From downstairs, the doorbell rang.

‘Go away!’ Edie shouted.

It rang again, politely but firmly. Edie dropped the towel she had tucked round her armpits and clawed her way into Russell’s ancient bathrobe that was hanging on the back of the door. Then she went cautiously out on to the landing and pressed her forehead against the glass to see down into the street.

On the step directly below her a young woman was standing. She wore a dark suit and was carrying a briefcase and there were sunglasses perched on top of her head. Edie looked at the briefcase. It seemed familiar, familiar enough to picture it propped against the wall inside the front door. It was Ruth’s briefcase. Edie unscrewed the security bolt on the window and put her head out.

Ruth glanced up.

‘Edie,’ she said uncertainly.

Edie put her hand up to her immense blue turban. ‘Just – washing my hair—’

‘I’m sorry,’ Ruth said, ‘not to tell you I was coming, but Matt said you’d be in, and I—’ ‘Matt did?’

‘Yes,’ Ruth said. ‘Matt suggested I just come. When I said I wanted to’.

‘Wait,’ Edie said.

‘Look, if it really—’

‘Wait,’ Edie said. She slammed the window shut and tore off her turban. Then she ran downstairs. Arsie was sitting in the hall, affecting indifference to whoever had come. Edie picked him up and held him against her while she opened the door.

Ruth said at once, ‘I’m so sorry—’

‘Don’t be,’ Edie said. She stepped back. ‘It’s – well, I’m very glad to see you’.

‘Are you?’

Edie looked at her.

‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

Ruth put out a hand to touch Arsie.

‘Well, I thought you thought—’

A drip from Edie’s hair slid on to Arsie’s shoulder and he sprang from her arms.

‘I did think’.

‘Yes—’

‘But a lot’s happened and I – well, my thinking has shifted a bit. You look very smart’.

Ruth made a little self-deprecating gesture.

‘You’ll have to forgive me,’ Edie said. ‘I was in a temper as well as in the shower. Coffee?’

‘Could – could I have tea?’

Edie looked at her.

‘I didn’t think you drank tea’.

‘I – didn’t’.

‘Come into the kitchen. There’s too much to apologise for in there so I won’t even start’.

Ruth said from the kitchen doorway, ‘It’s nice to be back—’

‘Is it? Have you been very unhappy?’

‘Yes’.

Edie picked up the kettle.

She said from the sink, her back turned towards Ruth, ‘So has Matthew’. ‘I know’.

‘Ruth,’ Edie said, ‘couldn’t you just have made a compromise? Couldn’t you just have made it possible for him to contribute something?’

Ruth went slowly across the room to the table and leaned against it. Then she put down her briefcase and took her sunglasses off her head and laid them on the table with precision.

‘I came,’ she said, ‘to tell you that I was pregnant’.

Edie froze for a moment. Then she turned off the tap and set the kettle down carefully in the sink.

‘Pregnant?’

‘Yes’.

‘I thought,’ Edie said with emphasis, ‘that you and Matthew hadn’t seen each other since you – parted’.

‘He came for dinner,’ Ruth said. ‘He came to my flat. I asked him to. I was missing him so much’.

Edie put her hands up to the collar of Russell’s bathrobe and held it against her neck. Then she turned round.

‘Does Matthew know?’

‘Of course’.

‘How – long has he known?’ ‘About two weeks’. Edie shut her eyes. ‘Two weeks—’

‘Yes’.

‘And – forgive me – but are you going to keep it?’

There was a small pause and then Ruth said, with barely suppressed fury, ‘Yes’.

‘But if you and Matthew aren’t—’

‘We are,’ Ruth said. ‘That’s why I’ve come. I’ve come to tell you what we’re planning’.

Edie put a hand out for a chair as if she was suddenly very old, and lowered herself into it. She didn’t look at Ruth. Instead she looked at the box of Grapenuts someone had left on the table.

‘But why come and tell me? Why not both of you? Why not tell Russell and me together? Why come like this, out of the blue—’

‘Because I wanted to,’ Ruth said. ‘Because you needed to know. Because you were so angry with me’.

‘I wasn’t—’

‘Oh yes,’ Ruth said. ‘Women are always angrier with other women. I’d hurt your son. I’d achieved more than he had. In your view, I’d rubbed his nose in it’.

Edie put her elbows on the table and her face in her hands.

She said, muffled by her hands, ‘You’ll learn’.

‘Oh,’ Ruth said, ‘I understood why you were angry. Of course I did. And I felt awful myself, awful at what I’d done and furious at being made to feel awful’.

Edie took her hands away from her face.

‘You’d better sit down’.

‘I’m fine—’

‘Sit down,’ Edie said. ‘Sit down and I’ll make you some tea’.

She got up and retrieved the kettle from the sink. She said, ‘Do your parents know?’ ‘Not yet’. ‘What?’

‘I’ll tell them next,’ Ruth said. ‘I’ll tell them at the weekend’.

‘But why—’

‘Because I wanted to see you first. Because I wanted to do something for Matthew’. Edie spun round. ‘Matthew’s not afraid of me!’

‘It wasn’t about that,’ Ruth said, ‘it’s about saving him having to explain himself again. It’s about me explaining to you how hard it is for women my age to deal with motherhood and work when both are so demanding and important, and how wonderful it would be if you could be on my side’. She paused. And then she added, ‘Irrespective of Matthew’.

Edie said nothing. She went back to her chair and sat down in it and pulled the belt of the bathrobe tighter. Then she looked at Ruth across the table, at her polished hair and her sharply cut suit.

‘Do you think,’ she said, ‘that it’s any easier for me?’

‘Yes,’ Ruth said.

‘Do you?’

‘Yes,’ Ruth said, ‘I think that women after their families have gone are pretty unstoppable. That’s what it looks like, from where I’m standing’.

‘Really?’

Ruth leaned forward.

‘The classic reproach, the one about women promoting themselves at the expense of people who need their care, doesn’t apply to you. Not any more’.

‘Wait a moment—’

‘I don’t want to argue,’ Ruth said. ‘I didn’t come to argue. I didn’t even come to make comparisons. I came to tell you about the baby’.

Edie looked up. She stared at Ruth as if she was seeing her properly for the first time.

‘Oh, my God,’ Edie said. ‘A baby’.


Russell looked at the glasses of wine Rosa had already carried to the table from the bar.

‘No wish to be churlish,’ he said, ‘but this immediately makes me suspicious—’

‘You like red wine’.

‘I do indeed. But usually I have to buy the red wine I like. In the case of my children, I invariably buy the red wine’. ‘Well,’ Rosa said, ‘things are changing’. Russell sighed. ‘That’s what I was afraid of’.

‘Dad—’

‘You ask me to have a drink with you, you soften me up by getting the drinks in first and then you ask me for ten thousand pounds. That’s the form’.

‘No,’ Rosa said.

Russell picked up his glass.

‘Then I’ll just have a quick swallow before I know what it really is’.

Rosa said carelessly, ‘I’m being promoted’. Russell put his glass down again. ‘I thought it was a crap job and only temporary and you hated it’.

‘I’ve been asked,’ Rosa said, ‘to run the branch in Holborn. I get a thirty per cent rise in salary and my uniform will no longer have sunburst buttons’.

Russell eyed her.

‘So I congratulate you’.

‘Yes, please’.

‘And why couldn’t you tell me this at home?’ ‘Home’s difficult,’ Rosa said. Russell looked away.

‘I mean,’ Rosa said, ‘I probably help to make it difficult but it’s not, well, it’s not really working, is it, us all living together? It’s not very successful’.

Russell said, still looking away, ‘I never thought it would be’.

‘Well, you were right. You’re right about lots of things’.

He said tiredly, ‘Don’t try to placate me, Rosa. I’m beyond all that’. ‘I mean it’. ‘Well, thank you—’

‘And I don’t mind going to Holborn and I don’t mind working in a travel agency. I don’t mind’.

‘Ah,’ Russell said. He turned to look at her. ‘Why don’t you?’

‘Because,’ Rosa said, spreading her fingers flat on the table and regarding them, ‘another avenue has opened up’.

‘Not a work avenue, I take it—’

‘No’.

Russell took a swallow.

‘Lazlo?’

‘Yes. I didn’t know you knew’.

‘I didn’t know,’ Russell said, ‘but I guessed. It would be hard to live in the same house and not guess’. Rosa smiled down at her hands. ‘It’s very early days’.

‘Yes—’

‘And he’s terribly shy. I’m not sure – he’s ever had a real girlfriend before’.

‘He’s a nice boy,’ Russell said. ‘An honest boy’. ‘So you don’t mind—’

‘Mind?’

‘You don’t mind if Lazlo and I move out to live together?’

Russell leaned forward.

‘No, Rosa, I don’t mind. I’m very pleased for you’. She eyed him.

‘Will Mum be?’

‘I should think so—’

‘Will you tell her?’

Russell shook his head.

‘No’.

‘Dad—’

‘You must tell her. Lazlo must tell her’. Rosa made a little gesture. ‘I really don’t like to’.

What do you mean?’ Russell demanded, sitting upright. ‘What do you mean, you don’t like to? After all she’s done for you—’