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down as ground to a halt.
    Her due date finally arrived: 27 April – Tina’s birthday. Natalie sent a card, but decided not to call – just for once, Tina could ring her. But there was no response. Clearly there was no real reason to remember the date, either for the sake of a fading friendship, or for failing to become her first child’s birthday.
    A midwife examined her and said it would not be possible to give her a cervical sweep; she was so far from beginning to dilate she hadn’t even softened up. Natalie imagined her cervix shut up tight, unyielding, stubborn and petrified.
No way is that thing coming through here
. Nature doing its damnedest not to let nature take its course.
    The next antenatal group meeting was due to take place that evening at Adele’s Battersea mansion flat. Over her solitary lunch in the silent house, Natalie realized that she couldn’t bring herself to go.
    She would be the only one who hadn’t yet had her baby. She was about to be overdue. She was heading straight for the cascade of interventions that the woman who wants a natural birth must at all costs avoid.
    She rang Adele and left a message saying she was very tired and couldn’t make it.
    The next morning the phone rang and she didn’t recognize the number. She picked up, thinking it might be a midwife or hospital administrator.
    It was Adele.
    ‘I just wanted to see if you were OK.’
    So out of the five other women, it was Adele who had volunteered for the job of following up on Natalie’s absence.
    ‘Yes, I’m fine, just a bit fed up waiting,’ Natalie said.
    ‘We missed you,’ Adele said. ‘I’ve got lots of food left over from last night. Why don’t you come for lunch?’
    ‘Oh no, I don’t want to intrude.’
    ‘Just come round. You don’t have to stay long. It would be nice to see you. I made pavlova, and hardly anybody ate it.’
    There was almost nothing Adele could have said that would have been more persuasive. Eating had become Natalie’s primary, indeed almost her only, source of physical pleasure – yes, there had been an attempt at sex the other night, with poor Richard toiling under the obligation of trying to induce labour; but that had been inconclusive on both sides, and so hardly counted.
    Also, she could never bear to spurn a gesture of friendship. If Adele, with a three-week-old baby, had found the energy to make pavlova, then Natalie had a moral duty to at least give it a try.
    ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll be there at one.’
    As she hung up she felt unexpectedly purposeful.
    This was what she needed. This was distraction. This might even be
fun
.
    When she got to the mansion block where Adele and Marcus lived, she took a moment to lean on the marble reception desk and catch her breath. She had regretted her decision to walk almost as soon as she’d set off. It wasn’t far, but she’d been trudging along for more than half an hour.
    ‘I’m here to see Adele Lowe,’ she told the concierge.
    ‘Fourth floor,’ he said, inclining his head towards thelifts; his eyes moved over her without registering her presence. She was reminded of what Tina had said:
The bigger her bump, the closer she is to vanishing
.
    The lift had a mirror in it. No wonder the concierge hadn’t paid her much attention: she was big-bellied to the point of sexlessness. She tried to ignore her reflection from the neck down and concentrated on smoothing her hair.
    When she stepped out Adele was coming along the hallway towards her. Her hair was loosely bundled back, and she was wearing a man’s plaid shirt, paint-splattered jeans and flip-flops; the red varnish on her toenails was thoroughly chipped, as if she’d applied it in a concession to feminine grooming, then decided to make a point of neglecting it.
    She held out her hand and, almost without hesitation, Natalie took it. Adele’s touch was dry and cool, and somehow unembarrassing, so Natalie only briefly worried about the potential stickiness of her