Zora laughed.
“And if we get on the train now,” Coralie said, “we’ll be in time for a Violet cupcake.”
“I didn’t hear that!” Marina threw up her hands. “Well, I suppose someone who’s about to be a big sister should have lots and lots of treats. It’s a very special time.”
Smiling, dodging running boys with untucked shirts, they made their way together to the gate.
•••
Coralie had toadmit it was not ideal to bring a seven-year-old into a building site, even though Oneal and his men were meticulous about their tools and swept up as they went. She served Zora brown pasta and baked beans (separate) and ate her own brown pasta, peas, and cheese (mixed). At the desk in the pink study, Zorawas watchingAll Hail King Julien, a Netflix animated comedy about a party-boy lemur’s unlikely rise to power. “This is just so funny,” Coralie kept murmuring, until Zora asked her if they didn’t have funny shows in “the olden days.”
After she put Zora to bed, Coralie half listened to the leaders’ debate on her laptop while searching for what Oneal had taught her to call “door furniture”—knobs and latches, et cetera. Seven leaders was too many to have on one stage. Ed Miliband had drawn the middle lectern—nice and central. He was wearing a good suit and fizzed with almost manic energy. But as she browsed and weighed up between lacquered and unlacquered brass, between bronze and cast iron, something began to worry her from her new perspective as a Labour supporter: She mentally tuned in only when it was David Cameron’s turn to speak. A member of the audience asked a question about the National Health Service. To her surprise, Cameron replied with a tremor of emotion in his voice. “I’ll never forget, as the dad of a desperately disabled child, what I got when I took him to hospital every night worrying about his health. I got unbelievable care, and I just want that for every family and everyone in our country.”
She opened Google. There was aGuardianarticle from 2009 about the death of six-year-old Ivan, who’d had severe epilepsy and cerebral palsy. “I know that the whole house will want to express their sorrow at the death of Ivan Cameron,” then–prime minister Gordon Brown had said in Parliament. “He brought joy to all those around him. Every child is precious and irreplaceable.”
“His parents lived with the knowledge for a long time that he could die young, but this has made their loss no less heartbreaking,” the Tories’ William Hague had said in reply. “He will always be their beautiful boy.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Coralie moaned out loud, and began to cry. Maybe she shouldn’t have come off the Pill. She was nuts.
Ed was on fire!Adam texted later.Did you watch?
He did a great job!Coralie wrote back.
Was it a lie? No. Ed seemed like the type of guy who could do pretty badly. Not doing badly meant he had done well.
•••
For Easter break,they’d booked Zora into a performing arts club in Islington so they could keep some semblance of a working life. Signing her in took such a long time that Coralie didn’t get to Clerkenwell until ten. Antoinette cruised by her and Stefan’s office and stared in, theJawsmusic almost audibly playing.
She shivered. “Does Antoinette know I only just arrived?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What if she saw me walk past in my coat?”
“Why do you care? She’s your CD, not your parole officer.”
This was a bit much from Stefan, who used to beg her to jiggle his mouse so his screen stayed on when he went downstairs for a smoke. But he’d quit now and had replaced milk in his coffee withbutterand had started “bullet-journaling” too.
All week Coralie felt her boss’s eyes on her, judging not only her competence as a worker but her status as a “creative,” a “career woman,” a feminist, and even her worth as a human being.
•••
On Friday,Adam received a surprise text about a surprise holiday club concert. He couldn’t attend—could Coralie? Coralie messaged Tom and asked if he was free. Tom wasn’t; he was in court. She wrote to Marina but didn’t get a response till she’d racedto the community hall and slid into the last seat:So sorry, Marina wrote.I was in acupuncture.
“Don’t worry, Mum’s here now,” she heard one of the instructors say. And without wanting to hear it, despite closing her ears through an effort of will, she heard Zora respond, “She’s not my mum.”
After the concert, Zora was low-energy, even sullen, before starting to cry, ostensibly at the inadequacy of Coralie’s snack, a popcorn bar she’d bought at Pret that morning (for herself). “Did you wish Daddy could’ve come?” Coralie had to say, and Zora nodded, tears rolling down her face. It was hard for Coralie not to cry that she wished that too. All the while, she was conscious of an argument going on inside her, between the part of her that loved Zora and would do anything for her and the part that hated being taken for granted by the adults in Zora’s life.
On the bus home, an email arrived from Antoinette.I seem to have missed you, the subject line read. Sinisterly, the body of the email was blank.
When she and Zora arrived at Wilton Way, they found a bumptious young electrician touring the ground floor, the lighting plan in his hand and a frown on his face. Everything Coralie had chosen was “really not normal” and “sorry, not being funny, but just wrong.” People usually had spotlights in the kitchen, recessed. Pendants were for living rooms, not above kitchen islands. Nobody would look for a light switch at a height of ninety centimeters. (The electrician mimed sweeping the wall for a switch in the dark.) For a “property of this nature,” he’d expect something fancier than the basic white switches she’d chosen, like brass or even gold. (Gold?!) Toward the end of his whirlwind tour through all her mistakes, her face was red, and she was trembling. “I want what I’ve said I want,” she almost shouted.
There was a long pause. “Well, okay, but I can’t do the work if you’re going to be here.”
Coralie laughed from shock. “I live here.”
“I mean,” he said slowly, as if to a stupid person, “normally the house is empty. When I’m working? I’m going to be turning the power off, replacing the consumer unit, all that.”
