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“What swimsuit did you pack for me?”

“I got the boring black one, like you said. From your boring drawer of boring black pants.”

“Perfect.”

“Important to be boring at all times,” Zora said.

“Why stand out when you could just…” Coralie shrugged. “Fade into the background and disappear?”

“No!” Zora’s teasing suddenly stopped. “I know you think you’re funny, but you sound really, really sad.”

“It’s possible to be both at once, you know. Funny and sad.”

“I don’t think you’re allowed to make grown-up speeches to me anymore,” Zora said. “Not after whatever all this is.”

“What do you think it is?”

“Leaving my dad? Moving out? Abandoning us? But not all of us. You’re still seeing the good children . Your real children.”

“Are you a child?”

“No,” Zora said. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Whatever you are,” Coralie said, “you’re good. And whatever I am to you—with you—it’s real.”

They walked on, past families straggling across the path, older women in hiking boots with dogs, and sunburned young people limping home from the night before. “When you were little,” Coralie said, “you used to call this Hampstead Heap.”

“I heard Dad crying last night, you know. A grown man, sobbing.”

“Sorry. Sorry you had to hear that.”

“I’ve heard it before,” Zora said. “Tom cries all the time.”

Coralie stopped, shocked. “Really?”

“Not all the time. But they’ve been fighting so much too. Marina lost her shit in lockdown and made Tom live in Eastbourne. That’s what I heard him crying about—that Eastbourne and the flat were so gross.”

“God! Don’t tell Anne.”

They both laughed.

After a bit, Coralie waved her arm around at the Heath. “You know, I’ve never swum here.”

“What? At the Ladies’ Pond?”

“I’m not a cool born-Londoner like you, Zor. I just live my little life in Hackney.”

She’d been aiming for something light, but Zora’s cry was desperate. “Why do you talk like you’re basically dead ?”

“I’m nearly forty,” Coralie said reasonably.

“God, get a fucking grip.”

“Zor!”

“Honestly!”

“Okay, since you’re the one giving grown-up speeches now and dealing out reality checks—what’s your news? What’s going on at school?”

“That question’s too boring to respond to.”

“Okay!”

WOMEN ONLY

MEN NOT ALLOWED

BEYOND THIS POINT

She’d seen the sign on Instagram so many times.

In the changing rooms lined in wood like a sauna or cabin, hardy, confident, and clearly self-actualized women of all ages were in various stages of undress, chatting, drying, or sharing shampoo in the shower. She handed Zora the tote with her things. Shyly, they diverged into separate cubicles.

When they met out on the deck, she saw something that amused her. Zora was wearing the same style of plain black Speedo that she was. “What was all that about being boring?”

“It’s practical .”

“Okay!”

The water was warm, which was spooky. “Oh, yuck,” Coralie said. “I just put my foot into a different layer. The water’s gone all cold. How can it be different temperatures? Why isn’t it all the same? What’s on the bottom of this, anyway? And how deep is it?”

“It’s nature. Are you scared?”

“Are you not scared?”

“Do you think I might be triggered? Because I fell in the lake at Victoria Park?”

“I’m the triggered one; I nearly froze to death after that.”

“I didn’t even get to touch the duck. Come on, put your goggles on, swim properly! We’ll do a lap.”

“I don’t want to put my head under.”

“Fine!”

Coralie swam sedately, keeping her head out of the water.

Zora flipped and twisted like a fish. “You’re not supposed to go too close to the edge,” she popped up to say.

“Why?”

“In case you see a dead body. No! You might damage the plants, that’s all.”

They struck out into the middle of the pond. Coralie wanted to hold a buoy to rest, but she was scared of the unseen rope trailing against her legs.

“So, is this it?” Zora bobbed in front of her. “Have you and Dad broken up?”

“No—” Coralie started. “Look at those women.”

Two swimmers had struck out to the deepest part of the pond. They had stopped and were resting—were they? Or clowning? They started splashing and holding each other.

“They’ll get told off,” Zora said.

“Are they kissing? No…Oh God—they’re drowning.”

A whistle blew. A kayak streaked out from nowhere. “Lady in the red hat!” a woman with a megaphone boomed from the deck. “Both of you. Stop struggling. Let go. Let go now! You’re dragging each other down!”

One of the two heads sank under the surface for a long time.

Screams and cries rang out around the pond. Coralie gasped. “Fuck!”

“Get apart! Get apart now!” the megaphone woman shouted.

The head popped back up. The rescuer reached the weeds. The two swimmers held the kayak, one on each side. After a while, they began an embarrassed breaststroke to shore.

“That’s what we were like,” Coralie said. “Adam and me. Dragging each other down. I just needed to be alone so I could rest, and breathe, and save myself.”

“And are you saved?”

“I think maybe I am.”

···

That night, she did her hour of bedtime as usual.

At the end, when the children were asleep, and Zora was up in her room, Coralie slipped out of the house and sent Adam a different message.

She was accepting visitors—well, only one visitor—to her flat on Graham Road.

Fifteen minutes later there was a tap on the front door.

Coralie ran down to open it. His shirt was open one more button than usual.

Sweat beaded on his temples and ran in rivulets down his chest. She saw his face again, what he actually looked like—not just how she felt about him. She was nervous, trembling. So was he.

The heat was incredible, she could smell his skin.

They kissed, and he rested his chin in her cupped hand.

She’d forgotten what he felt like, too, that he was a person, warm and alive.

He’d been an idea, a shadowy enemy, a ghost reaching out from the past. Now he was Adam again.

She remembered that she loved him. “Do you still love me?” she asked.

“Yes. Do you still love me?”

“Yes.”

They lay on their sides, facing each other, their heads on the same white pillow. “Do you remember when we first met?” Coralie said. “In bed for whole afternoons.”

“In your old flat? Under the skylight? I do.”

“Everything was so easy then.” Her eyes filled with tears.

She was still crying all the time—when she missed the children and couldn’t wait to see them again; when she thought about the record hot weather and what the future held; from relief, too—that she’d been to the brink and made it back.

There were people around her now. People who cared and who loved her.

“I’m sorry I let it get so bad,” Adam said. He reached for her hand and held it. “ One more book , I kept thinking. One more job. And then I’d finally be able to enjoy it.”

“You went on without me,” she said. “You left me behind. We were so in love. But I moved in with you and everything stopped for me. It took forever to have a baby. It took forever to have another one. It took me forever to start writing. I’ve been writing the same thing for years.

You’re wondering when you can stop. I’m wondering if I’ll get to start. ”

Two matching tears slid down Adam’s cheeks and dropped an inch apart on the pillow. “I don’t know how it happened….”

“But it wasn’t just you. It was me too.” Because there was something about her, Coralie could see it now.

Something very like her mother. Taking on everything like a mule or a packhorse.

Plodding along, buckling. Not insisting on things she wanted.

Talking herself out of complaints. She’d floated away, mentally.

A ghost in her own life. She’d nearly floated away for good.

She was crying. Never again. He held her against his chest.

“Remember CYK ?”

“ CYK? Yes,” Adam said. “I do.”

“It started off so full of love. But then it was just like ticking a box.”

“It won’t be anymore. I promise. I love you the most in the world.”

“I love you.”

“Forever.”

“Forever.”

She sent him home when it got dark. She slept all through the night.