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three-year-old and an uppity shoe-fitter.
    Olivia is coveting the shiny shoes. Melanie is barely concealing her disapproval, looking at her watch, and tapping the shoehorn on her long skinny leg. But like Steve is always saying, you have
to pick your battles. And I don’t have to live with Melanie. Thankfully. There’s something about her that sets my teeth on edge.
    ‘We’ll have the shiny ones.’
    There. That is decisive. I think.
    Olivia claps her hands and gushes you’rethebestmummyinthewholewideworld . Imo gurgles in her bucket, kicking her chubby legs like a bulbous frog. Melanie is not so appreciative; she
tuts, smoothing her long blonde hair before beginning to laboriously repack the discarded shoes in the boxes.
    ‘You wait till you’re a mother,’ I tell her, before I can stop myself. ‘Things will seem completely different.’
    Melanie looks doubtful. But then I would’ve looked doubtful at that age. In my early twenties. With my adult life in front of me and London all around me. I never for one minute thought
about having children. And then, when the time eventually came, and the prospect of kids edged into our radar, I never thought about the consequences of having children. Real children. Snotty,
pooey, crying, three-dimensional children. I didn’t see beyond the holding-the-baby-in-your-arms stage. I didn’t consider the fact they would keep growing. They would have their own
opinions. They would voice their own opinions. Or that those opinions would be more forceful than mine. (I should’ve known though, growing up with Martin.) But what I never foresaw was that
life could be so fragile. That a baby could be here one minute, and gone the next.
    ‘I suppose you’re going to let her wear them home,’ Melanie sighs.
    I want to tug her long blonde hair. Pull out great chunks of it and scatter it over the plush red Dulwich carpet. What does she know about anything?
    It takes much self-control to muster up my primmest curate’s wife voice and push out a basic response through clenched teeth: ‘Yes. Please.’
    I pay for the shoes ( How much?), not convinced I’m doing the right thing but Olivia is doing her very own version of Riverdance , a big smile on her face, and there’s no
way I’m giving high-and-mighty Melanie the satisfaction of back-tracking.
    I am a good mother. I make sure they have their five portions and a bath every day. I sew nametags on their school clothes. I read with them. Even Imo. I try to remember to tell them I love
them. I teach them right from wrong, their Ps and Qs, their table manners. I even pray with them sometimes though technically that’s Steve’s department seeing as I’m still not too
sure about this whole God thing.
    So why does this pair of shiny shoes make me feel like such a failure?
    The reason I chose to come to Dulwich – the real reason – was so that I can call round at Claudia’s. I had a text message this morning.
    Back home. Sorry to land family on you at Xmas. Wot a mess. Missing J loads. Is he OK? Can u come & see me? Don’t tell Martin. Cxxx
    How can I not go? I feel bad for Claudia, even worse that I couldn’t bring Jeremy as Martin had a rare moment of guilt and whisked him off to the golf course. He persuaded Steve and Rachel
to accompany them. Anything to avoid being on his own with his son and having to explain his actions to him. Wimp. Wuss. Scaredy-cat stinker.
    After getting over her initial disappointment that Jeremy is not with us, Claudia pulls herself together and becomes the hostess-with-the-mostest. She would make an admirable
vicar’s wife. If she believed in God.
    ‘Nice shoes, Olivia,’ Claudia says, showing us into the vast kitchen at the back of their double-fronted Victorian villa. She clacks across the slate floor in her own expensive
shoes. I think they are called kitten heels.
    Olivia’s new shoes shine as she skips after her auntie, deeper in love with her than before. But, as is her nature and