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the hole slithered inexorably back down its sloping sides. Several of the Nafia were on the benches beside the pit, including Laura, who having through most of the summer rather pointedly set herself apart from the girls—the trained and disciplined career nanny as distinct from these unreliable fly-by-nights—had in the last couple of weeks completely changed her stance and seemed to be making a determined effort to belong. The girls, being tolerant, accepted her, as no doubt at home they were used to accepting older and slightly odd relations into their extended families. As Poppy approached she rose and came over.
    â€˜You mustn’t mind me, Mrs Tasker,’ she said. ‘There’s a lot of very decent people of your way of thinking. I know that.’
    â€˜Oh, good heavens, I’m not worried if you aren’t, and I’m sure Janet won’t be either. I’ll have a word with her tonight and we’ll talk about it again tomorrow, if you’re still interested.’
    â€˜Shan’t be here tomorrow, Mrs Tasker. Got to take Sophie to the dentist.’
    â€˜Oh, Lord, is she starting already? Why must they grow up so fast?’
    Laura looked at her, then at Toby sturdy and golden in the pit, then at Nick, bleach-haired, patting sand into a bucket.
    â€˜That’s the pity of it, Mrs Tasker,’ she said. ‘That’s just the pity of it.’
    2
    Next day was a return to the full blaze of summer, glare and inertia, bare brown torsos littering the grass, diversions from the usual route to the play centre in search of shade, a sense of tranquillity and well-being and thanks for such a season before winter. Almost all the children were out in the open, moving in random patterns in their bright Mothercare clothes. Poppy helped Toby inspect the climbing frame, then settled on a bench to try and work more seriously on Floodlight . She had only three more days to make up her mind about first choices and alternatives before the scrum and frustrations of booking in. She was distracted by Big Sue, Little Sue and Fran on the next bench. Fran was bringing the others up to date on the saga of her neighbour’s domestic affairs. Fran brought her own son, Jason, to the play centre, and usually the neighbour’s little girl, Winnie, as well, receiving an erratic token payment when the neighbour was in funds. The neighbour had a new man living with her, and a few weeks back her previous man—not Winnie’s father—had come back and broken up her flat and given her a thrashing, the police had been called and the man arrested. Yesterday he’d appeared in court.
    This was one of the bonuses of bringing Toby to the play centre. Occasionally, amid the repetitions and banalities of the conversation Poppy would be given glimpses of other lives, or scraps of gossip and other social titillations. They weren’t often actually startling, though last year, before she’d begun coming, a girl called Jane had been working for one of the protagonists in a thoroughly English headline-making scandal involving sex, insider dealing, a viscount and a feud in a cricket club. Jane had left now, but Big Sue had told Poppy things about the case which hadn’t appeared in the newspapers. And more recently she’d heard Big Sue herself telling her friends about her previous employer, some kind of BBC executive, who’d been in the habit of coming home while his son was having his pre-lunch rest and trying to get Big Sue into bed with him. Big Sue was diabetic and earned her adjective but was still attractive in a creamy, cushiony way, so the episode was easy to imagine. Poppy was interested too in the conventions of these exchanges—suppose the man had been her present employer, would Big Sue have been so forthcoming? Probably not. She would have told Little Sue, and perhaps Fran, in confidence, Poppy thought, and that would have been it.
    By now Toby and Deborah had joined