Page 6

“Take it inside; it’s so cold. The hall, at least.”

“Okay.” His key ring was a leather map of France. She unlocked the top lock with a thin key and the bottom lock with a chunky one. She stood in the dark hall. “I’m in. So, I was on the phone to my brother to check up on Mum, and I said, ‘Sorry about the boxes in the spare room.’ And he said—”

Adam groaned. “What boxes?”

“Exactly. You can’t get upset with someone who has cancer. Anyway, it wasn’t Mum’s fault. I forgot about the wet season. It’s so tropical. They went moldy, and that was that—no way back. She got the council to collect them and take them to the dump.”

“How ruthless,” Adam said admiringly.

“When I came over here, I started all over again, ninety-nine pence each at charity shops. Okay, I’m going to turn on the light. Let me call you back. I want to have a look and then ask you about it.”

“I’ll just finish my eggs.”

“Great!”

“Great!”

“Bye!”

“Bye!”

···

Everything was painted the same generic builder’s white: walls, skirtings, floorboards, cornices, and, at the back of the hall, the stairs.

Two bikes leaned against the scuffed wall, one blue adult bike and a small pink one for Zora.

The original fireplace was still there in the sitting room, light gray marble with dark gray veins.

The alcoves on either side were lined from floor to ceiling with ply shelves on heavy-duty industrial metal brackets.

One shelf, halfway up on one side, held a record player with an amp and speakers.

Records filled the shelves underneath. The rest had books on them, all jumbled up.

Ottolenghi, Nigella, Nigel Slater. University reading list–looking books (black-spine Penguins).

A selection of novels in French with their distinctive cream covers.

Lots of politics and history, postwar British stuff.

Diaries: Alastair Campbell, Alan Clark, Chris Mullin, Tony Benn.

Politicians’ memoirs called things like My Life and A Journey and My Life, Our Times .

Extreme levels of Barack Obama: his books and lots of books about him.

Adam’s sofa was very like her sofa. In the corner was a big TV on an antique trunk, sort of like a pirate’s chest. Under the bay window was a giant pink plastic house.

Inside, small, nude human dolls were taking tea with Sylvanian animals, also nude.

Through double doors there was a small dining room with nothing in it apart from a large wooden table.

At one end of the table was an open laptop, the screen dark, and two coffee cups, each with an inch of cold black coffee inside.

At the other end, a long strip of butcher paper, Sellotaped to the pine, was covered in drawings of animals: orange lions, gray elephants, a black cat.

“ZoRa, ZoRa, ZoRa,” Adam’s daughter had written.

Coralie appreciated the flair of the random capital R .

At the top of the page, the sun had a smiling face.

The ghost of a childhood compulsion came over her, and she put lids back on the uncapped felt-tips.

She wondered what Adam was thinking about her long silence.

But she couldn’t experience his house and process it with him at the same time.

Antoinette, forty-six, lived in a much larger version of this kind of Victorian terrace; her two-decades-older architect husband had replaced the walls at the rear with a futuristic glass cube.

(Coralie hadn’t personally seen it; one of the top Google results for her boss was a house tour on the website Dezeen.) But Adam’s narrow galley kitchen must have been decades old.

Wonky pine cabinets ran down both sides, leaving just enough space at the end for a small table and four chairs.

There was a window over the sink and narrow French doors opening onto what she presumed was the garden.

She peered outside but couldn’t see much.

In the fridge she found milk in glass bottles, a bag of carrots, a giant slab of Cheddar in cling film, tomato ketchup and HP Sauce, half a bottle of supermarket white wine, and a phalanx of purple Petits Filous yogurt.

Upstairs in the big front bedroom that was clearly Adam’s room was a bed, made (but the dark gray linen very rumpled), a built-in wardrobe on either side of the fireplace, a bedside table with an industrial-looking task lamp, and a chair with a pair of jeans thrown over the side.

The room next to his seemed to have no purpose at all: there were three large packing boxes (stacked, possibly empty), a rolled-up yoga mat, and an ironing board.

The bathroom did have a bath, a huge freestanding one.

Beside it, a clear plastic container overflowed with boats, ducks, cups, and a Ken with a plastic mermaid tail.

She clomped up the carpetless wooden stairs, happiness rising within her.

When she reached the top landing, she gasped.

The big front bedroom was the only one that wasn’t white.

A nightlight had been left on and a scene of stars and planets gently rotated around walls of a bright sky blue.

Over the single bed hung a red-and-white-striped canopy like a circus tent.

A giant wooden toy box was propped open under one of the windows, filled to the brim with silks, feather boas, a space suit, a Spider-Man costume.

Clothes spilled out of two matching chests of drawers on either side of the fireplace.

In the unused grate, a collection of stuffed animals huddled together.

In front of them, on a Persian rug, was a basket of colorful Easter eggs.

The foil was half removed from each egg, and a child’s small bite taken out.

Her phone lit up with an incoming call.

“You do have a bath!”

“Have you found anything weird? You’ve gone all quiet.”

“I’ve only found nice things. I’ve just got to Zora’s room. It’s like a dream.”

“I can’t take any credit; she has a granny who’s very arty.”

“Your mum?”

“My mum’s partner.”

Coralie paused. “Oh God! Sorry! It’s like the riddle.”

“The fox, the chicken, and the granny…”

“Father and son are in a horrible car crash that kills the dad. The son is rushed to the hospital—the nurse hands the surgeon a scalpel. ‘Stop! I can’t operate! This boy is my son,’ the surgeon says.”

“Oh? The dad was gay? Two dads? No! The surgeon was a woman.”

“Sorry it took me so long to work out you could have two grannies together.”

“Don’t worry! It took Mum ages too.”

“But where’s the guest room? Does it exist?”

“You must be right next to it.”

She walked down the hall to the last door. “I was right next to it.”

On the double bed was a clean mattress protector, two fluffy white pillow inserts, and a duvet with no cover. A chest of drawers stood empty, another task lamp on the top. She clicked on the lamp and hung her tote on one of the drawer handles.

“The stuff is in the cupboard outside the bathroom,” Adam said. “Towels are in there too.”

“You can change the sheets on mine if you like. They’re in an ugly plastic box under the bed. I’m sorry my bathroom doesn’t have a window.”

“I’m sorry I only have nine books by women.”

“Wait, is this it? Are you going to bed?”

“Ring me when you’ve had something to eat and a bath,” Adam said. “I won’t go to bed until you do.”

···

She didn’t make pasta. She found a packet of crackers in the cupboard next to the fridge and sliced some Cheddar, which she had with a glass of his wine.

Afterward, she wandered back into the sitting room to find a book to read in the bath.

Among the mass of political books was Recollections of a Bleeding Heart , Don Watson’s classic biography of Australia’s charismatic and brooding prime minister Paul Keating.

Truly, no one knew anything about Australian politics in the UK, or anything about Australia at all.

But here was a very large paperback all about where she came from, the spine virtually corduroy from avid engagement.

Two bits of curled-over paper stuck out from the top, boarding passes for Sydney-to-Canberra flights in 2004: It must have been his Mark Latham–profile trip.

He must have been twenty-eight then. She would have been twenty-one, living in a share house with her ex-boyfriend Josh and the other High Court associates, in the final year of her arts degree and working four days a week at a local magazine.

Adam had been in the same city. Now, on the other side of the world, they’d somehow managed to meet—not once, but three times. How could it be this easy?

In a rush of fear, she googled him. Young Country did exist. So did the podcast. On YouTube, she watched him amiably review newspaper headlines on a weekend current affairs show.

The Adam of the video was recognizably the Adam of the Dove.

She hurried to his bedside table and pulled open the top drawer.

Four small marbles and one large one rolled to the front and bounced back.

She opened the bottom drawer. It contained a battered, much-read copy of Meg and Mog . He was who he said he was. It was real.

···

In bed, in his clean sheets, in the dark, she went into her call log and saved his number: Adam . He answered the call after a few rings. “I just got into bed,” he said. “Were you going to tell me about this guy behind the pillow?”

“Brown Bear? It seemed a bit mean after Tigey and Cuddles. Rubbing your nose in it.”

“Is this a boarding school thing? Stuffed animals?”

“We’re profoundly damaged.”

“I’ve just been dipping into The Group— I found it beside your bed. ‘Consider yourself kissed’—that’s how this bad boy Harald signs off letters to his girlfriend.”

“Later,” Coralie said sorrowfully, “he commits her to an asylum.”

“Why are you reading it if you’ve read it before? That’s my question.”

“I can’t believe you have the Don Watson Paul Keating book. It’s such a good book!”

“It’s the best political bio I’ve ever read. I had to write about Prime Minister’s Questions once—Question Time, I think you call it there. And I watched an incredible video with Paul Keating. The opposition leader, the leader of whatever the Tories are—remind me?”

“The Liberals.”

“The Liberal leader says, ‘If you’re so confident our policies are bad, why don’t you just call an early election?’ And Keating gets up. ‘Because, mate,’ he starts to say. Everyone’s hooting, shrieking; the Speaker says to settle down. ‘Because, because, mate.’ And then Keating says…”

“Because what?”

“Because, mate.” Adam was quoting, but he was speaking directly to her. His voice came right through the phone and shivered down her spine. “I wanna do you slowly.”

“So why did you go to the Dove? Rather than the other three pubs?”

“I suppose I can tell you, now I’ve got you into bed.”

“Tell me.”

“I was hoping you’d be there.”

“And I was.”

“You were.”

···

In the morning, they remained only a latte’s length of time at Climpsons before crossing the market to her flat.

They spent the whole Easter long weekend together, and almost all the ensuing weeks and months, opening up their individual bodies and minds and knitting them back together, connected—like an operation to separate conjoined twins, only in reverse.

Her happiness made her almost too open, and some things that weren’t Adam but shared some DNA with him were let in by mistake, like loose-leaf tea in a pot with a tea cozy, hot puddings (disparaged by the old version of herself as “second dinners”), listening to Radio 4’s Today and PM , and watching Channel 4 News and Newsnight .

Her love, too, overflowed and spilled out, and—having previously not made even the slightest impact—she was suddenly hailed at both her work coffee shop and Climpsons as an adored and favorite regular.

“I like it,” her boss said one day.

“Oh?” Coralie blushed. “Like what?”

“Whatever you’ve done.” Antoinette waved an elegant hand. “With your”—in a French accent—“ visage .”

London wasn’t unfriendly! London wasn’t cold!

“I’m sorry, so sorry to interrupt.” An older woman came up to them on Columbia Road. “But I just wanted to tell you how beautiful you are—both of you! Together.”

And Adam and Coralie smiled, thanked her, and took it as their due.

···

The drafts of her manuscript stayed under the seat cushion of the sofa. After a while, she moved them to an IKEA bag. Then she put the bag under the bed. Then she forgot about her writing entirely.