1

CORNWALL, TWO MONTHS LATER

They were having the train-crash conversation again.

“Right, okay, I think we should stop this,” Emmy said. “Now that we’re here.” She gripped the solid edge of the table, just to be sure they really were. Toby’s table. His kitchen. Her kitchen. Their kitchen.

“That’s rich, coming from you,” Niall said. “You’re the one who usually starts it.”

“That was back then.” She smiled. It was the contagious smile, the one that gave that glimpse of Maya. “Before my fairy godfather waved his magic wand.” It must have been magic, because it didn’t even matter to her anymore that Kat was on Niall’s lap. Being at Bodinnick made up for all sorts of things. “We missed the train,” she carried on. “It crashed. We could all be dead. We live here now. End of story.”

“Don’t you mean beginning?” Sita corrected. “This should be where it starts to get interesting.”

“We hope,” said Jonathan.

A blown fuse meant it was dark in the huge room, but it was a clear evening and there was a full moon, so they could at least see each other.

“Well, there are two ways of looking at what we’re doing,” Niall said, peering through the candlelight at the boxes of belongings all over the floor. “Essentials for simple living” was what they had all agreed to bring. It didn’t look like it. “One is that we’re all as mad as bollocks, and the other is that everyone else is.”

“At least we don’t have any secrets,” Sita said quickly to reassure herself, forgetting Emmy’s huge one, which was forgivable since Emmy had almost forgotten it herself. “At least we know, more or less, what we’re in for.”

One of them had already hung a clip frame on the flaking kitchen wall to prove it. Twenty years’ worth of changing photographic technology showing them freckled, plaited, big haired, tanned, pale, bearded, bare, tear-stained, pregnant, fit, anorexic and not. It was a reminder that their bold and hasty decision was not such a risk, a reminder that everyone had seen everyone else cry at least once. Except Kat, and for most of them she didn’t count.

“Downsizing,” the weekend property pages annoyingly insisted on calling the move from city to country, but that hardly seemed the word for it. All three of their London addresses would have fit easily into the rambling manor with room to spare. Admittedly, the four-story Fulham terrace that Jonathan and Sita had packed up and let at top speed took up considerably more space than Emmy or Niall’s rented broom cupboards, but no one was inclined to toy with architectural puzzles. The premise was that everyone here was equal. Animal Farm it was not.

Cold Comfort Farm was more like it. Two days ago, Emmy had phoned to ask the farmer’s wife to light the Aga and put the heating on in readiness for their arrival, and Eileen Partridge had replied, “What heating would that be, my bird?”

Anyway, freezing or not, spring was definitely back on course after its wintery blip, and Emmy was sure Bodinnick was relieved to be full again. In fact, earlier, it was as if the house had winked at her. She was standing by the sundial just as it was getting dark, looking up at the grand façade and realizing she had waited all her life for this moment, and someone had opened and closed an internal shutter on an upstairs bedroom window. Brilliant, she’d thought, almost winking back. The house has got us and we’ve got each other. How can we possibly fail?

Even the near-Gothic moment of flicking on the hideous kitchen strip light and fusing the entire ground floor seemed part of the big romantic conspiracy. Candlelight made it feel as if the adventure had finally begun.

It was as if the place was welcoming her back, delighted that she had brought properly passionate people with her this time, not just a few spiritless siblings—although even with five adults, three children and a baby, it wasn’t what you could call bursting at the seams. Once everyone got used to the space, though, it would shrink. Familiarity shrinks everything, she’d promised Sita and Jonathan’s middle daughter, Asha, who hated bigness, hated the high ceilings, the deep windowsills, the huge, heavy doors, hated the whole idea.

It was now dusk and the excited clamor of arrival had died down to a collective sigh of relief. At last they were dining in at home instead of dining out. Dining in together, for the first probationary night in their shared kitchen in the middle of nowhere, with a leg of Cornish lamb bought from the kitty and the children pottering around the vast upstairs, metaphorically peeing on imaginary boundaries to mark their new territory.

If they were feeling lucky, it was fair enough. Britain’s worst rail crash for sixty years, with a death toll of a hundred, and they should have been in it. “Carriage C,” Emmy could remember Jonathan shouting when they’d first heard the news, still stranded at the station the morning after Sara’s wedding. “Carriage C, Carriage C.” She could even remember the way his hand burrowed frantically in his inside jacket pocket for the tickets to prove his point. “All right, all right,” Sita had snapped. “We believe you.” But nobody believed it really, still didn’t.

“My God, we should be dead,” they kept saying to each other in the days that followed. “Why aren’t we dead?”

And the only answer they could come up with back in London, as they’d watched repeated television footage of the mangled lump of metal dangling from the crane’s teeth, was that it hadn’t been their time.

“If it had been our time, would we have died happy?”

It was that terrifying question which had started the whole ball rolling, from hermetically sealed sitting room to drafty manor kitchen in less than seventy days.

Admittedly, it helped that they had all had such a stress-laden two months, during which time the ball had careered relentlessly through their lives, apparently hell-bent on collecting every possible reason for them all to seek pastures new.

First, Niall’s flat had been burgled as he lay under his duvet playing with Kat. His CD player, his tape deck, his computer and his TV all yanked from their sockets, his credit cards, mobile phone and the keys to his motorbike gone for the third time in as many years. He’d been initially furious, and then, when he found a spattering of what looked like blood across his bathroom sink, frightened.

Not as frightened as Sita had been when she witnessed a mugging at the end of their street, though. Three men, two of them standing over a third, kicking him. She, a doctor, had run for her life. For nights and nights afterward, she could not forget the clicking of her heels on the pavement, racing blindly for home in the dark, round the corner and up the steps to safety, knowing that she should have offered her help. Later, she read in the paper that the victim had died in the ambulance, of a punctured lung.

Jonathan had lain awake next to her all those nights, too, taking deep, measured breaths and feigning sleep, too depressed to ask his wife why she was troubled, too obsessed with his boss’s newly cold shoulder and his secretary’s suspicious sick leave to take on anyone else’s pain. All he needed to ask was “Are you okay?” but they were three little words he couldn’t muster.

Things could hardly have been worse between them but then Jay’s persistent truancy came to light, when they were in the grip of the worst bout of flu either of them had ever experienced, and they hardly had the energy to get down to the school to discuss it. In fact, for the first appointment, they didn’t.

In the end, there was no contest. There was no point in hanging on to their sanity for dear life. Life was simply too dear. If Emmy was brave enough to give it a go, so were they.

“Is it socially interesting that the women take an entirely different view from the men on this?” Niall asked now, taking an unlit cigarette from his mouth for the second time and dipping the tip in and out of the candle flame.

Emmy didn’t know whether she couldn’t believe they were living under the same roof again—a leaky moss-lined slate roof with missing tiles, from which you could see the sea one way and green fields the other—or whether she had always known it would be so. It was just a shame Kat was such a wrench in the works.

“We don’t.”

Niall raised his eyebrows. Both knew damn well he’d only asked the question to get an argument going.

“Would ye come out of denial? Jonathan and I are totally fatalistic about it, whereas you and Sita keep going off on some great romantic journey about the what ifs.”

“Sita has never gone on a romantic journey in her life,” Jonathan said affectionately, “have you, darling?”

“Don’t have time,” she answered. “Not with four children to look after.”

“Three,” Kat corrected.

“She means me,” he whispered. “It’s an old joke.”

She might as well wear a neon sign over her head saying “I don’t fit in,” Emmy thought.

“So what ‘what ifs’ do the women do that you don’t?” Sita asked Niall.

“What if we had got the train? What if you hadn’t witnessed that mugging? What if Jay hadn’t been picked up by the police in the middle of a school day?”

“What if your flat hadn’t been burgled? What if your computer hadn’t been nicked? What if you hadn’t met Kat?”

Kat purred. “Do I make you feel reckless, darling?”

“Wrecked, more like it,” Niall said. “Anyway, those aren’t what ifs, they’re why nots. That bloody larcenist took so much of my stuff I had nothing to lose, did I? No, I’m right. The men do the why nots, and the women do the what ifs.”

“So why not do a what if for a change and see what happens?” Sita said quickly.

As Niall tried to work out what she had just asked him to do, Sita licked her finger and air-painted one point to her. It was a relief to remind herself that she was still the clever one, even though she was so often drunk with tiredness nowadays. Lila, living proof that even a doctor can make a contraceptive mistake, finally dropped off her breast, and she quietly adjusted her bra. There was no need for discretion; it was just the way she was. Whenever Emmy had fed Maya ten years previously, it had been an orgy of leaking nipples and tangled straps.

“Is she asleep?” Jonathan asked.

Sita nodded, tucking some of her dark, thick bob behind her ear and revealing one of the curls of gold he had given her the day Lila was born. Jewelry on the birth of a child, flowers on wedding anniversaries, a savings account for godchildren. Jonathan did everything by a book that Niall didn’t even know how to open. And here they all were, banking on the fact that their differences were their strengths.

“Jaysus, Sita, that baby could suck for Britain. Ye must be knackered.”

“What’s with all this sudden Irishness then, Niall?” Kat asked, inspecting her toenails. Jonathan wasn’t sure it was exactly what he wanted to watch at suppertime, but there were clearly going to have to be compromises. “Are you hoping for Celtic solidarity or something? E-mail me when he starts chewing straw, will you?”

When she said things like that, even Niall was relieved she hadn’t chosen to go the whole Cornish hog. She had kept them all guessing, though. Yes, she would come, no she wouldn’t, yes she would. In the end, she had agreed to keep her lucrative modeling work going, and live with him at weekends and holidays only. It seemed a perfect compromise.

“What’s that?” Emmy asked, watching her fiddle with a piece of blue foam.

“A toe separator. Do you want me to get you one?”

“I don’t paint my toenails.”

“So I noticed. Maybe you should start.”

Niall waved his cigarette in the air. “No, no, no, stop. A toe separator is not an essential for simple living.”

“It is in my book.”

“Well, your book is too feckin’ high-maintenance by half.”

“Speak English, sweetie. Pass me a candle. I need more light.”

“Okay, Sita. Here’s me doing a what if. Which single thing that went wrong that morning conspired to save us?” he persisted. He was going to have the train-crash conversation again if it killed him.

“The milk tanker!” all four others shouted, as they’d done a hundred times, but even as they did, the image of the colossal steel beast, nose in hedge and tank skewed across the narrow country lane, still shook them.

“It should never have tried to pull over to let us pass.”

“It was my fault. I made our cabbie flash his lights. I remember asking him.”

“Ah, you’re all obsessed with the milk tanker. That’s just because it was a big fecker. What about all the other little twists and turns?”

“Five minutes, tops. The milk tanker delayed us by fifteen,” Jonathan said.

Emmy went to fill his glass but his hand planed automatically over the rim.

“Go on, you’re not going anywhere, not for three months, anyway,” she coaxed.

He relented by showing her an inch with his fingers as the discussion rolled on, and only Sita saw him rub his chest with the flat of his hand. It didn’t make any difference how many times she told him the tightness was just stress. The one shelf that ran round the crumbling walls of their antiquated bathroom upstairs was already piled with his mail-order vitamins and health supplements.

“Except they weren’t the crucial minutes,” Niall argued, dragging on his cigarette as if his life depended on it. Sita realized Jonathan had been rubbing his chest in anticipation of smoke. “How many times has your plane left late and made up the delay during the flight? It wasn’t the milk tanker. It’s too obvious.”

“Why did it jack-knife, then?”

“Because the roads were wet, for feck’s sake.”

“Niall, that’s three fucks in the last two minutes,” Kat pointed out. “That shows you think you’re losing the argument.”

“Or that I’m frighteningly sexually prolific.”

“Hello? This is your live-in partner speaking.”

Emmy wanted to laugh. They’d only known each other for nine weeks.

“Not anymore, you’re not.”

“I will be when it suits me. That’s the beauty of a recreational relationship.”

“A what?”

“A recreational relationship. Didn’t you know? That’s what our sort of arrangement is called.”

“By who? Cosmofeckinpolitan?”

“I wouldn’t bother finding work, Sita. Just go out and buy a swear box.”

“Actually,” Niall said, “I think one of the rules for the next three months should be that we use the word ‘feck’ a bit more.”

“You couldn’t use it a bit more. You’d never finish a sentence.”

“It’s very therapeutic, the linguistic combination of an ‘f’ followed by a hard stop. And you know, we could all do worse than give way to the occasional feck.”

Niall winked at Kat. Jonathan raised his eyebrows at Sita. Emmy looked at the floor.

“That’s so eighties,” Kat said. “Hasn’t anyone told you no one cares about the word anymore? It’s lost its power to shock. It doesn’t sound cool these days, it just sounds goddamn rude. And you must try harder not to do it in front of the children. Don’t let him do it in front of the children, Emmy.”

“I don’t,” Niall said.

“You did today.”

“Come back and sit on my lap, you bossy tart.”

“My nails aren’t dry yet.”

“So, had we already missed the train by the time the cabbies made their detour?”

“Why did Sara get married on a Sunday not a Saturday like normal people? When else would we be busting a gut to get back to London on a Monday morning, for God’s sake?”

“Why didn’t we drive?”

“And if we weren’t meant to be dead, how come we booked those train seats in the first place?”

“That’s what I mean,” Niall said, flinging his arms into the air and letting his Camel cigarette drop its ash behind him. “Which link mattered? Which one was it that saved us?”

“The milk tanker!” they all shouted again, as he leaned back in his chair and inhaled again, grinning through the smoke like the devil’s favorite advocate.

“Right,” Emmy said, banging her hands on the table, “that’s it. That really was the last time, okay? The last.”

She supposed they had to go through it all again, to mark the remarkable just one more time. Eight weeks ago, the prospect of an evening like this hadn’t existed in so much as a flicker of a candle flame. Eight weeks ago, it was going to be just her and Maya. But then, of course, her fairy godfather had made them miss the train.

Prodding a puddle of freshly spilt wax, she reminded herself that the candles were hers. So were the candlesticks, the drawers and cabinets she’d found them in, the tables and sideboards—and even the bricks and mortar, for that matter. Or they would be for the next three months. That was the deal. If things worked out the way they should, Bodinnick would eventually belong to them all. The finer details of who would own what stake rested with the sale of Sita and Jonathan’s home in Fulham, but the general idea was that they would probably end up owning half, Emmy would own the other half, and Niall would buy into her share with whatever he thought he could afford, which might be anything between ten and two hundred thousand, depending on the state of his wine-importing business. It was a loose arrangement, to say the least, and that was the way she liked it. The small print didn’t interest her. What was hers was theirs.

She picked up some stapled sheets and fanned them in the air. Everyone knew what they were. On the long and boring journey down, Maya had given them a title sheet. Rules, she had written in neon gel pen.

“Right, to shut you up about the bloody train crash, I’m going to read these out.”

“Could you add a ban on toe separators?” Niall asked.

“And put in swear boxes,” Kat said.

“Of course. We can have monthly subscriptions to Cosmofeckinpolitan if we want. This is a work in progress, remember?”

“No, thanks. It takes me all month to get through What feckin Car,” Niall said.

Everyone had to admit it, he was good at making them laugh.

“Are you sitting comfortably?”

“Not yet.” Niall lifted a buttock from his chair.

Well, he made them laugh sometimes.

“Are you sure you want to come down at weekends, Kat?”

“I’m sure.”

“’Course she does,” he said, winking across her.

Emmy cleared her throat as Kat pushed her chair back, moved across and settled her tiny frame back on Niall’s.

“Toes dry, are they, darling?”

She nodded and pulled his arms round her waist again. He put his hand up her shirt and left it there.

“So,” Emmy said quickly, “are we all up to speed with the legalities?” She was overconcentrating on the first sheet. She didn’t want to see Niall’s hand up Kat’s shirt.

“What legalities?” Kat pounced.

“Well, just the private mortgage, really.”

“What private mortgage?”

“Oh. Didn’t you tell her, Niall?”

“No, he didn’t,” Kat answered.

“Well, to be fair, we only finalized it yesterday. I thought Sita was going to tell everybody, or maybe, well, I think I assumed Niall would.”

“No. No one told me anything.”

“Oh.”

They all sat there in their first awkward silence, everyone waiting for someone else to break it.

“Emmy?” Sita said at last.

“Oh, well, I mean, is there any need for Kat to take it on board anyway? She’s not implicated in any way.”

“No, but I think it’s important we all know everything,” Niall said, “so that there’s no sense of, you know, someone feeling they have a bigger right to be here and all that.”

“Okay, that’s fine.” Emmy shrugged. “Well, Jonathan and Sita are putting in forty thousand from their savings.”

“Not from our savings, that is our savings. We’re cleaned out.”

“Jeez,” said Kat. “What for?”

“To carry out urgent repairs to the roof, the plumbing and, er, the wiring,” Sita said, waving at the darkness around them.

“In return, they have that sum secured by a private mortgage on the property, to be repaid to them if and when it is sold,” Emmy added. Her voice was soft with appreciation, and yet it hadn’t occurred to her that, in fact, she was the generous one. Giving came naturally, which was a good thing, since taking also could.

“Which it won’t be,” said Niall.

Emmy winked at him. “Niall’s ten thousand—Sorry, you do know about that, do you, Kat?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent,” said Emmy, meaning the opposite. “So Niall’s ten thousand will also go into the repairs, but on a private loan arrangement with me, to be paid back after any sale, once Jonathan and Sita have retrieved their money. Are you sure you don’t want anything in writing, Niall?”

“It is in writing.”

“Well, in something other than felt-tip.”

“No. I trust you.”

“Fool,” she joked, knowing that he was right to, “and on the day-to-day front, we’ve already arranged equal access to a joint bank account opened in Sita’s and my names, with Jonathan and Niall as signatories. Our contributions to it will be reviewed after a fortnight to see if we got the sums right. A petty cash float of a hundred and fifty is already here”—she patted a locked tin—“and we’ll keep it on the top shelf of the Welsh dresser. It’ll be topped up weekly and used for agreed communal spending.”

“Like what?”

“Well, we said routine household expenses, didn’t we? Petrol, groceries, that sort of thing.”

“We won’t manage to feed nine of us on a hundred and fifty quid a week.”

“We might. Well, we’ll try, anyway, and if we can’t, we’ll up it. But we’ve got the bank account too, remember. If we get stuck, we’ll just dip into that.”

“No,” said Jonathan firmly. “That’s there for electricity and heating, phone and Aga fuel.” He held a photocopied version which had appeared from seemingly nowhere but had in fact been pinned—by him—to an old cork board earlier that day.

“It’s soundin’ a bit feckin’ fierce to me,” said Niall.

“That’s only because you have a problem with taking anything seriously. Do you want more? There’s reams of it.”

“Yeah, go on, hit us with the lot.”

“Okay. Sita’s going to use my car for work, Sita and Jonathan’s is going to become the communal car. Niall’s motorbike is totally bloody useless, of course, and we’re going to use buses whenever possible.”

“Oh, we are, are we?”

“I know what this reminds me of!” Niall exclaimed. “Your birth plan, Em. Maya was going to be born underwater to the sound of whale music and you weren’t going to have any pain relief, remember?”

“So how was the epidural?” Sita laughed.

“Bloody marvelous.”

“What’s that got to do with buses?” Kat asked, confused.

“You’d know if you’d seen the back end of her in labor like I did,” Niall said.

“I beg your pardon,” Emmy shouted.

“Buses,” said Jonathan. He could see things getting out of hand. “Where do we get buses?”

Everyone thought of the only one they had seen so far: the one they’d got stuck behind for the final mile of their journey, an ancient hand-painted jalopy with curtains at the window and a motorbike hanging off the back.

“Mrs. Partridge told me today that the nearest stop is at the bottom end of Cott,” said Sita.

“We should grow our own vegetables,” Emmy said. “Fresh peas and new potatoes. From garden to table in an hour. Unbeatable.”

“And in the meantime, we have to rely on local seasonal produce.”

“That’s swede and daffodil pie for the next three months, then,” said Niall.

“Who said anything about pastry?” Sita asked him.

“What about Cornish pasties?”

“I think they count as local seasonal produce.”

“As in year-round seasonal?” Niall asked with one raised eyebrow.

“Exactly. Oh, this is a good one, I don’t remember this,” said Emmy, looking at the biro scrawl on her sheet. “Discounted wine courtesy of PopCork Online.”

Kat spluttered. PopCork Online was Niall’s dot com business, one of the early ones that had miraculously survived. Miraculous not so much because of the famously precarious nature of such companies, but because of Niall’s somewhat unorthodox approach to stock control.

“Did you really say that, Niall?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“Is that okay?” Jonathan asked, looking at the four empty bottles on the table. It seemed a bit generous.

“Sure. I’ve always got bin-ends hanging around, so unless you’re all going to start drinking as heavily as me…”

“That’s not likely.”

“Not possible.”

“Then it’s fine.”

“You’ll never be rich,” said Kat, looking cross.

“Don’t want to be,” said Niall.

“That’s good,” said Emmy, thinking his girlfriend really did know nothing about him. “Do you want to hear more or have you had enough?”

“We want to hear it all.”

“Okay.” But she read the next bit quickly to herself. “Washing machine operational during off-peak times only. Nonessential phoning done during cheap-rate hours. E-mailing and letter writing for longer communications preferred. Hair and beauty treatments kept in house. Haircuts from personal budgets, appointments to be scheduled in conjunction with other necessary trips to town. Newspapers to be read on screen during free internet access time. Books to be borrowed from library. Gifts handmade or ‘promises,’ wine from Niall. All exercise, apart from swimming, must be free. All new clothes an individual expense.” She could remember them writing it in all seriousness in the sitting room at Sita and Jonathan’s one earnest Sunday afternoon. “Basically, we’re not supposed to be spending any money,” she said grimly.

“God, London is sounding better and better,” Kat smirked.

“Anything else?”

“Yes. To avoid chaos in the kitchen, children breakfast first, overseen by Jonathan, Sita or Emmy. Cooking on rota. Weekday suppers to include children, weekend suppers later, to exclude children who will be fed a proper meal at lunch-time. Niall and Kat to have their own timetable if required. Shopping to be done twice a week, with strict list, on rota basis. Laundry overnight, individual’s responsibility. Jonathan and Sita four nights, Emmy and Maya two, Niall one. General household cleaning to be run in conjunction with cooking rota. Family bathrooms and loos individual responsibility.”

“Jawohl.”

“What about my laundry?” Kat asked. “I don’t get much chance to do it in my flat. I’m never in.”

“Your clothes are so bloody small, you can rinse them under a tap in a British Rail bog on your way down.”

“So I can just do it whenever, can I?” she said, ignoring Niall.

“Yes, Kat. No problem,” said Sita.

“I don’t want to have to join a queue or anything. Not if I’m just here for one night.”

“That’s fine. I’m sure we can work round you.”

“Thank you, Sita.”

“Go on, Emmy.”

“Niall, you get exclusive use of the library for your office, and I get the en suite dressing room to your bedroom as my sewing room.”

“Isn’t there another room you could use?” Kat asked suspiciously. “It doesn’t seem an entirely logical choice.”

“You don’t need it for anything, do you?”

“No, I was just thinking of privacy.”

“Well, the only planned nakedness in there should belong to the dressmaker’s dummy.”

“I was thinking of our privacy, actually.”

“Ah, don’t worry about that,” Niall said. “She’s seen it all before, haven’t you, Em? And you’re not really going to be needing a sewing room anyway, are you?” He winked at her. “We all know about you and your great plans.”

“You’re on dodgy ground, mate,” Emmy said.

“Yeah, but so’s your business. How long has it been in the planning stage?”

“We did put something in about privacy, didn’t we?” Sita asked speedily.

“Yes, we said that if you want to be left alone, you shut your door.”

“But an open one doesn’t necessarily mean ‘Come in,’” Kat underlined unnecessarily.

Emmy didn’t know if it was just prejudice, but Kat did come across as a sour old cow sometimes. Young cow. Younger cow, anyway.

“We’ll all have to get into the habit of knocking,” Sita said.

“And that’s it,” said Emmy, folding the sheets. She’d had enough of rules now. She wanted the lovely familial warmth back.

“Oh, what about the final reminder at the end?” Jonathan asked.

“No, there’s no need to go into that,” she said hurriedly.

“Why not?”

“Well, it’s not quite in the spirit of things, is it? You and Sita didn’t have a prenuptial agreement, did you?”

“We did, actually.”

“Oh.”

There was a gunfire of laughter from all of them.

“To be fair,” Jonathan said, “it’s probably the only rule we need.”

“Okay,” said Emmy reluctantly. “You read it, then.” She pushed it across to him.

“Sure. Well, it just says that if at any stage any one of us wishes to move out, we can call a house meeting and the decision to put Bodinnick on the market will be discussed and put to the vote. If the vote is overwhelmingly to stay, that person or persons shall be bought out. And Emmy’s decision is final.”

“How do you call a house meeting?” Kat asked.

“Like this.” Niall cupped his hands round his mouth and shouted.

Lila jumped in her sleep and Jonathan frowned.

“You just have to ask. Make it clear you want us all to sit down and listen to you,” Sita said, feeling Emmy’s foot press against hers under the table. She pressed back.

“As I was saying, it’s all a bit feckin’ serious,” Niall said, grabbing a second set of stapled sheets from the heap of stuff in the middle of the table. This time, Maya had used glitter glue to spell out The Bodinnick Manifesto.

Jonathan had started this one by e-mail. That was when everyone knew they were on to something. If Jonathan, in the cold light of London, could carry the vision of a new life to work with him, so could the rest of them.

Niall handed it to him. “Go on,” he said.

“What, read it?”

“No, eat the bloody thing.”

“Do you want me to? Okay.” He cleared his throat. “The Bodinnick Manifesto.”

Niall coughed on his Camel. “It’s not a feckin’ by-election.”

“The vision. Jonathan Taylor—”

“Conservative,” said Niall in a stage whisper. Kat giggled.

“To cut down the stress, to get out of the rat race, to find the confidence to be different, to find out if I can, to kiss goodbye to the Heathrow Express—Oh, come on, I didn’t put that.”

“Ah, y’see? Typical bloody Tory, ye’ve changed your mind already.”

“Sita Dhanda—”

“Labor, three times, incredibly painful.”

“Yes Niall, it was, thank you.”

“To adopt a simpler lifestyle with more free time to concentrate on the things that matter. To show our children a nonmaterial world.”

“I’m still going with that.”

“Hear hear.”

“Emmy Hart—”

“Monster Raving Loony.”

“Okay, Niall. Joke’s over.”

“To say thank you for everything you all are to me. To provide Maya with a sense of family. To shout from the rooftops that I am living the life I want.”

“Rooftops?” Niall said. “What are you? Mary feckin’ Poppins?”

Kat giggled again.

“Niall O’Connor—”

“Wanker,” whispered Emmy, to loud cheers.

“To never eat sushi again.”

“That’s pathetic.”

“Even you have got to come up with a higher dream than that.”

“There is no higher dream.”

“Kat Rice: To get away from aggression and pollution. To give my mind and body the attention I deserve. To spend more quality time with Niall.”

“Quality time? With Niall?”

“You’ve got the wrong bloke.”

The shouting and laughter around the table became rowdy enough to draw the children down from upstairs.

“What’s so funny?”

“Why are you banging on the table, Dad?”

“Hold on, hold on,” Jonathan said. “I haven’t finished. I haven’t done you lot yet. “Maya Hart: To climb trees. To have a purple bedroom and a dog. To have an adventure.”

“Purple, Mum, got that?”

“Jay Taylor: To leave school.”

“Prosaic as ever,” said Sita, managing to put her hand on her son’s head before he ducked and moved away.

“Asha Taylor: To climb bushes. To have a pink bedroom and a rabbit, a guinea pig and a chicken. To have a safe adventure.”

“You copied Maya,” Jay said.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Hey, we didn’t invite you two in here to argue.”

“You didn’t invite us at all.”

“And you were arguing anyway.”

“He started it.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.”

“And finally,” shouted Jonathan over the noise. “Let’s not forget Lila. This sounds remarkably like her mother to me but it is apparently Lila’s intention to stop waking everyone up too early, to learn to sit up unsupported, to feed myself, walk, dress myself, cook, drive, clean.”

“Did you write that, Mum?”

“No, Lila did, you pillock,” Jay told his sister.

“To the Manifesto,” said Jonathan, raising his glass.

Everyone raised their glasses too.

“Is anyone missing sushi yet?” Emmy asked.

“Oh, it’s okay,” Kat said. “I brought some with me.”