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Later, after they had dropped Maxi off at Montessori, she braced herself for a coffee and a chat, but her father yawned once, looked pale, and said it was time to “rest and recharge.” His hotel was near Liverpool Street Station.

She put him on the train at London Fields and immediately rang Dan. “He said his timings are flexible .”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That he could stay on and on forever? He was so embarrassing at Montessori drop-off. He was reading out the labels on the shelves for the children’s shoes.

‘Olympia, Olive, Land, Leaf…,’ and then he goes, like he was still reading, ‘Dirt, Solar Panel, Pussycat, Rubbish Truck.’ Then he looked into the classroom and said… No, I can’t say.”

“Say,” Daniel said, resigned.

“He said, ‘So, there are still white children in England.’ Oh God.” She stared up at the gray sky. “I won’t survive this visit.”

···

The next day, Friday, was the day Adam didn’t do his show, and Montessori pickup was early, at twelve instead of three thirty. Adam would take Roger to pickup. Daniel and Coralie would stay home to prepare lunch. They’d all eat together as soon as Adam and Roger got back with Max.

Florence, at school all day and sad to miss out, had left a drawing of herself behind “for Grandad.”

“What’s this meant to be?” Roger scoffed. “A bit remedial .”

Daniel hadn’t arrived by the time Adam and Roger left for pickup. Coralie feared she’d have to start the lunch prep alone. But at twelve, the bell rang. She opened the door to find a stranger.

Well, it was Daniel, but his ponytail had gone. With his sleek new conservative haircut, he could have been a solicitor or an estate agent.

“It wasn’t worth it,” Daniel explained as they embraced. “I can’t cope with Roger’s remarks.”

Coralie checked her phone and found a WhatsApp from Adam: He made the joke about the names again. Rain’s mum didn’t laugh.

In the kitchen, Daniel took in her supplies at a glance. “We’ll need some more bread,” he said. “Because I’m going to use the last of it. Can you tell Adam?”

She watched as, in Dan’s hands, the unloved contents of her vegetable box became a delicious gratin and the remains of a sourdough loaf became bread crumbs for the top. “Is he bad, do you think?”

“Roger?” Daniel said. “Yeah.”

“Self-obsession isn’t a crime.”

“Sometimes I’ll be lying in the bath, or sitting at the table with a coffee, and I hear footsteps coming toward me.

I know it’s only Barbie, the man I love, and who loves me, because I’m in the house we share together, on the other side of the world from Dad.

But my heart races, I feel sick—I’m cowering, like Madonna being sniffed by a pit bull. The body doesn’t lie. He was bad.”

Was he bad morally? Or was she, for not being able to love him?

Her mother had spent much of their marriage scuttling like a rat to avoid Roger Bower’s eagle eye.

That was sad. A bit pathetic? Coralie liked to think that she had her father’s measure.

Little compliment there, little courteous question there!

Judicious application of a fascinated listening face; no sudden noises or movements!

It wasn’t too tricky. If she could do it—handle him—why couldn’t Mum? Or Dan?

She remembered a long-ago family trip to Lake Toba, a vast lake in the crater of a volcano.

She walked ahead with Dad as he discoursed at length about the geography of North Sumatra.

Trailing far behind them, Mum looked after Dan.

Suddenly, Dan (who must have been, what—seven?) collapsed on the ground, wailing with exhaustion and boredom.

“ Roger! ” their mother screamed, startling their local guide.

“Here we go,” Dad said. “Well, you know what they say.”

“What?” Coralie was twelve, on holiday from boarding school and enjoying being treated (however briefly) like an adult.

“It’s hard to soar like an eagle when you’re surrounded by turkeys.”

She was an eagle, like him—that seemed to be what he was saying. Wasn’t it?

We can do this the easy way or the hard way. That’s what baddies always said in films. What kind of idiot chose the hard way? Mum and Dan, that’s who. They couldn’t not struggle. They couldn’t choose the easy way.

Now grown-up Dan got the gratin ready to serve, his cheeks flushed from the heat of the oven. He must have been reading Coralie’s mind. “You were always Team Dad.”

“I wasn’t!”

“Well, you weren’t on Mum’s and my team.”

Even though she’d just been thinking the same thing, hearing him admit they’d had a team, and that she wasn’t on it, really stung. “You had a team, did you? That’s nice. I wish I’d had a mother. I would have loved one, actually.”

“You had one,” Dan said. “You just didn’t give a shit about her.”

“Dan!”

“Just a fact.”

“I was there for her small operation, her big operation, the hospital…”

“What about the other thirty years you were both alive at the same time?”

“I suppose there were the eleven years I lived in her various houses as a child? I was left behind after that. Raised by a school instead.”

“You loved your school, you were obsessed by school, you couldn’t wait to get back there every holiday, crossing the days off your calendar and ignoring us.

You had no idea what life was like for Mum and me as Dad grew more and more powerful, and we only got more scared.

You turned your eyes away. Then you got away for real. ”

Coralie’s breathing was fast, her vision blurred. “I don’t think I got away. It’s followed me around—everywhere!”

Dan looked around at her cozy kitchen. “You got away.”

“I don’t think I did, but I agree I wasn’t there. Not in the way you were. And I’m really sorry about it. You were there. You were there for Mum. You were a hero with her—an absolute hero.”

“Cor, I wasn’t a hero,” Dan said. “I was a mess. You had no idea—I had a breakdown when I was eighteen. And another one around the time of her big second op. That’s why I stayed home, and then why I moved home again.

Not to look after her—so she could look after me.

So, stop, please. Stop being nice to me. I don’t actually deserve it.”

What was this feeling inside her? Whatever it was, she hated it.

Dan’s big eyes and long lashes—so like Max’s.

She saw his perfect, smooth face, his poreless skin.

She wanted to claw and scratch at it. Envy, that’s what it was.

She was sick with it. Mum had accepted love from Dan and had given him her love back. Why not Coralie?

“Cor,” Dan said. “What’s going on in your mind? I was trying to make you feel better.”

On the kitchen counter, her phone lit up with an alert—she’d missed a call from Adam. She rang back. When the call connected, she could hear Max screaming in the background.

“Max is okay,” Adam said. “We were on Broadway Market, and I had to take a call. I was gone for ten minutes . Roger said he was buying some wine.”

“What happened? Adam!” A car accident. Deliveroo guys on their bikes. “Is he hurt? Is Max hurt?”

But Adam had hung up.

···

She could hear the crying from down the street. Roger was pushing the empty buggy. Maxi was sobbing in Adam’s arms. Coralie couldn’t see what was wrong. His legs were kicking, both his arms were around Adam’s neck. There didn’t seem to be any blood.

“Oh shit,” Daniel said.

“See!” Roger gestured at his children. “Real men have short hair! Even Uncle Danny!”

Coralie started jogging. “I’m so sorry,” Adam said. “I’m so sorry.”

She took her son into her arms. His beautiful hair was gone.

It was shorter than Daniel’s. The sides and back had been shaved.

He looked like a ketamine dealer, like he should be riding a stolen Lime bike or wearing a St. George’s flag around his shoulders and a shirt reading Convicted of Journalism .

“For God’s sake,” her father said. “Adam was off doing God knows what. The barber was right there. I was helping .”

Maxi was staring at her, wondering how to feel.

She pressed him into her chest, gathering the strength she needed to be calm.

He’d stopped crying but was breathing raggedly, periodically racked with sobs.

“That was a bad surprise, wasn’t it,” she murmured.

“You didn’t know Grandad was going to get your hair cut. ”

Maxi whimpered.

“You’re very, very beautiful,” Coralie said. His eyes were a startling blue, and his thick lashes curled up like a Rimmel ad. “I’ve got you now. I’ve got you.”

But that’s what she always said, that’s what she’d made her mission—looking after her children and protecting them from harm. She had failed.

“What the fuck were you doing?” she hissed at Adam inside.

His eyes bulged. “I was taking a call and buying your bloody bread!”

“Why would you leave Max with him?”

“He’s your dad, not Vladimir Putin.”

“You ruined everything,” she sobbed. But he hadn’t— she had.

When she served the lunch, it was with a smile. If her father knew she was devastated, it would only make everything worse. Better to keep him onside, to soothe, to venerate—as if nothing he did could ever possibly be wrong.

To survive his visit, she had to put the thinking, breathing, feeling part of herself safely away on a high shelf. The problem was, when he finally left, she’d shrunk so much she couldn’t get it down.