But all this time, NHS staff and key workers were out there risking their lives daily. In Minneapolis, a Black man was murdered by police, a crime and a profound injustice that was not new, but suddenly became the worldwide pressing and public concern of white people. Coralie herself posted a black square on Instagram, only to remove it a day later when activists said it messed up results for the Black Lives Matter hashtag. (Alice said Nicky’s white accountant had asked how he was “holding up.” “Financially?” Nicky was confused. “You tell me.” White people who didn’t know he was famous winced apologetically at his Blackness in the street. White peoplewho did know he was famous gave him solemn and respectful fist bumps.) Some elderly people were so lonely they could die of isolation; some houses and flats were so packed with multiple generations of the same family, it was impossible to shield the vulnerable. When single people said they were going mad with boredom, parents bitterly suggested they try looking after some kids. Parents of kids with special needs were too overwhelmed to compete about whose lockdown was the worst.
During the pandemic, Zadie Smith wrote that while privilege can be conceptualized and “atoned for through transformative action,” all suffering was uniquely personalized, “absolute,” and equally awful for the sufferer. She was such a good writer she could make anything sound true. With a small garden, the occasional Ocado slot, and a grumpy but alive husband, Coralie didn’t feel able to complain.
•••
In September 2020,after a summer they could almost pretend was normal, Florence started school. On the first day, they lined up at the gate, standing on yellow footsteps sprayed two meters apart. As Florence skipped in, they slimed her little hands with sanitizer. She made it to Halloween before multiple positive tests shut down the class.
Homeschooling a four-year-old was a maddening waste of time. On the days Adam had his radio show, he took the kids from eight thirty till ten and, however bitter the cold and rain, Coralie went out to Victoria Park, or Haggerston, or Hackney Downs, anywhere that wasn’t home. These were called “Mummy’s walks,” and she steeled herself to insist on them.
“You don’t see me getting time forself-care,” Adam said.
“You don’t see me getting to cycle in to London Bridge and be made a fuss of,” Coralie replied.
“I wouldn’t call doing my jobbeing made a fuss of.”
“I wouldn’t call an hour away from my kids an especially special treat.”
“An hour and a half,” Adam muttered.
Then somehow a fight bloomed, and she was saying that every single choice about their life was a choice that was made by him. Where they lived, having Florence later than Coralie had wanted so she was starting school in a global pandemic, the way he simply missed the hardest part of parenting for the majority of every day, how he’d used their eight years together to grow professionally, produce lauded work, and become famous, and she’d used their eight years together to run her body into the ground with two pregnancies, go backward intellectually, and become a pathetic household drudge.
“Everything we do is your choice!” Adam was incredulous. “The renovation, Florence’s nursery, you quitting—none of that was my choice at all!”
Those were just surface things—why couldn’t he see? She made surface-level changes, had a surface-level say, but he was the tectonic plates, his was the selfish core. Superficially accommodating, up to his neck in rinse-aid and nappies, it was nonetheless the bedrock of Adam, Adam’s career, and Adam’s needs that underpinned and structured every aspect of their lives. His Times Radio work was the best he’d had in terms of profile and income, but by far the most inflexible. There was no satisfying, worthwhile job Coralie could take that would (a) bring in enough money for Maxi’s childcare and (b) allow her to drop everything the next time schools were shut on a whim.
And what if she didn’t want to be in the UK at all? What if shewanted to raise their children in Australia? That was an option they never entertained, even as the NHS collapsed around them, life expectancy fell off a cliff, and raw sewage bubbled into the sea. For most of her near-decade away, “moving back to Australia” had functioned as a rip cord for Coralie. Jump—pull—float gently back to safety. But back home, the devastating fires had been followed by raging floods, and the right-wing Liberal government looked like it was there to stay. There was no escape, no alternative, and no dreams left to dream.
Even Lydia, a single mother in full-time work, was managing the global pandemic better than she could. Four short stories finished, one published inThe Stinging Fly! In her house, there were two important people, a mother and a daughter. They both had needs; the needs were balanced. In Coralie’s house, there were the kids and Adam—and they sucked her completely dry!
“Sweetheart?” Adam’s tenderness broke her heart. “What about your book? Why don’t you use this time to write?”
This time?Which time did he mean, exactly? The hour between the kids finally falling asleep and Adam arriving home expecting a hot meal? Maybe the hour between her waking up at four to worry and Maxi waking up at five to start his day?
Fridays, Adam said. He could work from home on Fridays, she could take the whole day to write—she must!
But it wasn’t atimething. The problem was the emptiness. All of life had drained from her, and she had no thoughts beyond the house.
•••
Somehow two yearshad passed. Easter 2022 was “the end” of the pandemic—well, that was when they took the plastic screens down from the checkouts in the Hackney Marks & Spencer. It wasalso when the police issued more than fifty fines for illegal parties that took place in Downing Street during the pandemic. Having been so comprehensively flouted by the people in charge of making them, it was clear that no further Covid restrictions could ever be imposed, even if a deadly new variant emerged, or one that targeted children.
Alice and Nicky moved back to Hackney from LA to find they’d been priced out. Their old flat above the pub was for sale again, for nearly three times as much as they’d paid. They rented a one-bed on Cecilia Road to save up for a bigger deposit—a two-bed was pointless, because after two years of lockdown, Beauty refused to sleep away from them. Nicky felt like all his success had been for nothing. Alice tried to keep him cheerful, but she hated everything about the flat. She had a hundred ideas for improvements, but the landlord wouldn’t allow paint, minor repairs, or even nails to put up art. She was like a racehorse forbidden to run.
Coralie marked “the end” of the pandemic by seeking recommendations from her Instagram friends for an affordable holiday somewhere warm enough to swim. The votes had come back for Lanzarote, in the Canary Islands, four hours away on EasyJet. She hadn’t slept anywhere except her own bed since Max was born, and she couldn’t sleep at all at the resort. As Max wailed from his blue synthetic collapsible cot, she felt like doing the same. The heavy door between their interconnecting rooms was propped open with a wastepaper basket. Maxi dislodged it on the first night, causing the door to close on Florence’s finger. Max’s sleep, and probably Coralie’s, could have been improved if Coralie had slept with him in the double bed and Adam and Florence slept in the other room in the two singles. But Adam refused and used “the finger thing” as a reason to keep the interconnecting door shut.
The countdown timer started ticking for holiday sex.
Max was too young for the kids’ club. Florence refused to go alone. Neither of them knew how to swim, so the four pools felt less like luxury oases and more like chlorine death traps. When she held a laughing Max in the water, or pushed Florence around on her blow-up doughnut, Coralie felt briefly strong, maternal, radiant with love. When she lay by the pool and watched Adam take his turn with them, she felt painfully self-conscious about her lockdown body—pallid, no muscles to speak of, neck and (somehow) wrist pain.
The second night passed with no sex.
Lanzarote (Coralie hadn’t really realized this) was just a browny-black rock in the middle of the ocean. Fresh food might have arrived on its shores (and surely there were fish out there to be had), but none showed up at their all-inclusive buffet. How fortunate Zora had chosen Marina and Tom’s luxury trip to the Maldives. No way was Marina washing Rup’s underpants in the sink and eating two to three ice creams a day.
On the third night, when silence finally descended on the kids’ room, they gingerly attempted to achieve some intimacy.
Soon they heard a strange accompaniment to, almost an echo of, their cautious, arrhythmic thumps. “Just ignore it,” Adam said. Coralie jumped up, wrapped herself in a towel, and opened the door out to the hallway. It was Florence, who’d escaped the children’s room and was wandering toward the pool in tears. “I’ll fetch her,” Adam said. “Don’t go anywhere.”
(“The intercourse will continue until morale improves,” she darkly joked to no one.)
