Page 42

It was the day before Christmas, and in the Wilton Way house, everyone was stirring, even a mouse.

That morning, at breakfast, a half-empty box of Rice Pops toppled on its side in the pantry.

A small brown shape streaked from the open door, zigzagged past the playpen, and disappeared under the fridge.

Luckily, Adam was still upstairs, having a lie-in for his forty-fourth birthday.

Florence was swinging her legs at the table and watching Peppa Pig on the iPad. She hadn’t noticed.

“That didn’t happen,” Coralie said. “Zora? Hannah? That didn’t happen.”

Zora’s friend Hannah had slept over the night before. “I honestly didn’t see anything,” she said. “I just worked it out from the sound, and your faces.”

“Zora? It’ll ruin his whole birthday, and Christmas.”

“Oh, totally,” Zora said. “It didn’t happen.”

Barbie overslept and almost missed his plane to New York, meaning Daniel was late, and so was Adam’s birthday lunch, which Dan was meant to cook.

Madonna was unsettled by the rush; she sat trembling in Dan’s market basket, then staggered round Coralie’s kitchen, barking at the pedal bin.

Dan jettisoned the slow-cooked lentil lasagna in favor of a much quicker pasta, but they still didn’t sit down at the table (extended by an Amazon trestle) until after two.

Just as well Coralie, who’d been up four times during the night with the baby, had already eaten three breakfasts.

At Montessori, a week earlier, Florence’s friend Anatole had stuck a pomegranate seed up his nose.

Pressed by Adam to relate the story in the high-stakes environment of this large family lunch, a tongue-tied Florence demonstrated by putting a raisin up her own nose, where it immediately got stuck; Anne seized her, blocked the other nostril, and blew sharply into Florence’s mouth.

The raisin dropped onto the kitchen floor.

As everyone else applauded, Adam knelt to pick it up, muttering crossly about “tempting rodents.”

Over the top of his head, Coralie and Zora shared a long, silent gaze.

(Putting a raisin up her nose was something a young Zora Whiteman would never do. That was all Bower. Embarrassing.)

And worst of all: Boris Johnson had decisively won the December 12 election.

His majority in Parliament was huge. The Tories released a triumphant Christmas video of him making mince pies with his father.

Surrounded by the detritus of the birthday lunch, Adam played it on his phone at the table.

Someone once bet Boris he couldn’t eat a “scalding” mince pie in five seconds flat, Stanley Johnson said.

But “I got that mince pie… done !” Boris replied.

He was clearly still in election mode, saying “Get Brexit Done” every five seconds.

Well, Brexit was done. On December 20, the withdrawal agreement had passed in the Commons.

The UK would leave the EU on January 31.

But it would not be Coralie’s problem. She’d been on a news and social media break since election day.

Nobody could make her hear that man’s voice without her consent. “Mmm,” she hummed. “La, la, la!”

“The YouTube comments are quite deranged,” Adam said. “?‘Whether you like the Conservatives or not,’?” he read out, “?‘Boris does make you smile, and brings a bit of optimism, unlike Corbyn, who made me feel suicidal!’?”

“Very cool and normal,” Coralie said. “A cool and normal thing to say in a cool and normal country. Can we try to have a Boris-free day?”

“You can’t hide from reality,” Anne said. “Boris Johnson will be the prime minister until 2024—at the very least. Perhaps longer! It’s our duty, as citizens, to engage with rising tides of authoritarianism in Europe and the US. We can’t just turn away!”

“I agree,” Hannah said.

“Actually,” Coralie said (under her breath), “I already have.” She used to reread Virginia Woolf’s Diaries every year, a tradition she’d started at school but had stopped when she’d shipped her books off and moved to Sydney to work in advertising, which was also when she’d got Twitter.

Coincidence? Well, no more. She’d just bought another full set of the Diaries from AbeBooks.

Twitter, gone. Instagram, gone. The Guardian app— so gone.

Anne could be ever vigilant, a bulwark of liberal democracy. Coralie had had enough.

“Show it to me?” Daniel surprised them all by saying. He was rolling out pastry for his own mince pies.

“Yes, chef.” Adam pressed play and leaned the phone against a candlestick.

“Oh, stop,” Daniel said, as soon as he glanced at the screen. “Stop!”

Coralie stretched over and paused the video.

“His father hates him,” Daniel said. “Can’t you see? God, someone tell Boris. He’s in danger.”

Adam raised his eyebrows as he pocketed his phone.

“We’re the ones in danger,” Anne said. “From him.”

In the playpen in the corner, Max kissed the air above his shoulders. “I’m going upstairs to feed the baby.” Coralie escaped.

She would never, ever take a full house and her Amazon trestle table for granted.

Her childhood Christmases had been so bleak—her parents, in opposite armchairs, watching Coralie and Daniel open one present at a time, every expression and utterance scrutinized for the correct amount of gratitude.

Invariably, having been “given so much,” Daniel would commit the crime of wanting more, or something different.

He would cry, their father would shout, their mother would sob as she ironed in the spare room, and Coralie would read, alone.

Throughout university, she’d been a guest at Josh’s family Christmases, an outsider in a foreign world of cousins, dogs, boisterous games, and water fights.

By the time they’d broken up, so had her own family, and she didn’t have the money, the annual leave, or the inclination to catch a plane to her mother’s place in Darwin.

She spent the day with friends and didn’t put up a tree.

But even having tasted loneliness, and knowing on a bone-deep level that what she had was special, she was still glad Maxi needed feeding at least every two hours so she could take a little break.

Stretched out on the soft cloud of the winter duvet, she gazed down at his silky blonde hair, and distracted him by stroking him, squeezing his earlobe, and craning to kiss his head, until he broke off and gave her an enormous smile. He was a perfect boy and her best friend.

“You know the nicest birthday present you could give me,” Adam had said that morning.

“A night without this Coralie-hog in the room.” That was a bit silly, coming from him—if he didn’t insist on having a study to write his election books, Florence could sleep in it, and Maxi would move into a beautifully redecorated nursery next door.

The Pinterest board was ready! But, to be fair to Adam, not that he deserved it, she was on the fence about moving Maxi too.

If it was up to her, Maxi would stay a baby and remain in her bed for life .

And if Adam had to move out, that was his problem!

“Isn’t it, Minnie?” She kissed his cheeks until he was trembling with delight. “It is!”

“Cor?”

“Zor? Come in.”

“When’s Hannah’s dad picking her up?”

“Five, I thought. Any minute now.”

Zora sat on the bed. “Coralie?”

“Mmm?”

“Do I have to go to Tom’s?”

It was Marina’s turn to have Zora for Christmas Day.

They’d be spending it, as usual, at Tom’s family home in Sevenoaks.

Zora probably didn’t want to endure the drive.

Since attending a big climate march in late September, she’d stuck an adhesive skull on Tom’s Range Rover and had threatened to let down his tires.

“Oh?” Coralie tried to keep it light. “Why?”

“It’s not my family, it’s Tom’s.”

“They’re okay, though, aren’t they?”

“Zor? Zor?” They could hear Hannah calling.

“Let’s talk more about this,” Coralie said. “Tom and your mum aren’t coming till six.”

Zora nodded at her feeding half brother. “That looks a bit gross. Is it gross?”

“I thought the whole idea of it was gross—until I was about thirty. But now, no. I love it.”

“Freak,” Zora said on her way out.

“You’re the freak.”

“Bye, freak.”

Maxi had nodded off. Coralie moved him to the center of the bed. With a nap this late, he’d be up till nine or ten. Then he’d still expect his midnight feed. And his feeds at 3 and 5 a.m. She owed her tenuous grip on sanity to breastfeeding hormones and a packet of biscuits a day.

Upstairs, the door to Zora’s room was ajar. “It’s not exactly a good look,” Hannah was saying. She was inclined, occasionally, to be bossy.

“It’s not what I would choose for myself,” she heard Zora say.

“Why shouldn’t you choose? It’s your name.”

They must be working on their novel. It was a sprawling, complex work called Seven Sisters .

There were seven main characters (all sisters), and it was set in Seven Sisters, a part of London that, to Coralie’s knowledge, neither author had actually visited.

She tapped on the door and pushed it open a few inches.

“Hannah, your dad must be due any minute. Don’t forget your toothbrush. ”

Adam was trudging up the stairs as Coralie was on her way down. “Where are the girls?”

“Upstairs, plotting.”

“Hmm…” He kept walking.

“Does Zora have to go to Tom’s family tonight?”

Adam shrugged tiredly. “It’s their turn.”

“I know.” Are you okay? she wanted to ask.

He’d only lie and say yes, but in a way that showed he wasn’t.

Or if he said no, he wasn’t okay, then what was she supposed to do?

She had a house full of people and a fifteen-week-old baby.

It would have to wait till everyone went home.

But when everyone went home, he’d have to work on his book about the last election campaign, due on March 6. So when would they talk? Never.

The doorbell rang. “Hannah!” she called.