“Mama!” Florence called down.
Upstairs, Flo had been bamboozled by Sally into wearing sweet little pajamas she normally refused to wear, a gingham shirt and trousers. Coralie got into her big-girl bed with her and kissed her:her cheek, her chin, her delicate temple. She breathed in her hair and traced the tip of her upturned nose. “Eat me up,” Flo said.
“No, I can’t…” Coralie tried not to devour her daughter before bed. It made Flo overstimulated.
“Eat me up, Mama!”
Coralie squashed her tiny chest, growled, and snapped her teeth near her ear and neck. “Yum, yum, my little girl, will you be my dinner?”
Flo writhed. “No!” she shrieked. “No, no!”
Coralie stopped. (She had read that this was how you “modeled consent.”)
“Maybe a bit,” Flo said.
“Rarrr!” Coralie nibbled her ear.
Florence was laughing so much she had hiccups. “I’ve gorten hick-pups,” she reported soberly.
“Why don’t I tell you a story tonight, instead of reading? I’ll turn off the light but stay in your bed.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, once upon a time. There was a girl. The most beautiful girl in the world.”
“Me,” Florence said.
“You…”
•••
Downstairs,on a stool next to the sofa, Sally had arranged bowls of crisps, olives, smoked almonds, cut-up cucumbers, and an herby Greek yogurt dip. She stood like a waiter. “Small glass of wine?”
Coralie hadn’t felt like wine or coffee the whole time she’d been pregnant, but with the night air at body temperature, and a breezeblowing through the big bay window, she suddenly did. She snacked and sipped her white wine, and as the sky turned navy blue, she zoned out, only the occasional shout of “Order!” recalling her to the television, the room, and reality.
“There’s one,” she said when the pain began, or just grunted if it was awful. “Finished now,” she’d say, and Anne would mark it on the page, hardly taking her eyes from the BBC.
The candles on the mantelpiece were really just ornamental, but no one had told Sally that, and rather than put the lamps on, she’d lit them. Still half in her dream, Coralie checked her phone and saw Adam had WhatsApped:CYK.
She had the absurd thought that she should name her baby boy CYK. (Could they be his initials?Claudewas on the list.)
“Sit up!” Anne shouted.
Coralie, who had been lolling to the side, shot upright.
“Silly,” Anne said. “No, look on the TV—Jacob Rees-Mogg.”
The insufferable Tory languidly reclined across three seats on the front bench. He was a poor person’s idea of a rich person (a snob had once told her at a party), and Boris a thick person’s idea of a clever one.
“Sit up,” MPs shouted. “Sit up, man!”
“Ow!” Coralie gasped.
Anne glanced at her watch and made a note. Soon, the whole page of drawing paper was full of scribbled figures. “Almost a minute each, every five minutes. You’re really getting there.”
“Wonderful, Coralie,” Sally said.
A wave of well-being swept over her, so powerful she felt she could almost fly up to the ceiling.
