The Family way

one

3

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

20

22

24

26

28

30

32

34

36

38

40

42

44

46

48

50

52

54

56

58

60

62

64

66

68

70

72

74

76

78

80

82

84

86

88

90

92

94

96

98

100

102

104

106

108

110

112

114

116

118

120

122

124

126

127

128

130

132

134

135

136

138

140

142

143

144

149

150

152

154

156

158

** «-

160

162

164

166

168

170

172

175

176

178

180

182

184

186

188

190

192

194

196

198

200

202

204

206

208

210

212

214

216

218

220

222

224

226

228

230

232

233

234

236

238

240

242

244

246

248

250

252

257

258

260

262

264

266

268

270

272

274

276

278

280

282

284

286

288

290

292

294

296

298

300

302

304

306

308

311

312

314

316

318

320

322

324

326

328

330

332

334

336

338

340

342

344

346

348

350

352

354

356

358

360

362

364

366

368

370

372

374

376

one

'Your parents ruin the first half of your life,' Cat's mother told her when she was eleven years old, 'and your children ruin the second half.'

It was said with the smallest of smiles, like one of those jokes that are not really a joke at all.

Cat was an exceptionally bright child, and she wanted to examine this proposition. How exactly had she ruined her mother's life? But there was no time. Her mother was in a hurry to get out of there. The black cab was waiting.

One of Cat's sisters was crying - maybe even both of them. But that wasn't the concern of Cat's mother. Because inside the waiting cab there was a man who loved her, and who no doubt made her feel good about herself, and who surely made her feel as though there was an un-ruined life out there for her somewhere, probably beyond the door of his rented flat in St John's Wood.

The childish sobbing increased in volume as Cat's mother picked up her suitcases and bags and headed for the door. Yes, thinking back on it, Cat was certain that both of her sisters were howling, although Cat herself was dry-eyed, and quite frozen with shock.

3

When the door slammed behind their mother and only the trace of her perfume remained - Chanel No. 5, for their mother was a woman of predictable tastes, in scent as well as men - Cat was suddenly aware that she was the oldest person in the house. Eleven years old and she was in charge.

She stared at the everyday chaos her mother was escaping. Toys, food and clothes were strewn across the living room. The baby, Megan, a fat-faced little Buddha, three years old and not really a baby at all any more, was sitting in the middle of the room, crying because she had chewed her fingers while chomping on a biscuit. Where was the nanny? Megan wasn't allowed biscuits before meals.

Jessica, a pale, wistful seven-year-old, who Cat strongly suspected of being their father's favourite, was curled up on the sofa, sucking her thumb and bawling because - well, why? Because that's what cry-baby Jessica always did. Because baby Megan had hurled Jessica's Air Stewardess Barbie across the room, and broken her little drinks trolley. And perhaps most of all because their mother found it so easy to go.

Cat picked up Megan and clambered onto the sofa where Jessica was sucking her thumb, for all the world, Cat thought, as if she was the baby of the house. Cat hefted her youngest sister onto her hip and said, 'Come on, dopey,' to the other one. They were just in time.

The three sisters pressed their faces against the bay window of their newly broken home just as the black cab pulled away. Cat remembered the profile of the man in silhouette - a rather ordinary-looking man, hardly worth all this fuss - and her mother turning around for one last look. She was very beautiful. And she was gone.

After their mother had left, Cat's childhood quietly expired. For the rest of that day, and for the rest of her life. Their father did all he could - 'the best dad in the world', Cat, Jessica and Megan wrote annually on his Father's Day cards, their young hearts full of feeling - and many of their childminders were a lot kinder than they needed to be. Years after they had gone home, Christmas cards came from the ex-au pair in Helsinki, and the former nanny in Manila. But in the end even the most cherished childminders went back to their real life, and the best dad in the world seemed to spend a lot of his time working, and the rest of the time trying to work out exactly what had hit him. Beyond his restrained, unfailingly well-mannered exterior, and beyond all the kindness and charm - 'He's just like David Niven,' awe-struck strangers would say to the girls as they were growing up - Cat sensed turmoil and panic and a sadness without end. Nobody ever sets out to be a single parent, and although Cat, Jessica and Megan never doubted that their father loved them - in that quiet, smiley, undemonstrative way he had - he seemed more unprepared than most.

As the oldest, Cat learned to fill in the gaps left by the parade of nannies and au pairs. She cooked and childminded, did some perfunctory cleaning, and a lot of clearing up (many of their kiddie-carers refused to do anything remotely domestic, as if it were against union rules). Cat learned how to program a washing machine, knew how to disable a burglar alarm and, after a few months of frozen meals and fast food, taught herself to cook. But there was one thing she learned above all others: before she was in her teens, Cat Jewell had some idea of how alone you can feel in this world. So the three sisters grew.

Megan - pretty and round, voluptuous, her sisters called her, but the only one of them who would always have to watch her weight, academically brilliant - who would have thought it? - with all the fierceness of the youngest child. Jessica - the doe-eyed dreamer, the sensitive one, prone

4

5

to laughter and tears, who turned out to be the unexpected boy magnet of the three, looking for that one big love behind the bicycle sheds and in the bus shelters of their suburban neighbourhood, quietly nursing a desire for a happy home.

And Cat - who quickly grew as tall as their father, but who never outgrew the small-breasted, long-limbed dancer's body she had as a girl, and never outgrew the unspeakable rage of being abandoned, although she learned to disguise her scars with the bossy authority of the eldest child.

They clung to each other and to a father who was rarely around, missing their mother, even when things were bad and they hated her, and after a while the fact that Cat had forsaken her childhood seemed like the least of their worries.

Cat loved her father and her sisters, even when they were driving her nuts, but when the time came, she escaped to Manchester and university with a happy sigh - 'As soon as someone left the door slightly ajar,' she liked to tell her new friends. And while Jessica married her first serious boyfriend and Megan moved in with her first real boyfriend, Cat lost herself in her studies and later her work, in no rush to build a home and start a family and return to the tyranny of domesticity.

She knew all about it. Family life meant nothing in the fridge, a mother gone, Jessica crying and baby Megan squawking for 'bis-quits, bis-quits'.

Family life was their father away working, the au pair shagging some new boy out in the potting shed and not a bloody bis-quit in the house.

More than either of her sisters, Cat had seen the reality of a woman's work. The hard slog, the thankless graft, the never-ending struggle to keep bellies fed and faces clean and bottoms wiped and eyes dried and washing done.

Let Jessica and Megan build their nests. Cat wanted to fly away, and to keep flying. But she was wise enough to know that this wasn't a philosophy, it was a wound. As a student, emboldened by one term at university, Cat angrily confronted her mother about all that had been stolen from her.

'What kind of mother were you? What kind of human being?' 'Your parents ruin -' 'Ah, change the record.' Cat was deliberately loud.

Megan stared with wonder at her big sister. Jessica prepared herself for a good cry. They were in a polite patisserie in St John's Wood where people behind the counter actually spoke French and shrugged their shoulders in the Gallic fashion.

'You were our mother,' Cat said. 'We were entitled to some mothering. I'm not talking about love, Mummy dearest. Just a little human decency. Was that too much to ask?' Cat was shouting now.

'Don't worry, dear,' her mother said, calmly sucking on a low-tar cigarette and eyeing up the young waiter who was placing a still-warm pain au chocolat before her. 'One day you'll have fucked-up children of your own.' Never, thought Cat. Never ever. When she was certain that her husband had settled down in front of the football, Jessica crept into his study and stared at all his pictures of Chloe.

It was turning into a shrine. The few carefully selected favourites were in their silver frames, but there were more propped up on bookshelves, and a fresh batch was spilling out of a Snappy Snaps envelope and fanning out across his desk, burying a VAT return.

Jessica reached for the envelope, and then hesitated, listening. She could hear Bono and U2 singing, 'It's a beautiful day'. He was watching the football. For the next hour

6

7

or so it would take a small fire to get Paulo off the sofa. So Jessica reached for the latest pictures of Chloe, and thumbed through them, frowning.

There was Chloe in the park, in the baby swings, one vicious-looking tooth glinting at the bottom of her wide, gummy mouth. And here was Chloe looking like a beady-eyed dumpling on bath night, wrapped up in a baby version of one of those hooded towelling outfits that boxers wear on their way to the ring. And here was Chloe in the strong, adoring arms of her father, Paulo's younger brother, Michael, looking ridiculously pleased with herself. Chloe. Baby Chloe. Bloody baby Chloe.

Somewhere inside her, Jessica knew that she should be grateful. Other men furtively pored over websites with names like Totally New Hot Sluts and Naughty Dutch Girls Must Be Punished and Thai Teens Want Fat Middle-Aged Western Men Now. Jessica was certain that the only rival she had for Paulo's heart was baby Chloe - the child of Michael and Naoko, his Japanese wife. Jessica knew she should have been happy. Yet every picture of Chloe was like a skewer in her heart. And every time that Paulo admired his shrine to his niece, Jessica felt like strangling him, or screaming, or both. How could a man that kind, and that smart, be so insensitive?

'Michael says that Chloe's at the stage where she's putting everything in her mouth. Michael says - listen to this, Jess - that she thinks the world is a biscuit.'

'Hmm,' Jessica said, coolly staring at a picture of Chloe looking completely indifferent to the mushy food smeared all over her face. 'I thought all Eurasian babies were pretty.' Cruel pause for effect. 'Just goes to show, doesn't it?'

Paulo, always anxious to avoid a fight, said nothing, just quietly collected his pictures of Chloe, avoiding his wife's eyes. He knew he should be hiding these pictures in a bottom drawer, while Jessica knew it hurt him too - the younger brother becoming a father before he did. But it didn't hurt him in the same way that it hurt her. It didn't eat him alive.

Jessica loathed herself for talking this way, for denying Chloe's unarguable loveliness, for feeling this way. But she couldn't help herself. There was a large part of her that loved Chloe to bits. But Chloe was a brutal reminder of Jessica's own baby, that baby that hadn't been born yet, despite the years of trying, and it turned her into someone she didn't want to be.

Jessica had left work to have a baby. Unlike both her sisters, her career had never been central to her world. Work was just a way to make ends meet, and, more importantly, to perhaps meet the man she would make a life with. He was driving a black cab back then, in the days before he went into business with his brother, and when he stopped to help Jessica with her car, she thought he would be all chirpy cockiness. Going my way, darling? That's what she was expecting. But in fact he was so shy he could hardly look her in the eye. 'Can I help?' 'I've got a broken tyre.'

He nodded, reaching for his toolbox. 'In the business,' he said, and she saw that slow-burning smile for the first time, 'we call it a flat tyre.' And soon they were away.

On her very last day at work, before she set off for her new life as a mother, her colleagues at the Soho advertising agency where she worked had gathered round with balloons, champagne and cake, and a big card with a stork on the front, signed by everyone in the office.

It was the very best day of Jessica's working life. She stood beaming among her colleagues, some of them never having

8

9

said a word to her before, and she kept smiling even when someone said perhaps she should go a little easy on the booze. 'You know. In your condition.'

'Oh, I'm not pregnant yet,' Jessica said, and the leaving party was never quite the same.

Jessica's colleagues exchanged bewildered, embarrassed looks as she beamed happily, the proud young mum-to-be - as soon as she conceived - examining the card with the stork, surrounded by the balloons and champagne, among all the pink and the blue.

That was three years ago, when Jessica was twenty-nine. She had already been married to Paulo for two years, and the only thing that had stopped them trying for a baby the moment the vicar said, 'You may kiss the bride,' was that Paulo and his brother were trying to start their business. It wasn't the time for a baby. Three years ago, when the business was suddenly making money and Jessica was about to leave her twenties behind - that was the time for a baby. Except nobody had told the baby.

Three years of trying. They thought it would be easy. Now nothing was easy. Not sex. Not talking about what was wrong. Not working out what they might do next. Not feeling like complete failures when her period came around, with a pain that all the Nurofen Plus in the world could not smother.

Those paralysing, indescribable periods. That was when she felt alone. How could she ever describe that white-knuckle pain to her husband? Where would she start? What did he have to compare it with? That was one kind of pain. There were others. Traps were everywhere.

Even what should have been a small, simple pleasure like looking at pictures of her niece had Jessica in torment. One day she found herself weeping in the fifth-floor toilets of John Lewis, the floor where the baby things are sold, and she thought, am I going insane? But no, it wasn't madness. Swabbing her eyes with toilet roll, Jessica realised that she had never had her heart broken before.

She had been hurt in the past - badly hurt, long before Paulo. But no boy or man could ever hurt her like their unborn baby did.

Jessica had believed that conception was a mere technical detail on her way to happy, contented motherhood. Now, after all this time trying, ovulation came around like a demand for rent money that she didn't have.

Now, when the Clear Plan Home Ovulation Test ordained that the time was right, Jessica and Paulo - who had imagined that they would be young, enthusiastic lovers for ever - grimly banged away like minor offenders doing community service.

That very morning Jessica had peed on her little white plastic oracle and it had duly decreed that her 4 8-hour window of fertility was opening. Tonight was the night. And tomorrow night too - although Paulo would have given it his best shot, as it were, by then. It felt like a cross between a date with destiny, and an appointment with the dental hygienist.

Paulo was settling down to the north London derby, a cold Peroni in his hand. He looked up as she entered the room, and the sight of his face made her heart give an old familiar pang. Although their sex life was now performed with a kind of numbing obligation, as if it were a form of particularly tiresome DIY, closer to putting together self-assembly furniture than creating a new life, Jessica still loved her husband's dark, gentle face. She still loved her Paulo.

'I don't know the score,' Paulo said, sipping on his Italian beer. 'So if you know who won, don't tell me, Jess.'

She knew it was a goalless draw. A typical grim north London derby. But she kept it to herself.

10

11

'I'm going up to bed now,' said Jessica. 'Oh, I say!' said the man on the television. 'Okay,' said Paulo. Jessica nodded at the beer. 'Go easy on that stuff, will you?' Paulo blushed. 'Sure.' 'Because… it makes you tired.'

She said it with the smallest of smiles. Like one of those jokes that are not really a joke at all. The way, thought Jessica, my mother would always let slip some unpalatable truth. The worthless old cow.

'I know,' said Paulo, putting down the beer. 'I'll be up in a minute.'

'You've got to admire the spirit of these youngsters,' said another man on TV. 'They're not giving up just yet.'

Something told Jessica that she had to harden her heart if she was going to get through this thing. Because what happened if the baby never came? What then? She didn't know how she could stand it, or what kind of life she would have with Paulo, who wanted children as much as any man could want children, which was almost certainly not as much as she wanted children, or how this marriage could endure with disappointment haunting their home like a malignant lodger. 'See you in a bit then,' Jessica said. 'See you soon, Jess,' Paulo said, not quite catching her eye.

She used to drive him crazy. Now he acted as though sex was an exam he hadn't prepared for.

'Oh, my word,' said the TV commentator. 'He's never going to get it in from there.' A cone of golden light fell on Megan at her crowded desk. She looked up from her computer screen at the skylight in the ceiling of the tiny room. To Megan it looked like a window in the kind of prison where they locked you up and threw away the key. The light and noise that filtered down indicated another world out there but it felt a very long way away. Yet she loved this room - her very first office in her first real job. Every morning she felt a shiver of pleasure when she walked into the little room. Smiling to herself, Megan got up from her desk and climbed on her chair. She was getting good at it now.

Three times a day she stood precariously on her swivel chair, its cushion worn threadbare by the buttocks of all those who had sat there before her, and she clung to the frame of the skylight, craning her neck. If she stood on tiptoe, she could see most of the school playground that backed onto the rear of the building. Megan loved to listen to the sound the children made at playtime. They were little ones, as noisy and smooth-skinned as babies. They sounded like a flock of ecstatic birds. She realised she had never had much experience of small children. She was so used to being the youngest. 'Doctor?' Megan spun round, almost toppling off her chair.

A crumpled-looking woman was standing in the doorway, nervously fingering a piece of wet kitchen towel. A child in some kind of miniature football shirt was shrieking at her feet. The woman watched red-eyed as Megan descended to her desk.

'They told me to go in, doctor. The lady on the desk.' The woman looked shyly at the ground. 'Nice to see you again.'

Megan's mind was blank. She had seen so many faces recently, and so many bodies. She got a name, a date of birth and took a quick look at her notes. Then it all started to come back.

The woman had been here a few weeks ago with this same small child, who was then in his other outfit of a grubby grey vest, and chomping on a jam sandwich. The brat had run his sticky paws through Megan's

12

13

paperwork while she examined his mother, confirming her pregnancy. The woman - Mrs Summer, although as far as Megan could tell, she wasn't married, and she didn't have a partner called Summer - had received the news like it was a final demand from the taxman. Not much older than Megan, who was twenty-eight, Mrs Summer was already beaten down by motherhood. The apprentice hooligan with the jam sandwich was her fourth from a rich variety of men.

'How can I help you?' Megan asked now, relieved that the brat seemed more subdued today. 'There's been some bleeding, Dr Jewell.' 'Let's take a look at you.'

It was an early miscarriage. The woman had been depressed by the news of the pregnancy, but this was infinitely worse. Suddenly, catching Megan off-guard, Mrs Summer seemed to be choking. 'What did I do wrong? Why did it happen?'

'It's not you,' Megan said. 'A quarter of all pregnancies end in - Here. Please.'

Megan pushed her box of Kleenex across the desk. Mrs Summer's scrap of kitchen towel was coming apart, and so was she. Megan came out from behind her desk and put her arms around the woman.

'Truly, it's not you,' Megan said again, more gently this time. 'The body runs its series of tests. It finds some abnormality in the embryo. Why does it happen? The honest answer is - we don't know. A miscarriage comes out of the blue. It's horrible, I know. The thought of what might have been.' The two women stared at each other. 'I'm sorry for your loss,' Megan said. 'I really am.'

And Megan was sorry. She even sort of understood how Mrs Summer could be terrified at the prospect of another baby, and yet devastated when the baby was abruptly taken away from her. A fifth child would have been a disaster. But losing it was a tragedy, a death in the family that she wasn't even really allowed to mourn properly, except for these shameful tears in a doctor's surgery the size of a broom cupboard.

Megan talked quietly to Mrs Summer about chromosomal and genetic abnormalities, and how, hard as it was for us to accept, they were simply incompatible with life.

'You and your partner have to decide if you want any more children or not,' Megan told her. 'And if you don't, then you need to start practising safe sex.'

'I do, doctor. But it's him. It's me… partner. He doesn't believe in safe sex. He says it's like taking a shower in a raincoat.'

'Well, you'll just have to discuss it with him. And condoms are far from the only possibility, if that's what he's referring to.'

Megan knew perfectly well that condoms were what he was referring to. But now and again she felt the need to adopt a magisterial tone, to reassert her authority, to keep her head above the sorry human mess that pressed its way into her surgery. 'What about the pill?'

'I blew up. Fat as a fat thing. Got thrombosis. Blood clots. Had to come off it.' 'Coitus interruptus?' 'Whipping it out?' 'Precisely.'

'Oh, I don't think so. You haven't met him. I've tried, doctor. Tried all the safe sex. What do you call it? The rhythm section.' 'Rhythm method, yes.'

'Tried that one when the doctor said it was the pill that was blowing me up. But it's when I'm asleep. He just helps himself.' 'Helps himself?'

14

15

'Jumps on top of me and he's away. Then snoring his head off the moment it's over. You would never get a condom on him, doctor. I wouldn't like to try. Honest I wouldn't.'

It was another world out there. The sprawling estates that surrounded the surgery. Where a baby was still a bun in the oven and the men still helped themselves when some poor cow collapsed at the end of another busy day.

'Well, you tell him he can't help himself. It's outrageous behaviour. I'll talk to him if you want me to.'

'You're nice, you are,' the woman told Megan, and grasped her in a soggy bear hug. Megan gently prised her away, and talked about the glories of an intrauterine device.

Women liked her. She was by far the youngest doctor at the surgery, a GP registrar only a month into her final year of vocational training, yet easily the most popular.

She had spent the last seven years preparing for this job - six of them at medical school, and the last year as a house officer in two London hospitals. Now, in a surgery where the other three doctors were all men, she was finally in a position where she could make a difference.

When women came in complaining of period pains that made them feel like throwing themselves under a train, Megan didn't just tell them to take a painkiller and get a grip. When young mothers came in saying that they felt so depressed they cried themselves to sleep every night, she didn't simply tell them that the baby blues were perfectly natural. When a nuchal scan said that the possibility of Down's syndrome was high, Megan discussed all the options, aware that this was one of the hardest decisions that any woman would ever have to make.

When Mrs Summer was gone, Dr Lawford stuck his head around her door. In the confines of the tiny room, Megan could smell him - cigarettes and a cheese and pickle bap. He bared his teeth in what he imagined to be a winning smile. 'Alone at last,' he said.

Lawford was Megan's GP trainer - the senior doctor meant to act as her guide, teacher and mentor during the year before she became fully registered. Some junior doctors worshipped their GP trainers, but after a month under his tutelage, Megan had concluded that Dr Lawford was a cynical, bullying bastard who hated everything about her.

'Chop chop, Dr Jewell. Your last patient was here for a good thirty minutes.' 'Surely not?'

'Thirty minutes, Dr Jewell.' Tapping his watch. 'Do try to move them in and out in seven, there's a good chap.'

She stared at him sullenly. Growing up with two older sisters had made Megan militant about standing up for herself.

'That patient has just had a miscarriage. And we're not working in McDonald's.'

'Indeed,' laughed Dr Lawford. 'Dear old Ronald McDonald can lavish a lot more time on his customers than we can. Here, let me show you something.'

Megan followed Lawford out into the cramped waiting room.

Patients sat around in various degrees of distress and decay. A large woman with a number of tattoos on her bare white arms was screaming at the receptionist. There were hacking coughs, children crying, furious sighs of exasperation. Megan recognised some of the faces, found that she could even put an ailment to them. She's cystitis, she thought. He's hypertension. The little girl is asthma - like so many of the children breathing the air of this city. My God, she thought, how many of these people are waiting to see me?

'You're going to have a busy morning, aren't you?' Dr Lawford said, answering her question. 'A good half of these

16

17

patients are waiting for you.' Chastened, Megan followed Lawford back to her office.

'It's Hackney, not Harley Street,' he said. 'Seven minutes per patient, okay? And it doesn't matter if they have got the black plague or a boil on the bum. Seven minutes, in and out. Until God gives us forty-eight hours a day, or we get jobs in the private sector, it's the only way we can do it.' 'Of course.' Lawford gave her an exasperated look and left her alone.

To get to this little room, Megan had worked so hard, but she wondered if she could make it through this final year with Lawford watching her every move. She had heard the only reason that surgeries welcomed a junior registrar was because it meant they were getting a doctor for nothing. But none of the old quacks, no matter how penny-pinching or cynical, wanted a bolshy GP registrar who was going to make their lives even harder. They would be better off without her. Megan felt that Lawford was waiting for her to do something stupid, so he could cut his losses and get shot of her.

And that was ironic because Megan suspected that she already had done something stupid. Something so stupid that she could hardly believe it.

In the morning, during one of her regular breakfast meetings with Lawford - Megan was obliged to meet him twice a week so that they could discuss her progress, or lack of it - she had quickly excused herself and run off to throw up her almond croissant and cappuccino in a cafe lavatory smelling of lemon-scented Jif.

But it was on her way home to her tiny flat, her feet and back aching, that Megan really believed that she had done something stupid.

She knew it was impossible, she knew that it was far too soon. But it felt so real. The kick inside. two 'Oh, you're far too young to be having a baby, dear,' Megan's mother told her. 'And I'm certainly too young to be a grandmother.'

Megan estimated that her mother must be sixty-two by now, although officially she had only been in her fifties for the last six years or so.

In Megan's surgery she often saw grandmothers from the Sunny View Estate who were the same age as Cat and even Jessica - all those 'nans' in their middle and early thirties, who started child-bearing in what Mother Nature, if not the metropolitan middle class, would have considered their child-bearing years. But it was true - Olivia Jewell didn't look like anyone's idea of a grandmother. And Megan thought, why should she? She had never really got the hang of being a mother.

Olivia Jewell still turned heads. Not because of the modest fame that she had once enjoyed - that had evaporated more than twenty years ago - but because of the way she looked. The massed black curls, the Snow White pallor, those huge blue eyes. Like Elizabeth Taylor if she had won her fight against the fat, or Joan Collins if she had never made it to

18

19

Hollywood. An elderly English rose, wilting now, it was true, but still with a certain lustre.

'They take over your life,' Olivia said, although her voice softened as she contemplated her youngest daughter. 'Darling. You don't want anyone taking over your life, do you?'

When their parents had met at RAD A, it was Olivia who was the catch. Jack was a tall, serviceably handsome young actor, ramrod straight after two years' National Service in the RAF and moonlighting as a male model (cigarettes, mostly - the young Jack looked good smirking in a blazer with a snout on the go).

But Olivia was a delicate porcelain beauty, like that other Olivia, Miss de Havilland, already a bit of a throwback in those years of post-war austerity, when large-breasted blondes were suddenly all the rage.

Olivia was swooned over by her teachers, her classmates and, later, the critics, who loved her as a petulant, foot-stamping Cordelia in Stratford. It was widely predicted that Jack would always work, but that Olivia was destined for true stardom. In the mocking passage of time, it had worked out very differently.

After a few years where he scuffled around in the background of British films nostalgic for World War Two - playing the pipe-smoking captain in a chunky sweater who goes down with his shipmates, or the knobbly-kneed POW who gets shot in the back by the Hun while attempting to escape, or the RAF squadron leader with the gammy leg anxiously scanning the blue skies of Kent - Jack Jewell stumbled on the role of a lifetime.

For almost twenty years he played a widowed father in the long-running BBC fishing drama, All the Fish in the Sea - played it for so long that Megan, his youngest child, had little memory of her father being around when she was growing up, he was so busy playing a doting father to his screen children. By the time they reached their teenage years, Jack Jewell's kindly, knowing face had become one of the cherished icons of the nation, while Olivia's big starring roles had never materialised.

'Dad would be pleased,' Megan said, deliberately provoking her. 'Dad would be happy to be a grandfather.'

Olivia shot her daughter a look. 'You didn't tell him, did you?' 'Of course not. But he would be happy, I bet.'

Olivia Jewell laughed. 'That's because he's a big soft bastard. And because he doesn't care what it would do to your life. Not to mention your lovely young body, dear.'

Megan and her mother were in the cafe in Regent's Park, ringed by all the white Nash houses, the most beautiful buildings in London, Megan thought, like architecture made out of ice cream. They were on one of their dates - drinking tea and watching the black swans glide across the lake, smelling freshly cut grass and the animal mustiness of the nearby London Zoo.

Megan was the only one of her daughters that Olivia saw on a regular basis. Contact with Jessica was sporadic - Jessie was too easily hurt for a sustained relationship with someone as selfish as Olivia - and Cat hadn't spoken to their mother in years.

You had to make an effort with her, Megan always thought. That's what her sisters didn't get. Their mother was all right if you made the effort.

'In the early sixties there was a darling little Maltese man off Brewer Street who used to take care of girls who got into trouble.' It still mildly surprised Megan every time she heard her mother's voice. She had a self-consciously cut-glass accent, the kind of accent that made Megan think of men in Broadcasting House reading the news in their tuxedos. 'God - what was his bloody name?'

20

21

'It doesn't matter, I'll be all right,' Megan said, pushing a napkin halfway across the table. Olivia covered her daughter's hands with her own, and gently rubbed them, as if to make them warm. 'Well - anything I can do, dear.' Megan nodded. 'Thank you.'

'A woman's body is never the same after giving birth. I had a body like you when I was young. Not petite like Jessica. Or skinny like Cat. More like you. All curves.' Olivia squinted at her daughter. 'Perhaps not quite so plump.' 'Thanks a million.' 'Did you know that Brando once made a pass at me?' 'I think you mentioned it. About ten thousand times.'

'Dear Larry Olivier admired my Cordelia. The dress I wore to the premiere of Carry On, Ginger caused a sensation. I was the Liz Hurley of my day.' 'Then that makes Dad Hugh Grant.'

'Hughie Green more like. That man. I dreamed of Beverly Hills. He gave me Muswell Hill.'

It was strange, Megan thought. Their mother was the one who walked out. Their mother was the one who shacked up with a second-rate ham in a rented flat. Their mother was the one who left the raising of her children to their father, and whoever he could hire, and to Cat. And yet their mother was the one who acted bitter. Perhaps she could never forgive their father for becoming a bigger name than she would ever be.

Her career had been a peculiarly English affair. If Olivia Jewell had ever needed a job description, then plummy crumpet would have just about nailed it down. In the fifties she had screamed her way through half a dozen Hammer Horror movies - strung up in her nightdress in a Transylvanian dungeon, the mad doctor lurching towards her, wicked experiments on his mind - and then moved into whatever ramshackle provincial theatre would have her when the times and the accents changed, and the public wanted actresses to be more working class and northern (the kitchen sink dramas), or exotic and foreign (James Bond and his bikini-clad harem).

Although only twenty-two when the sixties began, Olivia Jewell seemed to belong to another era. But she would never admit to the long years of rep and resting. In her conversation, and perhaps even in her feverish head, she was all that her teachers at RADA and Kenneth Tynan had predicted she would ever be.

Olivia's star burned brightest the year after she left home for ever. Fleeting fame, when it came for their mother, arrived late. She was pushing forty - and admitting to thirty-two -when she landed the part of the posh, nosy neighbour in the mid-seventies ITV sitcom, More Tea, Vicar? The man in the back of the cab was the male lead, playing a diffident young priest who had an electrifying effect on his female parishioners, and in the sweltering summer of 1976, while London seemed to melt in the heat and Cat cooked for her sisters and tried in vain to find this new group the Sex Pistols on the radio, Olivia and her dirty vicar appeared together on the cover of the TV Times.

Then her star faded, and within a few short years the humour of More Tea, Vicar? swiftly seemed as though it came from some older England that was now embarrassing, racist, and ludicrously out of time.

The characters in it - the eye-rolling Jamaican, the good-ness-gracious-me Indian, the bumbling Irishman and, yes, the plummy old crumpet from next door, who must have been a bit of a goer in her time - were all swept away on an angry tidal wave of jokes about Mrs Thatcher and bottoms. Eventually the man in the back of the cab left Olivia alone

22

23

in the rented St John's Wood flat and went home to his wife and children. But somehow Olivia never seemed cowed by time and experience. The haughty grandeur she had mastered in the fifties had never deserted her. Megan believed in her. 'What am I doing, Mum?' 'You're doing the right thing, dear.' 'Am I? I am, aren't I? What else can I do?'

'You can't be tied down, Megan. You've got your whole life in front of you. And what if you meet some young buck? Some handsome young surgeon?' Olivia's huge eyes twinkled with delight at the thought of this Harley Street hunk. Then she scowled, furiously stubbing out her cigarette, angry with her youngest daughter for throwing away this perfect match. 'He's not going to want to take on some other man's child, is he?'

'It's not a baby yet,' Megan said, more to herself than her mother. 'Jessica wouldn't understand that. That's why I can't tell her. Or even Cat. It still has a tail, for God's sake. It's more like a prawn than a baby. Admittedly, it would grow -' Her mother sighed.

'Darling, you can't have some screaming little shit-machine holding you down. That's what went wrong for me. No offence, dear. But you can't have this brat.' Megan's eyes stung with unexpected tears. 'I can't, can I?'

'Not now, darling. Not after passing all those exams. And being such a clever girl at medical school. And emptying bedpans in those horrid hospitals in the East End.' Her mother looked pained. 'Oh, Megan. A baby? Not now, chicken.'

Megan knew exactly what her mother would advise. That was why she had wanted to see her. To hear that she had absolutely no choice. To be told that there was no other way out. That there was nothing to even think about. Perhaps the reason that Megan was closest to their mother was because she remembered her the least.

The last meeting of Olivia and all of her daughters had been more than fifteen years ago. Megan was a bright-eyed, still boyish twelve-year-old, Jessica a shy, pretty sixteen, pale and quiet after getting mangled on some school skiing trip - at least, that's what they told Megan - and Cat at twenty was clearly a young woman, emboldened by two years at university, openly bitter and keen to confront their mother over the designer pizzas.

When their mother casually informed them that she would not be attending the prize-giving day at Megan's school -Megan was always the most academically gifted - because she had an audition to play a housewife in a gravy commercial ('Too old,' they said when she had left, 'too posh.'), Cat exploded.

'Why can't you belike everybody else's mother? Why can't you be normal?' 'If I was normal, then you three would be normal too.'

Megan didn't like the sound of that. Her mother made normality sound scary. Maybe if she was normal then school-work wouldn't come so easily to her. Maybe she wouldn't be collecting a prize from the headmaster. Maybe she would be as slow and stupid as all the other children.

'But I want us to be normal,' Jessica sobbed, and their mother laughed as though that was the funniest thing in the world. 'How is my little Jessica?' said Olivia.

'This is a tough time for her,' Megan said. 'She's been trying for a baby for so long. She would feel terrible about - you know.' 'Your abortion, yes.' 'My procedure.' Olivia never asked about Cat, although she sometimes

24

25

offered an unsolicited, and unflattering, opinion on her eldest child.

'I tried to speak to Jessica on the phone recently. Pablo said she was sleeping. Bit of tummy trouble, apparently.' 'Paulo. His name is Paulo.'

'Of course. Lovely Paulo with those gorgeous eyelashes. Like a girl, almost. I heard they were taking away her womb or something.'

'That's not it. She just needs some tests. She gets these excruciating periods. God, Mother, don't you know that?'

Olivia looked vague. 'I never really had much to do with Jessica's cycle, dear. But you're right, of course - you can't talk to her about your, you know, condition.'

Megan stared out over the lake. 'This should be happening to Jessica. This should be happening to her. She'll be a terrific mum.' 'Who's the father?' said Olivia, lighting a cigarette. 'Nobody you know.'

And Megan thought - nobody I know, come to that. How could I have been so stupid?

'My baby,' Olivia said, and she touched her daughter's face. Unlike her sisters, Megan had never doubted that her mother loved her. In her special way. 'Get shot of the bloody thing, okay? You're not like Jessica. The little woman who can't be fulfilled until she has a couple of screaming brats sucking her tits to the floor. You're not like that. And you're not like Cat - determined to be a spinster wasting herself on some inappropriate man.' Her mother smiled triumphantly. 'You're more like me.' And Megan thought, is that really what I am? Paulo hadn't been expecting the magazines. They were a surprise. Who would have thought the NHS would provide you with a bit of porn to help you fill your little plastic jug? Their attempt for a baby had been so overwhelmingly unsexy, so stripped of anything resembling passion or lust - saving up your sperm as though they were points in Salisbury's, only doing it when the ovulation test decreed, his wife's tears when it turned out that the act had all been in vain - that Paulo was stunned by the sight of what he thought of as dirty magazines.

Blushing like a teenager, he grabbed one called Fifty Plus and headed for his cubicle, wondering if that was their chest size, their age or their IQ. The doctor had assured Paulo that his sperm test wasn't really a test at all.

'I don't want you to feel under any pressure. Nobody expects you to actually fill the little plastic jug.'

But just like any other exam, a sperm test came with the promise of either success or failure. Or it wouldn't be a test, would it?

So Paulo prepared. But instead of practising three-point turns or studying the Highway Code, he did everything to increase the number of potential lives swimming about inside him, and everything he could to ensure that they would be heading in vaguely the right direction.

Loose pants. Cold baths. Zinc, vitamin E and selenium, all purchased in health shops where both the staff and the clientele looked uniformly and spectacularly unhealthy.

He read all the literature. And there was an amazing amount of it. The human race was forgetting how to reproduce itself. Tap in 'sperm' on the search engine, and you almost drowned in the stuff.

The vitamin pills, the roomy pants, the nut-shrinking cold baths - apparently all these were good for the number of sperm, and their motility - their ability to wiggle around in the required fashion. But what was the pass mark? How many million did you need to get the nod?

26

27

Surely, Paulo thought, when the sperm hits the egg, all you really need is one? The examination room was the toilet in an NHS hospital. Paulo had heard rumours that if you had your sperm test done in Harley Street, your wife was allowed to go in there with you and give you a hand.

But in this sprawling NHS hospital, which felt more like some untamed frontier town than a place of healing, where cancer patients in their dressing gowns hungrily sucked cigarettes outside the main reception, and tattooed men with head wounds regularly attacked the young nurses who were caring for them for not caring quite quickly enough, you just went in the toilets and made sad love to your little plastic jug.

And yet the event seemed momentous to Paulo. This was something new. This was masturbation for some greater good. After years of doing it behind locked doors - and how he recalled the shame and the fear that his parents would catch him red-handed emerging from the bathroom with a copy of a Sunday paper stuffed down his shirt - he was actually being encouraged to strangle the one-eyed trouser snake, choke the monkey and beat the meat. The world was saying, go ahead, Paulo. Wank yourself stupid.

There was a list of instructions - as if any man needed advice on how to fiddle about with himself - but basically it was just you, your jug, and some pornography, provided by the state.

So much was riding on this ridiculous act. It didn't feel like his sperm they were testing. It felt like his future, and the future he might have with Jessica. He unzipped his trousers, then immediately zipped them up again, taking deep breaths.

He had it easy. He knew that. He had to ejaculate into a little plastic jug, and he was allowed to do it in the privacy of an NHS toilet. Jessica had had so many examinations that she said she felt like her private parts were now in the public domain.

All these tests, all these judgements - as if it wasn't up to them if they loved each other, but to some much higher power, ancient and cruel.

Paulo flicked through the pages of Fifty Plus. He hadn't seen any of this stuff for years. At school, there was a boy known as Spud Face, a cackling, habitual masturbator -thick specs, red cheeks, always giggling inanely by the corner flag during games - who had regularly brought to class what he pronounced 'good wank fodder'.

Paulo, a shy, thoughtful boy who preferred magazines featuring motors, had always stayed at his desk, reading the latest edition of Car. But one day Spud Face had called Paulo across to the leering, cheering mob that always surrounded his dirty magazines during break.

'Oy, Baresi, come and look at this, you big poof. Here's something you can't get from cars.'

Paulo had caught a glimpse of the magazine and almost fainted - a bearded Asian man with no clothes on was doing something unbelievable to a goat who clearly couldn't believe his luck. While all the other goats in the neighbourhood were no doubt being beaten and mistreated, this goat was getting a blow job. That goat must have felt like he had won the goat lottery.

It was enough pornography to last Paulo a lifetime. He didn't like it then, and he didn't like it now. There was just something a bit too gynaecological about it for his straightforward tastes.

Paulo closed his copy of Fifty Plus. Although he felt like he was semi-retired from his sex life - making love and making babies were clearly two very different things - the women in Fifty Plus did not remotely stir him.

28

29

Paulo closed his eyes. He got a grip of himself. And he thought about his wife.

Which made him a different man to all the other wankers in there. The way Megan found out that her boyfriend was sleeping with somebody else was that she caught him with his hand on her arse. And Megan couldn't say that he looked exactly unfamiliar with the territory.

Will and Katie were on the up escalator at Selfridges just as Megan was coming down - perfectly placed for a view of Will's hand casually exploring the valley of the little tart's bottom. Katie had the decency to gasp when she saw Megan. Will went white, his hand frozen on Katie's rear, like someone caught with his fingers in the till.

Megan thought, what am I going to do? I just lost my best friend. 'A woman's biological destiny is to have a baby,' Will said. 'A man's biological destiny is to plant his seed in as many women as he can. But that doesn't mean I don't love you.'

This is what he told her. He told her all the other stuff too - that it didn't mean a thing, that he loved her, that they had been together for too long to chuck it away because of one mistake. And they had been together for a long time. Megan and Will had been med school sweethearts, living together when most of their contemporaries were playing doctors and nurses at every opportunity. But what it came down to in the end was that he had slept with Katie because the survival of the human race depended upon it.

'What can I do? I'm programmed to spread my seed. It's the biological imperative.'

'That's on your hard drive, is it? Sticking your miserable dick in strangers?' 'Katie's hardly a stranger. You've known her since med school.'

'She was a slapper there, too. Plenty of junior doctors did their advanced biology on Katie.'

'We grew very close working in accident and emergency at the Homerton. These things happen. You get thrown together.'

'You mean - oh, no, I've slipped! And now my penis has got stuck in Katie! How on earth did this happen? Is that what you mean, you rotten bastard?'

Megan thought that she should have expected something like this. She had noticed a sudden decline in Will's sex drive when he was doing those six months' vocational training at the Homerton, while she was off doing her six months' VTS in paediatrics at the Royal Free.

She had put it down to Will witnessing stab wounds on a regular basis, for the Homerton is in Hackney, and meir A amp;c E is busy every night of the year. Now Megan felt she should have guessed that Katie was wagging her tail in the doctors' mess during tea break. One of the first things that every medical student learns is that the average hospital has the sexual mores of a knocking shop when the fleet's in. All those extremely young doctors and nurses working all hours of the day and night in a highly stressed environment, most of them too busy for a proper relationship - it did something to the hormones.

As part of her vocational training, Megan had done six months at the Homerton's A amp; E herself, and it had done nothing for her libido. She had felt as though she was seeing the world as it really was for the first time in her life. But perhaps she had more imagination than Will and Katie.

He attempted to put his arms around her but she shrugged him off, almost baring her teeth. He really didn't understand that it was over. How could he? He wasn't like Megan. His parents had stayed together.

30

31

Nobody left in his home. Nobody decided to cut their losses and bolt. He had never seen the rotten, messy aftermath of fucking around.

Will had grown up as the youngest child in a tight, loving family in Hampstead Garden Suburb. That was one of the things she had loved about him. The intact, secure world that he came from, the long Sunday lunches and the gently mocking humour and the years of unbroken happiness. At weekends, and at Christmas, he took her home to his parents and they made her feel like she belonged, and she wanted to be a part of this other family, this other life, this better world.

These kids from their nuclear families made her laugh. Will thought he would always be forgiven, he thought that trust could never be broken and love could never be pissed away. Like all the saps from happy homes, Will believed in his right to a happy ending.

But she snapped the suitcase shut, hefted it from their bed and placed it at his feet. 'Megan? Come on. Please.'

She saw him now as the rather pathetic figure he had always been. Will was one of those good-looking short guys who are destined to a life of discontent. Sweet enough but totally unreliable, bright but lazy, socially charming but academically listless, he truly wasn't cut out for a career in medicine. He desperately wanted to be, and his parents - a silvery, gym-fit eye surgeon father and a blonde, well-preserved paediatrician mother - desperately wanted him to be, but during the long years of training their good-looking boy had struggled at every stage.

Will had been one of the unhappy minority of medical students who have to resit their finals, finally scraping a pass only to discover that dealing with death, sickness and gore on a daily basis gave him a funny tummy, and minor league depression. Even his depression was half-hearted. Now a part of Megan wanted to strangle him. But she also felt sorry for him. Poor Will. He was wrong for this life. Just as he was wrong for her.

And there was something else he was wrong about. It was true that she was not led around by a part of her anatomy, the way Will's penis apparently dragged him around like an insane tour guide, taking him to places he had never in a million years planned to visit.

But there were times when Megan's craving for that kind of human contact was just as urgent. There were days when her yearning - for love, for sex, for something better than both - was far stronger than anything Will could have felt when he bent Katie over in the darkened doctors' mess at three in the morning. She had a biological imperative of her own.

The big difference was that Will's craving was determined by a little pink courgette that was on call twenty-four hours a day, vulnerable to the whim of anything in a mini-skirt that took a shine to him. And when it came, Megan's craving was determined by something far more powerful than that.

It was on one of those craving nights, about two weeks after she had sent Will home to his bitterly disappointed parents in Hampstead Garden Suburb, that Megan went to a party for the first time in ages, and met a young Australian who, after taking a look at the world, was soon to go home to sun and surf, Sydney and his girlfriend.

What was his name again? It didn't really matter now. She was never going to see him again.

Where Will was small, dark, with cheekbones that really belonged on a woman, the man at the party was tall, athletic, with a nose that had been broken twice playing rugby in college, and once falling off a bar stool in Earls Court.

32

33

Not really Megan's type at all. But then look what her type had done to her. Cat Jewell loved her life.

Every time she entered her Thames-side flat, Tower Bridge glittering just for her beyond her windows, it felt like she was taking a little holiday from the world.

Almost twenty years after leaving home, she had finally found a place of stillness and silence and fabulous riverside views, a place that felt like the home she had been looking for all these years.

In an underground car park, there was her silver Mercedes-Benz SLK, and although her brother-in-law Paulo, who knew about these things, made gentle fun of her -'That's not a sports car, Cat, it's a hairdryer' - she loved zipping about town in a car that, rather like her life, was built for two. At the very most.

It was true that her flat was the smallest one in the riverside block, and the car was five years old and etched with a beading of rust. But these things filled her with a quiet pride. They belonged to her. She had worked for them. After escaping from the prison of her childhood, she had made a life for herself.

When she had come back to London after university, the woman who gave Cat her first proper job told her that you could get anything in this town, but sometimes you had to wait a while for a good apartment and true love. At thirty-six, she finally had the apartment. And she believed she also had the man.

Over the years Cat had had her fair share of sloppy drunks, premature ejaculators and the secretly married - on one memorable occasion, all on the same date - but now she had Rory, and she couldn't imagine being with anyone else. Cat had met him when he was teaching Megan wado ryu karate. He was standing in the corner at a party celebrating Megan's end of term at medical school, and Cat had taken pity on him. You could tell he didn't have it in him to start a conversation with anyone.

To Cat he had seemed an unlikely martial artist - soft-spoken, socially awkward, no swagger about him. Then as the party rapidly degenerated into what Megan said was a typical med school do, full of legless nurses and young doctors off their faces on half an E, Rory explained to Cat how he came to the martial arts.

'I was bullied at school. The tough guys didn't like me for some reason. They were always pushing me around. Then one day they went too far. I had concussion, broken ribs, a real mess.' 'So you decided to learn - what is it? - kung fu?'

'Karate. Wado ryu karate. And I enjoyed it. And I was good at it. And soon nobody pushed me around any more.' 'And you mashed up the bullies?'

He grimaced, wrinkling his nose, and she realised she liked this man. 'It doesn't really work like that.'

Thirty years on, you could still glimpse the quiet, bullied kid he had once been. Despite his job, all those days spent teaching people to kick and punch and block, there was a real gentleness about him. A strong but gentle man. The kind of man you might want to have children with, if you were the kind of woman who wanted children. Which Cat Jewell was most certainly not.

Rory's body was fit and hard from the endless hours of wado ryu karate, but there was no disguising the inner wariness of a divorced man in his forties. He had done the whole happy families bit for so long, it hadn't worked out, and he was in no rush to do it all again. He had been there, done that, and was still paying the child support. And that was fine by Cat.

34

35

Rory was more than ten years older than Cat, living across town in Notting Hill with a son who came to stay, usually when he had argued with his mother and stepfather.

Since his divorce, Rory had dated plenty of women who all seemed to have the alarms ringing on their biological clocks - women in their early thirties who had yet to meet Mr Right, women in their late thirties who had met Mr Right only for him to turn out to be Mr Right Bastard. It was too much. The last thing a man wanted to hear about on the third date was how much the woman wanted a husband and a baby. It would turn off any man. Especially a divorced man. After all of that, Cat was a sweet relief.

She didn't want him for a husband, or a father. She loved her life, and didn't need some ageing Prince Charming to change it. If their relationship was going nowhere, then that was fine. Because they were both happy with the place that it had arrived at.

And that was just as well, because Rory wasn't in the position to give any woman a baby. Cat had heard all about it the night, a month after Megan's party, that they had slept together for the first time.

'I'll wear a condom if you want me to, Cat. But there's not really the need.'

She stared at him from the other side of the bed, not trusting him and wondering what line she was being spun.

'I mean, I'll wear a condom if you want me to. Of course I will. But you don't have to worry about getting pregnant.'

He wasn't going to promise to pull out before he came, was he? Yeah, right. And the cheque's in the post. 'I've had the cut,' Rory said. 'What?' 'The snip, the cut, the operation. You know. A vasectomy.'

For some reason she knew he was telling the truth. There was just something about the way he hung his head, smiling ruefully, saying the words that she knew he must have rehearsed.

'I had it just before my marriage broke up. My wife and I - well, things were bad. We were both getting older. We knew we didn't want any more children. So I had it done. And then she got pregnant by her tennis coach.' The rueful smile. 'So it was perfect timing, really.' 'Did it hurt?' 'A bit like getting your balls caught in a nutcracker.'

'Okay. We don't need to talk about it any more. Come here.'

It was strange at first - the feeling of a man coming inside her, and knowing she didn't have to worry. Cat had spent so many years trying to avoid getting pregnant, enduring the various indignities of coil, cap, condom, pill and pulling out, that it was a load off her mind, and a load off her menstrual cycle, to be able to stop worrying about all of that. Rory was a considerate, experienced lover, and yet not one of those men who absolutely insist on the woman coming first, as though anything else would be awfully bad manners. They even had their own running gag about their contraception arrangements, or lack of them.

'How do you like your eggs, madam?' Rory would ask, and Cat would cry, 'Unfertilised!'

She began to see his inability to have children as another one of the good things in her perfect life. Like the flat with the view of Tower Bridge, and the beat-up little sports car, and her job as manager of Mamma-san, one of the most fashionable restaurants in London, where tables were in such short supply that, when you called the reservation line, they just laughed at you and then hung up. Unencumbered - that was a word Cat liked.

She was free to lie around all Sunday in her dressing gown, reading the papers, or jump on a plane and go to Prague

36

37

for the weekend, or stay over at Rory's place when the mood took her. Unencumbered - and that was just how she wanted it. Because after their mother had walked out, her childhood had been as encumbered as can be. She never wanted to be that tied down, that domesticated, again.

She didn't want children, and could go for, oh, months, without even thinking about the subject - until someone implied that it was somehow abnormal to want to hold on to a life you loved - and she was too successful, and too fulfilled, to feel as though she was missing anything. Cat didn't consider herself childless, she considered herself child-free. Big difference.

She wasn't like those other women. She wasn't like her sister Jessica. Cat didn't need a baby to make her life worthwhile, and her world whole.

Where did it come from, that addiction to the idea of motherhood, that need to be needed? Cat knew where it came from - it came from men who didn't love you enough. Men who left a hole in your life that a woman could only fill with some adorable, eight-pound crying and crapping machine.

So she lay in the dark with Rory sleeping by her side, and she thought to herself, this is perfect, isn't it? This is a good, unencumbered life. Unencumbered - the most beautiful word in the English language. Why would anyone ever want anything more? three Paulo and Michael grew up in one of the rougher parts of Essex, their father an engineer at Ford in Dagenham, and their childish dreams were full of cars.

More than half the men in their neighbourhood worked at the plant. Cars were everything here. Cars meant jobs, a wage packet, a glimpse of freedom. Cars were how the boy became a man. A teenager's first Ford Escort was a rite of passage as momentous as any tribal scar. Yet although the brothers both loved cars, they loved them in very different ways.

Paulo was fetishistically obsessed with V8 engines, camshafts and the life of Enzo Ferrari. Michael's interest veered more towards what he called 'pussy magnets'.

Paulo loved cars for themselves. Michael loved them for what they could get you, the sweet illusions they projected, and the dreams they made come true.

Michael liked girls as much as he liked cars. His specialist subject, even when he was a spotty little virgin, sharing a bedroom with his slightly bigger brother, was 'what drives them wild'. While Paulo learned about Modena and Le Mans, Michael

38

39

read top-shelf magazines and absorbed the lessons of 'shallow fucking' ('You don't put it all the way in - drives them wild, it says so here') and locating the G-spot ('Put a moistened finger inside and then move it as if you want someone to come towards you - drives them wild, Paulo, apparently').

They both covered the walls with pictures of Ferraris, but Michael had Sam Fox sandwiched between the Maranellos and the Spiders. Until one day their devout mother saw her.

'I'm not having the Whore of-a Babylon in my house,' she said, pulling down the poster with one hand and deftly cuffing Michael around the ear with the other. She knew it wouldn't be Paulo putting up Whore of Babylon pictures. 'Put up our Holy Mother.'

'No jugglies on the wall, lads,' their father quietly told them later. 'They upset your mother.'

And the brothers thought - jugglies? What would their old man know about jugglies?

Their parents had come across from Napoli as small children, landing within a year of each other, although you would never know it. Their father, another Paulo, sounded every inch a working-class Londoner, all glottal stops and talk of West Ham and Romford dogs, while their mother, Maria, had never lost the accent and the attitudes of the old country.

Maria - who was called 'Ma' by both her husband and her sons - didn't drive, never saw a bill and never had a job. 'My home is my job,' she said. Yet she was the volatile, undisputed emperor of their little terraced home, giving her sons what she called 'a clip round the earhole' as often as she kissed their cheeks with a fierce, moist-eyed passion. The boys couldn't recall their father ever raising his voice.

As a child, Paulo felt most Italian when he visited the homes of his friends. That's when he knew his own family was special, not because they attended Mass or because they ate baked ziti or because his parents spoke to each other in I foreign language, but because they resembled the type of family that was dying out in this country.

Some of his friends lived with just their mother, one of them lived with just his father, many were in strange patchwork families, made up of new fathers, half-brothers and stepmothers. His own family was much more simple, and old-fashioned, and he was grateful for that fact. It was the kind of family that Paulo wanted for himself one day.

There were only ten months between the brothers, and many people mistook them for twins. They grew up unusually close, dreaming of going into business together one day - something with cars. Racing them, mending them, selling them. Anything. This was what they had learned from their father and all those long years at Ford. 'You can't get rich working for somebody else,' said the old man, again and again, just before he fell asleep in front of the ten o'clock news.

After leaving school at sixteen, the brothers drove taxis for ten years, Paulo in a black London cab after passing the Knowledge, and Michael working the minicabs, until finally they had enough of a stake to get a loan from the bank.

Now they sold imported Italian cars from a showroom off the Holloway Road in north London. They brought in small quantities of pre-ordered merchandise from Turin, Milan and Rome, driving the cheaper left-hand-drive cars back to the UK themselves, doing the conversion to right-hand drive in their body shop, or else they bought secondhand in the boroughs of Islington, Camden and Barnet. Above their modest showroom a row of green, white and red Italian flags streamed in the weak sunlight of north London, above the name of the firm - Baresi Brothers. They made a good living, enough to support both their

40

41

families, although like many small businessmen they found there was either not enough work or more than they could handle.

Now when trade was slow, Michael produced the latest pictures of his daughter, Chloe, and spread them across the gleaming red bonnet of an old Ferrari Modena. If marriage to Naoko had calmed Michael down, Paulo thought, then the birth of Chloe seemed to have tamed him.

As they admired the latest portraits of Chloe, the brothers were joined by Ginger, the showroom's receptionist. Ginger was married and somewhere in her late thirties, and Paulo couldn't help noticing that Ginger's breasts seemed to rise and fall in slow motion as she sighed with longing at the sight of baby Chloe in all her gummy-mouthed glory. 'Oh, she's gorgeous, Mike,' Ginger said.

And Michael smiled proudly, completely smitten by his daughter. Ginger looked all dreamy-eyed, as she went to put on the kettle.

'They love it if you've got kids,' Michael told his brother when they were alone.

Paulo smiled. 'I guess it's a sign that your wedding tackle's in full working order, and you're a good provider, and all of that. You know - a good mate.'

'Yes, all that old bollocks,' Michael said, as he considered his daughter's pouting beauty. 'It drives them wild, doesn't it?' Megan didn't remember too much about the party. A crumbling Victorian house big enough to provide a home to half a dozen trainee doctors. The sweet and sickly smell of dope. All these people she knew acting ten years younger than they really were. And all this really bad music - or at least music she didn't know.

Then suddenly there was this guy - Kirk, definitely Kirk - and he was different from the other people there. For a start he wasn't as unhealthy-looking as all the young doctors. He didn't drink as much, or smoke as much. He didn't have the cynical line in chat that Megan's contemporaries had developed as a way of dealing with the parade of disease and deprivation that was suddenly passing through their lives, expecting to be saved.

He just stood there, a fit, good-looking Australian boy -more reserved than you would expect a guy like that to be - smiling politely as the finest minds of their generation got stoned and drunk while talking shop. 'Everybody's so smart,' he said, and it made her laugh.

'Is that what you think? I thought this lot were just good at passing exams.'

'No, they're really smart. Got to be smart to be a doctor, haven't you? I don't understand what they're talking about half the time. All these medical terms. Someone was talking about a patient whe-was PFO.'

Megan smiled; That just means, Pissed - Fell Over,' she said. He frowned. 'It does?'

She nodded, and let him into the secret language of medical students. Raising her voice above the bad music, while he tilted his handsome head towards her, Megan told him about ash cash (money paid to a doctor for signing cremation forms), house red (blood), FLKs (funny-looking kids), GLMs (good-looking mums) and the great fallback diagnosis, GOK (God only knows) - all the mocking slang that protected them from the sheer naked horror of their jobs. 'But you still got to be smart, though,' he insisted.

What an open and honest thing to say, she thought. And so unlike all the people she knew, who couldn't open their mouths without trying to make some cynical little joke. She looked at him - really looked at him - for the first time. 'What do you do?'

42

43

'I teach,' he said. It was the last thing she would have expected. 'I teach people how to dive. You know - scuba dive.'

She gestured with her glass, taking in the party, the flat, the city. 'Not around here.'

His wide white smile. Megan loved his smile. 'In sunnier places. You ever dive?'

'No, but I've got a certificate for swimming a length in my pyjamas. Not really the same thing, is it?' He laughed. 'It's a start.'

He liked her. She could tell. It happened quite a lot. She knew she wasn't as pretty as Jessica, who had a kind of baby-faced beauty about her, or as tall as Cat, who was as long-limbed and rangy as a dancer, but men liked Megan. They liked all those curves and a face that, because of some genetic accident, somehow looked slightly younger than her age. They liked that contrast. A girl's face and a woman's body, Will always said excitedly, heading straight for Megan's breasts.

She smiled at Kirk, and he did her the honour of blushing. It felt good to have this kind of contact after being with Will for so long, and having to make sure she didn't send out the wrong signals. Tonight she could send out any signal she liked.

Then suddenly there was finally a song she knew and loved - the one where Edwyn Collins sings, "Well, I never met a girl like you before.'

'That can be our song,' Kirk said, grinning sheepishly, and usually such ham-fisted flirting would have turned her right off. But she let him get away with it because she liked him too. Right at that moment, she liked him a lot. He wasn't part of her world and that was fine. She was ready for a break from her world. And then there was that moment she had almost forgotten about after all the years as someone's girlfriend - the look of recognition in the eyes of someone you don't know yet - and suddenly his face was an irresistible object, and their heads were slightly tilting to one side, and finally they were kissing.

He was a good kisser and that was nice too. Enthusiastic, but not trying to clean your tonsils with his tongue. A really good kisser, Megan thought - just the right amount of give and take. She liked that too. But what she liked best was that he could have probably fucked any girl at that party, but he clearly wanted to fuck her. And Megan thought, you're in luck, mate.

So they found themselves in one of the bedrooms, and Megan started to relax a little when she saw there was a lock on the door, and soon she was fulfilling her biological destiny on a stack of coats, while downstairs Edwyn Collins sang, 'I neveryfnet a girl like you before,' and, yes, somehow it felt like it was just for them. Megan smiled to herself as her sister came through the turnstile.

Jessica looked gorgeous passing through the crowd, Megan thought, like a woman without a care in the world among a mob of tube-weary commuters. Men of all ages turned for a second look - checking out the slim legs and that effortlessly size 10 frame and the round baby face that often made strangers believe she was the youngest of the sisters.

Looking at Jessica made Megan feel shabby and fat. That was the trouble with curves. You had to watch them or they got out of control. Megan was suddenly aware that she had only fingercombed her hair that morning, and that she had to stop keeping Mars bars in her desk.

44

45

They hugged each other at the ticket barrier.

'Look at us,' Megan said, linking arms with her sister. 'Grace Kelly and a crack whore.' Jessica sized up her sister.

'You look exhausted, Dr Jewell. Doesn't that sound great? Dr Jewell, Dr Jewell.'

'I've been pretty busy. It feels like every woman in the East End wants me to look up her fanny.'

'Oh, I know the feeling. Are you still okay for lunch? We could have done it some other time.' 'We're fine, Jess.'

'And they do give you a four-hour lunch break, don't they?' Jessica said.

She was wide-eyed with concern. There was an innocence about her that both her siblings lacked, as though she had been spared most of life's sharp edges. The middle child, buffered by the presence of the big sister and the baby.

Megan just smiled. It was true that her morning surgery ended at twelve, and her afternoon surgery didn't begin until four. But her morning surgery usually overran by almost an hour - she just couldn't seem to get her consultations down to the required time - and before afternoon surgery bega^, she was expected to make her round of house visits.

'I've got us a table in J. Sheekey's,' Jessica said. 'Is fish all right for you?'

Fish and a few glasses of something white would have been fine with Megan. But she really didn't have time for an elaborate lunch in the West End. In truth, she just about had time to grab a sandwich at the nearest Pret a Manger, but she didn't want to cancel lunch with one of her big sisters.

'It's not really all lunch break, Jess,' Megan said gently. 'I have to see someone in their home before surgery starts again.' 'You mean sick people?' 'Sick people, yeah. I've got to see a woman this afternoon. Well, her little girl.'

'You visit sick people in their homes? Wow, that's terrific service, Meg. I thought they only did that on Harley Street.'

Megan explained that the sick people with a doctor on Harley Street didn't need someone to come round to see them. Those people had cars, taxis, spouses who drove, even chauffeurs. Her patients in Hackney were often afflicted by what was known as no means. No cars, no money for cabs. Many of them were stuck at the top of a tower block with a bunch of screaming kids, and all this stuff in their heads about it getting worse if they sat in a doctor's waiting room. So house calls were actually far more common at the bottom end of the market.

Megan didn't tell Jessica that the older, male doctors at the surgery all hated making house visits, and so farmed the majority of them out to her. Despite being four years younger, Megan had always felt the need to protect Jessica from the horrible truth about the world.

'Somewhere closer then,' said Jessica, trying not to sound disappointed. 'Somewhere closer would be good.'

They bagged the last table in Patisserie Valerie, and after they had ordered, the sisters smiled at each other. Because of Megan's new job, it had been a while since they had seen each other. They both realised that it didn't matter where they had lunch. 'How's Paulo and his business?'

'Good - business is up eighty per cent on last year. Or is it eight per cent?' Jessica bit her bottom lip, staring thoughtfully at the mural on the Pat Val wall. 'I can't remember. But they're importing a lot of new stock from Italy. Maseratis, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, all that. People here order them. Then Paulo and Mike go and get them. How's Will?'

46

47

'Will's sort of out of the picture.'

Jessica flinched. 'Oh, I liked Will. He was really good-looking. For a short guy.' 'He wasn't so short!'

'Kind of short. I suppose it's hard to keep a relationship going when you're both working so hard.'

'Will's never done a day's work in his life. It's actually hard to keep a relationship together when one of you is a slut hound.' 'Oh. Oh, I'm sorry.'

'Don't be. Best to find out these things before - you know. Before it's too late. Before you go and do something stupid.' 'But you loved Will, didn't you?'

'I think I was grateful that somebody seemed so interested in me,' Megan said. 'Especially such a good-looking short guy.' They laughed. 'Don't worry about it. Really. It was never one of the great love matches. Not like you and Paulo.'

'Still - it's sad when people break up. I hate it. Why can't things just stay the same?'

Megan smiled at her sister. Jessica - last of the great romantics. She was exactly the same when they were growing up. Jessie always had Andrew Ridgeley on her wall, and some unreachable boy she had a hopeless crush on. 'You look good, Jess.'

'And you look worn put. Nobody would guess that I'm the ill one.' I 'You're not ill!'

'Got this bloody test coming up. Where they drill a hole through your belly button, for God's sake.' 'The laparoscopy. Who's doing it?'

Jessica named an obstetrician and an address on Wimpole Street.

'He's good,' Megan said. 'You'll be fine. Everything okay with Paulo's sperm?' A businessman at the next table turned to look at them. Megan stared back at him until he looked away. 'There's a slight mobility problem.'

'Motility problem. That's not the end of the world. It just means some of them are lazy little buggers. You would be amazed what they can do with lazy sperm these days.'

The businessman stared at them, shook his head, and signalled for his bill.

'I'm not so worried about Paulo.' Jessica idly ran her fingers through some spilled sugar on the table in front of her. 'What I'm worried about is me, and what they are going to find when they cut me open.'

Megan had her own ideas about what they might find when they looked inside her sister. But she smiled, taking her sister's sugar-coated hands in her own, saying nothing. 'I feel like I've got something wrong with me, Meg.'

'You're lovely. There's nothing wrong with you.' Megan shook her head. Nobody who looked like her sister should ever feel this sad. 'Look at you, Jess.'

'I feel defective.' Jessica gently released herself from Megan's grip, and considered the small crystals of sugar stuck to her fingertips. 'That I don't work the way I should work.' She carefully placed her fingers in her mouth, and grimaced, as if the taste wasn't sweet at all.

'You and Paulo are going to have a beautiful baby, and you're going to be the best mother in the world.'

The waitress arrived with Jessica's pasta and Megan's salad, and that's when the wave of nausea struck. Megan pushed back her chair, shoved her way through the crowded cafe, knocking aside an authentically French waiter, and just about made it to the toilet before she threw up. Back at the table, Jessica hadn't touched her lunch. 'What's wrong with you, Megan?' 'Nothing.'

48

49

Jessica stared at her with a sullen stubbornness that Megan knew from their childhood. 'What is it?'

'Just really tired, that's all. Working too hard, I guess. It's nothing. Eat your pasta.' Megan couldn't tell her sister.

Jessica had to be protected from this secret, more than she had ever needed to be protected from anything.

How could she ever tell Jessica? Megan's baby would only break her heart. It wasn't as though she was planning to keep it. 'I tell you, doctor - I'm so knackered today I ain't hardly got the energy to light up.'

Megan soon understood why the other doctors were reluctant to make house visits.

It was hardly ever the truly sick and infirm that demanded a doctor come to their door. The pensioner crippled with arthritis, the single mum with a disabled child, the middle-aged woman who had just been told that there were cancer cells throughout her body - these people somehow struggled to the overcrowded waiting room of the surgery.

The ones who called you out were invariably the loud ones who talked a lot about their rights, the ones who managed to be both self-pitying and egocentric. Like Mrs Marley.

She was a large woman in a small council flat in the bleak heart of Sunny View, one of the most notorious estates in London. If you didn't live among these concrete warrens, then you didn't venture into the Sunny View Estate unless you were buying drugs, selling drugs or making a concerned documentary. Apart from summer, when the annual riots came round, even the police gave the Sunny View Estate a wide berth. Megan didn't have that option. She had been frightened before. During her year as a hospital house officer she had spent six months attached to a consultant at the Royal Free, and then six months working in casualty at the Homerton.

The Royal Free was a breeze - her consultant, a paediatrician, was a kind and generous man, and the children of Highgate and Hampstead and Belsize Park were mostly beautifully behaved little children who wanted Megan to read them Harry Potter. But casualty at the Homerton was another world.

After the first shift Megan felt that she had seen more of the world than she ever wanted - stabbed teenagers, beaten wives, mangled bodies pulled from car wrecks. Meat porters with hooks in their heads, pub drinkers who had been glassed at closing time, drug entrepreneurs who had been shot in the face by a business rival.

It was Megan's responsibility to assess the level of injury when the patients crawled, hobbled or were carried in. Seeing those wounds and that misery, and having to make an instant judgement about what needed to be done - that was as scared as she had ever been. Somehow walking through the Sunny View Estate to see Mrs Marley and her sick child was worse. How could that be? Hormones, Megan thought. It's just your hormones going barmy.

At the foot of the stairwell to Mrs Marley's flat, a group of teenagers were loitering. With their unearthly white skin and hooded tops, they looked like something out of a Tolkien nightmare. They didn't say anything when Megan passed through them, just smirked and leered with their generic contempt and loathing. They stank of fast food and dope -a sweet, rotting smell coming from under those hoods.

'You look a bit young to me, darling,' Mrs Marley said suspiciously. 'Are you sure you're a proper doctor?'

Megan was impressed. Most people never questioned her authority. 'I'm a GP registrar.'

50

51

'What's that then?'

'I have to do a year under supervision before I become fully registered.'

Mrs Marley narrowed her eyes. 'Next time I want a proper quack. I know my rights.' 'What appears to be the problem?' said Megan.

The problem was the woman's daughter. An impossibly cute three-year-old - how do such repulsive adults produce such gorgeous children? - who lay listlessly on the sofa, staring at a Mister Man DVD. Mr Happy was having the smile wiped off his yellow face by all the other inhabitants of Mister Town. Megan knew the feeling.

She examined the child. Her temperature was high, but everything else seemed to be normal. Megan saw she was wearing small diamond studs in her ears. They couldn't wait for their children to grow up on the Sunny View Estate, although with their casual clothes and recreational drugs and loud music, the Sunny View adults seemed to stew in a state of perpetual adolescence.

'What's your name?' Megan said, pushing the child's hair from her moist forehead. 'Daisy, miss.' 'I think you've got a bit of a fever, Daisy.' 'I've got a kitty-cat.' 'That's nice.' 'I've got a puppy.' 'Lovely!' 'I've got a dinosaur.'

'I just want you to take it easy for a couple of days. Will you do that for me, Daisy?' 'Yes, miss.' 'Are her bowel movements normal, Mrs Marley?'

'Shits like a carthorse, that one,' said the mother, running her fat pink tongue along the edge of a cigarette paper. Megan stood up and faced the woman. When she spoke she was surprised to find her voice shaking with emotion.

'You're not smoking drugs in the presence of this child, are you?' Mrs Marley shrugged. 'Free country, innit?'

'That's a common misconception. If I discover you are taking drugs in front of this child, you will find out exactly how free it is.' 'You threatening me with the socially serviced?' 'I'm telling you not to do it.'

The woman's natural belligerence was suddenly cowed. She put down the cigarette papers and began fussing over Daisy as though she was up for mother of the year.

'You hungry, gorgeous? Want Mummy to defrost you summink?'

Megan let herself out. That woman, she thought. If Daisy were mine I would feed her good nutritious food and read her Harry Potter and never pierce her little ears and never let her wear cheap jewellery and -

Her eyes suddenly filled with tears. Daisy was not her child. She was just her patient, and she had three more to see on the Sunny View Estate before the start of afternoon surgery.

Megan pushed through the hooded youths at the foot of the stairwell. They didn't laugh at her this time, even though their ranks had been swollen by a number of smaller hooded creatures, who looked like elves on mountain bikes.

These people, thought Megan. The way they breed. Like rabbits. It was lucky she was here to save them. Cat's boss was the woman with everything.

Brigitte Wolfe had a business she had built from nothing, a boyfriend she had met in one of the more exclusive resorts in Kenya and, above all, independence.

52

53

If Cat's dream on leaving home was pure, unencumbered liberation, then surely Brigitte was closer to achieving that dream than anyone she had ever known. There was no husband to answer to, no children to prevent her jumping on a plane to anywhere she felt like going. Nobody owned Brigitte. Unlike most people on the planet, Brigitte wasn't trapped by her past.

So Cat was surprised to walk into Brigitte's office at Mamma-san on Saturday night and find her boss feeding a shoebox full of photographs to a shredding machine.

Brigitte held up her hand, requesting silence. Cat stood there and watched her deleting a box full of memories.

Brigitte would select a photograph from the shoebox, give it a cold smile, and then feed it to the growling shredder. A wastepaper basket overflowing with coloured streamers indicated Brigitte had been at her work for some time. Cat noticed that the photographs were all of Brigitte and her boyfriend. If a forty-five-year-old property developer called Digby could reasonably be called a boyfriend.

There had been a string of men in the past, all that bit older and bit richer than Brigitte, and she tended to stick with them for two or three years, and then trade them in. 'Like cars,' she told Cat. 'You get a new one before the old one fails its MOT'

Digby had been around for longer than most. Brigitte always said that he could stay until she found a vibrator that liked going to galleries. Now Digby was clearly out, but it didn't look as though it had ended the way these things had for Brigitte in the past.

Brigitte had taught Cat everything she knew about the restaurant business, and a lot of what she knew about life.

So while Brigitte fed her relationship to the shredding machine, Cat stood there in patient silence, as if she might learn something. Cat owed her career to this woman.

When she had first met Brigitte Wolfe, Cat was a twenty-five-year-old freelance journalist eking out a minimum wage by knocking out restaurant reviews for a trendy little listings magazine. Write about what you know, they all told her, and after feeding her younger sisters thousands of meals when they were growing up, what Cat knew about was food.

And by now she also knew about restaurants, because the well-brought-up public school boys she met at university had all wined and dined her before attempting to take her to bed. It was a different world from the one she knew - the restaurants she had occasionally glimpsed with her father and his actor friends had seemed more concerned with drinking than eating - but she took to it immediately. Usually the food was better than the sex. What she liked most of all was that you didn't have to cook it yourself.

When she met Cat, Brigitte Wolfe was nearly thirty, and was the owner, accountant and head cook of Mamma-san, a tiny noodle joint on Brewer Street where young people queued out on the narrow pavement for a bowl of Brigitte's soba and udon noodles.

Over the next ten years London would become full of Asian restaurants that were neither owned nor run by Asians - bright, funky places with menus that served Thai curry and Vietnamese noodles and Chinese dim sum and Japanese sashimi, as if that continent was really just one country, with a cuisine that was perfect for beautiful young people who cared about their diet and their looks. Mamma-san was among the first.

Cat joined the noodle queue on Brewer Street, and wrote a rave review for her little listings magazine. When she came in again, not working this time, Brigitte offered Cat a job as manager. As the listings magazine took a very casual approach to

54

55

paying its contributors, Cat took the job. The magazine went out of business soon after. Mamma-san moved up-market and out of Soho, although Cat believed that the clientele were still the same ragged-trousered kids who had queued up on Brewer Street all those years ago before going dancing at the Wag, just ten years older and, a decade into their careers, a lot more affluent. Brigitte seemed to enjoy her restaurant as much as they did.

'A great man once said, Arrange your life so that you can't tell the difference between work and pleasure.' 'Shakespeare?' said Cat. 'Warren Beatty,' said Brigitte.

It was love at first sight. Cat had never met anyone who could quote Warren Beatty, although her mother claimed that he had once touched her arse backstage at the London Palladium. Brigitte had more fun than anyone Cat had ever known. After the domestic drudgery of her childhood, here was life as it ought to be lived.

When most of the city was still sleeping, the two women toured the markets - Smithfield for the restaurant's meat, Billingsgate for their fish, New Spitalfields for vegetables. Red-faced men in stained white coats shouted at each other in the pre-dawn gloom. Cat learned how to hire good kitchen staff, and how to fire the bad ones when they turned up drunk or stoned, or couldn't keep their hands off the waitresses.

Cat learned how to talk to the wine merchant, the VAT man, the health inspector, and to be scared of none of them. Although she was only four years older, Brigitte felt like the closest thing to a mother that Cat had ever had.

Brigitte was one of those European women who seem to discover a lifestyle they like in their middle twenties, and then stick with it for ever. She had never married. She worked harder than anyone Cat knew, and played hard too - twice a year she flew off to walk in the foothills of the Himalayas or dive in the Maldives or drive across Australia.

Sometimes she took Digby with her, and sometimes she left him at home - more like a favourite piece of luggage than a man. Brigitte enjoyed her life, and for years she had been Cat's North Star, guiding her way, showing her how it was done. This unencumbered life.

But now Brigitte selected a photograph of Digby and herself on a blinding white beach. The Maldives? Seychelles? One last look, and she fed the photo to the shredding machine. 'What's he done?' Cat said.

'He wants to be with someone who can bring something new to a relationship.' 'Like what?' 'Like, for example, a pair of twenty-four-year-old tits.'

Cat was speechless. And outraged. Men didn't treat Brigitte like this. She was the one who did the dumping.

'Some well-stacked slut from his office.' Brigitte calmly fed the shredding machine a Polaroid of TJigby and herself atop a couple of drooling camels, the pyramids shining in the background. Dry-eyed, Cat noticed with admiration. Even now, Brigitte seemed in control. From the floor below they could hear the clatter and din of Saturday night at Mamma-san.

'I just wanted to tell you there are a couple of footballers at the desk. They haven't booked.' 'Alone?'

'Two women with them. They look like lap dancers. Although of course they could be their wives. What should I tell them?' 'Tell them to call ahead next time.'

'Could be good publicity. There are a couple of photographers outside.'

56

57

'It's even better publicity if we turn them away' 'Okay.' Cat turned to leave. Brigitte's voice caught her at the door. 'Do you know what I am this year?' Cat shook her head.

'Forty. I am forty years old. How can I compete with a big bouncing pair of twenty-year-old tits?'

'Twenty-four. And you don't have to compete. You're a strong, free woman who has seen life, and lived life, and all that kind of stuff. You don't need to latch on to some man to prove you exist. She has to compete with you.' Brigitte began to laugh. 'Oh, my darling Cat.'

'She's not the catch,' Cat said, warming to her theme, 'you are!'

Brigitte stared wistfully at a photograph of Digby and herself at a crowded party - New Year's Eve? - and then gave it to the shredder.

'The trouble is, Cat, as women get older, the pool of potential partners gets smaller. But for men, it gets bigger.' She fed the shredding machine a picture taken on a bridge in Paris. 'So where does that leave women like us?'

And as the roar of Saturday night boomed beneath her feet, Cat thought, women like us? four It was his favourite moment of the week.

When the city streets were starting to empty, and the lights were going out all over London, Cat would ease her long body into his car, closing her eyes as soon as her head touched the passenger seat. 'Boy,' she said. 'I'm bushed.' 'We'll be home soon,' he said.

He always picked her up at the restaurant on Saturday night. By the time Mamma-san closed for business, and the last drunken customer had been decanted into a taxi, and the kitchen staff and waitresses had all been fed and watered and packed off in a fleet of minicabs, by the time Cat locked up Mamma-san, it was always the early hours of Sunday morning.

These Saturday nights and Sunday mornings were among their favourite times. They would have a drink back at his place, shower together, and make familiar lazy love before expiring in each other's arms.

Sunday meant brunch just off the Fulham Road, surrounded by the papers and fresh bagels in a little cafe they felt was their own private secret, where they could watch

58

59

the world go by and pretend it was Chelsea in the swinging sixties. In these luxurious hours of doing nothing very much, their dreams coincided. Cat found the freedom she had craved since childhood, and Rory found the quiet life he had searched for since the end of his marriage.

But not tonight. Rory let them into the flat, and there were lights and music that shouldn't have been there. Bright lights, loud music. 'Jake must have let himself in,' Rory said.

Jake was Rory's fifteen-year-old son. He usually stayed with Rory's ex-wife, Ali, at the weekend, and lived with Rory during the holidays. The exceptions to this rule were the nights when hysterical screaming rows ended with Jake storming off to his father. Rory frowned. What was it this time? He turned to Cat with an apologetic smile. 'Hope you don't mind,' Rory said. 'It's fine,' Cat said.

She had been looking forward to being alone with Rory and shutting out the world. But what could she say? Her man had a child, and if they were going to be together, she had to live with the fact. Besides, she liked Jake. When she had first met him, three years ago now, he had been a shy, sweet-natured twelve-year-old boy who had reacted to his parents' divorce as though the sky had fallen in. Cat loved him instantly, and saw echoes of her own childhood wounds in the boy. Jake was clingy with Rory, and easily moved to tears, and you would have needed a heart of stone not to warm to him. But Cat had to admit it was hard to equate that sunny-faced twelve-year-old with the hulking teenager that Jake had become.

'What's this music?' Rory smiled brightly, as he came into the room with Cat. 'Nirvana?'

Jake - spotty, lanky and hooded, hormones in turmoil -was draped all over the sofa with a hand-rolled cigarette dangling from his lips. 'Nirvana?' he sneered. 'Nirvana?'

There was another youth by his side, wearing a woolly hat. Cat thought, why do they wear outdoor clothes inside? What's cool about that? 'Nirvana,' the youth chortled. 'Nirvana!'

'It's White Stripes,' Cat said. 'Something from Elephant, isn't it? "Ball and Biscuit", is it? Shame on you, Rory. Hello, Jake.' 'Sounds a bit like Nirvana,' Rory said sheepishly.

Jake rolled his eyes to the ceiling. 'It does not sound anything like fucking NirvanaV

'Tone down the language a notch,' Rory said. 'And please open the window if you have to smoke that stuff.' 'Mum doesn't mind.' 'Mum doesn't live here. Don't you say hello to Cat?' Jake grunted.

'Hi, Jake, how's it going?' Cat said, in that affable voice she seemed to reserve just for him.

The friend was called Jude. Jude had been planning to stay the night with Jake until there was some dispute with Jake's mother. The details were unclear. As far as Cat could make out, it was something to do with three-day-old pizza, unwashed socks and treating the place like a hotel. So Jake and his friend had escaped to Dad.

Cat felt sorry for Jake. She knew what it was like to have your mother and your father living different lives in different homes. She knew how trapped a teenager could feel. She struggled to remind herself that Jake was still the same vulnerable child she had known not so long ago.

But her Saturday night was shot, and it was hard to fight the feeling that your parents ruin the first half of your life, and then somebody else's children ruin the second half. How her mother would have laughed.

60

61

There was no lazy lovemaking for Rory and Cat that night, and the glass of wine they shared in the kitchen felt perfunctory, like a ritual that was getting old.

They bolted down the wine, as in the living room White Stripes gave way to hip-hop blaring from the TV, and she tried her best to hide her disappointment from Rory, because he was by far the kindest, most gentle man she had ever met, and she supposed she loved him.

She was bone tired. When they crawled under Rory's duvet, they made spoons, and she soon fell into a fitful sleep, despite the boom-boom guns-and-bitches racket coming from the TV set.

When she woke in the early hours she was desperate for water, and wearing just her pants and a white karate jacket snatched from the dirty laundry, she padded her way through the now silent flat to the kitchen.

When she turned on the light she gasped. Jake and Jude were in their boxer shorts, munching toast.

'Oh, excuse me,' Cat said, grabbing a bottle of Evian from the fridge, and deciding not to get a glass because going to the cabinet where they were stored would have meant getting closer to all those gawky white limbs of the two teenage boys.

As she closed the bedroom door behind her, she heard the voice of Jake's friend Jude, and their graveyard laughter. 'Not bad for an old girl,' he said. Michael pushed his smile into his daughter's filthy face.

'She's a mucky pup,' he observed. 'And she's a chubby bubba. She is, she is! Ooza lovely chubby bubba? Ooza lovely chubby bubba? Chloe is, Chloe's a lovely chubby bubba!' Chloe stared blankly at her father. Then she burped, and the burp evolved into minor projectile vomiting, a milky stream of mashed organic vegetables erupting from her mouth and then dribbling down that dimpled chin.

And Jessica thought, forced to listen to this mindless gibberish, who wouldn't throw up?

'Oooh, has Daddy's chubby bubba got an upset yummy-yummy tum-tum? Has she? Has she?'

It can't be good for her, thought Jessica. Talking to a baby as though you have just had a full frontal lobotomy, it just can't be good for her development.

But then again, thought Jessica, what do I know about it? Nothing, that's what.

While Naoko cleaned the bile from her baby daughter's face and clothes, Michael rushed off to get the Ј1,000 digital camera that he had bought to record Chloe's vomiting for future generations.

Naoko lifted Chloe from her high chair and gently placed her on her feet. Chloe was walking. Well, not exactly walking. More like staggering really, Jessica thought, as she watched her niece shuffle around with the grim purpose of a drunk trying to establish sobriety, her parents on either side of her like kindly, concerned policemen.

'She'll be adorable when she gets some hair and teeth,' Jessica said.

Michael, Naoko and Paulo shot her a look, as if she had uttered some unforgivable blasphemy. 'Even more adorable,' she added quickly.

'She has hair and teeth.' Naoko smiled, stroking the light brown bum fluff on the top of her daughter's head. 'Don't you, Chloe-chan?'

Chloe smiled, revealing four tiny white teeth, two up two down, in the centre of her wet pink mouth. And then she

62

63

collapsed onto her nappy-covered bottom, her brown eyes wide with shock. Four adults rushed to attend to her. 'Come to your Uncle Paulo.'

But Chloe didn't want to come to her Uncle Paulo. She clung to her mother and howled with outrage, staring at Paulo as though he had just climbed in through the window with a chainsaw.

Chloe was changing. A few months ago, when she was still indisputably a baby, Chloe didn't care who picked her up and gave her a cuddle. But now, one month short of her first birthday, with babyhood already being left behind, she was clinging to her parents and regarding anyone else with suspicion. Not so long ago, she was content to lie back and be admired. But already, she was becoming her own little person, stingy with her affection and wary of the world.

Paulo was crushed. He had fondly imagined that Chloe would grow up loving him, just as he loved her. But she was dumping him already.

Jessica was glad that Chloe's cuddles were off limits. When she had held her as a newborn baby, something strange happened inside her. It was far more than wanting a baby of her own. It was the terrible knowledge that she had been born to give birth in her turn, and that she might never fulfil that destiny.

For Jessica, there were a thousand humiliations in any visit to Michael, Naoko and Chloe. She couldn't stand the pity of her brother- and sister-in-law. They were decent-hearted people, but it was bad enough feeling like a defective woman, without having to put up with all the concerned, sympathetic looks at her lack of fertility. The fact that the sympathy was genuine, and meant well, only made it worse.

She could understand their delight in their daughter - if Chloe were her baby, Jessica was certain she would never leave her side. But where did understandable, unbridled joy end, and unbearable, insufferable smugness begin?

Yet she had to be the good guest - expressing wonder at how much Chloe had grown since she had last seen her (seven days ago). Listening with rapt interest as Michael discussed developments in Chloe's bowel movements, or Naoko went on (and on and on) about her daughter's eating habits, and her apparently whimsical changes of taste.

Give me a break, thought Jessica. It's bad enough that I can't have one of my own. Do I really have to give a standing ovation to everybody else's baby?

Jessica knew that Naoko was a good woman, and that Paulo was as close to Michael as she was to her two sisters. And, objectively, she could see that Chloe was a lovely baby - good-humoured, robust and adorable. In a bald, toothless, incontinent-old-geezer sort of way.

Jessica really didn't want to come here for Sunday lunch any more. It was just too hard.

'Excuse me,' she said, with the fixed grin that she wore as protection around other people's babies.

She fled the room with Naoko holding the red-faced, crying Chloe, and Michael stroking his daughter's (when you thought about it) alarmingly large head, and Paulo keeping a respectful distance, like a minor courtier. Nobody even noticed her leave the room.

Jessica desperately needed to get to the bathroom, but there were these bloody baby gates all over the house. Now that Chloe was on the move, disaster had to be averted on every landing and stairway. Because of an eleven-month-old child who could just about make it from the sofa to the coffee table (the numerous remote controls were a source of endless fascination to Chloe's sticky fingers), the Victorian terrace had been turned into a maximum-security prison. Chloe certainly wasn't getting through these gates. They

64

65

were hard enough for an adult. You had to find the little button on top, press it down and lift up the gate all at the same time. Then you had to step over the bottom of the gate without falling flat on your face. Jessica made it through three gates and locked herself in the bathroom, where she confirmed what she already knew. Her period had started.

One more month of failure. One more month of feeling like she should be recalled by whoever had manufactured her. One more month of seeing that disappointed look in her husband's eyes, neither of them daring to say what was in their hearts - that this marriage might be childless for ever.

And, just to rub it in, her period brought one more bout of teeth-grinding pain that would have had a grown man begging for it to stop.

I'm not crying, Jessica thought. They're not going to see me cry.

But she had to get out of here. She had to find a place where she could remove the fixed grin and take a shower and let her husband hold her. So she almost ran out of the bathroom, stumbled over the metal bar of an open baby gate and, with a shocked intake of breath, fell flat on her face.

By the time Jessica presented herself in the living room, Michael was on his knees playing peek-a-boo with Chloe, who was now dry-eyed and shrieking with delight - talk about violent mood swings - and Naoko was alerting Michael to the latest bulletins from the kitchen.

'I tried her on broccoli blended with sweet potato but the funny thing is that she refuses to eat anything green and -my God, Jessica, are you all right?'

Jessica laughed gaily, a lump the size of a tennis ball throbbing on her forehead, a bruise pulsing on one of her shins, the palms of her hands red and sore from carpet burns. 'Oh, I'm fine, fine, just fine,' she said, turning brightly to her husband. 'Is that really the time?' They sat in the car and Paulo listened to her pouring it out.

'Have you noticed that everyone's having a baby these days?' Jessica said. 'Gay men. Lesbian couples who wouldn't touch anything with a penis. Sixty-year-old Italian grandmothers with one wonky ovary. I even read that they might start making babies from aborted foetuses - how about that? Someone who has never even been born can have a baby. But I can't.'

They were sitting outside Michael and Naoko's house in Paulo's blue Ferrari. The car was a perk of the Baresi Brothers, but also a necessity. Michael always told Paulo that you couldn't sell imported Italian cars when you come to work in a Ford Mundano. Michael's red Maranello sat in the drive, as well as a BMW with a baby seat in the back.

'They don't do it to hurt you. To hurt us. They don't mean to rub it in our faces. But they're just so happy with their baby, they can't help it. They don't mean to hurt us.' 'I know,' she said, hanging her head.

We would be the same, he thought. If Jessica and I had a baby, we would love it so much that we wouldn't care who we hurt. It seemed to Paulo that having a baby made you care less about the rest of the world. Because the baby became your world.

'Do you know what my brother told me? He said that he hasn't had sex with Naoko for seven weeks.' Jessica stared at him. 'Are you listening to me?' 'I'm listening to you. I'm just saying.' 'What? What are you saying?'

'I'm saying that it's not perfect in there. I know Chloe's great. I know how much you want a baby of your own.

66

67

Our own. But I'm just saying. Something's happened to them. I don't know how to explain it. It's like since Chloe was born, they have something between them now.'

'She's younger than me,' Jessica said, not listening to him. 'Naoko. Four years younger. Same age as Megan. When Naoko is the age I am now, Chloe will be starting school.' 'It's not perfect in there,' Paulo insisted.

His conversation with Naoko had shocked him. His sister-in-law had a PhD from Reading University. She had been an archaeologist when she met Michael. And now all she talked about was how this week Chloe preferred brown mush to green mush.

Paulo loved his little niece. He had loved her from the moment he saw her. He knew that he always would. But in a secret chamber of his heart, he had his doubts.

He didn't mind the indignities of making love to a plastic cup. He didn't feel less of a man because apparently some of his sperm were dozy bastards who couldn't find one of Jessica's eggs if you gave them an A-Z.

The doctor had told him they just needed to keep banging away. Plenty of people conceived babies with far worse odds. And whatever his wife had to go through - the endless scans and tests, the laparoscopy, whatever new humiliation they came up with - Paulo would be right there at her side. He would always be there. She was the one for him. He had known from the first time he had seen her face.

But he wondered if he would really be any good at this fatherhood lark - the endless games of peek-a-boo, and in-depth analysis of 'pooing' (Jesus, his brother - the arch shag-ger, the great womaniser, the Don Juan of Dagenham - was suddenly talking like a little kid), and watching it - the baby - every waking second, so that it - the baby - didn't collide with the coffee table, or crawl out of the window, or swallow the remote control. It was like you created this new life, but your life was over. Mother Nature had finished with you.

And here was the funny thing. Paulo's sex life with Jessica had become bleak and desperate because they were trying for a baby. But Michael's sex life with Naoko was nonexistent because they had a baby.

Once Michael had been crazy for Naoko. The only reason Michael gave up Sunday morning football in the park was because it gave him an extra ninety minutes under the duvet with Naoko. But that was before they had a baby. Paulo still wanted a child with Jessica.

But the most pressing reason he wanted it was because he knew it would make her happy. And was that a good reason to bring a baby into the world?

68

69

five The job was too much for her.

Megan could handle the workload, but not at the pace required. Her patients still filled the waiting room long after the other doctors had gone to lunch, and more were there when she came rushing back late from her house visits. So it was no surprise when Lawford came into her office and told her, 'There's been a complaint about you.'

All those years at med school. All those blood-splattered hysterical nights in A amp; E at the Homerton. All the tired flesh she had pressed, all the dicky hearts she had fretted over, and all the rubber gloves she had donned to probe some ancient and decaying rectum.

And now the ancient rectums she worked with were kicking her out.

She wondered which of the surgery doctors had lodged the complaint. They had some nerve. Bastards, she thought. Rotten bastards the lot of you.

No wonder female patients flocked to her, away from these old men with hair in their ears and stains on their trousers and contempt for their patients and their talk of 'plumbing problems', as if the aftermath of an ectopic preg- nancy was no different from having a leaking pipe, as if crippling period pains were somewhat similar, when you thought about it, to having a broken boiler.

Megan could deal with any of it, all these things that she had never experienced herself, only studied in a classroom at medical school. But she just couldn't do it in the few fleeting minutes allowed. She needed time.

She was just about to tell him to take his job and stick it up the terminal part of his large intestine when he spoke. 'I think you're doing a terrific job,' Lawford said. 'What?' 'So do the other doctors.' 'But the complaint…' 'It's from a patient.' 'A patient? But my patients love me!'

'Mrs Marley. Remember her? The large woman from the Sunny View Estate? One of your house visits.' Tremember Mrs Marley. And Daisy.' 'Daisy's the problem. You diagnosed a fever, correct?'

'Her temperature was a bit high. She was listless. I thought -'

'She was rushed to hospital the next day. It turned out to be a thyroid condition. Daisy's hypothyroid. Hence the lethargy.'

Megan could feel her heart pounding. That poor child. She had failed her. 'A thyroid condition?' 'We all get it wrong sometimes. We're doctors, not God.' 'How's Daisy? What will they do?'

'Give her some Thyroxine pills and she should be back to normal.' 'But she will have to take them for life.' 'In all probability.'

70

71

'Are there any side effects?'

'Side effects?' Lawford was suddenly impatient. 'Yes -they make her well.'

It was the response of a vastly experienced doctor. Are there side effects to these pills, doctor? Yes, they make you well. Megan filed it away for future reference. She knew she would use the line many times in the coming years. If she ever became a fully registered GP.

'Don't worry about Daisy. She'll be fine. Mrs Marley's the problem. You don't want a complaint of negligence on your record. Doesn't look good at all.' 'What do I do?'

'You apologise to Mrs Marley. Grovel a bit. As much as necessary, in fact. Admit you're only human. As you know, this year is a continuous exam for you. I'll be writing a summative assessment. I don't want a misdiagnosis on your record, Megan.'

It was the first time that Lawford had ever called her by her first name. She could see that he was trying to get her out of this thing with her career intact, and she felt a flood of gratitude.

'You're not just apologising because it will get Mrs Marley off your back,' he said sternly. 'You're apologising because it's the right thing to do.' 'Of course.' Lawford nodded and headed for the door. 'Thank you, Dr Lawford.' He turned and faced her. 'How far along are you?'

She placed a protective hand on her stomach. 'Is it so obvious?' 'The constant vomiting was a clue.' 'Eight weeks,' she said, finding it difficult to breathe. 'Are you planning to have the baby?' 'I don't see how that's possible. I can barely look after myself.'

I'm not going to cry, Megan thought. I am not going to cry in front of him. 'I do want children,' she said. 'Very much. But not now.'

Lawford nodded again. 'Well,' he said, suddenly shy. 'That's it then.' He smiled with a softness that Megan had never seen before. 'I'll let you crack on.'

I do want children, Megan thought when he had gone. And one day I will have children, and I will love them far more than our mother ever loved my sisters and me.

But not now, not when I have just started work, and not with some man I fucked at a party. Yes, she would apologise to Mrs Marley. But Megan felt like she should really be apologising to Daisy. And to this little life that would never be born. Bloody doctors, Paulo thought. They never tell you what you are letting yourself in for. If they did, they would all go out of business.

Paulo carefully steered his Ferrari through the streets of north London as if he had a cargo of painted eggshells on board. Jessica was sleeping in the passenger seat, white-faced and exhausted by the events of the morning.

They had made the laparoscopy sound as routine as having a tooth filled. But Jessica was dead to the world - pumped full of drugs so they could drill a hole in her belly and send in their camera to find out what was wrong.

He slowly drove home with one eye on the road and one eye on his wife, and he knew with a pure and total certainty that he loved this woman, and that he would not stop loving her if they couldn't have children. He would love her even if she found it impossible to love herself. He would love her enough for both of them.

72

73

When they got home Paulo undressed Jessica and put her to bed, her sleeping face as white as the pillows.

Then he went into his study and took down all of his pictures of Chloe. When Megan left the surgery, a young man stepped into her path.

He was big and good-looking, in a bashed-in, careless kind of way, and at first she thought he was one of those charity muggers - chuggers, they called them - who increasingly ambushed you with their clipboards, stepping over the homeless to assault you with their good causes and direct debit forms. She tried to swerve past him, but he moved quickly to intercept her. She shot him her look of cold magisterial fury, usually reserved for patients refusing to take their prescribed medication. 'Megan?'

And then all at once she realised that it was him. The man from the party. The father of her child. 'Oh - hello, Kurt.' 'It's Kirk.' 'Of course.'

'It's great to see you, Megan.' A lovely accent. Full of wide-open spaces and healthy living and Christmas on the beach. 'You look fantastic'

'Thank you.' She gave him a quick smile. He was a nice guy, and she had liked him a lot, and she had no regrets -apart from the fact that a doctor who spent her days lecturing teenage mums about contraception should probably never leave her own family planning to the fates. But there was no time left for anything more. 'Nice bumping into you, Kirk. But I really must be -'

'I had to see you,' he said, and at last she understood that this man had actually been waiting for her. Megan's head reeled with the insanity of the situation. Here she was carrying his baby inside her and here he was.mgling for a second date.

She didn't know him. And he didn't know her. Yet even in the cold light of Hackney, without one too many Asahi Super Drys inside her, Megan could recall very clearly how they had ended up in bed, on a pile of coats dumped by the guests. He was tall, athletic but with a kind of genial innocence about him. His children will be beautiful, Megan reflected, and the unbidden thought made her feel like weeping. 'I thought you were going back to Sydney.' 'I am. I will be. But I wanted to see you before I go.'

She had to be strong. He might be making beautiful babies one day, but they would not be with her. 'Why's that then?'

'Because, well - I like you. It was terrific, wasn't it? It was great, wasn't it?' 'It was okay.'

'It was unbelievable!' He grinned, shook his head. 'I don't usually do that kind of thing.' 'I am sure your girlfriend is delighted about that.'

He had let slip the girlfriend early on in their conversation, but she had been quietly forgotten when he started reading Megan's signals, cottoning on that - maybe - she was interested. Now he had the decency to blush. He did that quite a bit for such a good-looking man.

'I just wanted to say goodbye. That's all. And say that I hope we see each other again.' 'How old are you, Kirk?' 'Twenty-five.'

'I'm twenty-eight. I'm a doctor. Remind me what you do again?' 'I teach.'

74

75

'What subject?' 'Scuba diving.'

'Right - so you're a young scuba diving instructor living in Sydney, and I'm an elderly GP practising in London.' 'You're not so old.'

'I just - I really don't see how anything can come of it, do you?'

He hung his head, and Megan had to fight back the urge to take him in her arms, taste some more of those good kisses, and tell him the truth.

'Just wanted to see you. That's all. I don't usually do things like that. Get pissed and fall into bed with a complete stranger.'

'Could you speak up a bit? I think one of the old ladies at the bus stop across the road didn't hear you.'

Kirk hung his cropped blond head, knowing at last that coming here had been a bad idea.

'Take this,' he said, handing her a scrap of paper with a scrawled telephone number. It looked like long distance. Very long distance. 'If you ever need me. Or, you know, come to Australia.' 'Thanks.' 'As I said - I just like you.' 'Yeah, well. I like you too.' 'Well - like the song says -1 guess I'll see you next lifetime.' 'Yes,' she said. 'See you next lifetime, Kirk.'

As soon as she had disappeared around the corner, she began ripping the telephone number into tiny pieces, her eyes blurring with tears.

Young, dumb and full of come, she thought. On his way home to his girlfriend and their beautiful babies without me ever telling him, without ever knowing, without ever being asked to carry his share of the load. And he was right - it had been fun while it lasted. But he should consider himself lucky. She didn't want a family with this man. She had a family already. In some other family, they might have drifted apart by now. In their late twenties and thirties, other sisters might have found the demands of work and home life closing in on them, clamouring for attention, taking up all their time. In some other family, men and jobs might have got in the way.

But although Jessica had her husband, her house and her dreams in one of the leafier parts of town, and while Megan and Cat had their demanding jobs at either end of the city, they clung to each other now as they had clung to each other as children, growing up in a home where the mother was absent.

They didn't talk about it. But when Cat had first started with Rory, he had been surprised to discover that, no matter what was happening in their lives, the sisters spoke on the phone every day and tried to meet for breakfast once a week. 'That's unusually close, isn't it?' he said, with that gentle, querulous Rory-smile on his face. But of course to Cat -and to Megan, and to Jessica - it seemed perfectly normal.

This is what Cat thought about it - nobody loves their family more than someone from a broken home. They always tried to meet in a restaurant that was equidistant from their lives.

When Megan was at the Imperial College med school, and Jessica was living in Little Venice with Paulo, they had met in Soho, in the shabby opulence of Cat's private club, where the members were as frayed as the carpets.

Now that Megan was working in Hackney, and Jessica was up in Highgate, the axis had moved east, to a restaurant

76

77

next to the meat market in Smithfield. Cat's suggestion. It was a place where young foreign waiters dressed in black served traditional British fare such as bacon butties, porridge and fried breakfasts as if they were exotic delicacies, and every hot drink came in a mug, rather than a cup and saucer. Everything was authentically working class, apart from the sky-high prices.

Cat was the first to arrive, and through the huge windows of the restaurant she saw white-coated porters who had worked all through the night hauling massive slabs of fresh meat onto the waiting vans.

Jessica turned up next, and together they watched the porters of Smithfield at their work.

'In ten years this will probably all be gone,' Cat said. 'AH pushed out to the suburbs, and Smithfield turned into another Covent Garden, full of clothes shops and street performers and little cafes.' 'Oh, that'll be nice,' Jessica said, picking up the menu. Cat stared at her. 'It will be bloody awful, Jess.'

Jessica shrugged. 'I suppose you prefer all these men walking about carrying cows. I suppose that's atmospheric, is it?'

Megan arrived, glancing at her watch, already dreading the dash back to the East End and morning surgery. She snatched up a menu. 'Did you get your results?' she asked Jessica.

Jessica nodded. The black-shirted waiter arrived, and they placed their orders, pointing at the menu as he couldn't understand their English. When he was gone, Megan and Cat watched Jessica, and waited for her to speak.

'It's endometriosis,' she said, pronouncing the word as if it had been new to her until quite recently. 'The results of the laparoscopy say that I've got endometriosis.'

'That explains the pain you get,' Megan said, taking her sister's hands. 'That terrible pain every month.' 'I'.ndometriosis,' Cat said. 'That means - what? That's to ilu with your period, right?'

Megan nodded. 'It's a menstrual condition. Fragments of membrane similar to the lining of the uterus are where they shouldn't be - in the muscles of the uterus, the Fallopian tubes, the ovaries. Basically, all these horrible, inflamed bits that bleed when you bleed.'

'It stops you getting pregnant,' Jessica said. 'And it hurts like hell.' 'They can't cure it?' Cat said. 'It disappears after the menopause,' Megan said. 'That's something to look forward to then,' Jessica said.

'You can control it by taking the pill. You stop the periods, you stop the pain. And stop the condition from deteriorating. But the best cure for it…'

Jessica looked at her, smiling bitterly. 'This is the funny bit, Cat. I love this bit.'

'The best cure for endometriosis,' Megan said quietly, 'is getting pregnant.'

'It stops you having a baby,' Jessica said. 'But it only goes away if you have a baby. Isn't that perfect?'

'Symptoms disappear when you get pregnant,' Megan said. 'But it's true - the symptoms make conception difficult. Not impossible, Jess. Please believe me.'

Megan put her arms around Jessica, and her sister pressed her head against her. Stroking Jessica's head, Megan glanced out of the window, and saw the slabs of bloody meat being carted into the fleet of white vans. All the headless, yellow-white carcasses and the panels of bloodied flesh. The men with their bloody, Jackson Pollock-splattered white coats.

Their breakfasts arrived at that moment and Megan gasped, the vomit rising in her throat. She pushed her sister away and quickly fled from the table. When she returned

78

79

from the bathroom, Cat was tucking into her sausage sandwich, but Jessica hadn't touched her pancakes. 'What's wrong with you, Megan?'

'It's nothing.' She looked at her porridge and felt like being sick again.

'Megan,' Cat said, the stern elder sister demanding the truth. 'What's happening?'

Megan looked at her sisters and knew that it was madness to think she could keep this thing from them. They were her best friends. They would understand. 'I'm pregnant,' Megan said. Cat put down her bagel. 'How long?' 'Eight weeks.' 'How does Will feel about it?' 'It's not Will's.' 'Okay,' Cat said. 'Okay.'

Jessica struggled to speak. 'Well - congratulations,' she said eventually. She stroked her sister's shoulder, smiling through a thin film of tears. 'I mean it, Megan. Congratulations.' Cat shot Megan a look. Megan shook her head. 'No.' 'You'll be a terrific mother,' Jessica said. 'But you're not…' Cat's voice trailed off. 'No,' Megan said. 'I'm not keeping it.' Jessica looked at her.

'I'm not keeping it, Jess. How can I? I hardly know the father. And even if I did, I still wouldn't keep it. I'm not in love with him, Jess. And this is the wrong time. It's just completely the wrong time for me to have a baby.' 'The wrong time?'

'I've just started work. I just did six years at medical school - six years! - and another year as a house officer in hospitals. I'm not even fully registered for another year.' 'You just started work?' Jessica said. 'Wait a minute - you're Hoing to have an abortion because you just started work}'

'That's right,' Megan said, angry that she had to justify herself.-

'Do you know what it means to go through an abortion?' Jessica said. 'Jess,' said Cat, trying to stop her. 'Come on.'

'I almost certainly understand the procedure better than you do,' Megan said.

'I wouldn't be so sure,' Jessica said. 'Some things you can't get from books. They hoover the baby out of you. That's what it amounts to. They get a fucking hoover, and they hoover this baby out of you, then stick it in a bin, or they burn it, they throw it away like a piece of rubbish. That's how they will get rid of the baby, Megan, just so you can carry on with your precious career.'

'And do you know what it means to go through a pregnancy without a father?' Megan said. 'Or to go through life as a single parent? I see them every day in my surgery -women with the life sucked out of them. You sit out in Highgate waiting for Paulo to come home, and you have no idea what women are going through in the real world. I'm sorry, Jessica - that's not going to happen to me.'

'So selfish. So bloody selfish. You think I'm not in the real world? What makes you think that Hackney is any more real than where I am?'

'This is not about you, Jess,' Cat said. 'It's not about you and Paulo and your baby. This is Megan's decision.'

'It just makes me sick,' Jessica said. 'These women treating abortion like it's just another form of contraception.' 'These women?' Megan said.

'As though it's no different to a condom or a pill or something. Why did you let it get this far? Why did you have to make a baby? Why did you have to do that?'

80

81

'It's not a baby,' Megan said. 'Not yet. And I can't cope with my work as it is - it just wouldn't be fair on the baby.'

'You think that killing it is fair on the baby? You don't care about the baby, Megan. You care about your career.'

Jessica stood up. Cat tried to stop her, but Jessica shook her off. 'That poor little thing, Megan. That poor little thing.'

Jessica threw some money on the table and walked out. Megan and Cat let her go. A couple of porters whistled at her. 'It's natural, isn't it?' Megan said. 'Not to want this baby?'

Cat stared out of the window at the meat market. All this would be gone soon. She suddenly felt exhausted. 'It's the most natural thing in the world,' she said.

SIX

Far above the South China Sea, Kirk suddenly felt the plane jolt, drop and his stomach fall away.

The fasten seat belt sign pinged on and flight attendants began passing through the cabin, waking the sleepers and making them strap themselves in. The Aussie captain's calm, reassuring voice began murmuring over the intercom, as soothing as a lullaby.

Kirk closed his eyes and touched the fastened buckle of his seat belt. The plane shuddered, more violently this time, and again seemed to sink through the sky. Now there were cries of mild alarm, and the unspoken paranoia of the modern traveller - what iff Kirk took a deep breath, his eyes shut tight.

It's just a bit of turbulence, he thought. I am a seasoned world traveller.

But he again touched the buckle of his seat belt, and did what he always did when he felt there was a faint possibility that he could die on a plane within the next few minutes. He tried to remember all the women he had ever slept with.

He had started early, at fourteen, with the family's babysitter. One. Then there had been a fallow period of a few

82

83

years until he was seventeen, and started with his first proper girlfriend. Two.

By the time that ended three years later, he was a dive instructor, and every day at the office there were women in swimwear. Three to ten.

Then he spent a summer in the Philippines, and discovered bar girls - eleven to nineteen, or was it twenty? When he got back to Sydney that September, there was an older married woman whose family owned a flower shop. He met her there every Sunday morning between eight and nine o'clock, while her husband and sons slept on upstairs, and he was dressed and gone by the time they got up and started getting ready for church. Twenty or twenty-one.

Then there was a surfer girl he really liked and the sister of a friend… but hadn't he forgotten someone? He knew there had been the odd brief encounter that sometimes slipped his mind, but faces and bodies and beds seemed to blur and merge, and some names were already lost for ever.

At twenty-five, he was already unsure of the number. He guessed it was somewhere in the high twenties. Not that many really, when you considered that sometimes a period of monogamy had lasted for years, sandwiched between bouts of wild promiscuity.

And now he came to think of it he recalled the days of madness when, as one relationship ended, and another began, and a limited offer suddenly presented itself, he had somehow squeezed in three women in one day. He still didn't understand how he had done it. It wasn't the physical demands that took the toll. It was all that travelling.

But for the last two years he had been faithful to his girlfriend back home. Remarkable really, when he remembered that his travels had taken him to bars in Bangkok and clubs in Tokyo and parties in half a dozen European cities, including Warsaw and Stockholm, where there was a beauty on every corner. He had been faithful to the girl back home iIn inigh all those temptations. Up until the night he met Megan. What was it about this one? Why was she special?

Because he was keener than she was. That was a first. She ticked all the boxes - she was hot, funny and smart (although 'smart' was a box that Kirk didn't necessarily need licked). But the clincher was that she just didn't care as much as he did, and that had him hooked.

As his plane trembled and shook somewhere over Indonesia, Kirk asked himself all the questions that are the stirrings of love in the male heart. How can I win her? How many have known her? And when will I see her again? Digby walked into Mamma-san with Tamsin on his arm. Cat glanced across at Brigitte drinking with a couple of regulars at the bar and saw her visibly flinch, as if she had been slapped.

Cat glared at Digby, and thought, how could you? But the terrible thing was, she sort of understood. Not how Digby could come here and rub Brigitte's nose in his new relationship - such casual cruelty was beyond her comprehension - but she could understand how Digby had ended up with Tamsin. Cat had seen Tamsin in Mamma-san back in the days when she was just another party tart hoping to bump into a footballer at the bar, and she could see the appeal.

If Tamsin's body language could be summarised in two words, it was fuck me. Whereas Brigitte's natural demeanour - proud, strong, glamorous Brigitte - suggested fuck you.

Cat watched Digby and Tamsin at the lobster tank, choosing their main course. When she looked back at the bar, Brigitte had fled into the kitchen. She decided she wasn't

84

85

going to allow anyone to humiliate her friend. Not in this place.

Digby, who Cat thought was good-looking but with charm so oily you could fry noodles in it, had the self-consciously puffed-up look of the older man with the younger woman. Steeling himself for applause, or laughter.

Tamsin also did her bit to fit her sexual stereotype, clinging to his arm as if he were the hot one, not her, as if a black American Express card was superior to gilded youth. She was really that stupid.

Abbreviated skirt. Strangely immobile breasts. Unfeasibly blonde. Digby had dumped Brigitte for this little fuck puppet? It was like choosing an inflatable doll over a real woman.

Cat crossed the restaurant with a friendly smile, knowing that the promise of staying friends was impossible for a man like Digby. It wasn't enough to break up with a man like that. They had to make sure their ex was unhappy. 'Digby, how good to see you.' 'I know the one I want, Cat,' Digby said.

Tamsin bent over, pressing her snub nose against the fish tank, her skirt rising up her golden thighs. Men at the adjacent tables held their breath, their chopsticks quivering with longing. A gang of lobsters waved their pincers at Tamsin in slow motion. 'But I thought they was pink,' she said. 'Only when boiled,' Cat said.

'I like them when they're fresh,' Digby said, pressing his fleshy face against the tank, considering the lobsters. 'I'll take that one, Cat,' he added, pointing at the biggest crustacean. 'I'll make sure it's as you like it, Digby.'

After indicating to the chef the lobster they had selected, Cat found them a good table. She took their orders for drinks - white wine for Tamsin and Asahi Super Dry for Digby. Cat watched them whispering their giggly secrets, and Digby •.lipped his tongue in Tamsin's ear, giving it a good clean. Then she went into the kitchen to check on Brigitte. 'Are you all right?'

Hrigitte attempted a laugh, but didn't quite make it. It sounded more like she was clearing her throat. Cat was shocked to see her this undone. The unencumbered life was meant to be pain-free. 'I bet she fucks his brains out,' Brigitte said. 'Didn't know he had any. Excuse me.' Cat went off to talk to the chef.

And she made sure that she was standing close by when the lobster, sunburn pink now and peacefully reclining on a bed of shredded horseradish, was served up to Digby and Tamsin on a wooden Japanese platter.

There was an instant when nothing happened - when the diners and their beady-eyed meal seemed almost hypnotised by the sight of each other. Then Cat saw the smiles vanish from their faces as, with considerable effort, the lobster lifted itself from the wooden platter and began crawling from the plate, its claws trailing thin white slivers of horseradish.

Tamsin screamed. Digby snatched up his butter knife, as if to defend himself and his fuck puppet. The lobster slowly toppled from the wooden platter and began its slow march across the table towards Tamsin, who was shrieking with terror now, and her inflatable breasts. 'Do you want some wasabi on that?' Cat said. It was scary to be too unencumbered, she thought later. The whole unencumbered thing could go too far. Cat saw that now. You had to get the balance right.

A person needed to be unencumbered but not cast adrift, free but not lost, and loved but not smothered. But how do you manage all that?

86

87

'We're going clubbing,' Brigitte told Cat. 'It's DJ Cake versus the Glitter Twins at Zoo Nation. Want to come?'

It was almost one in the morning. The restaurant had closed, and the staff were grimly shovelling food into their tired faces. Their minicabs were already lined up outside, waiting to take them home. A brace of pierced, dyed blond young waiters hovered deferentially behind Brigitte, watching Cat expectantly. 'Oh, come on,' Brigitte said excitedly. 'It'll be fun.'

Maybe a few years ago, Cat thought. Maybe before I had someone to curl up with and cuddle.

'You have fun with the boys and DJ Cake,' she said. Through the plate-glass window of Mamma-san Cat could see Rory pulling up outside. 'I'm going home.' 'Bring Rory.' 'He's more of a Sting man,' she said.

Cat didn't feel sorry for Brigitte. She was good at having a good time. But personally Cat couldn't think of anything that she would like less than being in a black hole listening to crap music with drugged-up people fifteen years her junior.

Cat thought, is this what happens? If you don't settle down when the world tells you to? Do you end up taking drugs in a club when you are forty? So unencumbered it hurts. Jake had moved into Rory's place.

A purely temporary measure until things were smoothed out with his mother and stepfather, who had apparently -as always, the hard facts about the domestic tiff were somewhat hazy - caught him sacrificing virgins in the conservatory or something.

In many ways, Rory was the most easy-going man Cat had ever known. She came and went from his flat as she pleased, she worked late without explanation or apology, she felt no inclination to report her whereabouts when they were not together.

Loved without being suffocated - wasn't that exactly what she wanted? He wasn't as possessive as some other men had been, or as clingy as many of them, and not as fixated on her sexual history as all of them.

He wanted to make this relationship work, and to last, and to make them both happy. She could see it twinkling in those shy, amused eyes. But she couldn't utter even the mildest criticism of his son. That was the one thing that wasn't allowed.

Since Jake's latest row with his mother, Cat wasn't even allowed to suggest that Rory slept over at her place. Because Jake - Mr Sensitive - might think she wanted to avoid him (like the plague, actually, for she had come to the conclusion that the sunny-faced twelve-year-old was gone for good). Rory fretted constantly about something called Jake's self-esteem. Cat wondered if her mother had given her self-esteem a second thought as she turned her back on her three daughters and caught a taxi to her new life.

'Hi, Jake, we're home!' Rory called, as they came into the flat to find Jake fondling the breasts of a thin, droopy girl on the sofa. The place stank of stale pizza, teenage sex and what Cat identified as Moroccan Red. Cannabis had never been to her taste, but a large proportion of her kitchen staff had a spliff during their tea break.

And my kitchen staff are grown-ups, she thought. Not just past puberty.

'Can't you fucking knock?' Jake snapped, and Cat almost laughed at that - the idea of someone knocking before they came into their own home. She tried to find something else to look at while the girl fastened her training bra and pulled down her T-shirt and Jake adjusted the rise in his Levi's. Cat saw that the girl was wearing one of those modern, ironic T-shirts where the same slogan is repeated endlessly.

88

89

I blame the parents I blame the parents I blame the parents…

'Hello, Misty,' Rory said, 'does your mother know you're here?' 'She don't care, the old cow.' The young folk had a snigger at that. 'Well, please let her know if you stay over. Will you do that?'

Misty's stoned gaze seemed directed at a point over Rory's shoulder. 'Would you kids like something to eat?'

'I'm so not hungry,' Jake said, choosing to take it as an insult, as he did everything his father said. 'Well - good night then.'

But they were already lost in the banal materialism of their TV show. Big cars, white mansions, bikini-clad babes by the pool. At least we dreamed of freedom, Cat thought. When did the dreams of children become the same as the dreams of middle-aged men?

'Drugs?' Cat said. 'I'm no prude, Rory - God knows, you get all sorts in a kitchen - but aren't they a little on the young side for drugs?'

T wish that was true,' Rory said sadly. 'But the drugs have found them by the time they're fifteen. And Ali and I agreed that we would rather he did the soft stuff under our roofs, than the hard stuff somewhere else.'

Ali and I, Cat thought, and it made her blood boil. They had been divorced for years, and Rory still talked as though they were some kind of partnership. Because of their overgrown, overindulged child.

T hate the way he talks to you,' Cat said to Rory as they undressed. It was a listless kind of undressing. They were not going to have sex tonight, she could tell. 'And I hate the way you talk to him.' 'I low do I talk to him?' Keeping his voice neutral, not wanting to fight. 'As if you're apologising for existing.'

'Is that what I do? I don't mean to. I love him, that's all. I Ic's my son. Maybe if you had children…' 'Maybe. But I'm not going to have them with you, am I?'

He turned his head away, stung, and she was immediately sorry she had said it. She didn't want to hurt him. And she didn't want children with him, or anyone else. Did she? At the same time she didn't want to end up going to clubs when she was forty. Oh fuck, sometimes she didn't know what she wanted.

'That's true, Cat. You're not going to have children with me.' 'Oh, Rory, you know I don't want kids.'

T worry about him, that's all. I have always worried about him. Before he was born I worried that his mother might miscarry. Then when he was a baby I worried that he would suffocate in his cot. I couldn't bear to leave him alone, it was physically painful to leave him sleeping there alone. Then when he was growing up I worried about drunk drivers and sexual perverts and killer diseases. These things happen to real children.'

T know they do,' she said. But she felt like screaming, but what's this got to do with us?

'And now I worry about the divorce and what it has done to him - how much it has hurt him, what it will do to his relationships and happiness. I worry about what the world might do to him, and I worry about what I have done to him. When a baby is born - no, nine months before that -you get the fear of God in you, and it never goes away. Not when you're a parent.'

In the living room, Cat could hear the callous laughter of the children. She didn't want to argue with this good man.

90

91

'Don't listen to me,' she said. 'I've had a bad night.'

She told him about Digby turning up at the restaurant with Tamsin. He smiled that rueful smile when she told him about the lobster and her revenge.

'Digby's threatened by Brigitte,' Cat said. 'That's why he left her for this little tart. He can't handle a successful woman.'

'Well… it's not necessarily that Digby's threatened by Brigitte,' Rory said cautiously, not quite sure if he wanted to get into all this. 'Sometimes men don't want a replica of themselves. Someone who is - you know - successful, driven, work-obsessed, all of that.' Cat began pulling off her clothes.

'But Brigitte's formidable. What about education, earnings, professional achievements?'

'It's not a job application, Cat. Sometimes a man wants a woman who can bring something new to the table.' She threw her T-shirt at him. 'Oh, you mean like a big pair of twenty-four-year-old tits?'

She kicked off her trousers and walked into the room's en suite bathroom.

'I'm just saying.' He began folding her T-shirt. 'It's wrong to think that men only want a copy of themselves. Where's the law that says men can only want women their own age?'

She came out of the bathroom in just her pants, her toothbrush in her hand. She felt his eyes run over her long limbs and saw him catch his breath. 'And what do you want?' she said. 'You know what I want, Cat. I want you.' Maybe they were going to have sex after all. Megan was changing.

Her hair was becoming less oily, her skin was becoming smoother and her breasts, always abundant, were becoming fuller and rounder, almost an embarrassment of riches. The i 11ionic, all-consuming sickness was easing now, yet becom-illg more selective. She couldn't walk past a Starbucks or McDonald's without wanting to throw up. Wow, she i bought. It's an anti-globalisation foetus.

The doctor in her knew that the baby was hardly there at all - so small that it almost didn't exist, despite the tightness around her waistband. Just three centimetres long from head to bottom. Not a child. Not a baby. A problem that would be dealt with tomorrow morning. Certainly not murder. And yet, and yet.

She knew that a scan would show minute fingers and toes. The eyes were already forming, and so were the nose, the arms, and the mouth. The internal organs were already there. It was difficult to kid herself that she was ridding herself of something other than another human life.

She stood at the window of her tiny flat looking down at the streets of Hackney, still swarming with people going about their pleasures way after midnight.

Her eyes were suddenly brimming with emotion. And Megan thought, oh, God, please let me get it over with. What else can I do?

She put on her pyjamas and opened a bottle of white wine. Then Jessica rang her doorbell.

Megan buzzed her up, amazed that her sister hadn't been relieved of the Prada handbag she was clasping, and somehow not surprised to see her. It was almost as if Megan had been expecting her.

Jessica sat on the sofa that had been used by countless other tenants, trying not to look disapproving. Megan found another glass and poured them both a drink.

'Should you be…' Jessica stopped herself, and held out her hand for a glass. 'Thank you.'

92

93

Megan wearily took a slug. 'I think my drinking while pregnant is rather academic, don't you? Please don't lecture me, Jess. I'm not in the mood tonight.'

Jessica's face was pale and beautiful, her features a chorus of perfect symmetry. Our mother, Megan thought. That's why Jessie is so good-looking. She's the one who looks like our mother.

'I didn't come here to lecture you,' Jessica said. 'I just wanted you to know that you're wrong about me. You think I'm jealous of you. Paulo and I try so hard for a baby - and then you get knocked up just by looking at some guy.' 'There was a bit more to it than that,' Megan said gently.

'You know what I mean. You think I'm taking my disappointment out on you.'

'I wouldn't blame you. I know it must seem unfair. And it is unfair - but that's the random nature of the whole thing. People who want babies can't have them, people who don't want them get knocked up on a one-night stand. Mother Nature is a heartless old bitch.' 'I'll drink to that.' The sisters clinked glasses.

'But there's another reason why I was so upset,' Jessica said. 'You think I'm some kind of innocent, don't you? Married, having my nails done when you're curing sick people, dreaming of nothing more than my own baby.' Jessica raised a manicured hand, overruling her sister's objections. 'I know it's different from your life. And from Cat's life too. But I'm not as innocent as I look.' Jessica took a drink, took a breath. 'I had one.' 'What?'

'I had an abortion. Long time ago. When I was sixteen. God, I was so stupid.' 'I never -' 'Of course you didn't. You were twelve years old. You Were a little girl. Cat knew. She helped me. Came down from M.mchester to help me. I was meant to be on a skiing trip with the school.' 'I remember that trip. You got hurt. Your knee.'

'There was no trip. I was somewhere else. Getting rid of my baby.' 'Jesus, Jess.'

Jessica shook her head, and Megan could see that it was all still raw. This wasn't a long time ago for her sister. It wasn't some other life. It was still happening.

'Dad - you could tell him anything. He was a good dad, he did his best, but you know what he was like.'

'Maybe if he'd had sons,' Megan said. 'Maybe it would have been different. Maybe he would have been closer to sons.'

She was still in shock. Jessica - pregnant? Jessica - having an abortion, and Cat helping her, while Megan did her homework and played with her dolls and rode her bike? I never knew, Megan thought, I never knew.

She wished she could have helped her sister then, and she wished she could help her now. But back then she had been a child, the baby of the family, and now she was about to go through exactly the same thing as Jessica. She would even have Cat by her side, taking care of her.

'I'm not sure I could have got away with it with a full set of parents,' Jessica said. 'Or maybe they are all that trusting, maybe nobody wants to believe these things about their little girl.' 'Who was it?'

'Some guy who already had a girlfriend. Some guy I thought I loved. Some guy on the football team who thought he was God's gift. Fuck him, Megan - I hope he's having a miserable life with a fat wife. He's not important. The important thing is - I got pregnant, didn't I? I proved I can do it. But now that I want to - I can't.'

94

95

'There's no link between what you went through at sixteen and what you're going through now.'

'See, I think you're wrong. They sell abortion like it's -I don't know - this pain-free, clinical procedure. And it's not like that at all. It's like having the best part of you torn out. We mess around with our bodies, Megan. We cut them up. We throw away babies. We do, we do. And then we're all surprised when we can't have another one on demand.'

Megan sat down on the sofa and put her arms around Jessica. She hugged her so hard that a bone clicked.

'What else could you do, Jess? You couldn't have a baby with that boy. You couldn't become a mother while you were at school. You must know that.'

'I know, I know. But we do it too much. We chop our bodies about because we're not ready, because it's the wrong time, because it's the wrong guy. And then we act all amazed when we can't have a baby when we really want.'

Megan wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her pyjamas. Then she wiped her sister's eyes. 'This is a tough time for you. And for Paulo too.'

'I just wanted to tell you that it's not just envy and hurt. I worry about you. I worry about this thing you're going to do. And I love you.'

'I love you too, Jess. Don't worry. You'll have your baby, and when you do you'll be a terrific mum.'

'You know what I really want? I just want to be myself again.'

Megan heard those words from sick people every day in the surgery. This is not really me. I want to be myself again. Where did the real me go? I want my life back. 'Yes,' said Megan. 'Me too.' Jessica stayed the night. It was too late to go home, and anyway she said she wanted to be with Megan at her appointment. When Megan was twelve, she had been far too young to be a part of what Jessica had to go through. But now the sisters were grown. Now they could stick together. Now they could help each other.

Without even needing to discuss it, they slept together in the same bed, just as they had when they were children.

Megan tucked herself into the curves of her sister's body, holding on to her until sleep came, almost as if the younger sister felt the need to protect the older one from all the things that were out there, moving in the darkness. Cat was waiting at the clinic.

When Megan walked in with Jessica, it all came back. Jessica at sixteen, her world unravelling. 'In trouble', as they still called it back then. The boy and his friends on the corner, smirking as the sisters passed by in Cat's rusty Beetle, on their way to Jessica's fictitious skiing trip. The waiting room just like this one, as antiseptic and clinical as a dentist's. And Jessica later, after the abortion, hiding in Cat's halls of residence for a week like a wounded animal, years younger than Cat and her friends, shattered and shivering, as though it was not the tiny life inside her that had been drawn out, but her own. Too young for this experience. Much too young.

Cat thought, why should it all come back? This was different. Megan was a grown woman. A doctor - or about to become one. Megan was clear-eyed and calm when she arrived. Nobody's victim. A woman, not a girl. A woman who knew what she had to do.

'Can I help you?' said the old lady at the reception desk, and the three sisters ignored her. Megan and Jessica sat down either side of Cat, their bodies so close that she could feel their warmth. 'There was this woman at my surgery,' Megan said. 'Mrs

96

97

Summer. From one of those estates. The Sunny View Estate - the worst one of the lot. A bunch of kids and another one on the way. It would have been hard having this baby. This new baby. But then she lost it. And the strange thing is -that was even worse.'

Yes, it was very different this time, thought Cat, suddenly understanding. Because this time her sister was keeping the baby. seven We are all miracles, thought Paulo.

What were the odds against a life? Any life? All of our lives? When you thought of all the untold billions of sperm that fell on stony ground, and the eggs beyond number that were destined to make their lonely journey unfertilised, and the virtual impossibility of any sperm and any egg ever meeting, it was a wonder that anyone ever got born at all. Every last one of us, thought Paulo. A walking miracle.

He flipped the switches and the lights went off in the showroom. The four cars in the window gleamed in the glow of the street. Two Maserati Spyders, the Lamborghini Murcielago and the fairest of them all, the Ferrari Maranello.

Paulo paused for a moment, his heart aching at the sight of all that low-slung, metallic Italian-built beauty. Then he punched in the numbers for the alarm system.

It had always been Michael's responsibility to lock up for the night. That changed after Chloe was born. Now Michael had taken to disappearing early, and Paulo happily shouldered the extra workload. When you had a kid, thought Paulo, work was different. Not so central to your life. Let Michael go home and enjoy some quality time with his

98

99

beautiful baby girl. For the first time in his life, Paulo envied his brother.

With the alarm's warning signal buzzing, Paulo headed for the door, the keys in his hand. Then he paused. There was a sound that shouldn't be there. It was coming from Michael's office.

Paulo quickly punched in the code again and the alarm fell silent. He could hear the low murmur of voices. He glanced at the showroom. How much was this lot worth? In this neighbourhood convenience store clerks were frequently knifed for a fistful of till money, and pensioners were battered for a purse containing nothing but coins for cat food. The rent was cheap around here, and so was life.

There was a toolbox behind the reception desk. Paulo opened it as quietly as he could and pulled out a wrench. Then, conscious of his shallow breathing and hands that shook with fear, he edged towards the darkened office, holding the wrench like a club.

Shouting more from fear than rage, Paulo threw open the door to Michael's office and turned on the lights.

And there was Ginger on top of the desk on all fours, her skirt pushed up above her breasts and her thong pulled down around her knees, and hammering away behind her when he was supposed to be home with his wife and child, there was his brother Michael. When they were alone - and Ginger had set an Olympic record for getting on her bra and pants - Paulo slapped Michael's face, slapped him as hard as he could, this brother who had always been able to beat him up. Paulo didn't care tonight. He felt wild and out of control, as if something priceless had been insulted here.

'You idiot. I don't believe you. You've got a perfect life, and you're pissing it all away.' Michael's face twisted into a bitter grin. There was a red mark throbbing on his stubbled cheek. 'What do you know about my life?'

Paulo tried to slap him again but Michael easily swatted away the blow.

'What don't I understand, Mike? That things are not what they were at home? Get over it. You're a father now.'

'You don't understand how they change. Women. When they have had a baby. You don't understand how they change.'

Paulo felt the argument slipping away from him. Michael was making it sound complicated. And it wasn't complicated at all.

'Of course they change. You're not the centre of their world any more. That's the way it should be.'

'Easy for you to say.' Suddenly Michael seemed like the angry one. He towered over his brother, his fists clenched by his side. T can deal with the broken sleep - night after night, month after month. This permanent state of being totally knackered - I can live with that.' 'That's big of you.'

T can even handle Naoko going off sex,' Michael said. 'Or being too tired to even think about it. Or not fancying me any more. Or whatever it is. I can handle that.'

'Michael - you've got this beautiful little baby. For once in your life, stop thinking about getting your end away.'

When they had both been a lot younger, Paulo had admired Michael's easy way with women. The way they flocked to his brother, the way they fell for him, and the way that he was always moving on. Now it seemed like a burden. Paulo had thought Naoko - so physically^ different from the blondes that Michael had knocked around with in Essex - would put an end to all that. Now Paulo wondered if it would ever end.

100

101

'When a woman has a baby, everything is different,' Michael said, quietly now. He wanted his brother to understand. 'You can never mean as much to her again. You can never take up so much space in her heart.'

'You've got this perfect family,' Paulo said. 'You really want to break it up? Is that what you want? You want Chloe to grow up without her dad around? Like so many of the poor little bastards around here?'

Michael shook his head. 'You think it's so simple, don't you, Paulo? You think you get the job, get the girl, get the house - and get the baby. And then live happily ever after.'

'What more would you want? You should be grateful. You should consider yourself lucky.'

'Don't lecture me. I love my daughter, you self-righteous fuck. And I love my wife. I love her as much as I can love anyone.' 'Funny way of showing it.'

'But a baby doesn't complete your world. Not if you're a man. A baby is a rival. And you can't compete, you just can't compete.' Michael took the wrench from Paulo's hand and placed it gently on the table. 'She's found someone much more loveable than me. Our daughter. So where does that leave me?' 'Go home, Michael. And count your blessings.'

'When a woman has a baby, she changes. I don't know how to explain it.' Michael smiled sadly at his big brother. 'It's almost like she has fallen in love with someone else.' 'My poor baby,' said Megan's mother. 'It's a rotten thing to go through, I know.'

Olivia let her youngest daughter into her flat. Heels and make-up, thought Megan, as her mother clicked across the floor. She even wears heels and make-up when she's home alone. 'We all have these little accidents. I had to have myself seen to before we shot the second series of Vicar. And long before that - before your father, even - there was a photographer who was helping me put a portfolio together.' Olivia, who rarely touched her children, rubbed Megan's back, gauging her daughter's condition. Still beautiful, thought Megan. She could understand why men her own age turned for a second look at her mother. 'I have to say, dear, you really don't look too bad.' 'I'm keeping it.' 'What?' 'I didn't go through with it, Mum. I'm keeping the baby.' 'But - why would you do a thing like that?'

Megan shrugged. She couldn't tell her mother about Mrs Summer. She couldn't explain that having this baby was hard, but not having it would be infinitely harder. How can you explain that feeling of being torn? She sat down on the sofa. The bouts of nausea were passing, but she was starting to feel tired all the time. 'I want to have it,' Megan said simply. 'I want this baby.' 'But - you're too young to have a child!'

'I'm twenty-eight, Mother. A bit older than you were when you had Cat.'

'I was married, dear. With a ring on my bloody finger. And it was still a fucking disaster.' 'This isn't going to be a disaster.' 'Where's the father? Is he in the picture?' 'No, he's out of the picture.'

'Megan, do you have any idea what you're taking on? The sleepless nights, the exhaustion, the screaming and the shitting and hysterical fits?'

'And that's just the mother, right?' Megan let out a breath. 'I know it will be hard. I know it will be the hardest thing I've ever done.'

102

103

'You have no idea. It's hard enough if you've got a husband and a nanny and a few bob in the bank. Try doing it alone on whatever pin money the NHS is chucking your way.' 'Jessica says she is going to help me.' 'Jessica has got her own life.'

'She means it. I know she does. She says she gets sick of going shopping and having facials and waiting for Paulo to come home. Jessie will be glad to look after the baby while I'm at work.' 'And what if Jessica finally gets knocked up?'

Megan hadn't thought about that. After all the sights she had seen in hospitals and doctors' surgeries, was it really possible her mother knew more than she did? Megan felt a shiver of fear. What if there was no one to help? What was she getting into? She saw the years stretching ahead - an eighteen-year sentence. Then she saw her mother's painted face twisted with anguish and she thought, perhaps you are never free of your children.

'What about your career? What about all those years at college and all those exams?'

'I'm going to keep working.' She didn't sound quite so sure of herself now. 'Of course I am. I can't afford not to. As you say, I don't have a ring on my finger.' 'You little fool, Megan.' Her mother's voice was thick with disapproval. 'Why are you so angry with me?' 'Because you're throwing your life away!'

'Is that it? Or is it that you hate the thought of being a grandmother? Because it will be the final confirmation that you're no longer in the first flush of youth.' 'Oh, don't be ridiculous.'

'Please. I don't want you to be angry with me, Mum. I want you to be happy.' Nappy? My daughter acts like some stupid little shop rn I.ind she wants me to be happy?' 'I want you to love this baby. I want you to be happy.' 'Then go,' said Olivia. 'If you want me to be happy - just ?.".'

So Megan went, and for the first time the hard practicalities of her new life crowded in. Where would this nameless, unimaginable baby sleep in her tiny flat? Would the music played by the neighbours downstairs keep it awake? What would actually happen when Megan was at work? Would Jessica really be able to care for it during the day, every day, as if it was her job? What would the nights be like with the baby sleeping - or screaming - by her side?

Then Megan had her first scan, and although the doubts and the dark stuff did not disappear, someone or something seemed to whisper, the right thing, the right thing, you are doing the right thing. Cat changed after Megan decided to keep the baby.

Rory couldn't understand it, but suddenly she seemed to act like his operation was a big deal.

The cut. The snip. The bollock-tampering. That had never been the case in the past. She didn't want children! God knows, he didn't want children. So the vasectomy was, if anything, a bit of a bonus. Then Megan cancelled her appointment at the clinic and things were somehow different.

Perhaps it had as much to do with his ex-wife as with Megan. One day Ali turned up to claim Jake with her five-year-old, Sadie, in tow.

There was undeniably something impressive about Ali. Rory had to admit that, even though their love was dead and buried years ago. Ali was small and blonde, but she had made a little go a

104

105

long way - she was tanned and toned, with a prettiness that had made it into middle age without seeming absurd. She had an air of quiet authority about her. Jake was almost meek in her brisk, bossy presence, as she stood there watching him gather his belongings, and lug them out to her big BMW X5 off-roader - perfect for taking Sadie to her ballet class.

'Why has Jake-Jake been staying here, Mummy?' asked Sadie.

'He's just been spending a little time with his daddy, darling,' said Ali. 'Now it's time to come home.'

'He's welcome any time, the old boy,' said Rory, clapping his son on the back.

Stooped with teenage self-consciousness, Jake carried on gathering up the CDs that were strewn all over the coffee table, not meeting his father's eyes.

'But maybe next time he could leave his Rizlas at home,' Cat said quietly. Rory and Ali stared at her. 'Mummy?' said Sadie.

Cat knew it was a mistake to say anything. But she couldn't help herself. Just because Rory and Ali were forced to negotiate an emotional minefield, that was no reason for her to pretend that Jake wasn't a walking nightmare. 'What are you suggesting?' Ali said. 'That Jake's too young to take drugs,' Cat said. 'Cat,' Rory said.

'How dare you?' Ali said. 'How dare you push your face into my family's business?'

'I can't help it. Sorry. I'm just saying - you let him get away with too much.' 'I'm ready, Mum,' Jake said. Sadie took his hand, beaming up at her big half-brother. 'Jake-Jake,' she said. 'My son has been under enormous pressure,' Ali said, trembling with emotion. 'But I wouldn't expect someone like MMI to understand.' 'Someone like me?'

Ali smiled thinly. 'Someone who has never had a family •»i her own.'

'I've got a family,' Cat said, trying to keep her voice calm. 'I don't have children, it's true. But don't you ever tell me I li.tven't got a family.'

Then they were gone, and Rory was trying to make up. Too late. Cat was furious - with Rory, for letting his ex-wife walk all over him. With Jake for coming into their life. With Ali, for being such a cold, self-righteous bitch. And with something else that she couldn't name. It was something to do with the limitations of her life. She didn't want limits put on her life. She wanted her options to be permanently open. 'Cat?' Tm going.' 'Stay! Come on. We've finally got the place to ourselves.' 'She really kept her options open, didn't she?' 'Who?'

'Who? Your ex-wife. Ali got a second chance to get it right, didn't she? Another marriage, another kid, another life. You and her - that was just her starter marriage. Her dry run. She got another go.' 'Why are you so mad at me?'

She turned on him, white with fury and tears in her eyes. It frightened him. He was losing her, and he didn't want to lose her.

'Why did you have that stupid operation? Why? Cutting yourself up like that. Doing it for that cold bitch who went straight out and had a kid with the next man who came along. Why?'

106

107

Rory held up his hands. 'Because - because we didn't want any more children. Because it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.'

'So she got another go. But you don't. You're stuck with the past, and all its fucking mess. And me too. I'm stuck with your past too. You didn't just limit your options, Rory. You limited mine.'

'What's this all about? Megan's pregnant, so you suddenly want a kid of your own? You're talking like you want a baby.'

'It's not that. Where would I put a baby, for God's sake? But why couldn't you keep your options open? Ali did.'

'I can't give you a baby, Cat. You knew that when we started.'

'I know. And why should you? You've done it, right? Done it and got the T-shirt. And I don't even want a baby, do I?' 'So what's the problem?'

Cat shook her head. She couldn't explain it to him. She didn't suddenly want a child. She really didn't. But she wanted to be part of a family. When Ali had told her she didn't have a family, it had cut her to the core.

Cat was starting to understand that children gave you a stake in the future, and they gave you a family. They gave you a new family just when your old family was starting to drift apart, when your old family was starting to go its own way, making new families with their husbands and their babies. Without children all you had was now, and reminders of the past.

Rory stared at Cat, watched her anger fading away. He knew he didn't want any other woman, only her. But when she walked out the door, he didn't try to stop her.

Women got it wrong, Rory thought. They believed that they were victims of some ticking biological clock, and yet men could go on having children for as long as they liked. And it just wasn't true.

Because you got tired. You made that journey - from the nights when your child stayed awake teething, to the nights when your child stayed awake taking drugs - and it exhausted you. It just wore you out.

Even without his operation, and the divorce, and all the poison between him and his ex-wife, Rory would have found it hard to go through all that again. Time performed its own kind of surgery on you. And even if it was a possibility, which it wasn't, it would be absurd to choose to go through all of that again at his age, wouldn't it? By the time the kid was sixteen, he would be well into his sixties. It was tough enough dealing with a teenager in your forties. How could you do it as an old man? It would take a lot to decide to go through all that again. You would really have to love someone. Megan gripped Jessica's hands as the sonographer put cold jelly on her belly and pressed down hard with the scanner.

The pressure felt too hard, far too hard, but the twinge of anxiety was forgotten because suddenly there it was on the screen, Megan's baby, this unplanned little human, looking like an alien in a snowstorm.

Its head too big, fingers like threads in a spider's web, and lidless eyes, unseeing and all-seeing. Megan and Jessica laughed out loud, laughed with delight and disbelief. Megan looked at her sister and was filled with gratitude for her love, and for her generosity, and for the fact that she was there to hold her hand and share this moment. Jessica was as thrilled, and as moved, as Megan. It was almost, Megan thought, as if the baby belonged to both of them.

Megan looked at the hazy profile on the scan and felt a connection that she had never felt with another human being.

108

109

The baby was part of her flesh and blood and yet entirely separate, at once as familiar as her own face and yet as mysterious as an angel. It was just a fuzzy black-and-white image on a screen. That's all. The sonographer probably did a dozen a day. And yet it provoked feelings inside Megan that she had never known existed.

Maybe the neighbours downstairs would play their music too loud. Maybe there would be days when Jessica couldn't baby-sit. Maybe it would be harder than Megan could possibly imagine. But these worries all seemed to diminish in the presence of that blurred image. How could you worry too much about the neighbours or sleepless nights when you were in the presence of magic?

When Megan left she was given a slip of shiny black paper with the baby caught in heartbreaking, big-headed profile. That little alien in a snowstorm. The first picture of the baby.

Megan was told a date for the birth, a day that seemed ridiculously distant, almost meaningless, as though it had been plucked from the calendar at random. But she knew it would come. And she knew it was a date with another kind of life. Jessica and Paulo talked to their doctor about going for IVF.

Paulo had been shocked by the discussion - shocked by both the cost (thousands) and even more the odds (about a one in three chance of success, and that was the most optimistic prognosis). Most of all, he had been shocked to hear that there was no time to waste. 'But she's thirty-two!' he said to the doctor.

'Exactly,' said the doctor. 'A woman is born with the only eggs she is ever going to have. And there's a marked deterioration in fertility after thirty-five. Best to get started before you get too old. Who knows how many cycles you'll need?' 'I want to do it,' Jessica said on their way home. 'I don't i.?? what we have to do to get the money. I don't care how in.in? times we try. But I want to do it now.' 'What does your sister say?' 'Megan?' 'Does she think IVF is a good idea?'

'I didn't talk to her about it. She's got enough on her plate. I don't want to worry her that I won't be free to look after her baby. You know. When I get pregnant from the IVK'

So that's what they were going to do. Their GP referred them to a private clinic out in rural Essex with one of the best rates of success in the world. And Paulo went along with it because he would do anything for Jessica. Almost anything.

'I'm not going to let this baby thing break us up, Jess,' he said when she came into the bedroom that night. 'What?'

'I've never complained. And I never will. All the tests and the consultations. All the wanking into little jugs and the rest of it. All the text messages telling me to come home and shag you because you're ovulating. I'll go along with all of it. You want IVF treatment? Fine. But I'm not going to let this break us up.' 'Why would it break us up?'

He sat on the bed and took her face in his hands. He loved that face.

'Because it has become more important than anything. More important than you and me. This baby thing - it's taken over our world.' 'You know how much this means to me.'

'Of course I do! But if it doesn't happen, if it never happens - well, I'll still be in love with you. I know you want a kid. Me too. But it's not the most important thing in my life. Because you are, Jess.'

110

Ill She shook her head.

'It can't be like it was before. When we could make love when we felt like it. You don't understand, Paulo. If I don't have a kid, then what's the point of me?'

'The point of you? If you never have a kid, you're still beautiful. You're still smart, and kind, and sexy.' 'I'm not sexy.'

'Yes, you are, you sexy little bitch.' They were both smiling now. 'I know you want a kid, Jess. So let's go for the IVF. And if it doesn't work, let's try again. And again. And if we have to sell everything to keep trying, then we'll do it.'

She placed a hand on his upper arm and squeezed it, massaging the curve of the muscle, feeling the bone beneath. This was the man she wanted to be with for the rest of her life. 'Thanks,' she said.

'But if it doesn't happen, if it never happens, then let's not stop loving each other. Because I couldn't stand that.' 'Me neither.'

'I promise you we'll spend every penny we have on the IVF thing, but I want you to promise me something.' 'What's that?'

'That once in a while, just every once in a while, we will stop thinking about all this baby stuff and make love not because we want a baby, but because we still fancy each other.' Her smile was broader. 'I promise.'

So they kissed for a while and then took off their clothes and she put on her high-heeled Jimmy Choo shoes - her husband was a very conventional man, and she knew how much he liked high heels in the bedroom - and then they stood up, positioning the wardrobe door just right so that they could see themselves in its full-length mirror.

And that was the night that Jessica and Paulo made their baby. eight Jack Jewell was still recognised.

All the Fish in the Sea had ended ten years ago, but he had never stopped working and there had been enough roles on television - the retiring cop forced to work with the reckless rookie, the gentleman jewel thief swindling the gullible widow, the private dick with exquisite table manners and Sherlock Holmes tendencies - for it to cause a minor stir when he walked into a restaurant in Chinatown.

Today he didn't notice the double takes, the affectionate smiles, the startled murmurs of 'Isn't that…?' Today all he saw was his daughters.

He was so proud of them. They were so beautiful, they had always been so beautiful, and he was the one person in the world who could see on the women they'd become the imprint of the children they had once been.

Megan, pretty and round, as if she was made up of circles (he knew she worried about her weight, but she was always gorgeous to him). Jessica, the conventional beauty, with her lush black hair, compact frame and baby face (he could understand why people thought she was the youngest, and smiled when he remembered how that used to drive her

112

113

crazy). And Cat, his darling Cat, tall and slim, all arms and legs, with those wide-set brown eyes that seemed to see right through you.

What was the old song? Something about when you are the father of boys you worry, and when you are the father of girls you pray. He was never worried about them, the girls, but only what men - his lying, cunning, cheating tribe - would do to them. But now he felt that it was all going to work out fine.

He liked to joke about what a trial they had been, but it was the defence mechanism of a man who felt he hadn't been there often enough for the children in his sole charge. He loved them more than he loved anything in his life. But he knew that the hard work, the day-to-day drudgery and graft, had been mostly done by Cat and a series of hired hands from the poorer parts of the globe.

'So you're their mother and their father,' women would say to him when the girls were growing up.

But he had never been a mother to them. A man doesn't become a mother just because the mother is not around. He hadn't even been a good enough father.

It would be different today. Men were different. More capable of taking on different roles. But back then, in the mid-seventies when Olivia walked away, Jack had been typecast as an old-fashioned kind of father. Designed to go out into the world and make a living while his children were brought up by someone else. A parade of long-forgotten nannies, au pairs, housekeepers and, above all, his oldest daughter.

Jack Jewell had been too busy earning a living to always be there for Megan, Jessica and Cat. But it was more than the demands of work. Unlike his ex-wife, and unlike most actors, Jack had never had years of resting. There had always been a market for his well-mannered decency, his old-world I barm. 'David Niven lite', one critic called it, trying to be Unkind, but Jack had taken it as a compliment. Sometimes In took jobs not because they needed the money but because lie needed the self-esteem and sense of worth that came from 111.1king his mark in the working world.

When Olivia left him, his sense of self had taken a terrible blow. He thought less of himself as a man when she w.ilked out. The only way he could recover his sense of self was through work, and by taking to bed the women that work brought his way.

Helping Cat with her homework, taking Jessica to ballet class, teaching Megan to dress herself - these things would not have helped Jack Jewell put himself back together. He needed his work. It was so much easier to make a success of your career than your marriage.

And now two of his children were to have children of their own. The news filled him with nothing but happiness. It seemed to Jack that grandchildren would put stabilisers on their little family, and ensure its survival.

What stability had he given his daughters? He was there in theory, the sole carer. In practice he was constantly on set, or attending to his needs with some love-struck makeup girl or recent graduate from RADA. To his buried but abiding shame, Jack Jewell knew that he didn't have it in him to be a full-time parent. It would have driven him insane. But perhaps - no, definitely - even back then he could have struck a healthier balance between home and work. There were jobs he could have resisted, women he could have walked away from. And gone home early to his three daughters. It was too late now. Thank heavens it had worked out all right in the end. He knew that Megan and Jessica would make good mothers. Megan was smart and tough. Jessica was loving and kind. They would be everything that their own mother had not been.

114

115

If he had been sometimes preoccupied by work, and distracted by starlets, then Olivia had been something worse. From the moment she left, it was as if she wanted no reminders of her old life. Contact was sporadic, and then almost non-existent. The children, it seemed to Jack, were expected to make all the effort. Olivia made none. She had more important things to consider - the struggle with her weight, her botched second face-lift, and again and again the man of her dreams turning out to be a lazy, freeloading loser.

Jack had known plenty of fathers who had behaved that way to their first family. Olivia proved that a mother could be just as cruel and pitiless. A barnyard animal would not have been so callous to its offspring.

Jack could never explain such wanton malice to his children, and neither could he articulate his own feelings about how he had failed them as a father. He could hardly explain these things to himself.

Bloody actors, Jack thought. No good to anyone without a script. Megan always told her patients that pregnancy was a bit like flying. Take-off and landing. They were the tough parts. If things were going to go wrong, that's when it usually happened.

When the three of them sat down with their father in their favourite restaurant in Chinatown, Jessica was in -what? Week four? Most women wouldn't even know they were pregnant by then. Most women would be looking at the calendar and starting to think, funny that. A bit late. Or perhaps most of them wouldn't even notice that their cycle was a bit out.

Unless of course they were waiting. Unless they were trying, and had been trying for a long time. 'You're going to be a grandfather,' Jessica said again, I tughing with delight. 'Twice over, Dad. Can you handle it?'???? can't be any harder than you three.' He smiled,? nbracing Jessica. 'And at least at the end of the day I'll be i?? to give them back. Congratulations, darling. I know Imw much you wanted this. You and Paulo.'

Then he attempted to do the same to Megan, but it was much more awkward because she was holding a spring roll with her chopsticks, and she didn't have a partner, and she iic.irly stabbed him in the eye.

'Well done, darling,' he said, and Megan felt as if she had just got another A+ in another exam.

Megan smiled. Dear old Dad. Week four and week twelve was all the same to him. But it wasn't the same to her. During take-off and landing a few short weeks could be the difference between life and no life at all.

For like all doctors, Megan counted pregnancy in weeks. It was only the rest of the world that counted in months.

Megan thought, oh Jessie, week four; it's far too soon to be telling people. But nothing in this world could stop Jessica blurting out her news. She had waited so long. And it was hard to urge caution in the face of such unbridled joy.

Megan hugged her sister and congratulated her, but in her heart she thought, the plane is still on the runway. And anything could happen.

'It was a Sunday morning,' Jessica told their father. 'Paulo had been for a run. And when he came back, I was sitting on the stairs. He looked at my face. And he just knew.'

And there was something else. On some level of sibling rivalry, Megan knew she was jealous.

She was happy for Jessica. She couldn't have been happier. But Jessie had her husband and her house and her life. And, yes, the ring on her finger. Their father had walked Jess down the aisle - given her away, as they say. There was

116

117

Paulo to go running on a Sunday morning and to come back home and hear the good news and to cuddle Jessica at night.

Megan thought - I have no Paulo, no ring, and no room in my flat for a little pink or blue nursery. All I've got is the bun in the oven and a rented room in Hackney.

Megan was in week twelve while Jessica was in week four or five. Megan had just sailed through her nuchal scan -there were no chromosomal abnormalities, there was no risk of Down's syndrome. The heartbeat was strong and steady, the baby looked normal and happy. The date Megan had been given seemed more real with every passing day. This is your captain speaking. We have lift-off. You may unfasten your seat belts and wander about the cabin. You are definitely going to have a baby.

Jessica was still a couple of months away from a nuchal scan. Megan didn't think her sister had any comprehension of how momentous that test would be, or how awful that paralysing wait when you hold your breath until they give you the odds of Down's syndrome. Less than 300 to one and you needed further examination - an invasive test, they called it, to find out if the baby was really likely to be disabled or not.

But this was the heartbreaker - an invasive test, an injection into the baby's neck, could kill a healthy baby. If the bookies of the medical profession gave you odds of less than 300 to one, did you go for an invasive test, and risk killing a healthy baby? Or did you take the risk of disability? And how could anyone ever make those choices about something as innocent and defenceless as their unborn baby, and know for certain that they were doing the right thing?

Megan was over that particular hurdle. If there were others, they were likely to occur nearer to the date they had given her. During landing. At week twelve Megan's foetus was undeniably human. ()n the scan it - Megan still thought of this thing growing m.icli- her as it, although the he or she had already been I'ciHiically programmed - could be seen crossing its legs and wiggling its fingers. The head was enormous - almost half «ill ittle It was taken up by that great bulging bonce, nodding lorward as if it was far too heavy to hold up - and, incredibly, unbelievably, Little It seemed to be sucking a thumb. Little It was around eight centimetres long and weighed in at eighteen grams.