“A walk through the park,” he mused. “Okay.What about you, Adam? You’ll be too busy, I suppose?” He was genial, comradely—one tireless world leader to another.
“I often do the school run.” Adam caught Coralie’s eye and carefully added, “In the mornings.”
“But he has meetings this morning,” Coralie said. “Don’t you?”
“I do,” he said. “Sadly.”
“I read your election book,” Roger said. “The Boris one. Now, he’s a real character, Boris. Someone I’d have a beer with.”
“He’s in trouble at the moment for doing exactly that,” Adam said. “During the pandemic. You’ve read about Partygate?”
“Pfft,” Roger said. “Britain won’t know what it’s got till it’s gone.”
“We actually have to get moving,” Coralie apologized. “Maxi’s drop-off is before Florence’s.”
But by the time they managed to farewell Adam and leave the house, it was already twenty to nine. They would have to do Florence first, and then ring the bell at Montessori and cringingly insinuate Max into class. Miss Sarah didn’t like the children to miss their handshake.
Out in the street, Florence trotted next to Roger. “What’s your favorite subject at school?” he quizzed. “Physics? Geography? Advanced mathematics?”
“I like reading? And—” (And gymnastics, Coralie knew she was going to say. Flo adored Marley, her gymnastics teacher.)
But her father didn’t let her finish. “Reading, eh! That sounds familiar. Your mother loved sitting on her backside with a book.” AsCoralie digested this, Maxi gave a little shriek from the buggy. Roger wheeled around as if he’d been punched. “What’syourproblem?”
They had reached the wall Max liked to walk along, holding hands with Coralie, and then getting what she called a “tall kiss” at the end, because the wall made him the same height as she was. “Sorry, Maxi, there isn’t time,” she said.
He beat his legs and feet against the buggy and squirmed against the straps. Viewing her beloved boy’s behavior through the judgmental eyes of her father, she was shocked to find herself wanting to shake him—not her father, Max. She checked the time on her phone. “Okay, a quick one.”
Maxi’s tearstained face was all smiles as he leaped up. “He’s a very good balancer,” she narrated as he stepped nimbly along the wall with just the lightest touch of her hand.
“He’s got you wrapped around his little finger,” Roger said.
It was time for Maxi’s tall kiss. Coralie tried to get away with a quick one, kissing his soft cheek before wrapping her arms around him and imperiling her pelvic floor as she hauled him bodily back into the buggy. He started wailing again; she buckled him in, her flesh crawling from embarrassment as everyone on the street was left in no doubt about her failings as a mother. She dug out the emergency squeezy tube of puréed fruit in her bag, clicked the lid off, and gave it to him.
“That’s right,” Roger told Max. “Get some pure sugar into you. You bloody crybaby.” He said it wittily, roguishly, almost like an inside joke.
“Grandad…” Flo tried again.
Roger strode off in the lead despite not knowing the way.
She lost him for a bit in the crowds doing drop-off. Only children in Year 3 and above were allowed to run into the school buildingunder their own steam. All the younger years lined up in the playground, then processed in with their teacher, parents grouped around to wave farewell. As usual, a significant number of children were crying, causing delays. It was hard to keep her buggy out of the way and to navigate around the buggies of other people. Often she didn’t get out of there until ten past nine, and so it was that day. Her father was waiting outside the gate, pacing, a haunted look on his face.
“Very hectic,” she empathized.
“Battle of Basra in there. Where’s my AS-90 self-propelled howitzer? Joking! Of course, I didn’t see action myself in Iraq. I was merely a…” (he pronounced the words with relish) “desk jockey. Good grief, now where are we going?”
It would be a very painful visit if he was bored after only an hour. “Maxi’s nursery, through the park and behind the market.”
“This is what you do, is it? Walk around all day with a pram? Yummy mummy?”
“Oh!” Coralie said. “I suppose—”
“Hi, Coralie,” one of a pair of mums called. They were in their activewear. Coralie would have given a limb to be striding out for a walk with a friend, unencumbered. Lydia dropped Nancy at nursery and went to work. Beauty went to a different school nearby but was on the waiting list to transfer.Alice, Lydia, Adam, my children, home.She drew strength from the thought of them. Roger might be her father, but she wasn’t a child. Things were different now.
“So, tell me,” she said. These types of pauses were dangerous around her father; he invariably hijacked them. “What are your plans while you’re here?” she quickly finished.
“See my beautiful grandchildren. Churchill’s bunker. Sherlock Holmes Museum. New umbrella from the umbrella shop. British Museum.”
“What date is your return flight?”
