Intrusion

7. Second Life

After Hugh had gone to work on Monday morning, Hope took her time over breakfast and found herself running late. She skipped the usual ten minutes of talking Nick into his clothes, and just picked him up and started inserting him in them. Underpants, warm vest, shirt, trousers… at that point he kicked – not deliberately at her, but walking his legs in midair and landing an occasional random heel on her shins.

‘Stop that!’ Hope said.

‘I’m not I’m not I’m not.’

He was drumming his heels on her now, squirming in the elbow she had around his waist.

‘That bloody hurts,’ she said. ‘Stop it!’

Instead of doing what she instantly expected and gleefully repeating the bad word that had slipped out, Nick acquiesced in sudden sullen silence, stepping into his trouser legs one by one as she set him down and held them out in front of him. He even buttoned the waistband and buckled the belt, in a belated display of independence.

Then, as she held out his cagoule, he put his arms in one by one and said as he turned away to zip up the front: ‘This is such cack.’

He said it in such a weary, resigned voice that Hope was more shocked by the tone than the content. His accent on the last word was like Hugh’s, with a long vowel and a guttural: caachck. And he didn’t say it in the defiant way he usually repeated naughty words, or as if said to provoke her. It was an aside, a remark.

So she didn’t reprove him.

‘What is cack, Nick?’ she asked.

‘It’s what comes out of people’s bottoms,’ he said, without so much as a giggle, then added: ‘You know – poo.’

‘Yes, I know,’ she said, getting into her own cagoule. ‘But what is “such cack”?’

Nick pouted. ‘The weather,’ he said. ‘Everything.’

‘Surely not everything?’ Hope said, holding out her hand.

‘Not you and Max and Dad,’ Nick allowed.

‘Or nursery?’

‘Nursery’s all right,’ he said.

They went out the door and into the rain.

‘Well, I’m glad to hear that,’ Hope said, locking the door. ‘Off we go!’

Nick went up the steps. To him, they were high. His legs swung out to the sides as he clambered up.

They walked down Victoria Road, rain rattling on their hoods.

‘Who did you hear saying that word?’ Hope asked.

‘What word?’

‘You know,’ Hope said.

‘I don’t know.’

‘All right, “cack”.’

‘I meant I don’t know who said it.’

‘Was it your dad?’ Hope asked, in an amused tone.

‘Oh, no!’ Nick looked up at her from under his hood.

‘So who was it?’

‘Don’t know, don’t care,’ Nick sang.

That wasn’t like him, either.

His hand tightened on hers as he swung over a puddle.

Oh well, Hope thought. Probably one of the kids at nursery. She’d have to have a word with Miss Petrie about language.

Miss Petrie, as it turned out, was outside the nursery gates when Hope and Nick arrived. She was standing talking to – or being talked to by – three mothers. One of them – Carolyn Smith, an Adventist faith-kid mum whom Hope knew well enough to nod to – saw their approach and pointed. Four heads turned. Miss Petrie looked worried, Carolyn a little embarrassed, the other two tight-lipped.

Hope marched up.

‘Good morning, Miss Petrie,’ she said. ‘Hi, Carolyn.’

‘Good morning, Miss Petrie,’ Nick said.

Miss Petrie gave him a brief smile. ‘Be a big boy and go in by yourself today, Nick,’ she said.

She glanced at Hope, as if getting permission, then stooped and pushed the small of Nick’s back with one hand while waving her phone at the gate with the other. The gate began to slide open. Nick seemed taken with the idea.

‘Bye, Mummy,’ he said.

But one of the two angry-looking mums blocked his path. He looked up at her, and then back at Hope and Miss Petrie. Finding no guidance there, he dodged to one side, lunch box swinging, and nipped past the woman’s legs. She reached out and snatched at his shoulder.

‘Oi!’ Hope shouted.

The angry mum’s fingers slipped on the wet cagoule and Nick darted away, through the gate. He’d disappeared and the gate had begun to swing shut behind him before Hope managed another word.

She stepped forward, getting in the woman’s face. ‘Don’t you dare grab at my child like that!’

The other woman didn’t back down.

‘Your child’s endangering my child,’ she said.

‘No, he is not,’ Hope said. ‘And that’s not the point. Endangering is statistics. Grabbing is battery. I could report you to the police.’

‘Now, Hope,’ Miss Petrie interposed, ‘that’s not very helpful, is it?’

As Hope turned to reply, she saw that the other angry mum was holding up a phone, recording the confrontation. This made her more angry and more restrained at the same moment.

‘Maybe it would be helpful if you could tell me what’s going on.’

‘Well,’ Miss Petrie said, wiping rain from her eyebrows, ‘Chloe and Sophie here were just raising their concerns about your little boy bringing in infections…’

‘Look,’ said Hope, gesturing in a vague way so it didn’t look like pointing, ‘there’s Philippa Kaur going in with her kids, and they sure haven’t had the fix. Why don’t you have a go at her?’

Sophie, the one who was recording, clicked her tongue at this.

‘What?’ Hope said.

‘Oh,’ said Chloe, the one she’d just had words with, ‘so you want us to single out the Kaurs, do you?’

‘No!’ Hope snapped, outraged at the unspoken imputation. ‘I just don’t see why you should single out me.’

‘Because you’re just doing it out of selfishness,’ said Chloe. ‘We’re doing it and Philippa’s doing it because of conscience.’

The penny dropped.

‘Oh, your kids are faith kids too!’

‘That’s right,’ said Chloe. ‘So they’re in danger of any infections your kid brings in.’

‘Oh, Christ!’ said Hope.

Sophie tutted again, and Carolyn, who’d been hanging back until now, assumed a pained look and said: ‘Please.’

‘OK, sorry,’ said Hope. She took a step back, feeling crowded, and tried a different tack.

‘Why can’t we stick together on this? I know we all have different reasons for not wanting the fix, but let’s be honest, our kids give each other germs no matter what our reasons are, and they’re not giving or getting germs from the rest. So it’s only us and our kids this affects, right? Can’t we, you know, live and let live about it?’

‘You don’t understand, Hope,’ Carolyn said. ‘It’s our live and let live that you’re putting in danger. You and people like you, all over England.’

‘What d’you mean, people like me?’

‘Oh, you know,’ said Carolyn. ‘Those Iranian atheists or whatever they are.’

‘Nearly all atheists are absolutely up for the fix,’ Hope said. ‘Believe me, I checked. Anyway, I don’t see how what I’m doing puts you in any danger. I’d have thought you’d, you know, sort of welcome it that we agreed on this point at least.’

‘But we don’t agree on it!’ said Carolyn.

Hope blinked. ‘If you say so. But leaving beliefs out of it… why is it a problem for you if I do the same thing as you do? I mean, one more nature kid can’t be that much of a risk, and it’s a risk you’re willing to take yourselves.’

Carolyn was frowning. ‘You don’t get it,’ she said. ‘You’re missing the point. It’s not the infections; it’s that you’re putting at risk the live-and-let-live thing. I mean, people put up with us because we have a good reason, and if you’re doing it without a good reason and the Kasrani case becomes a precedent and all that, then they might well turn on us. They might say, well, if it’s so important that we have to force it on a mum who doesn’t want it, why should the faith mums be different? Because, see, the fix doesn’t work for everything, and there’s always the chance that one of our kids might catch something serious and pass it on to, you know, the other kids, so it’s a balance, right? We’ve got our faith, well our faiths, OK, on our side of the balance, and people respect that, but you’re just causing trouble.’

Chloe and Sophie nodded along. Miss Petrie looked from face to face helplessly. Hope took another step back.

‘You’re really telling me,’ she said, ‘that you’d rather I had the fix than not?’

Carolyn looked uncomfortable. ‘Well, not exactly…’

‘You don’t actually care if other people have the fix, do you?’ Hope accused. ‘Just as long as you’re left alone to stick to your, oh, your deeply held beliefs. You’re as selfish as the anti-vaccers.’

‘You’re the one who’s being selfish,’ said Carolyn.

‘You don’t believe in nothing,’ Sophie said. She’d just stopped recording, and now spoke up. ‘I mean, what’s it to you anyway? I have my guru, what do you have?’

‘I have a job to go to,’ said Hope.

She turned away.

Next day the weather was better: still chilly, overcast, but not actually raining or snowing. Miss Petrie’s cagoule was open, over a buttoned-up green cardigan and flower-printed dress. The cagoule wafted behind her as she hurried about, talking to a dozen or so mothers and two fathers outside the nursery-school gate. As Hope walked up with Nick, the parents all lined up across the pavement in front of her. The three Hope had spoken to the day before – Carolyn, Chloe and Sophie – were in the middle of the row and slightly forward of the rest. Miss Petrie stood a little away from them, swithering for a moment, and then stepped forward.

‘Can I take Nick for a little walk round the corner?’ she said. ‘Just for a few minutes, while you…’ She gestured vaguely behind her.

‘No,’ said Hope. ‘You can’t.’

Nick tugged at her hand. ‘I want to!’

Hope looked down at his pleading face and tried to smile.

‘Just hold on a moment, Nick,’ she said. She turned to Miss Petrie. ‘Not this again.’

‘I’m sorry, Hope,’ said Miss Petrie. ‘All the faith kids’ parents and some of the, uh, the other parents are concerned about—’

‘Don’t give me any more of that crap, Miss Petrie! I don’t care what their concerns are. They’re being ignorant, bigoted and unfair and that’s all there is to it. Your job isn’t to pander to them, or even argue with them. Your job’s to ignore them, tell them to go somewhere else, and to get the… get out of our way before you call the police. They can arrange an appointment with Mrs Wilson if they want to discuss school policy. Now, will you tell them that, or will I?’

Miss Petrie’s troubled face brightened.

‘Well, that’s a way of looking at it, Hope. I will raise the point about how this is out of my hands…’

Her voice trailed off and her gaze locked on something behind Hope’s shoulder. Her mouth opened, and stayed open. Hope turned and looked around. Five or six young women, hands linked, were skipping along the pavement towards them. As they came within a few metres they started singing. The line split. Someone caught Hope’s right hand, and someone else caught Nick’s left hand, and in a moment the line had formed a ring, with Miss Petrie outside it. Hope felt an odd thrill as the stranger’s fingers interlaced with hers, and an obscure sense that there was something missing, something not as obvious as a finger, about the hand, but before she had time to process either thought, she felt a tug to one side and to keep her balance had to sidestep, and then again, and then she and Nick were whirling around with the young women, who were all smiling and singing:

‘Ring a ring a roses, a pocket full of posies…’

She heard Nick’s voice joining in. ‘Atishoo! Atishoo!’

She couldn’t help joining in herself, on the last line, but the others didn’t shout out what she did. They shouted:

‘We all JUMP UP!’

And they did, giving Hope’s shoulders a wrench as she tried to fall down as everyone else including Nick jumped up. She’d just sorted herself out from that when her arms were again tugged as the women and Nick all moved a few steps towards the school gate and then started again, side-skipping around in a ring. After a couple more rounds of this they were at the gate – Miss Petrie, and one of the fathers and two of the mothers who tried to intercept them, were brushed aside by the whirligig of bodies. The next time they stopped, Nick was standing right in front of the now open gate. Well done, Miss Petrie! Hope ducked and gave him a quick kiss on the top of the head, which got her an ‘I’m-too-old-for-that’ scowl.

‘In you go!’ she said.

Dizzy, and with a puzzled look, Nick ran in. He glanced back over his shoulder and gave a quick wave. Hope barely had time to wave back before her hands were snatched again and she was hauled into skipping along the pavement with the other women. She looked back, and saw Carolyn, Chloe, Sophie and the rest of the group of parents who’d tried to stop Nick going into nursery gazing after them with baffled looks. It had all taken about two minutes, though it had seemed longer. The line split and re-formed like molecules as it bypassed late-arriving parents and children and others on the pavement, and swung almost into the road as it swept around the nearest corner. Then they slewed to a halt, panting and laughing. Hope glanced around her unexpected rescuers. All six of them were women who looked a bit younger than she was. They were dressed for the weather and for running – jeans or short skirts with leggings, and trainers or Kickers. The rest of their clothing, in all its variety, had a craft-made or selective-vintage look: the sort of stuff, Hope thought with a brief pang, that she’d once imagined herself selling or making.

‘Thanks for that,’ she said. ‘Who are you?’

‘We just came together for this,’ said the woman who’d held her hand. ‘None of us know each other.’ She grinned around at the group. ‘Thanks, all. I’ll take it from here.’

The rest nodded, smiled, and walked off, up or down or across the street. Hope stared at the one who remained, still grinning at her out of a sunburst of blond ringlets. The woman stuck out a hand.

‘My name’s Maya,’ she said. ‘I did this.’

Hope shook hands. ‘Hope Morrison,’ she said. ‘You organised it?’

‘Flash mob,’ Maya explained, or rather, said as if it was an explanation.

‘Hmm,’ said Hope.

‘They all live around here,’ said Maya. ‘Bet you didn’t know you had so many interesting and supportive neighbours, huh?’

Hope felt patronised. ‘How would you know that?’

Maya didn’t seem fazed. ‘If you did, you could have done something like this yourself.’

Hope couldn’t think of a reply to that. Instead she asked, ‘How do you know about me? How did you know I was…’

‘ParentsNet,’ said Maya, looking away a little.

‘Oh,’ said Hope. ‘Well. That’s interesting. I start a thread and suddenly everybody knows my business.’

‘You know how it is,’ said Maya, sounding defensive for the first time. ‘It’s all out there. But the good thing about it is that you now have an army of flying monkeys.’

‘I didn’t ask for an army of flying monkeys!’

Maya looked abashed. ‘Well, sorry, at least we did help you there, and… Uh, do you have time for a coffee and a chat, maybe?’

Hope felt suddenly reckless. She deserved a bit of relaxation – not to mention explanation – more than she needed an hour’s pay.

‘Yes!’ she said. ‘Let’s do that.’

She expected Maya to ask her to suggest somewhere to go, but instead Maya nodded and smiled and set off down the street. Hope fell in beside her. On reaching the next junction, Maya put on a set of glasses and looked around. As she did so, Hope noticed what it was about the woman’s left hand that had struck her as odd a few minutes earlier. She wasn’t wearing a monitor ring.

Hope hadn’t seen a woman of childbearing age without a monitor ring since she didn’t know how long. It wasn’t compulsory, certainly not, but it was such a badge of adulthood – and indeed freedom, compared to the old system of monthly pregnancy tests and certification cards – that girls put them on long before they had the slightest intention or legal opportunity to drink alcohol, smoke or get pregnant. She’d seen ten-year-olds showing them off as if flashing engagement-ring rocks, though in these cases Hope rather suspected the rings were fake.

Maya led the way across the road, took a few confident steps onward, then stopped at the door of a small shop that didn’t at all promise coffee. Its faded sign still said Newspapers and Tobacco and it sold sweets, convenience food and emergency groceries. Maya strode inside, nodded to the Sikh woman at the counter, and asked for two coffees.

‘Real or instant?’

‘Real, thanks.’

The shopkeeper opened an airtight jar and scooped some ground coffee into a paper bag.

‘Milk?’ she asked.

Maya looked at Hope.

‘What kind would you like?’ Maya asked.

‘Uh, thanks, cappuccino, why not?’

‘Ah,’ said Maya. ‘I think the choice here is with or without milk.’

Hope shook her head. ‘OK, without, thanks.’

‘Just one,’ said Maya.

The shopkeeper measured a few mils of milk into a small plastic bottle, and popped a lid on it.

‘Five pounds,’ she said.

‘What!’ said Hope.

Maya grinned and raised a finger. ‘Wait.’

She paid, and then led the way through a plastic tape curtain to the back. Hope fought down a momentary apprehension and followed, out through a door to a back green with cracked concrete paths. Just ahead, in the middle of the green, was an area covered by a shallow roof of two sloping sheet-diamond panes, visible only from the drizzle-drops that misted them, and held up by four stout wooden posts. In its shelter were half a dozen tables with benches, and a scatter of small round tables with plastic chairs. There was a good and noisy crowd of twenty-odd people at the tables, eating, drinking, some of them smoking. It had been years since Hope had seen so many people smoking, openly, in one place. At the back, a young Asian guy sat behind a table, keeping an eye on people pouring water from electric kettles as they made their way past with cafetières and mugs.

Hope stopped dead.

‘I can’t go in here,’ she said. ‘I’m pregnant.’

Maya, a step or two in front, looked over her shoulder.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘You just take the ring off.’

‘But it’s dangerous,’ Hope said.

‘The smoke?’ Maya flapped a hand in front of her face. ‘Pffft!’

‘Well, no, I mean taking the ring off. It’ll get logged!’

‘The Health Centres look for patterns,’ said Maya. ‘Not odd incidents. Relax.’

Not feeling at all relaxed, Hope turned the monitor ring to loosen it, slid it slowly off her finger and stuck it in the bottom of her jeans pocket. She looked at the pale indentation around her finger above the gold wedding ring, and felt naked.

They found a table. Maya took the packet of coffee and the bottle of milk to the queue. Hope sat down. She could smell coffee, tea, bacon – rolls bought somewhere else, she guessed – and cigarette smoke. The crowd looked like a mixture of art students and building workers. Quite a few of both types were wearing glasses and obviously into some virtual scene. While Maya waited for the boiling water, Hope put her own glasses on. The overlay snapped into view, showing, as she’d expected, people posing as their online avatars: two of the art students looked like dragons, others wore strange strappy costumes or had features like manga characters, all big eyes and chiselled cheekbones. Four lads stooped intently over a tabletop football match on a pitch the size of two chessboards. Hope was amused to see that they kept their mugs and plates off the virtual field. In a far corner, Indian Air Force jets made repeated bombing runs on a forested mountain slope, red and black blooms rising above the green.

Maya joined the queue and glanced back. Hope caught her features in the glasses, framed the face, and – guessing at the spelling of her name – tapped out a search. About a second later she was looking at a full-face photo of Maya, and all her occupational and educational details. Brunel MA (Hons.) in law and government, gap year in Nepal, front-line post in an Advice Centre, campaigns against refugee deportations, member of Liberty and Amnesty, assiduous writer of letters to the web… a troublemaker, without a doubt.

She took the glasses off, rather guiltily, when Maya returned with a full cafetière and two mugs.

‘Isn’t this illegal?’ Hope asked. ‘An outdoor smoking area?’

Maya shook her head. ‘It’s not open to the public and they’re not serving the coffee or tea. The shop sells very expensive dry coffee and tea bags. What the customers do with it is their business. There just happens to be a place out the back where as a favour the customers can use the family’s kettles.’

‘And seats, and tables, and shelter.’

‘Well, you know how it is with extended families,’ said Maya, hand poised over the plunger. ‘They need lots of room for gettogethers.’

‘The inspectors will find some way to shut it down. Otherwise more people would be doing it.’

Maya smiled. ‘More are. More than you’d think. Smoke-easies. Shebeens. Drinking sheds.’ She tapped her glasses, in her shirt pocket. ‘There’s a black app for finding them.’

Hope was not interested in black apps. She felt disquieted that Maya actually had one on her glasses.

‘No, I meant like cafés and so on.’

‘That’s not how it works,’ Maya said. ‘If you’re running a café or a pub, the problem with a workaround like this is that it isn’t covered by insurance. Suppose someone were to scald themselves with the kettle! Or trip and hurt themselves! Nightmare. You run into all kinds of legal minefields even before the health inspectors come down on you. And if they do, they can close a café. The most they can do with this is stop the shop owner from letting people use their back yard. Or someone else’s back yard, for all I know. It’s legally quite tricky. In fact what usually happens is the shop owner just stops for a bit, and a place just like it pops up somewhere nearby. Rinse and repeat.’

She pushed the plunger down, and poured. Hope breathed in fragrant steam, blew, and sipped.

‘Why did you come here anyway?’ she asked. ‘Instead of to a café, I mean? You don’t smoke, do you?’

‘I’m a consenting and mildly addicted passive smoker,’ said Maya, inhaling a passing wisp. ‘I should explain. I work in an Advice Centre, out in Hayes. Lots of refugees and DPs, you know? Which means I work with people who – I’m not making this up – will list smoking under “outdoor activities”.’

They laughed.

‘But that’s not why I picked here,’ Maya went on. She leaned forward, elbows on the table, hand waving. ‘It’s sort of relevant to your problem, sort of an example…’

‘Oh yes, my problem,’ said Hope. She put the coffee mug down, hard. ‘You have some explaining to do.’

Maya did some explaining.

Hope put her elbows on the table and her palms across her eyes.

‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘I feel like I’ve been stalked or something.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Maya. ‘Really you haven’t. It’s just that, you know, you posted on ParentsNet, and then that other mum at your school uploaded yesterday’s little contretemps, and—’

‘Yes, I bloody know that!’ Hope snapped. ‘But that science woman, what did she have to poke her nose in for?’

‘For God’s sake!’ said Maya. ‘She hasn’t done anything. She just told me about you, and I came up with an idea to help. To let you know you’re not alone. And come on, I did help.’

‘Yes,’ said Hope. ‘For today. But that doesn’t do me much good, does it?’

‘That’s what I want to talk about,’ said Maya, sounding both exasperated and embarrassed. ‘About ways you can deal with the situation.’

Hope decided to give Maya a chance. ‘OK,’ she said.

Maya leaned back, as if making a conscious decision to get out of Hope’s face, and waved expansively. ‘The first way,’ she said, ‘is the kind of thing people do here.’

‘Drink coffee and smoke?’

‘No,’ said Maya. ‘Find workarounds. Look, I understand how you must feel, like everything’s closing in on you. The health centre, the school, the insurance soon enough… I know all about that sort of thing, because I deal with it every day. Laws and bureaucracy, God! But the point is, if you really want to, you can get around it.’

‘Like?’

‘Take the school, for example. All those mums who’re giving you trouble – well, maybe you can shame them by going to school in a group with mums who support you.’

‘I don’t know any,’ said Hope.

‘OK, but have you looked? Asked? Anyway’ – Maya waved a hand again – ‘let’s leave that for the moment. Sooner or later the insurance issue will come up – the school will be told it can’t be insured against your little boy, or rather you can’t be insured. Now, you have alternatives there: you could home-school…’

‘No way!’

‘… or join a parents’ school group. I can help you find some.’

‘No, again. I’m not taking Nick out of the nursery.’

‘Well… in that case, there are alternative sources of insurance cover you might consider. Mainly religious – Islamic, some kinds of Catholic, even, uh, Mennonite and so on, you know, sects. They’ll all cover you and the school will have to accept that you’re covered, because of various non-discrimination acts – you see how it works, you use one part of the law against others?’

Hope looked at the dregs of her coffee.

‘Want another coffee?’ she said.

Maya nodded. Hope used the five minutes it took to buy the powder and milk and queue for the water to think over why she objected so much to Maya’s well-meant suggestions. By the time she got back, she thought she had it.

‘I don’t want to sneak around,’ she said. ‘That’s what “workaround” means to me. I don’t want to live in some hole-and-corner way, relying on the goodwill of sects and cults, thank you very much. I just want to live like everybody else.’

‘OK, OK,’ Maya said, again with the backing-off body language. ‘All right, let’s see how you can do it mainstream.’ She gave an embarrassed smile. ‘Have you thought of writing to your MP?’

Hope stared at her. ‘What would be the point of that?’

‘More than you’d think,’ said Maya. ‘They still take letters from constituents seriously. And come on, your MP is one of the better ones. Jack Crow.’

‘He even lives around here,’ Hope said. ‘I’ve spoken to him, now I come to think of it. He knocked on our door at the last election.’

‘An MP who canvasses?’ said Maya. ‘My, my. Did you vote for him?’

‘None of your business,’ Hope said.

Maya nodded. ‘Fair enough.’

‘But I did,’ Hope added.

Maya looked surprised. ‘I wouldn’t have expected you to be—’

‘Oh, no,’ Hope said. ‘I’m not. No, I don’t believe in all that, but it’s – well, it’s two things. One is my job, you know? In China? So I’m all for that side of it, the war and so on; we really have to, you know, defeat those people. And the other is, uh, my husband. He’s from the Highlands and he’s half native, as he puts it, and I don’t know if you know what the people up there are like, but I swear if he even thought I was going to vote any other way he’d walk out on me.’

‘Really?’

Hope laughed. ‘It’s a slight exaggeration, but he takes it all very seriously.’

‘Ah!’ said Maya. ‘So he might be quite pleased if you were to take it so seriously that you’d actually join the—’

‘What! I couldn’t!’

‘Why not?’

‘I mean, look at me!’

‘I’m looking at a regular Islington mum.’

‘Exactly! And my accent! Come on, I’m a Home Counties middle-class girl.’

Maya put a hand across her mouth and pinched her nostrils as if stifling a giggle.

‘I think you’ll find,’ she said when she’d ostensibly recovered, ‘that you’ll fit right in.’

That evening, Hope wrote a letter to her MP, Jack Crow. She found no difficulty at all in composing it, but quite a bit in writing it. She hadn’t hand-written an entire page since primary school. In the end she found an app on her glasses that sampled her handwriting and turned it into a font that looked like her handwriting would if it had been regular, and printed it off. There was even an app for the printer that indented the paper a little, and an ink that looked like ballpoint ink. She signed the letter in what she hoped was a sufficiently similar ink and script, and sealed the envelope. She looked up Jack Crow and was about to address the letter to him at the House of Commons, when she noticed that his own address was only a few streets away. The following morning, after dropping off Nick – no problems this time – she took the letter round and posted it through the letter box of the MP’s house, a modest multi-household Victorian jerry-built tenement like her own but with, she was quite pleased to see, one floor fewer. It seemed appropriately modest, for one of the better MPs, one who lived in his constituency and actually canvassed.

As soon as she got home, Hope joined up. A few days later she got a package in the post enclosing: a plastic membership card with an offer of a Co-op Bank loan and a data chip containing more information about the Party, the movement, and parliamentary procedure than she could possibly live long enough to read; a welcome letter; and a plastic badge in the shape of a circle with a logo in fake enamel of a torch, a shovel and a quill pen. Around the border were the words LABOUR PARTY and across the middle was the word LIBERTY.

This looked promising. She pinned the badge to her coat collar at once. She knew that Hugh must have noticed it in the hallway when he came home, but he made no comment.