“God, good question, what about him? I’ll text.”
After Covid, Tom had been appointed a parliamentary under-something for—something (she wasn’t really sure). It looked good on his wiki and apparently came with a pay rise, a small one, which made Marina laugh.
“Ah!” Adam showed Coralie his phone. Tom had responded with a screenshot of the Google Image search results for “cat holding on to branch with one claw.”
“But is that about Boris or him?”
“Hard to say.” They couldn’t work it out and didn’t ask.
Coralie got to sleep at ten thirty. An hour later, Adam came to bed and woke her up. She didn’t sleep again until five.
•••
Was she in crisis?She couldn’t tell. It was intolerable, unbearable. Yet there she was, bearing it. She thought of her life as a train, running between its stations, fixed, unchanging, never deviating from the track. Could she press the emergency stop—shock everyone, inconvenience them, grind the whole thing to a halt? The fact of being alive, the fact of her going on—it made the part of her that couldn’t be alive (couldn’t go on) a weakling, a fool, and a liar. She hovered on the edge, half emergency, half not. If you could press the big red button, you didn’t need the help. But if you couldn’t…
•••
She typed allthis out to Lydia but couldn’t bring herself to share it.
•••
By the next day,so many Tories had resigned that Coralie wondered if Boris Johnson would even show up at Prime Minister’s Questions. It was brave of him that he did. Labour leader Keir Starmer called the quitters “sinking ships fleeing the rat.” And “as for those who are left,” Starmer said, “they’re only in office because no one else is prepared todebasethemselves any longer—the charge of the lightweight brigade. Have someself-respect!” Ouch. Even Coralie felt chastened by the speech, and—apart from being a mental and physical wreck, economically inactive, a failed writer, a shit mother, a shit sister, a shit daughter, and a shitty common-law wife—she hadn’t done anything wrong.
•••
That night, exhilaratedby events, events, events, Adam stayed late in the News Building. Coralie couldn’t sleep because she knew his return would wake her up. By the time he got back at eleven, she was no longer tired. At four thirty, the Wilton Way seagulls started their usual screaming and flapping. Wednesday, July 6, became her first official zero-sleep night. Zero. Nothing! Absolutely no sleep at all.
At five, she gave up and went downstairs to make the kitchen perfect, tipping loose raisins out of schoolbags, folding up Wrennie’s PE kit. She made muffins to use up the apples. She froze the very ripe bananas in chunks for smoothies. She set up drawing paper onthe table in case the children wanted art. They came down, warm and cuddly in their summer pajamas, surprised (in a good way) to see their mother out of bed.
On Radio 4, BBC political reporter Chris Mason was speculating about Boris Johnson’s future. “Mishal,” he told the host, “as I speak to you, I’m getting a call from Downing Street—so I’m going to take this call and I’ll come back on to you in just a second.”
Adam was in the bath, having a shave. (When it was a big day of news, his show also went out live on YouTube, so he had to look his best.) “Turn on Radio 4!” she called up the stairs.
“Don’t let the neighbors hear you!” he called back down. “She means Times Radio,” he shouted out to no one.
She laughed, delighted. She was so sleepless she’d gone beyond tired and become euphoric. “Mummy,” Florence seized her moment craftily. “Willyoutake us to school this morning?”
“Yes, Chris,” Mishal Husain said on the radio. “Let’s go straight back to you. You were just talking to Downing Street?”
“The prime minister has agreed to stand down.”
Coralie was faint; it was quite extraordinary. She leaned back against the counter. A wave of tiredness crashed over her, threatened to pull her under. “I can’t, Flo-Flo,” she said. “Daddy will take you to school.”
•••
She was a puppet,shaking and waving. Her head was a balloon, floating away. Her vision narrowed, her mouth was dry. She sat in front of the TV, vacant.
“And to you, the British public. I know that there will be many people who are relieved and perhaps quite a few who will also bedisappointed. And I want you to know how sad I am to be giving up the best job in the world. But,” Boris said, his voice flat with sudden bitterness, “them’s the breaks.”
•••
Laundry she coulddo. Tidying wasn’t a problem. She made up her daughter’s bed with the summer duvet and the quilt Sally had made that saidFlorence. She arranged Catty with his long legs crossed, his plush black arms open in a hug. Maxi’s special toy was a sheep; she laid him on his side in the cot. The colorful magnets went in one basket, the Duplo in another. Upstairs, she made Zora’s bed with sheets she’d brought in from the clothesline. They were warm and smelled of the sun. She couldn’t mother the children. The house would do it instead.
•••
That night,Adam was on air as usual until eight. He stayed back in the office for a while, then went on to theSpectatorsummer party. The party—she hadn’t factored in the party. There’d be no point trying to go to sleep before he came back; he’d simply wake her up. In fact, was there any point going to sleep at all, when the morning would inevitably come, and everything would start all over again? She explained this to Lydia in a text.
I think there is a point, yes, Lydia replied.To sleeping.
