Cover

Dedication

For Bridie, when she’s older,

and for Nimmi, who wove me back into the tale.

Epigraph

You do not solve the problem or question of motherhood. You enter, at whatever risk, into its space.

JACQUELINE ROSE,

MOTHERS: AN ESSAY ON LOVE AND CRUELTY

London Fields

2004

IT IS SATURDAY, WHICH IS MARKET DAY. IT IS LATE SPRING, OR early summer. It is mid-May, and the dog roses are in bloom in the tangled garden at the front of the house. It is still early, or early for the weekend—not yet nine o’clock, but Hannah and Cate are up already. They do not speak much to each other as they take turns making toast and tea. The sun slants into the room, lighting the shelves with the haphazard pans, the recipe books, the badly painted walls. When they moved in here two years ago, they vowed to repaint the dreadful salmon color of the kitchen, but they never got around to it. Now they like it. Like everything in this shabby, friendly house, it feels warm.

Upstairs, Lissa sleeps. She rarely gets up before noon on the weekends. She has a job in a local pub and often goes out after work—a party at a flat in Dalston, one of the dives off Kingsland Road, or further afield, in the artists’ studios of Hackney Wick.

They finish their toast and leave Lissa to sleep in, taking their faded canvas shopping bags from the hook on the back of the door and going out into the bright morning. They turn left and then right into Broadway Market, where the stalls are just getting set up. This is their favorite time—before the crowds arrive. They buy almond croissants from the baker at the top of the road. They buy strong cheddar and a goat cheese covered with ash. They buy good tomatoes and bread. They buy a newspaper from the huge pile outside the Turkish store. They buy two bottles of wine for later. (Rioja. Always Rioja. They know nothing about wine, but they know they like Rioja.) They amble further down the road to the other stalls, looking at knickknacks and secondhand clothes. Outside the pubs there are people, in the manner of London markets, already clutching pints at nine o’clock.