Page 96 of Consider Yourself Kissed

His eyes bulged. “I was taking a call and buying your bloody bread!”

“Why would you leave Max with him?”

“He’s your dad, not Vladimir Putin.”

“You ruined everything,” she sobbed. But he hadn’t—shehad.

When she served the lunch, it was with a smile. If her father knew she was devastated, it would only make everything worse. Better to keep him onside, to soothe, to venerate—as if nothing he did could ever possibly be wrong.

To survive his visit, she had to put the thinking, breathing, feeling part of herself safely away on a high shelf. The problem was, when he finally left, she’d shrunk so much she couldn’t get it down.

21

Weeks after her father had left, and even as spring turned into summer, she found she was still living in fear. Daniel had talked about trembling as footsteps approached while he was in the bath. Now it was Coralie’s turn. Sometimes, when the children were in bed, and she was waiting for Adam to get back from the studio, she made him call her from Dalston Junction so she didn’t freak out when she heard the front door unlock. When she walked through the streets, strangers seemed to loom and menace her, talking about her, judging her, despising her. She used to take the children to the park after school. Now she was too frightened—of having to talk to other parents, or of her children falling, breaking their legs or even necks. When she closed her eyes, she saw them getting hurt: if not at the park, then on the road; if not on the road, then in a house fire, a terror attack, a flood. Her obsessive concern for them did not translate into solicitude. Every cry or exclamation grated; she experienced every spilled glass of water or smear of yogurt on the floor as an assault. Being near them was impossible. Being away from them was worse.

All but the most basic parenting tasks suddenly proved beyond her. Taking the children to swimming lessons, in the newest and nicest of Hackney’s leisure centers, felt like going to war—the hot chlorine air in the bleachers, the crush to pick up the children, the shouting in the changing rooms, the chemical plumes of spray deodorant and perfume. She began to lose sleep the night before. After a month of insomnia, she canceled the lessons, but it was too late; her body had made a new rule: She did not sleep on Mondays. Then she didn’t sleep if she had an appointment the following day, even something minor like an Ocado slot. Then she didn’t sleep at all. She was absolutely fucked.

This does sound like the sort of thing people used to tell you to see your GP about, Lydia wrote, worried.

LOL! Coralie hadn’t seen her GP since 2019.

But also (not LOL), she was too scared to call for an appointment.

What do you think about?Lydia asked.On those nights when you can’t get to sleep?

She thought about the children growing up and there being no world for them to live in. That she was nigh on forty, and halfway dead, unless she died early like her mother—then she was more like two-thirds dead. That Adam would get hit by a car when he was cycling on London Bridge. That Adam would leave her because she couldn’t laugh, or live a normal life, or get a new job, or even think about having sex. But these fears only took up a few moments each. The rest of the time, she thought nothing.

She was absolutely blank.

As the clock reached one, two, three, four, she began to picture the following day, the banging headache she’d have, her bone-deep exhaustion, her savage reactions to noise and stimuli, all hitting herright at the worst possible time: school pickup, for which she was solely responsible, and the dinner, bath, and bedtime routine, which she did alone and unsupported! At 4 a.m., she often cried, carefully sobbing just loud enough to wake up Adam, and because of the crying, or because he wrapped himself around her and crushed her like a python, she was able to get to sleep, and sometimes she could sleep through the children getting up and claw back two or even four hours, which meant she could exist.

“Do you want me to tell you a story?” One morning, Florence was sitting on the edge of the bed. Her gingham school dress had swamped her at the beginning of Year 1. Now it fit snugly. Time just kept on passing. It was cruel.

“Okay, Wrennie,” Coralie said, though she’d been asleep and wished that she still was.

“Once upon a time, there was a mum, the most beautiful mum in the world…”

“Florence!” It was Adam, half shouting through his toothpaste foam. “Mummy’s sleeping! Get your school shoes on!”

After another sleepless night, Maxi came in with a play-silk on his head. “Ooh,” he moaned. “I’m a goat.”

“Oh, help, a ghost,” Coralie said. “There’s a ghost in my room!”

“Max!” Adam shouted up from downstairs. Fear filled her at the sound of the shout. Uncontrollable fear.

“You’d better run,” she said. “Daddy’s angry.”

The patter of his footsteps receded. She was alone.

•••

Boris Johnson wasin trouble. His MPs were all fed up with him. His health secretary quit his job, and then, nine minutes later, his chancellor. “Rishi Sunak hasresigned,” she heard on Radio 4 as shedug old rice out of the plughole in the sink. (She didn’t listen to Adam’s show in the evenings. Hearing his voice but not seeing him confused the kids.) “Oh, it’s all over now!” the commentator exclaimed.

But Johnson simply reshuffled his cabinet and carried on.

When Adam got home, he was giddy with history and drama. “Everyone’s resigning,” he marveled. “There won’t be anyone left!”

“What about Tory Tom?”

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