Of course, and there were no hard feelings, and she was proud of Stefan and wouldn’t have wanted the job anyway—but Florence had just taken her first steps at nursery, and Coralie hadn’t been there to see them.
It was a bit rich to talk about sacrifice.
11
“Come inside me,” Coralie told Adam in the stimulating anonymity of the vinegar-scented all-white bed in a boutique Paris hotel.
Adam paused, still inside her. They heard the distinctivenee-no, nee-noof a French police siren. “Shit, it’s the pigs.”
“They’re arresting me for my bad choices.” She meant not using a condom.
“It can’t be bad to do something so good,” he breathed into her ear. “I want a thousand babies with you.”
“I’d love that, too; it’s justhard.”
He leaned down until their noses touched. “It’ll be different this time.”
“Promise me it’ll be different,” she said. “I don’t want it to be the same.” Her mind had played tricks on her when Florence was a baby. When things were good, she’d thought they were good. She’d woken as if from a trance. Work guilt, home guilt, C-section scar still numb, clumps from postpartum hair loss still clogging up the drain. Having a baby was lovely if that wasallyou had. Anything else in the mix—forget it.
“It’ll be different.” Adam started to thrust again. “So different, so different, even better.”
•••
Two weeks later,Theresa May called a snap election, and Adam was instantly offered a contract for another book. When, a few days later, Coralie’s period arrived, it was the most operatically dramatic it had been since giving birth.Hell no, her body seemed to say. If Brexit had made things more difficult on Wilton Way, a long election campaign (and another book project) would smash what little amity remained.
Adam seemed not to sense the danger. His admiration for Ed Miliband had made his first book a torment—that was how he remembered it. He didn’t have the same inner conflict about Labour’s new leader, Jeremy Corbyn, whom, like many of his colleagues, he viewed as an allotment-dwelling, strategy-free, kindly but irrelevant kook. And he simplyreveledin his new insight into the Conservative Party, which this time he was also contracted to cover.
One day, early in the campaign, Coralie came home late from work and nursery pickup. The buggy groaned under the weight of Florence, binders of printed-out long-form web copy requiring urgent review, and last-minute supplies for dinner. Adam, lounging on the sofa in his socks, hung up his call and padded to the door, giggling. “Guess what the Australian pollsters just called the chancellor—off the record till publication! Coralie? You know, Philip Hammond? I said guess!”
“Could you get the shopping from under the buggy?”
“Fine, I’ll just tell you.” He was laughing so much she could hardly understand him. “Afucking cheese-dick!”
•••
Theresa May wasa diabetic, apparently, and owned more than 150 cookbooks. She gave up crisps for Lent. She didn’t have children, which was something she was sad about. On a rare evening when Adam was home with her on the sofa, Coralie watched the Mays’ first joint appearance on a BBC chat show. The husband seemed quite sweet. The PM looked sick with nerves. Was it a fucked-up feminist impulse—trauma, maybe, from Clinton in 2016? Whatever it was, Coralie found herself full of pity. “Oh dear, really?” Adam said. “This is a woman who once made an entire conference hall of Conservatives boo the Human Rights Act.”
“Okay, but you know who else is awful? Men in her own party who insist on calling her Te-ray-sa. She’s said it’s Ta-ree-sa. Her husband’s saying Ta-ree-sa right now! And still they do it. Do they think they know better?”
“It’s likely they think they do.”
“Well, theydon’t.”
“I know!” Adam said. “Why are you cross withme? I’m not them! I’m me!”
“You’re bad enough,” Coralie muttered.
He looked puzzled, then hurt, then annoyed.
Princess Diana voice: “There were three of us in this marriage”—Adam, Coralie, and Adam’sbloodybook. For the duration of the seven-week campaign, she did drop-off, pickup, bath time, bedtime, and Zora’s Saturday circus school almost entirely on her own. There could not have been a worse time to add a pregnancy into the mix. Luckily, she’d put her dreams of a second baby on ice. Along with all her other dreams! But Adam was achieving his! So that was great! For him!
“But what other dreams do you have?” Adam asked her in a kindly voice.
What a cunt!
•••
Close to election day, Daniel texted and asked if she’d like to campaign with him for Labour in Chingford.If power is lying in the streets, he wrote,pick it up!
