Someone had to say something—she should advocate for herself. Or maybe that was Adam’s job. He was huddled next to the bed wearing the baby blanket she’d packed in the hospital bag. It got very cold in the hospital, as anyone could have told him. God forbid he dress adequately and look after himself!
“Thereisa baby,” she said. “I’m going to be sick.” A papier-mâché bowl reached her just in time. Afterward, the midwife discreetly wiped her arse. She’d done it. Shat herself! Bestial!
But somehow the baby hadn’t descended enough to be sucked out with a vacuum or levered out with forceps. Compression socks, gown, the spinal. She was wheeled into the operating room, a curtain set up across her. “Señorita” played on Kiss FM. The anesthetist stroked Coralie’s hair from her forehead with a delicate gloved hand.
A chorus ofahs as a long, thin creature was held aloft over the curtain. Coralie’s gown was pulled down and the creature was deposited on her chest, warm and slimy like her own heart or entrails. Beside her, forgetting to take photos as usual, Adam wept.
The miracle of her new boy’s alert black eyes. He craned up,tap-tap-tapped his little chin, and fastened his mouth on her breast.
18
It was the day before Christmas, and in the Wilton Way house, everyone was stirring, even a mouse. That morning, at breakfast, a half-empty box of Rice Pops toppled on its side in the pantry. A small brown shape streaked from the open door, zigzagged past the playpen, and disappeared under the fridge. Luckily, Adam was still upstairs, having a lie-in for his forty-fourth birthday. Florence was swinging her legs at the table and watchingPeppa Pigon the iPad. She hadn’t noticed.
“That didn’t happen,” Coralie said. “Zora? Hannah? That didn’t happen.”
Zora’s friend Hannah had slept over the night before. “I honestly didn’t see anything,” she said. “I just worked it out from the sound, and your faces.”
“Zora? It’ll ruin his whole birthday, and Christmas.”
“Oh, totally,” Zora said. “It didn’t happen.”
Barbie overslept and almost missed his plane to New York, meaning Daniel was late, and so was Adam’s birthday lunch, which Dan was meant to cook. Madonna was unsettled by the rush; she sat trembling in Dan’s market basket, then staggered round Coralie’s kitchen, barking at the pedal bin. Dan jettisoned the slow-cookedlentil lasagna in favor of a much quicker pasta, but they still didn’t sit down at the table (extended by an Amazon trestle) until after two. Just as well Coralie, who’d been up four times during the night with the baby, had already eaten three breakfasts.
At Montessori, a week earlier, Florence’s friend Anatole had stuck a pomegranate seed up his nose. Pressed by Adam to relate the story in the high-stakes environment of this large family lunch, a tongue-tied Florence demonstrated by putting a raisin up her own nose, where it immediately got stuck; Anne seized her, blocked the other nostril, and blew sharply into Florence’s mouth. The raisin dropped onto the kitchen floor. As everyone else applauded, Adam knelt to pick it up, muttering crossly about “tempting rodents.”
Over the top of his head, Coralie and Zora shared a long, silent gaze.
(Putting a raisin up her nose was something a young Zora Whiteman would never do. That wasallBower. Embarrassing.)
And worst of all: Boris Johnson had decisively won the December 12 election. His majority in Parliament was huge. The Tories released a triumphant Christmas video of him making mince pies with his father. Surrounded by the detritus of the birthday lunch, Adam played it on his phone at the table. Someone once bet Boris he couldn’t eat a “scalding” mince pie in five seconds flat, Stanley Johnson said. But “I got that mince pie…done!” Boris replied. He was clearly still in election mode, saying “Get Brexit Done” every five seconds. Well, Brexitwasdone. On December 20, the withdrawal agreement had passed in the Commons. The UK would leave the EU on January 31. But it wouldnotbe Coralie’s problem. She’d been on a news and social media break since election day. Nobody could make her hear that man’s voice without her consent. “Mmm,” she hummed. “La, la, la!”
“The YouTube comments are quite deranged,” Adam said. “ ‘Whether you like the Conservatives or not,’ ” he read out, “ ‘Boris does make you smile, and brings a bit of optimism, unlike Corbyn, who made me feel suicidal!’ ”
“Very cool and normal,” Coralie said. “A cool and normal thing to say in a cool and normal country. Can we try to have a Boris-free day?”
“You can’t hide from reality,” Anne said. “Boris Johnson will be the prime minister until 2024—at the very least. Perhaps longer! It’s our duty, as citizens, to engage with rising tides of authoritarianism in Europe and the US. We can’t just turn away!”
“I agree,” Hannah said.
“Actually,” Coralie said (under her breath), “I already have.” She used to reread Virginia Woolf’sDiariesevery year, a tradition she’d started at school but had stopped when she’d shipped her books off and moved to Sydney to work in advertising, which was also when she’d got Twitter. Coincidence? Well, no more. She’d just bought another full set of theDiariesfrom AbeBooks. Twitter, gone. Instagram, gone. TheGuardianapp—sogone. Anne could be ever vigilant, a bulwark of liberal democracy. Coralie had had enough.
“Show it to me?” Daniel surprised them all by saying. He was rolling out pastry for his own mince pies.
“Yes, chef.” Adam pressed play and leaned the phone against a candlestick.
“Oh, stop,” Daniel said, as soon as he glanced at the screen. “Stop!”
Coralie stretched over and paused the video.
“His father hates him,” Daniel said. “Can’t you see? God, someone tell Boris. He’s in danger.”
Adam raised his eyebrows as he pocketed his phone.
“We’re the ones in danger,” Anne said. “From him.”
In the playpen in the corner, Max kissed the air above his shoulders. “I’m going upstairs to feed the baby.” Coralie escaped.
She would never, ever take a full house and her Amazon trestle table for granted. Her childhood Christmases had been so bleak—her parents, in opposite armchairs, watching Coralie and Daniel open one present at a time, every expression and utterance scrutinized for the correct amount of gratitude. Invariably, having been “given so much,” Daniel would commit the crime of wanting more, or something different. He would cry, their father would shout, their mother would sob as she ironed in the spare room, and Coralie would read, alone. Throughout university, she’d been a guest at Josh’s family Christmases, an outsider in a foreign world of cousins, dogs, boisterous games, and water fights. By the time they’d broken up, so had her own family, and she didn’t have the money, the annual leave, or the inclination to catch a plane to her mother’s place in Darwin. She spent the day with friends and didn’t put up a tree. But even having tasted loneliness, and knowing on a bone-deep level that what she had was special, she was still glad Maxi needed feeding at least every two hours so she could take a little break.
