Sophie ignored the last comment. "Good. Listen, I want you to come round in the morning, okay? Bring my laptop. I didn't have time to pick it up when we went. Bring all the stuff we talked about today and our schedule for the week. I want to sort out exactly who's doing what when."

"Okay, sir," Cal said. "Should we synchronize our watches, sir?"

Sophie did not laugh. She did not like it when Cal called her "sir." "Any other calls?" she said.

"Jake called to see if we'd heard from you. He asked me for your home number, and I said it was against company policy and all that, but he said what about your cell phone number, and I said I supposed that would be okay if it was really important, and he said he needed to talk to you about the party. So I offered to see if I could help him, but he said he'd just give you a ring and see how you were doing, so he clearly fancies you even though you've just become a single mother. I think you should marry him. He's a keeper."

Sophie gave a short, hysterical laugh. "Look, Cal, I need to get my head round this. Carrie's gone, and her children are in my living room. I can't think about any of that stuff-so please, for my sake, just give it a rest, will you?"

There was short pause.

"I'm sorry, Soph," Cal said, his voice softened. "You know me, the more complicated and emotional things get, the bigger and more stupid my mouth gets. Look, if I can help you with anything, you know I will, don't you?"

Sophie smiled. "I know," she said. "You're a mate. Just come over tomorrow-at lunchtime, okay?"

"Yes, sir," Cal said resuming normal service. "Over and out, sir!" And for once Sophie didn't mind.

She listened for any sound of disturbance from the living room. All was quiet on the Western Front except for the faint jangle of the Richard & Judy theme song. She dialed her mother's number. As usual, it rang only twice before she heard the receiver clatter to the floor and the sound of dogs baying and yapping. Her slightly hard of hearing mother had trained her Great Dane cross, Scooby, to answer the phone when it rang. She had not, unfortunately, trained Scooby to take messages or, perhaps more vitally, to let her know that someone was waiting on the other end of the line. Sophie had always thought that was an essential bit to leave out.

"Mum!" she yelled into the phone. "Mum! Mum! Mum!" It was a bit of a lottery as to whether her mum would work out that she was on the phone at all. But the more Sophie yelled, the more the dogs barked, which meant the more likely her mum was to come and see what they were barking at, which usually resulted in a conversation. Usually it did, but one evening when Sophie had called her, she had not answered at all, and after listening to dogs for twenty minutes, Sophie had been forced to go around to her mum's house and let herself in just to double-check that her mother wasn't lying dead in the hallway having her toes nibbled by her pets.

Finally there was a clank and the sound of her mother's voice conversing with the dogs. "Get down, poochies-get down! Hello?" Her mother spoke into the receiver at last. She always sounded surprised when she answered the phone as if she'd forgotten that it had been invented until each time it rang again.

"Mum, it's me," Sophie said.

"Hello, dear." Her mother's voice warmed. "Oh, I am glad I called you. I've got a lot to tell you. Felicity's got to go back to the vet's again-same upset tummy-"

"Mum! Look, I'm sorry, but I've got something to tell you." Sophie told her about Carrie and the children.

"Oh dear," her mother said after a long pause. "How terrible. How terrible."

Sophie agreed once again that it was, she knew it was terrible, but she worried that she was secretly thinking it was terrible for all the wrong, selfish reasons.

"The thing is, Mum, I don't really know what I'm doing, you know. I thought maybe you could come over? Give me some tips? Please, Mum?"

Her mother hesitated, as Sophie had known she would. "Tonight, dear, do you mean?" she said uncertainly.

"Well, it is sort of an emergency," Sophie said. She was disappointed at her mum's reluctance, even though she knew that prying her away from her dogs was near impossible, especially in recent years.

"Please, Mum," Sophie said, resenting that she had to ask for help twice. "I need you."

"All right," her mother said, with slow reluctance. "But I won't be able to stay for long, okay? Mitzy's expecting, you know-it could be any minute."

Sophie said good-bye and looked at her reflection in her dressing table mirror. She looked exactly the same as she always did. Neat and efficient. Calm and in control-so why did she feel as if she'd suddenly been sent into a war zone, thrown in among the bloody chaos without the faintest clue what to do, not even any basic training? She made herself take a deep breath. Managing children was no different than managing any other project. It simply required a broad depth of knowledge, a cool head, and brilliant negotiating skills. That and twenty-four tranquilizers and a large bottle of whiskey. Sophie smiled at herself in the mirror. Things were not quite that bad. Yet.

"It's just two weeks," she told herself. "You'll be fine."

The bedroom door opened a crack, and Bella's bangs peered around the corner, followed a fraction of a second later by her eyes.

"Um, Aunty Sophie," she said ominously. "I think you'd better come and see this."

Sophie instinctively steeled herself as she followed Bella back down the hallway to the living room, imagining the very worst that could have happened. She did not imagine hard enough.

"My sofa!" Sophie cried, ignoring the child who was covered from head to foot in Thai-curry-seafood-pasta. "Oh, my God! My sofa! My...sofa."

Half of her cream leather sofa was now a greenish color, and so were her two faux fur cushions, their once strokable softness now converted into punklike sticky spikes.

Izzy grinned at her. "Tea was all bleugh and yuck," she said reasonably, by way of explanation. "So look, I made a painting with it on the sofa!" Izzy clearly thought that the artwork was something that should impress and not depress Sophie. "Is there any ice cream please?" she asked.

Sophie resisted the urge to weep. She ran through all the legal and moral reasons she knew of why it was not a good idea to throw a child out the window until she was sure she had stopped herself from screaming. She took a deep breath and counted backward from ten just to be on the safe side.

"What have you done to my sofa?" she said, after the countdown with much more control than she felt. "Why have you...ruined my sofa?" She turned to Bella. "Couldn't you have stopped her? Couldn't you have come and got me? I mean, you're the responsible one."

"I'm only six and a half," Bella said, looking irritated. "And anyway, you were on the phone and you said it was okay for us to eat on the sofa and I thought you realized that she might be a bit messy and I didn't know that she was going to do that, did I? I just went in the kitchen to get some more water and when I came back she'd tipped it everywhere and-" Bella stopped talking, and Sophie was worried that she had made her cry. But when Bella looked up at Sophie, her eyes were dry.

"Really," she said, giving Sophie a look of pure recrimination. "Izzy needs adult supervision."

"All right, I appreciate that it's not your fault," Sophie said. She looked at Izzy, narrowed her eyes, and tried a phrase her mum had used on her frequently as a child. "What have you got to say for yourself, young lady?"

Izzy giggled and clapped her hand over her mouth. "Ooops," she said. "I done a wee-wee in my pants!" The child giggled and pointed at a trickle of warm liquid running over the edge of Sophie's sofa and dripping onto her sheepskin rug. Sophie wanted to break down and cry over her sofa, she wanted to weep for her rug, she wanted desperately to mourn her faux fur cushions, but she could not, she told herself. She could not be crying over rugs or cushions or sofa when so far she had witnessed neither one of these children cry over the loss of their mother. Whatever way you looked at it, they had the moral high ground. And children are more important than sofas or cushions. Apparently.

Gingerly, Sophie picked Izzy up and held her at arm's length. This was harder than she'd imagined; Izzy was pretty heavy and, what's more, very ticklish. She giggled and kicked, sending a fine spray of goo all over Sophie's dry-clean-only skirt. Sophie gritted her teeth and thanked God that she had removed her new boots and locked them safely away in her wardrobe.

"I'm just putting you in the kitchen for a minute, Izzy," Sophie told her. "Just while I clear up the mess, okay?"

"Okay!" Izzy said.

Sophie was not reassured. She set Izzy down on the floor by the window and cast an eye about for any more potential disasters. There were no sharp objects in view, no toxic substances, and no box of matches. Everything should be fine, she thought.

"Okay, let's play statues, okay? You stand very, very still for as long as you can and don't move. Okay?"

Izzy nodded. "Okay," she said.

Twenty minutes, two rolls of Bounty, and three bowls of warm, soapy water later, Sophie and Bella had made quite a good job of cleaning the sofa, although Sophie suspected there was no hope for the cushions, which she consigned regretfully to a garbage bag that she put outside the flat's front door in the communal hallway.

"Thank God," Sophie told Bella sincerely. "That Marks and Spencer doesn't use artificial coloring."

"Thank God," Bella agreed. Sophie noticed her food also uneaten but mercifully still congealing on the plate.

"You didn't like it either, did you?" Sophie asked.

"It was rather disgusting," Bella said, wrinkling her nose.

Sophie suppressed a smile. For a small child, Bella had a remarkably large vocabulary.

"I'm sorry Bella," she said. "This is all new to me. I'm not very good at it, am I?"

"No," Bella said. "But you're trying."

Sophie somehow found the energy to get off her knees and stand up again and held out a hand to help Bella up.

"Aunty Sophie?" Bella said, still holding on to Sophie's fingers. "I love Grandma and everything, but I'm glad we came to stay with you."

Sophie felt herself smile and her resolve strengthened. "Really?" she said, warmly deciding to fish a bit further. "Why's that?"

Bella shrugged. "Grandma doesn't have a telly," she said.

Sophie nodded and glanced at the TV, where the end credits for Richard & Judy were rolling.

"Fair enough," she said. "Well, I suppose we'd better go and clean up your sister."

"Yes, before she starts eating the cat food," Bella said.

Sophie laughed. "You're joking, right?" she said.

Bella wasn't joking.

Sophie gave her mum a cup of tea and her very best resentful look. Iris looked offended. "I got here as soon as I could, dear," she said.

"Mum, it's twenty to ten! I was hoping you'd be round before they went to sleep. That's when I needed help the most."

It was shortly after Sophie had discovered Izzy snacking on the dry cat food that she had made what would later prove to be a critical discovery. When a three-year-old girl is determined to do something, she really, really means it.

In this case, Izzy had refused point-blank to remove her fancy dress, even for a much-needed bath. At first Sophie had tried reason and logic to persuade the child out of the dress. But then, as Izzy's screams had grown to eardrum-perforating levels and Sophie had clutched at all the available straws, she had turned in desperation to Bella.

"What do I do?" she had asked the older girl, who was watching with detached interest, her hands clapped over her ears.

"Let her keep the dress on?" Bella had suggested casually. Simple, brilliant, and entirely effective.

A few minutes later, Sophie had washed child and dress in her bath, tipping in large amounts of Chanel bubble bath in an attempt to mask the smell, too fraught to resent the sacrifice.

"She's always happy if you let her get her own way," Bella had observed, sitting on the toilet.

"I'm not letting her get her own way," Sophie had said with determination. "I'm multitasking."

Iris was unrepentant. "I would have been here earlier, Sophie, but Oedipus Rex started having one of his turns, and I had to stay with him until he settled down. I don't want the neighbors complaining again, do I?"

Sophie shook her head. "You should move, Mum. You should sell that house and move to the country. You'd get somewhere much bigger for your money, and it wouldn't matter so much that you have the canine version of the von Trapp family."

Iris sniffed. "I don't know anyone in the country," she said, looking a little hurt.

"You don't know anyone here anymore," Sophie reminded her. "No one wants to come round in case they catch rabies."

Iris sighed. "I want to live near you, anyway," she said wistfully.

Sophie covered her surprise. Her mother loved her dogs so much that sometimes Sophie forgot she was probably fairly fond of her daughter too.

"So what do you think about the cat food thing, then?" Sophie said, deciding to change the subject before they somehow got embroiled in one of their long, consistently unsatisfactory, and ultimately life-draining conversations about what it meant to be a good daughter.

Her mother considered the question for a moment. "I think it will be fine," she said. "There was an article about an old lady who couldn't pay her gas bill in the Express last week. She'd been living off cat food, the poor old dear, even though when the neighbors broke in they found thousands of pounds in cash under her bed."

"Why did the neighbors break in?" Sophie asked her.

"Because she was dead, dear," her mum said, as if it were a stupid question.

"Dead!" Sophie panicked momentarily as she wondered what the maximum sentence was for involuntary manslaughter.

"Oh, no, no," Iris said quickly. "She didn't die of cat food. No, she died of hypothermia. All alone in the world, you see-her children had abandoned her."

"Oh, thank God," Sophie said with relief. Her mother raised an eyebrow at her. "Well, you know what I mean." Sophie sighed and drew her legs up under her on the sofa. She wrinkled her nose. It still smelled decidedly spicy. "The thing is, Mum, I have no idea what I'm doing. I know I'm only having them for a week or so, but right now that feels like a week or so too long. I'm useless."

Her mother reached into her bag and pulled out a book. She tossed it to Sophie, who was expecting something useful on child care. She should have known better.

"Dr. Robert's Complete Dog Training and Care Manual?" Sophie read out the title in disbelief. "Mum! They're children, they're humans-or at least that's what I've been told! How's this"-she wagged the book at her mum-"going to help?"

Her mother pursed her lips. "You'd be surprised, actually. The principles are more or less the same. Sit, stay, come, et cetera. House training. A spot of doggy psychology. It could work wonders, I expect. I wish I'd known all that when I had you. That's the trouble with you cat people. No imagination."

Sophie tossed the book to the floor in disgust. "You must know something about looking after children, Mum, you brought me up after all-more or less."

Iris nodded and looked slightly abashed. "I know, darling, I know, but I've-Well, I've forgotten how I did it. It sounds silly, doesn't it, but it was rather a long time ago, and I don't know-it's just gone out of my head. The only thing I do remember is feeling like I was always getting it wrong. I can't have done too much of a bad job, though-look at you. Successful, independent. Can't get a husband, but that will come..."

Sophie sipped her tea and felt it warm the back of her throat. "Don't want a husband, Mum. Don't want one," She said irritably. "There is a difference." Sophie's mother looked skeptical. Sophie thought about Jake. "And even if I did, I never exactly know when one wants me."

"That's the easy bit, dear." Iris chuckled, thinking that her daughter must be joking. "It's what to do with them after you're married that's the hard part."

"You and Dad never had any trouble," Sophie said.

"Yes, well." Iris smiled fondly. "You father and I always had incredible sexual chemistry. I can't tell you how I've miss-"

"Mum!" Sophie did not want to think about her mother as a sexual being. Especially when she did not think of herself that way.

"All I'm saying is that a woman has needs. I know since your father passed-"

"Mum!" Sophie hissed, afraid to raise her voice. "I don't want to talk to you of all people about 'needs'-mine, yours, or anyone's-okay? I need your help with these children!"

Iris shrugged. "Alex was a nice young man," she said, willfully ignoring her daughter's attempt to change the subject. "He seemed to really care about you, and he bought me some lovely flowers."

Sophie felt the muscles tighten in her chest with anxiety and frustration. She had told her mother time and time again why things didn't work out with Alex.

In the end, Alex had told her he was tired of going out with her. Tired of the amount of effort it took to get her to leave her job alone for even a few minutes and spend some time with him. He said he'd jumped through hoop after hoop to get her attention, but nothing seemed to work. So he'd tried a last-ditch attention grabber.

He'd asked her to marry him.

Crucially, Sophie had hesitated. Not for a few minutes or days but for nearly three weeks. When he'd left her that evening with a ring in a box on her coffee table it was the last time she talked to him face-to-face. She just didn't know what to say, so she didn't say anything.

Eventually, Alex had sent her an email telling her he assumed her silence was a no-unless she wanted to let him know otherwise. Sophie had never replied to that either. She'd let the biggest and potentially most important relationship in her adult life slip out of her hands simply because she didn't know who to be in it. No, it was worse than mere negligence. She had deleted it.

And although her friends, especially Cal, had told her she was crazy to let him go, she'd told them she couldn't keep him, because she wasn't absolutely certain she wanted to.