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months,’ says Ruth. ‘I remember it well.’
    Louis starts to bang his rattle on the table in front of him.
    ‘Noisy baby,’ says Kate, primly sipping her juice.
    ‘When are you going back to work?’ asks Ruth. Shona teaches English at the university, which is how they first met.
    Shona pulls a face as she reaches down to pick up Louis’ dropped rattle.
    ‘I’m not sure I want to go back.’
    Ruth stares at her friend. She remembers the emotional intensity of those months alone with your baby. She remembers the feeling that work was another world, one that you are no longer equipped to enter. But not to go back at all?
    ‘I remember feeling like that,’ she says. ‘But, when I went back, it felt great. I felt like I was a person again.’ She had almost cried with happiness when she saw her office again, but she’s not going to tell Shona that.
    ‘I don’t know,’ says Shona. ‘I just love being with Louis. I’m so enjoying him.’
    Maybe it’s different if you have another adult at home, thinks Ruth. Mind you, that other adult is Phil.
    ‘What does Phil think?’ she says.
    ‘Oh,’ says Shona dismissively. ‘He thinks I should go back. He says we need the money. He says we should get a childminder. He’s always going on about how well you cope.’
    ‘He is?’
    Part of Ruth is gratified to hear this. She has tried hard not to let her motherhood intrude on her work or to burden her colleagues with excuses about illness or child-minding problems. But on the other hand—
cope
? How many men are complimented on how well they ‘cope’ with fatherhood?
    ‘Well, you’ve got a while to decide,’ says Ruth. ‘You can take a year now if you want.’
    ‘But you only get paid maternity leave for six months,’ says Shona. ‘Honestly, I never knew Phil was such an old woman about money.’
    But Shona didn’t know Phil that well at all, thinks Ruth, until she moved in with him. They had been lovers for some time but, as we all know, lovers are more attractive than husbands or boyfriends. Phil probably made efforts to disguise his chronic stinginess (a standing joke in the department) when he was only seeing Shona twice a week, stolen hours in a country pub or in the office after dark. Even so, Ruth bets that he kept the receipts.
    ‘Louis is gorgeous, though,’ says Ruth, retreating to a safer topic. ‘I can see why you don’t want to leave him.’ Shona puts her son on a rug on the floor, propped up by cushions. Kate sits next to him and solemnly shows him how to work his shape sorter. Louis doesn’t seem that interested in shape-sorting himself. He just sits and smiles goofily at Kate.
    ‘Isn’t it sweet?’ says Shona. ‘Maybe they’ll get married.’
    ‘Maybe,’ says Ruth drily. ‘Maybe they’ll achieve something neither of their mothers managed.’
    Shona looks sideways at Ruth. She knows about Nelson but is usually very good about ignoring Kate’s parentage. Like most of Ruth’s friends, she acts as if Kate sprang fully formed from the maternal egg.
    ‘How’s Max?’ she asks.
    ‘OK,’ says Ruth. ‘He’s down next weekend.’
    ‘We should get babysitters and go out, the four of us,’ says Shona.
    ‘We should,’ says Ruth. She has no desire to see more of Phil than she has to but maybe it would be good for them to socialise with another couple. It might make her relationship with Max seem more like a relationship.
    ‘We might be going on holiday,’ says Ruth.
    ‘You and Max?’
    ‘No.’ Ruth realises that this isn’t what she meant. ‘Me and Kate.’
    ‘Oh.’ The sideways glance again. ‘Where?’
    ‘Blackpool. Well, Lytham.’
    She tells Shona about Dan and about the invitation from Pendle University. She doesn’t tell her about the text message or about the possibility that the fire might not have been an accident. Shona listens, entranced. She always loves a story. Her subject is English literature, after all.
    ‘Oh you must go,’ she says. ‘Kate would