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it’s a big plus, he’s my dad’s girlfriend’s brother. I have a suspicion, but don’t quote me, that with Mum that could be an insey-winsey problem.’
    Chloe giggled. ‘If you all married each other, you’d be your stepmother’s sister-in-law. If you all had children, your dad would be his grandson’s er . . . uncle?’
    â€˜I can’t say anything to Mum. Not that there’s anything
to
say.’
    â€˜No you can’t,’ Chloe agreed. ’But that’s mostly because secrets are sexy. Is
he
?’
    Emily put down the bone she was holding and pushed her plate away, all hunger, at least for food, gone. ‘Yes. Oh God Chloe,
yes
.’
    Nina sat in the Polo outside Lucy’s school and watched the stream of children emerging. Mostly they were running, hurtling towards the freedom of the weekend like puppies let off their leads in a park, their mothers trailing behind, weighed down with their children’s bags and coats and buggy-loads of baby siblings and shouting to mind the road. It all seemed such a time ofburden, that phase when the children were so little, always constantly hung round with paraphernalia and worry. Even in the park there was the running in front of swings, bad dogs, evil men who just wanted your back to be turned for a second. Sally’s boys were grown up now and she still worried that they might get run over by a bus or electrocuted in a launderette – so obviously it never ended.
    â€˜Don’t be late out, please don’t be late,’ Nina murmured to herself, feeling anxious. They had to drive to Kensington, no fun on a busy Friday afternoon, for what Lucy’s agent Angela, at Little Cherubs, had described as the ‘go-see of the season’. This, when she’d got Angela to dispense with the persuasive hype and come across with genuine information, turned out to be an audition for a chain-store’s new clothes catalogue. ‘They’re talking Caribbean, darling,’ Angela had persuaded breathily. ‘And terrific
money
, of course. Don’t forget Lucy’s book.’
    Nina flicked through the ‘book’, a photographic CV of the best of Lucy’s modelling work. Some of the earlier ones should be removed now – a few were a couple of years old and Lucy was now changing fast, losing her podgy baby-tummy and gaining cheekbones and pre-pubescent angles that would later become curves. She was a tall girl, and had probably inherited her mother’s tendency to early maturity. Nina herself still recalled the humiliation of being the first one in her class (age eleven) to start her periods. Her mother had told her it was a perfectly natural thing, that she should be proud to have reached womanhood and not to be ashamed of it. ‘It’s not a curse, you ignorant girls, but a blessing and don’t ever forget it,’ Monica had boomed at them when Nina and her friend Paula had been sniggering over Nina’s off-swimming letter.
    â€˜Can I go to Sasha’s?’ Lucy opened the car door, flung her bag on the floor but didn’t get in. She looked expectantly at her mother, large cat-like blue eyes eager for an instant ‘yes’. Sasha, stumpy and stolid, hovered in the background, kicking at stones on the pavement.
    â€˜Oh Lucy, I’m sorry but not today. You know you’ve got an audition at 4.30.’ She smiled past her daughter to the stone-kicker: ‘Sorry Sasha, another time?’
    Lucy slumped into the car, her slanted eyes narrowed and her mouth pouting sullenly. ‘I forgot. I
never
forget. Why did I forget? Have you got my stuff?’
    As Nina pulled away from the pavement, she could see Sasha waving but Lucy ignored her, she’d moved on mentally straight from school to work. She was already turning round and searching through the bag on the back seat for a change of clothes and the essential box of food. Nina joined a trail of