In the kitchen Hannah took a stool at the counter while Pippa filled the coffee pot. The kitchen was about the same size as the one at Quarrendon Street and had similar double doors leading into a garden that was slightly bigger. While Hannah had managed to wrestle theirs under control, however, Pippa’s was left wild. ‘I’d love it to be a bit more civilised,’ she’d said the first time Hannah had come round, reaching out to snap off a skinny runner from the rose that scrambled up the back of the house, ‘but, you know, twenty-four hours in a day and all that.’ Today a primary-coloured jumble of plastic toys collected the rain that had started to fall about an hour ago, and a ride-on tractor lay on its side, its moulded wheels gradually filling.
There was more chaos inside. Washing up was piled in the sink, and a bevy of old coffee cups had collected on the counter next to a net of sprouts. A polythene bag of muddy potatoes rested atop a pile of Sunday papers that was already devolving into a shaggy-edged nest. Next to it, perilously close to a small pool of spilled orange juice, was a handful of A4 sketches for The Witches of Wandsworth, the cartoon strip Pippa drew for the magazine given out free at Tube stations on Friday mornings. Her other strip, Harrised, adventures from the life of Emily, a woman terrorised by her three-year-old son, appeared in one of the big women’s glossies. The end of the kitchen table bore evidence of potato printing – bowls of drying paint and a jam-jar of cloudy blue water – and a bowl of something mashed was browning on the tray of Paddy’s high chair.
Pippa handed over a mug of coffee and nudged a carton of milk across the countertop. ‘It’s a good thing you rang. I said I’d stay behind and get some stuff done but I got sucked into this straight after they left and I haven’t done a thing.’ She tapped the cover of the thriller lying face down by the side of the chopping board. ‘Have you read any of his? Don’t: they’re like crack. I bought this one yesterday afternoon at Nomad and I’ve barely spoken to anyone since. Dan had a go at me this morning for ignoring his mother.’ She pulled a face. ‘Do you mind if I carry on with this while we chat?’ She tipped a colander of French beans on to the board and started regimenting them into lines, ready to top and tail.
‘Anything I can do?’
‘No, don’t worry. So you were over doing a bit of shopping?’
‘Just a birthday present I needed to pick up.’ Here come the lies, Hannah thought. ‘I quite often use Putney High Street. I like the compactness – everything close together.’
‘It’s good, isn’t it? Much better than having to drag into town. Well, whenever you’re over here, give me a ring. I’m always around at weekends.’
‘Thanks, I will. Same when you’re over our side of the river.’
Pippa looked up from the beans and smiled. She was the one of Mark’s British friends Hannah had immediately liked the best. Pippa and Dan had been at Cambridge with him, and it was Dan Mark had called first with the news that he and Hannah were getting married. All the wives and girlfriends of his friends were nice people and they’d made her feel welcome, but Pippa was the one Hannah felt most connection with. That she didn’t take herself at all seriously was a big part of it. A couple of the others – Marie, in particular – seemed to have had a sense of humour bypass in the labour ward and talked about their children with an awe usually reserved for irascible deities, apparently terrified of being struck by lightning should they so much as glance at a non-organic banana in Waitrose. Pippa had managed to remain human, despite Paddy and Charlie being only one and four.
‘Booze,’ she’d said frankly, when Hannah had asked her secret. ‘The hardest thing about having a baby is the not drinking. I tell you, all I wanted when I was pregnant was a very large gin and tonic, and people looked at me like I was Stalin if I as much as said it. And all these toddlers who are sugar-free, gluten-free – vegan, for Christ’s sake: the first time they have a cup of lemonade and a chocolate biscuit, their heads’ll explode. Sometimes I listen to all these earnest conversations – I know they mean well, I do – but it makes me just want to . . . I don’t know, drink five martinis and stand on the table smoking and flashing my knickers.’
Now, though, Hannah wondered what she was going to say – how she could even start. In the car on the way over she’d rehearsed two or three possible opening gambits but, here in the relaxed fug of Pippa’s kitchen, she couldn’t see how any of them would work. Pippa was sharp: she’d be on to her straight away. And the last thing Hannah wanted was for any of this to get back to Mark. But Pippa was her best shot, and if any of his friends would know what was going on, it was Dan.