‘Sounds good,’ I said, and I realised as I said it that it did. I hadn’t really been eating recently, besides the vegan (of course they were) salads I pretended to appreciate. ‘But seriously, I’m paying for this. It’s the least I can do.’

‘Ok,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’ Then she said: ‘Eleanor Anastasia Rachel Cooke.’

‘What?’ I said.

‘So now you know.’

‘Eleanor,’ I said, ‘Anastasia?’

‘Eleanor Anastasia Rachel Cooke.’

‘Why do you go by Rachel?’

‘I always hated my name,’ she said, and shrugged. ‘It was so – showy. So extravagant. When I started secondary 41school I decided to become just Rachel.’

‘But Eleanor’s a beautiful name,’ I said. ‘And Anastasia! I mean, not that Rachel isn’t, I just mean—’

She looked at me. That suddenly-familiar, wry, amused, crinkle-eyed expression.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say, and it’s true, I am.

‘Come on, you,’ she says. ‘You’re drunk. Let’s get you home.’

42

Words for Things

We were talking about Monica Lewinsky.

My friend had googled her, some late-night internet rabbit hole, and had realised that, when it all happened, she’d been just twenty-two.

Fuck, I said.

I know, right? Twenty-two.

Neither of us said anything more for a bit. We rocked our buggies absent-mindedly back and forth. Sometimes I rocked the buggy when the baby wasn’t in it. Sometimes I rocked shopping trolleys.

We’d just come from our baby swimming class, thirty minutes of trailing wet bundles in thermoprene suits, who ranged from bemused indifference to howling impotence, around a hotel’s basement pool, singing made-up extra verses to old nursery rhymes. If you see a crocodile, don’t forget to scream!

We were standing outside the hotel’s back entrance, preparing to push our buggies their separate ways. The babies were uncharacteristically silent, glazed and stupefied in the way I remembered being after swimming as a child, although 43they hadn’t exactly done much of the work. It was spring, but cold. My friend tucked a stray hair under her yolk-yellow hat. Our babies, born within a month of each other, were just old enough now that our hair was starting to grow back: soft, stubborn wisps, and the relief of no more frantic hairballs choking the plughole.

Well, my friend said. I want to get home for his nap. So I should get going.

Twenty-two, I said. Do you remember what you thought at the time?

How stupid she was, I think.

Yeah, me too.