Assia has pulled on the goatskin gloves over her polished fingers and, following Sylvia’s lead, pulls a weed or two from the edge of the bed. “What are you writing now?” she asks.

“I’ve finished a novel, but only for the money,” Sylvia shrugs. “I’m thinking of starting another, and I write poems of course, here and there, when they come. But I’m really just settling back into my routine after the baby.” She pauses, feeling minutely, uncomfortably exposed. “Ted couldn’t very well take Nicky along, not yet,” she adds. “He nurses every three hours. He’d starve.” She lifts an onion thinning, the length of a scallion, and draws it toward her knee, knocking grains of soil from the shallow white roots clumped at the end of the knuckle-sized bulb. “Can you smell it?” she asks Assia, holding the delicately pungent onion under her own nose. “It’s glorious! I can’t wait to cry real onion tears.” Sylvia drops the shoot into the basket and continues thinning the plants.

Assia cocks her head vaguely in the direction of the pram where Nicholas sleeps. “Do you think you’ll have more children?” she asks.

“As many as we can, until we run out of room or I collapse,” Sylvia answers with a self-deprecatory laugh. She lifts her eyes away from her muddied hands and looks at Assia. “Seriously, I’ve never felt so right about anything as having babies. I feel I was somehow born with my children. I think they’ve made everything else possible.” Assia meets Sylvia’s gaze, her thickly black-lashed eyes round, the irises light, wolflike and gray. “Won’t you and David have children soon, now that you’ve settled at Chalcot Square?” Sylvia blurts, startled by the strange intensity of Assia’s eyes.

“I’ve had more than my share of chances for children,” Assia replies, absently pulling a weed and placing it in the basket. She turns again to Sylvia. “You know, David’s my third husband.” Sylvia looks up from the onions, her interest piqued. “I’ve had six, or maybe it’s seven, abortions.”

Sylvia scoots on her knees toward her right, her trowel in one hand, pulling the basket along the edge of the bed and motioning Assia to follow. “Seven?” Sylvia asks, both fascinated and horrified. She squelches her horror; she wants to hear the details. “I knew one girl in school who had an abortion—she’s an actress now. What did they do? How did you do it?”