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“We’re the losers for not liking it. Maybe it was actually good . I wonder if Roger will hit us when he comes in March.”

“I wonder if we’ll hit him.”

“I FaceTimed Barbie,” Daniel said. “He was at lunch with his sons in Brooklyn. They have a nice dad.”

“You didn’t want to go with him?”

“Ugh, I did, and it would have been fine, but I didn’t, for some reason. I couldn’t face it.”

“Stay here tonight,” Coralie said. “Anne and Sally are in the spare room. You can have the sofa.”

“I’ve got the keys for the Graham Road flat. It’s more my size when I’m on my own.”

“Nice to be a property mogul.”

“It is, I have to say.”

“Come as early as you want in the morning. Florence will be up from six.”

“I won’t be.”

“I will,” Coralie said sadly.

“Isn’t that your neighbor?”

Miss Mavis rounded the corner, walking with a stick. “Merry Christmas to you, Cara Lee,” she said. “Thank you for the cards. Come in, come in, I have something for the girls.”

They followed her into her front garden, paved over and empty except for her bins and a narrow strip of dirt where two giant camellias grew, their drooping petals scarlet in the security light.

In the hall, Miss Mavis leaned her stick against a tall walnut console table.

On it was a crocheted doily and a brass dish.

In the brass dish was an envelope from British Gas.

Capital letters shouted from a big blue oblong: Do Not Disregard This Letter.

Payment Due . Above the table, hanging from the picture rail, was a framed piece of delicate cross-stitch:

CHRIST is the HEAD

of the house

THE UNSEEN GUEST

at every meal

THE SILENT LISTENER

to every conversation

Daniel was staring at it, his face pale. “Like Roger.”

“What did Barbie mean that time,” Coralie said urgently, “when he said I was the good one and you were the bad one?”

“Here we are.” Miss Mavis shuffled back in with two envelopes and a packet of Jammie Dodgers. “One for Florence. One for Miss Zora. She’s not too old to get a card and her biscuits.”

“She’ll love them, thank you, Miss Mavis. They both will. What are you doing for Christmas?”

“Church for me. Busy all day. And who is this?”

“It’s me, Miss Mavis. Daniel. I’m Coralie’s brother, we met before.”

“Nice to see you again,” she said with great formality.

“Nice to see you again,” Daniel laughed as they went back next door. “She definitely forgot me.”

“So clever, so polite, she sounds like a politician. Like Tory Tom. Oh no.” She could hear Maxi wailing through the closed front door.

“Eek, that’s a lot of crying. I’ll head off.” Daniel embraced her. “Say bye to everyone, and happy birthday to Adam. I’ll see you tomorrow for lunch.”

“You will, because you’re cooking it.”

“Oh, ’e’s the best at cooking,” Dan made Madonna say in a Cockney accent, gently holding her tennis ball skull. “The best li’l boy in the weald.”

···

Inside, the real best little boy in the world was waiting for her in his new nappy and clean pajamas.

She arranged herself in the semi-dark, propped up against the bedhead with a pillow across her lap.

For this part of bedtime, they kept the door open and only the bathroom light on, just enough to see by.

Maxi was sucking his thumb with an intensity that meant he had recently been in tears, was probably about to be so again, and was very hungry.

Adam tossed the wormaid onto the bed, ceremoniously laid Max in, and zipped him up.

(The “wormaid” was their name for his sleeping bag: It made him half a worm and half a mermaid.) Transformation complete, he was handed over to Coralie for milk.

“Night night.” Adam kissed him gently. “Little baby boy. I’m going to work in the kitchen tonight. Not too late, maybe midnight.”

“Do you think we’ll ever get to talk?” Coralie asked quietly.

“What, you and me? Alone, as adults? Probably not.”

“It seems unlikely.”

“A far-off dream.”

“Happy birthday,” she said.

He slipped out.

Maxi’s hair was damp from his bath. She tried not to chat to him during his last feed of the day.

Nighttime was supposed to be nighttime, that’s what all the books said.

They also said not to feed a baby to sleep, but his eyes soon shut, and his fists flopped back to his ears.

She blew on his long eyelashes. They fluttered, but he didn’t wake up.

When she got to her feet, she couldn’t hear any milk inside him.

(Usually he sloshed like a hot-water bottle.) Her left breast was still full; if he didn’t wake up in a few hours, she’d be in pain and have to hook up to the dreaded pump.

But Max always knew what to do. They were a team.

She laid him in the cot. He looked enormous in it, dwarfing his toy sheep.

She leaned down to kiss him and tiptoed out, pulling the door shut softly behind her.

As she stood in the hallway, her ear to the door, her father came to her, and the black hole of growing up.

She felt herself sitting to attention in her bedrooms in Brisbane, Canberra, Jakarta, Darwin, waiting to be given her orders for the day; tiptoeing around, always silent and ideally invisible; arranging her face to be attentive, alert, polite.

Never sad, never angry, never happy; it wasn’t worth it.

To have an emotion (bad or good) was to make yourself a parent’s problem.

To make yourself a parent’s problem was simply begging for trouble.

She learned the lesson of The Look. The Look was all it took with Coralie, but Daniel never learned it, he had to have the smack.

(That must have been what Barbie had meant about the good one and the bad one.) All this still churned inside her.

But it wouldn’t touch her children. She was the wall, between the past and the future, and they were safe on the other side.

For as long as she was alive, she would protect them.

···

Swept up in Untitled 2019 Campaign Book , Adam nonetheless devoted three days over the New Year’s break to record test radio shows for The Times and the Sunday Times .

Partly based on the popularity of his podcast, the idea was to launch an “audio product” to drive print subscriptions for the paper.

The spontaneity of radio appeared to suit him (less slogging, more blagging).

Now he was the front-runner to get his own politics variety show: a mix of hard and breaking news, lighthearted quizzes, premade packages, interviews long and short, and a potential phone-in segment.

It would go out live, between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. Monday to Thursday, from the studio in London Bridge.

If it went ahead (the launch date was late spring) Coralie would be dealing with four pickups, children’s dinners, and solo double bath and bedtimes minimum every week. She’d be a widow without the sympathy.

But Lydia was an actual single mother. And when Nicky went away, or was busy at the studio, Alice was on her own for months at a time. Coralie couldn’t trouble them with her despair.

When she complained to Adam, he immediately said he’d turn it down—“You’re the boss! Just say the word!” An easy offer to make, since he knew she’d never do it. Ask an ambitious show-off to refuse high-status work? She wasn’t mad .

Besides, there were other things to worry about. A third person in Britain was diagnosed with the novel coronavirus, and (while getting a packet of biscuits from the pantry) Adam had seen the mouse.