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Fridays are the best. I’m Ellen.’
    ‘Lara.’
    ‘Lara,’ she says, looking at me with an assessing gaze. ‘That’s a very glamorous name. It suits you.’
    ‘Um, thanks. I had no idea that commuting like this was a thing people do. I thought it was just me. What’s your job?’
    ‘Banking. You know. In London I’m one of the hated bankers, but no one really hates us. In Cornwall I’m just a woman who works in London.’
    ‘Why don’t you live in London?’
    She shrugs. ‘I love Cornwall. I love my weekends there. It’s glorious. I would far rather live like this, because you do get fond of that train ride, than have some stupid flat in Clapham like everyone else. My partner’s in Cornwall. He’s a farmer, so he can hardly do that in the big city. It can get knackering, but I do generally love it.’ She smiles and looks around. ‘There’s nothing like the buzz. People hate Monday mornings. I don’t.’ She lifts a hand and waves to somebody. ‘I relish them.’
    ‘That’s great to hear. Hey, this coffee isn’t exactly amazing, is it?’
    ‘Oh God, no. Not in comparison with actual coffee. It has caffeine in it, though, and it’s relatively fresh. It’s the caffeine that does the job for me.’
    ‘Oh, me too.’ I think of Sam, and the way he carefully gave up caffeine with me as part of our bid to conceive. We both operated under the solemn pretence that the absence of coffee-related products in our systems would suddenly propel sluggish sperm to recalcitrant egg and produce a child where there would otherwise not have been one. I knew all along that the subtle realignment of the universe to make it greyly decaffeinated was not, actually, going to tip the balance, but I went along with it anyway; just in case.
    ‘Do you have children?’ I did not mean to say that. I resent it greatly when strangers ask this of me, and here I am doing the same thing. ‘I mean, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to …’
    Ellen chuckles. ‘No, Lara, I don’t. I never wanted them, actually. I was married for a while, but I held out against starting a family because it wouldn’t have been right, and I knew that, really. Then when I met Jeff, that time had passed. I’m glad I never had them. I wouldn’t be able to live this schizoid life if I did. I guess you don’t either?’
    I look at my coffee. The frothy milk has gone from the top of it now. This conversation, even with so friendly a stranger, is never easy. ‘We tried for years. Me doing this job kind of marks the fact that we failed.’ I look at her face and quickly add: ‘It’s fine, though. I mean, it really is. I was never that maternal or broody. It was Sam, more than me. I would have loved a baby, of course I would, but then it doesn’t happen and the whole quest takes over your life, becomes this massive obsession, and every aspect of your life is suddenly governed by injections and cycles, and everyone asks you about it all the time – “So are you two going to be starting a family?”, as if that’s not the only thing the two of you ever talk about – and Sam could, actually, think and talk about nothing else, and by the time we did give up, I felt nothing but the most gigantic relief. I’m happy to be moving on.’
    ‘Well, there you go.’ She lifts her coffee. ‘Cheers, Lara. Welcome to your new life. Joyous moving-on to you.’
    We stand, gather our bags and set off together through Paddington station, at the beginning of the Monday-morning rush hour, towards the Tube, and work, and a London life.

chapter four
    The working day is the easy part. I spend the first couple of hours meeting people, working out where things are and getting to grips with the project. It is going to be an interesting one, just behind Tate Modern: I will be turning industrial warehouses into flats and a restaurant. I start with the basics of the project, running over each step in my head. It’s in an area with a high water table, a strong likelihood of