Cate stays one night a week. Hannah looks forward to her visits, when they will sit and talk and laugh. She has asked Cate to be her birth partner, and Cate has said yes. It will take her an hour and a half to drive from Canterbury, two hours at the most.

HANNAH WAKES IN the night.

It is very late, or very early. It is four o’clock. It is the time at which people are born and the time at which people die. It is dark and she is wet—the bottoms of her pajamas are soaked. She reaches for her phone and calls Cate.

“She’s coming,” she says.

She feels the leap of her heart, the beat of her blood in her ears.

She is coming. Here, in the darkness, a new story is beginning.

Her girl is on her way.

London Fields

2018

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. Lissa sees them as she passes, on her way to the park.

It is warm. She is dressed simply, in faded jeans, an embroidered peasant blouse. Her feet are in thin sandals, and she carries a canvas bag on her shoulder—inside it: good tomatoes, bread, Rioja, a goat cheese covered with ash.

As she enters the park, she pauses on the path, looking over towards the back of the big old house with its crumbling garden wall, the old tree beneath which they used to love to sit. Today, the grass beneath the tree is packed with people, the air filled with the scent of barbecues and cigarette smoke, the blare of competing sound systems. It looks like a festival for the young. She looks up once more at the house, at the open windows, at the distant, shadowy figures that move around inside, then turns and walks on. They have arranged to meet on the other side of the park—close to the pool—the side where the families go. Here the grass is quieter and still green. She finds a spot and puts down an old rug and kicks off her shoes. The grass is lovely beneath her feet. She is nervous. This meeting was her idea—she wrote to them both, on a whim, one morning from the balcony of her small flat in Mexico City, telling them she was coming—a rare visit to England, to London, for Laurie’s funeral, asking if they might want to see her again, after all this time. She was surprised, and pleased, when they both replied and said they would.