“That maybe it was irresponsible. Having a child at all.”

And just like that she feels Hannah detach. Feels the morning, with all its promise, drain away from her, drain from them all.

“Cate,” says Hannah, her voice tight, “listen to me. Take the offer of childcare. Have a day a week to yourself. Sleep. And I think you should see someone. A doctor.”

“A doctor?”

“If you’re depressed,” says Hannah slowly, “there are things you can do. You’ve been here before. Go and see the doctor. Take some pills. Get better. Please.” She lifts Tom, places him back on Cate’s lap. “Come on, Cate, nip it in the bud. For Tom, if not yourself. And he’s cold,” she says. “Tom’s cold. Let’s go inside.”

Lissa

THE FIRST DAY OF REHEARSAL IS A CRISP, EARLY AUTUMN DAY and Lissa rises early. In the shower she hums, sounding out her voice, running her tongue round her jaw. She chooses her outfit with care: a loose cotton shirt open at the neck, jeans, and a necklace of red beads. No makeup other than a touch of mascara. She pins up her hair and throws on a man’s oversized jacket and winds a light scarf around her neck. She is nervous, but it is a manageable feeling, a sharpening, a slight fizz at the edge of things as she walks across the park, enjoying the pull of the morning tide, the fast pace of the walkers, the bikes. The air is clean, the leaves of the plane trees catch the early sun.

As she walks she speaks to herself in a low voice, running over the speeches she has half memorized. They are using the Michael Frayn version, and she is coming to know it well already, to internalize its cadences, imagining herself in the part: Yelena, the young wife of an old man, buried in her marriage and thirsty for life.

Yelena: You know what that means, having talent? It means being a free spirit, it means having boldness and wide horizons . . . he plants a sapling, and he has some notion of what will become of it in a thousand years’ time; he already has some glimpse of the millennium. Such people are rare. They must be loved . . .

She is interested to see who is playing Astrov, the doctor with whom her Yelena will fall in love. Interested to see who is playing all of the parts she has been reading to herself over and over for the last three weeks.