“My work did all my paperwork. They’ve just renewed my visa. Next time, I can apply for indefinite leave to remain.”
“And how old are you, remind me?”
“Thirty-one.” She added, in spite of herself, childishly rounding up: “And a half?”
“Eight years’ difference.” Anne looked meaningfully at Adam.
“Thirty-one and a half and thirty-nine is nothing like nineteen and twenty-seven,” Adam said.
This was all new to Coralie. “Was that the difference between you and Adam’s dad?”
“It wasn’t the main one,” Anne replied. “But yes, we were also eight years apart. Planning any children?”
Coralie gaped.
“I ask,” Anne said, “because if so, it’s time to start on the folic acid. And, Adam, forty isn’t young, you know. Everyone knows abouttick-tock,tick-tockfor women. Sperm degrades too.”
“Thanks, Mum,” Adam said. “I’m not quite forty yet. And recovering quite well from my Ebola.”
Who was Anne to snap on her latex gloves, slice and dig into Coralie’s chest, yank out her most cherished private dreams, and examine them like an excised tumor? She wished she’d phoned her own mother when she’d had the chance. But that would have left her empty in a different way.
The doorbell rang and she leaped in her seat.
“Zora,” Adam called. “Marina’s here!”
“It’s only little old me!” Tory Tom was hale and hearty in the hall. “Very unlike us to be early! Sorry about that. We’ve come from a place close to your heart, Anne!”
“Tom, good to see you again,” Anne said. “How are you and your cronies planning on ruining Eastbourne?”
Tom winked at Coralie. “You’ll have to wait and see!”
“I read what you said about people on benefits.”
“I simply said!” Tom laughed his joyful and infectious laugh. “That people on benefits move to Eastbourne to be on benefits by the sea! It was (a) a joke and (b) a deadly serious fact-based assertion. I mean, if something is funnyandtrue—what’s the crime? Happy birthday, Adam.” Tom extended his hand and Adam shook it. “Do you think my car’s safe out there? In Hackney? Murder Mile? Should I bribe a local youth to look after it?”
“Your car’s safe in E8, Tom. But I’m not sure you’ll get away with those shoes.”
“What?” Tom angled his calf. “My taupe suede driving loafers?”
“Tom?” Zora called from the sitting room. “I want to watch the iPad in the car.”
“You can’t watch the iPad in the car! You’ll do a sick! We have an iPad at home with all the same awful shows on it.”
Anne nodded at the plastic laundry basket near the front door. “These are our presents for Zora.”
“Oh, that reminds me.” Coralie started up the stairs. “I’ve got to finish some wrapping.”
“Gosh,” Tom exclaimed. “Zora’s a lucky girl. You can carry them out to the car, Anne. You’re the only one here with biceps.”
As well as being the Conservative candidate for Eastbourne, Tom Dunlop was a police barrister. Coralie had always assumed he was a prosecutor in criminal trials, presenting the case against the accused (the bad guy) on behalf of the good guys (the boys in blue). In fact, he represented police officers against accusations of wrongdoing as various as sexual assault, negligence, and murder (or accidental death, as murder was known when police did it). Marina had left Adam, moved to Bartholomew Road, and got together with Tom in suspiciously short order. Coralie and Adam had attended their wedding the previous summer, more to provide childcare for Zora than anything else. During his speech, Tom had spoken wittily about his and Marina’s love across the barricades, exchanging flirtatious glances as opponents in the case of the “accidental death” (by violent police restraint) of a mentally ill person. “I bet if I looked up the judgment, I’d see it was in 2010,” Adam had said darkly. Coralie had looked up the judgment. The inquest had taken place in 2009, when Zora had been just one. Her parents had still been living together.
Coralie was thinking about all this as she sat in her pink study wrapping a Barbie in a doctor’s coat, a plush apricot-colored onesie with cat ears, a lilac ukulele, a fact book about theTitanic, packets of Wizz Fizz and Furry Friends from a UK-based specialist online retailer of Australian foods, some floral cloth bunting with the lettersZ O R A, and a child-size full kit from Liverpool FC. Now thatSparebitty was kept at Wilton Way and Rabbitty in Camden, nothing Zora owned had to be urgently transported between houses. Although—they’d picked her up in her school uniform. She dug around in Zora’s drawers and added it to her teetering pile.
“Well, send my best to Marina,” Adam was saying as Coralie wobbled down the stairs. “Zora? Time to jump up, poppet.”
There came three very loud knocks. Coralie dumped the presents in the laundry basket and swung the front door open. “Sorry, I couldn’t last in the car,” Marina said. “I’m absolutely bursting. Do you mind?”
“Oh God,” Coralie said. “Of course not!” Marina stomped up the stairs. “Marina’s here,” Coralie announced to the sitting room.
