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reconcile an only moderately successful freelance career like mine with family life. As we can’t afford childcare on retainer, we’ve decided that it makes more sense for me to stay at home – here, with the baskets of dirty laundry, the shopping lists, the appointments pencilled into the kitchen calendar – while Ben profits from the plum spots vacated by female colleagues. So this is my lot now. It was always going to come down to this, if only I’d thought about it hard enough. If I’d thought about it hard enough, would I have made the same choices? Yes, yes, of course. But still.
    Christopher has been lifted out of his chair and comes over, putting his plump little hands out to me, as if he knows I’m feeling sad. I lift him on my knee and put my nose in his hair. It smells clean and dirty at the same time: like damp straw, like an animal that has been out in the rain. His hand in mine is sticky with vinaigrette and grainy with bits of shortbread. I try not to mind. I don’t mind, really. I blow in his ears, making him laugh and twitch, and then I whisper, very quietly, ‘You’re lovely, aren’t you?’ He puts his thumb in his mouth and leans back against me and when I glance up, Ben’s smiling at us both, and then he starts to clear away the lunch things.
    ‘You’re doing OK, aren’t you?’ Ben asks later, as we wait for the BBC4 procedural to start. ‘You’d tell me, wouldn’t you, if you felt . . .’
    ‘Of course I would,’ I say as the screen goes white.
    I’m fine. I’m fine. There’s nothing to tell.

Nina
    Atsuko comes back into the room. I hear her moving around quietly, the careful noises as she places my shoes by the door, washes her hand at the shallow basin, and opens her wooden box of bottles, which rattle as she selects the few she needs. All the little rituals. Like casting a spell.
    She knows I don’t like to talk. Just the basics. ‘Is this OK for you?’
    ‘It’s great,’ I say, into the aperture. I’m facedown on the upholstered gurney, my cheeks and forehead pressed against the protective tissue shield. I close my eyes. The iPod soundtrack starts: the familiar loop of pebbles dropping into pools, wind chimes, sitars, Tibetan bowls, Bedouin drums, the noise of birds and surf and the rustling of leaves. Ersatz nature, the contemporary shorthand for relaxation.
    The smooth heat of Atsuko’s palms and fingers as she sets to work on my shoulders, the diligent firmness which is almost, but not quite, painful.
    I let my mind empty. I don’t think about Sophie, who comes home from school and swiftly leaves again, telling me she’s going round to Eva’s to work on an English project; or holes herself up in her room with her laptop, communicating (I imagine) with strangers in LA and Kuala Lumpur and Brisbane, who might be seventeen or twenty-seven or fifty-three. I don’t think about Charles, who is in Bristol overnight. I don’t think about the fact that my father’s in town, demanding some attention.
    Cicadas, the drone of ethnic chanting. Atsuko’s fingers are steadily working towards the point I’m always conscious of, the tender spot just below my right shoulder blade. Knowing it’s coming – dreading it, but needing it too – I frown down into the aperture, bracing myself, tensing up. I can’t help it. ‘It’s too much?’ asks Atsuko, easing off. ‘Is it too painful?’
    When I’m dressed, walking home in the dark, feeling the new chill in the air and the warm film of oil on my skin, my phone rings. Paul .
    ‘You are being elusive,’ my father says.
    ‘Am I?’ I say, turning into Pakenham Gardens. All along the street the bay windows are lighting up, displaying similar domestic scenes: the unpacking of groceries, table-laying, clarinet practice. I catch a glimpse of Monica and Tim Prewitt, evening newspaper and novel angled into the light, sherry glasses on the ottoman.
    ‘I’ve got a table at Marcy’s. I hear the fruits de mer is fabulous,’ my