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Weeks after her father had left, and even as spring turned into summer, she found she was still living in fear.

Daniel had talked about trembling as footsteps approached while he was in the bath.

Now it was Coralie’s turn. Sometimes, when the children were in bed, and she was waiting for Adam to get back from the studio, she made him call her from Dalston Junction so she didn’t freak out when she heard the front door unlock.

When she walked through the streets, strangers seemed to loom and menace her, talking about her, judging her, despising her.

She used to take the children to the park after school.

Now she was too frightened—of having to talk to other parents, or of her children falling, breaking their legs or even necks.

When she closed her eyes, she saw them getting hurt: if not at the park, then on the road; if not on the road, then in a house fire, a terror attack, a flood.

Her obsessive concern for them did not translate into solicitude.

Every cry or exclamation grated; she experienced every spilled glass of water or smear of yogurt on the floor as an assault.

Being near them was impossible. Being away from them was worse.

All but the most basic parenting tasks suddenly proved beyond her.

Taking the children to swimming lessons, in the newest and nicest of Hackney’s leisure centers, felt like going to war—the hot chlorine air in the bleachers, the crush to pick up the children, the shouting in the changing rooms, the chemical plumes of spray deodorant and perfume.

She began to lose sleep the night before.

After a month of insomnia, she canceled the lessons, but it was too late; her body had made a new rule: She did not sleep on Mondays.

Then she didn’t sleep if she had an appointment the following day, even something minor like an Ocado slot.

Then she didn’t sleep at all. She was absolutely fucked.

This does sound like the sort of thing people used to tell you to see your GP about , Lydia wrote, worried.

But also (not LOL), she was too scared to call for an appointment.

What do you think about? Lydia asked. On those nights when you can’t get to sleep?

She thought about the children growing up and there being no world for them to live in.

That she was nigh on forty, and halfway dead, unless she died early like her mother—then she was more like two-thirds dead.

That Adam would get hit by a car when he was cycling on London Bridge.

That Adam would leave her because she couldn’t laugh, or live a normal life, or get a new job, or even think about having sex.

But these fears only took up a few moments each.

The rest of the time, she thought nothing.

She was absolutely blank.

As the clock reached one, two, three, four, she began to picture the following day, the banging headache she’d have, her bone-deep exhaustion, her savage reactions to noise and stimuli, all hitting her right at the worst possible time: school pickup, for which she was solely responsible, and the dinner, bath, and bedtime routine, which she did alone and unsupported!

At 4 a.m., she often cried, carefully sobbing just loud enough to wake up Adam, and because of the crying, or because he wrapped himself around her and crushed her like a python, she was able to get to sleep, and sometimes she could sleep through the children getting up and claw back two or even four hours, which meant she could exist.

“Do you want me to tell you a story?” One morning, Florence was sitting on the edge of the bed. Her gingham school dress had swamped her at the beginning of Year 1. Now it fit snugly. Time just kept on passing. It was cruel.

“Okay, Wrennie,” Coralie said, though she’d been asleep and wished that she still was.

“Once upon a time, there was a mum, the most beautiful mum in the world…”

“Florence!” It was Adam, half shouting through his toothpaste foam. “Mummy’s sleeping! Get your school shoes on!”

After another sleepless night, Maxi came in with a play-silk on his head. “Ooh,” he moaned. “I’m a goat.”

“Oh, help, a ghost,” Coralie said. “There’s a ghost in my room!”

“Max!” Adam shouted up from downstairs. Fear filled her at the sound of the shout. Uncontrollable fear.

“You’d better run,” she said. “Daddy’s angry.”

The patter of his footsteps receded. She was alone.

···

Boris Johnson was in trouble. His MPs were all fed up with him.

His health secretary quit his job, and then, nine minutes later, his chancellor.

“Rishi Sunak has resigned ,” she heard on Radio 4 as she dug old rice out of the plughole in the sink.

(She didn’t listen to Adam’s show in the evenings.

Hearing his voice but not seeing him confused the kids.) “Oh, it’s all over now! ” the commentator exclaimed.

But Johnson simply reshuffled his cabinet and carried on.

When Adam got home, he was giddy with history and drama. “Everyone’s resigning,” he marveled. “There won’t be anyone left!”

“What about Tory Tom?”

“God, good question, what about him? I’ll text.”

After Covid, Tom had been appointed a parliamentary under-something for—something (she wasn’t really sure). It looked good on his wiki and apparently came with a pay rise, a small one, which made Marina laugh.

“Ah!” Adam showed Coralie his phone. Tom had responded with a screenshot of the Google Image search results for “cat holding on to branch with one claw.”

“But is that about Boris or him?”

“Hard to say.” They couldn’t work it out and didn’t ask.

Coralie got to sleep at ten thirty. An hour later, Adam came to bed and woke her up. She didn’t sleep again until five.

···

Was she in crisis? She couldn’t tell. It was intolerable, unbearable.

Yet there she was, bearing it. She thought of her life as a train, running between its stations, fixed, unchanging, never deviating from the track.

Could she press the emergency stop—shock everyone, inconvenience them, grind the whole thing to a halt?

The fact of being alive, the fact of her going on—it made the part of her that couldn’t be alive (couldn’t go on) a weakling, a fool, and a liar.

She hovered on the edge, half emergency, half not.

If you could press the big red button, you didn’t need the help. But if you couldn’t…

···

She typed all this out to Lydia but couldn’t bring herself to share it.

···

By the next day, so many Tories had resigned that Coralie wondered if Boris Johnson would even show up at Prime Minister’s Questions.

It was brave of him that he did. Labour leader Keir Starmer called the quitters “sinking ships fleeing the rat.” And “as for those who are left,” Starmer said, “they’re only in office because no one else is prepared to debase themselves any longer—the charge of the lightweight brigade.

Have some self-respect !” Ouch. Even Coralie felt chastened by the speech, and—apart from being a mental and physical wreck, economically inactive, a failed writer, a shit mother, a shit sister, a shit daughter, and a shitty common-law wife—she hadn’t done anything wrong.

···

That night, exhilarated by events, events, events, Adam stayed late in the News Building.

Coralie couldn’t sleep because she knew his return would wake her up.

By the time he got back at eleven, she was no longer tired.

At four thirty, the Wilton Way seagulls started their usual screaming and flapping.

Wednesday, July 6, became her first official zero-sleep night.

Zero. Nothing! Absolutely no sleep at all.

At five, she gave up and went downstairs to make the kitchen perfect, tipping loose raisins out of schoolbags, folding up Wrennie’s PE kit.

She made muffins to use up the apples. She froze the very ripe bananas in chunks for smoothies.

She set up drawing paper on the table in case the children wanted art.

They came down, warm and cuddly in their summer pajamas, surprised (in a good way) to see their mother out of bed.

On Radio 4, BBC political reporter Chris Mason was speculating about Boris Johnson’s future. “Mishal,” he told the host, “as I speak to you, I’m getting a call from Downing Street—so I’m going to take this call and I’ll come back on to you in just a second.”

Adam was in the bath, having a shave. (When it was a big day of news, his show also went out live on YouTube, so he had to look his best.) “Turn on Radio 4!” she called up the stairs.

“Don’t let the neighbors hear you!” he called back down. “She means Times Radio,” he shouted out to no one.

She laughed, delighted. She was so sleepless she’d gone beyond tired and become euphoric. “Mummy,” Florence seized her moment craftily. “Will you take us to school this morning?”

“Yes, Chris,” Mishal Husain said on the radio. “Let’s go straight back to you. You were just talking to Downing Street?”

“The prime minister has agreed to stand down.”

Coralie was faint; it was quite extraordinary. She leaned back against the counter. A wave of tiredness crashed over her, threatened to pull her under. “I can’t, Flo-Flo,” she said. “Daddy will take you to school.”

···

She was a puppet, shaking and waving. Her head was a balloon, floating away. Her vision narrowed, her mouth was dry. She sat in front of the TV, vacant.

“And to you, the British public. I know that there will be many people who are relieved and perhaps quite a few who will also be disappointed. And I want you to know how sad I am to be giving up the best job in the world. But,” Boris said, his voice flat with sudden bitterness, “ them’s the breaks . ”

···

Laundry she could do. Tidying wasn’t a problem.

She made up her daughter’s bed with the summer duvet and the quilt Sally had made that said Florence .

She arranged Catty with his long legs crossed, his plush black arms open in a hug.

Maxi’s special toy was a sheep; she laid him on his side in the cot.

The colorful magnets went in one basket, the Duplo in another.

Upstairs, she made Zora’s bed with sheets she’d brought in from the clothesline.

They were warm and smelled of the sun. She couldn’t mother the children. The house would do it instead.

···

That night, Adam was on air as usual until eight.

He stayed back in the office for a while, then went on to the Spectator summer party.

The party—she hadn’t factored in the party.

There’d be no point trying to go to sleep before he came back; he’d simply wake her up.

In fact, was there any point going to sleep at all, when the morning would inevitably come, and everything would start all over again? She explained this to Lydia in a text.

I think there is a point, yes , Lydia replied. To sleeping.

There is , Coralie conceded. But I won’t be able to.

Could you ask Adam to come home?

She didn’t want Lydia to lose patience with her. She had hogged the role of Friend in Crisis for too long. I’ll try! she wrote back, with a fake and cheerful exclamation mark.

When do you think you’ll come home? she texted Adam.

Hi gorgeous, definitely before midnight , he replied. I love you. CYK.

Consider yourself kissed. When she was happy, it felt so romantic. When she was broken, it felt like a slap.

···

Grief is the price we pay for love, that’s what the Queen had once said.

The price Coralie paid for love was fear and getting lost. Something was wrong with her, it set her apart—she couldn’t be in love, but she couldn’t be out of it either.

If she didn’t love, she was half a person.

But if she did love, she’d never be whole.

Her hands shook as she packed her bag. Mother, writer, worker, sister, friend, citizen, daughter, (sort of) wife.

If she could be one, perhaps she could manage.

Trying to be all, she found that she was none.

A high-summer night, still light outside—the seagulls soared and screamed.

She loved him so much, more than anything. But when Adam came home, she’d be gone.