Her dignity would have had her close the door. Her pride would have had her walk out. Her rage would have made her speak vitriol at them. But this was stronger than any of those.

She looked at him, waiting to hear what he would say. And realised that she didn't want to hear him say something mitigating. She didn't want him to implore, or dismiss Phil, or apologise, or reason. And so, suddenly, with no desire for explanation with a nook or cranny she could latch on to that would make it possible, once again, for her to stay, there was no need to stay. Not in this room, not in this house, not in this moment. And she could make her body move.

She didn't close the door. Let them get dressed in public, pulling their clothes on with none of the artfulness or pa.s.sion with which they had removed them.

In the villa's white kitchen Nicole made two phone calls, the first to the agency manager on site, explaining that she and the children were needed at home illness in the family; she asked him to book a flight for that evening and a cab to drive them to the airport. Then she rang Harriet.

'Tim?'

'Is that you, Nicole?'

'Yes. What are you doing at home?'

'Been out with a client this morning, got home early there's n.o.body here, I'm afraid. 'S'pose you're after Harry.'

'I was. Do you know where she is?'

'No idea. I'm the last person she tells anything to, you know that.' Tim laughed a small, sad laugh. 'Can I help?' Realisation. 'Aren't you in Spain?'

'Not for much longer. Tim, I need a favour.'

'What do you need?' That was so Tim, instantly calm and efficient, making you feel there was no problem he couldn't sort out. She nearly cried with relief.

Don't you dare cry, she told herself. Not here, not now. She used the shorthand of intimacy, and the language of a long, close friendship. That was such a relief, not to have to say why, just when.

'Picking up. Gatwick. Tonight.'

'Not a problem. Which terminal, what time?'

'Thank you. North. About eight thirty.'

'Is it all of you?' Tim's question was laden with a dozen others.

'Just me and the kids.'

In five words she had given him most of the answers.

She was thanking him again and her voice threatened to break. 'It's all right, Nic. You hold it together for a few more hours. One of us will be there for you. Okay?'

'Okay. Tim?'

'Yeah?'

'Tell Harriet I'm sorry.'

'She'll tell you to shut up. So will I. You just get yourself on that plane and don't worry about the rest of it. See you later, love.'

When she turned round Gavin was staring at her. She couldn't see Phil. Maybe later, when she had figured it out herself, she would explain to him what he had just done to her, to all of them. But now she wasn't sure herself, and she found she didn't need to say anything to him.

She picked up three towels from where the maid had left them earlier that morning. 'I came back for these. The kids are at the main pool, with Tony Brooks.' She handed them to Gavin. She had to walk across the kitchen to do it, then retreated back to the other side. She didn't want to smell him or let him touch her. 'Keep them out of my hair for a couple of hours while I pack. Give them some lunch.' Instructions, not requests. It felt strange to talk to him this way.

Gavin started to speak. She didn't let him. 'Don't let Martha burn.'

'Nicole, what am I supposed to do, stuck here without you?'

In her head, in her best Southern drawl, she quoted Rhett Butler at him. Aloud, calmly, she said, 'It's four days, Gavin. Sort the villa out, work on your handicap, top up your tan. I don't care. I just don't want you in my home.'

Gavin turned to leave, like a schoolboy who had just heard the headmaster p.r.o.nounce his punishment.

He's got no idea what he's done, Nicole thought. No idea.

Cressida Like period pains, just a bit stronger... Rescue Remedy can help you to feel calm and in control... It does hurt, yes, but you feel like you're working towards something visualisation techniques can make a big difference. Bulls.h.i.t. Lies. Propaganda, put about by those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, who are probably men, who don't want the birth rate to fall. This hurts like h.e.l.l. The only thing I can visualise is dying.

Cressida was not happy. She had read the chapter about what would happen when it was time. Only it wasn't time. And it wasn't happening like they said it would. She was only thirty-five weeks. She wasn't ready. She hadn't packed a bag with nappies (for her and the baby) and muslin squares and little vests that tied at the side with satin ribbons, and bootees that looked unfeasibly small, and slippers and breast pads. She hadn't even shaved her legs. That had been getting harder and harder, and she'd given up a couple of weeks ago, promising herself a pedicure and shave when the due date loomed the thought of good-looking obstetricians poking about when she looked like a monkey with pig's trotters appalled her. But there hadn't been time to do it. She remembered endless sit-coms and films in which husbands ran around like headless chickens while the contractions were ten minutes apart and calm nurses told them not to worry, that it would be hours, even days before the baby came. Hers had been painful, debilitating and strong since the first, which had come while she was letting herself out of the front door this morning. There was never more than three or four minutes between them. Long enough to stop feeling sick, to catch your breath, to find a comfortable position to sit in and then wham another one. 'You may find time for a rest, even a short sleep between early contractions, and it is important to conserve energy at this time.' So the book had said. Ha b.l.o.o.d.y ha.

She felt lost in the pain. In a way it was work. When the pains weren't happening, you could see the sense of it in a way: that you were opening up, gradually, rhythmically. Each time you promised yourself that you would relax into it, think about yourself opening up so the baby could get out, let the animal process take over, but then, when it started again, all that sprang out of your grasp, and you were lost in the pain again, disoriented and desperate.

'You've got to relax, darling,' Polly was saying. 'You're going to be exhausted if you don't try.'

She knew Polly was right, but didn't know how to do it. 'I can't, Mum. It hurts.' She wanted Polly to make it go away. She took her mother's hand, gripped it tightly.

'I know, darling. I know. It won't be long. I'm here.' That hand was Cressida's anchor. It held her down when the pain was trying to float her away.

'And me. I'm here too.' That was Elliot, on the other side, helpless and apart.

He had so wanted to be there, when the baby was born. Polly had thought it was a bad idea, Cressida knew. She hadn't wanted Dan anywhere near her when Cressida and Daniel were born. It may have been the seventies, but Polly felt she was delivered fifty years too late she would have preferred to labour alone, with Dan pacing the corridor, cigar behind his ear in antic.i.p.ation, until she could sit up in a white nightdress, legs together, and present him with a cleaned-up baby.

She thought Dan would too, if there hadn't been tremendous peer pressure in the unit where Cressida had been born. Blood and violence and gore just weren't his thing. She wasn't sure he had ever seen her the same way again he hadn't touched her for months afterwards, winced and worried more than she did when they first 'resumed relations' as the nurse called it, and they had both been wordlessly relieved when he had missed Daniel's birth, caught on a train on his way back from some seminar or other.

But Cressida wasn't sure. She worried about how she would behave, how she would look. But she couldn't shut Elliot out of this. It was part of what she had signed up for when she decided to keep the baby. Whatever else was going on, she felt that this baby belonged to both of them. It had been made in love by the two of them, however corny and cliched that sounded, and it should be born into love, and the people who would always love it the most were her and Elliot. That link between them had been created for ever when that first magic explosion of chemistry had happened inside her while she lay in his arms. That earned him his place by her bed now.

Polly hadn't argued. For a moment she had wondered how she would have felt about Jack being there with her, in an alternative universe where they might have had a child. He would have been fascinated, she thought. But that thought was painful, and she pushed it to one side. Jack wasn't here.

But for now Elliot was strangely irrelevant to Cressida. It was about her and Polly and the baby. That was all.

Polly was holding the mouthpiece for the gas and air. She never once took her eyes off Cressida's face. Each time the rising crescendo of pain expressed itself there she fed the tube into Cressida's mouth for her to suck, and they were connected then, by their hands, and by the plastic tube, and by that endless eye contact, with which, wordlessly, Polly told her that she was here, that she understood, that she would make it okay.

Cressida's knees were aching. She had been kneeling, leaning forward, across the bed at home for an hour or more, with Polly on the other side, while they waited for Elliot to come and drive them to the hospital. There they had wanted to monitor her, and she sat up, the elastic belt round her b.u.mp, under her nightshirt. She could see her knees, with red circles bright on them. Elliot stroked her head, but she didn't want that only Polly's hand.

'Let's have a look at you, shall we?' The midwife's face was gentle and kind, but her hands were like razor blades. Her name was Alison, and she looked at the wall behind Cressida's bed, concentrating while she felt her progress. 'Crikey. You're doing brilliantly. You were four centimetres when you came in, and I'd say you're about eight now, which means you're racing along.' She lowered her voice. 'There's a lady along the corridor who's been at it all night, poor thing, and she's nowhere near eight centimetres.' Cressida felt pretty clever. 'At this rate, you'll be ready to push Baby out in an hour, couple of hours, I should think. Good girl. How are you feeling? Still coping with the pain?'

'More like the pain's coping with me.'

Alison laughed. 'Glad to see you haven't lost your sense of humour. It's a bit late for pethidine or an epidural. Think you can make it without? We give medals, you know!'

It didn't sound as though she had a choice, but she was scared about the next bit. She remembered a story her dad had told her about her mum: how half-way through her labour with Cressida, she had turned to him and begged, "Don't make me do this today, I'll do it tomorrow, but I don't want to do it today." She had found that hilarious, when she was a child, and Polly had laughed too. It wasn't so funny now that she knew exactly what her mum had meant. 'I'll try.'

'Brilliant. You're my favourite kind of patient.' Alison looked at the monitor. 'Baby's fine, happy as Larry. I'll be back in a few minutes call if you need me.'

When she had breezed out again, Cressida looked at Elliot. 'Why don't you go and grab Mum a cup of tea?' The concern on his face and his desire to touch her was beginning to irritate her she wanted him to go away, just for a few minutes, and leave her with Polly and the machine.

'Of course. Sugar?'

Polly smiled at him. 'No, thanks. But I wouldn't mind a biscuit or something, if you can find one. I never did get my breakfast!'

'Coming right up.' Elliot kissed Cressida's cheek. 'Don't do it while I'm gone, will you?'

'I wish,' she replied.

Elliot closed the door behind him, and walked to the lifts. Clare was standing there, her back to him, waiting. The down arrow had been pushed. He had forgotten this might happen. His girlfriend was having a baby in the maternity unit where his wife worked and he hadn't worked out what he would say when he would b.u.mp into her. Stupid. But when the call had come from Polly this morning, he had been more excited than he could ever remember. He had put the phone down and hugged himself, trying to keep still. Thinking, today is the day I will hold my baby. Too happy, too excited.

Guilt hit him like a brick. She looked as if she was going off shift. He glanced at his watch. Nine forty-five. She would have finished at eight stayed on to finish a labour where she thought it would help the woman. That was typical of Clare. He registered something like relief that she still did it, still worked longer hours than she was contracted to work, now that she wasn't trying to avoid coming home to him. Her back looked tired.

He wanted to skulk away so that this scene wouldn't punctuate his memory of today and so that he didn't make her more sad. But it was too late. She had turned, sensing a presence behind her.

For a second she was confused had he come to look for her? but then it dawned on her why he was there. She had been waiting for this. Like a soldier, she had planned her defensive position. She had lain awake thinking of what she would say to the ward sister if she was asked to attend Cressida's labour. She couldn't do this, but she wouldn't know what to tell her. His being here as she was going off duty was both a surprise and what she had been expecting. She was relieved to be leaving the hospital. She wouldn't work tomorrow, or the next day. She would make excuses, invent food poisoning or a high temperature. She wouldn't come back until Elliot, Cressida and their baby had gone.

She hadn't known whether he would be here with Cressida. She hadn't spoken to him since that night in the summer in his car, and whatever her mum learnt from Susan she wisely kept to herself. She didn't know if he and Cressida were together. Most mornings, she half expected the post to contain a solicitor's letter but it had not come. But he had come. He was going to watch their child be born. She had watched a hundred fathers see a hundred babies burst forth, wet, b.l.o.o.d.y and red, from a hundred grunting, heaving mothers. She had them in tears with broad smiles, wide-eyed with shock, dazzled with wonder fascinated, horrified, delirious, moved. She had heard them cry, moan, laugh, swear, and declare their love. She wouldn't see his face, and she wouldn't hear his voice. She wouldn't ever know which kind of new father Elliot was.

Elliot moved forward. 'h.e.l.lo, Clare.'

'h.e.l.lo.'

'You're off, then?'

'Yes. I'm on nights.'

'I thought so.'

'Of course.' It seemed a long time since she had gone home, after nights, to their house to find him dressed for work, making her tea and toast, with the bed neatly rearranged for her to slip into.

'It's today, then, is it?'

'Yup.' He didn't dare say anything else. Why would she want to know any more?

'Is it... has it...?'

'Not yet. She's doing brilliantly, though.'

Clare didn't want to know. She turned back to the lift. Mercifully, its rescuing bell sounded and the doors opened for her. A crowd of strangers waited to absorb her.

'I hope it all goes well,' she said, and she was gone.

Downstairs, Clare ran through the wide front doors, dodging the wheelchairs, towards the car park, searching frantically in her handbag for her keys. She got to her car, opened the door, slammed it shut behind her, and laid her forehead on the steering-wheel while she caught her breath. As soon as she had, and her heart had stilled enough for her to feel safe, she reversed out and drove as fast as she dared down the back road to the roundabout that would point her home.

Upstairs, Elliot fumbled in his pocket for change, and tried to make sense of the signs that directed him down labyrinthine corridors to the cafeteria. He was glad she had gone. It wouldn't help any of them for her to be around.

When he got back, with the tea and some limp croissants, Alison was there again. Cressida had changed positions. She had been lying on her side, facing Polly, and the blessed gas and air, now she was sitting up, her hands gripped round her knees, knuckles white. Her cheeks were red, and puffed up with air, and she blew it out ferociously when she saw him. 'Just in time. Did you go to Ceylon to get that tea? Alison says I'm ready.' She was smiling, but her eyes were frightened. Polly was standing up now, the gas and air abandoned behind her. She had one arm round Cressida's shoulders, and a determined expression on her face. This was it.

Oh, G.o.d. Oh, G.o.d. Oh, G.o.d. Elliot issued a silent plea: Let this be all right. Let them be all right. It was almost too real for him now. She might die, they might die, and it would be his fault. His anxiety must have shown in his face, because Polly said, 'Don't worry, she's doing brilliantly.'

'Right, Cressida. I can see a head, and it's got your hair, lots of it. On the next one, I want you to give me a mighty push. Your baby's almost here.'

They all pushed. Polly's lips were set and white. Cressida's eyes widened as the head emerged, glistening. 'Ow ow ow ow! It hurts. It's burning. Ow!'

'You're an absolute star,' Alison was saying. 'I don't think you've torn at all with the head. Don't push now, sweetheart. Pant for me, just for a minute.' She was calm, holding the baby's head. 'Just the shoulders now, and then Baby will be out, and you can see it.'

'I need to push. I gotta get it out. I gotta get it out. Please?' This last was desperate.

'Okay. Come on, then. One more big push. Good girl.'

Cressida pressed her chin into her neck, gritted her teeth and the baby slithered out almost violently on to the sheet. Cressida collapsed backwards into the pillows, crying with happiness and relief and pain.

Alison turned the baby over, wiped its mouth with the corner of a clean towel, and it gave a small, wet cry. Still talking, she wrapped it up expertly, in another towel, and pa.s.sed it to Cressida through her legs. 'You've got a boy. Quite a big boy, considering his dates, I'd say. He looks fine.'

Polly opened her mouth to say something, but couldn't. Tears ran down her cheeks. To watch your baby have a baby, to be allowed to be in the room where it happened, in describable. Love, pride, relief and the reverberations of her own labour with Cressida broke over her. She reached over and laid her palm on Cressida's cheek.

'I know, Mum.' Cressida was smiling at her. 'Look at him. He's beautiful. h.e.l.lo, little man.' She had already acquired the soft, murmuring voice every mother has the change was that quick.

Elliot reached out one finger, smoothed it slowly across the baby's damp head. It felt warm and soft. He buried his face in Cressida's dark hair. She squeezed his hand. 'Thank you,' he muttered.

'Shush.' She pulled at his hand so that he raised his head and looked at her. 'You're welcome.'

Elliot laughed. 'Christ. That was the most incredible thing I have ever seen.'

Alison smiled at the tableau. 'I know. That's why I love this job. Every time is like the first time. A new miracle every day.'

When Jack got home from work that night, the red light on his answer-machine was flashing insistently. He pushed it, then picked up the pile of post his cleaning lady had laid neatly on the hall table. He stopped as he heard Polly's voice.

'Jack, it's me. Sorry. It's Polly. It's Tuesday, about lunchtime. I know you're at work. I didn't want to call you there. I I just thought you'd like to know, well, I wanted to tell you Cressida had her baby this morning. It's a little boy. A bit early, but they say he's fine. Weighed about five and a half pounds, so no problems there. And she's fine, too. It was pretty straightforward, fortunately. She did really well I was very proud of her. I got to be there for the whole thing. It was amazing, Jack. Well, sorry, this message is a bit rambling. Just wanted to let you know, really. Um, she's going to call him Spencer. It's different, I suppose. I guess we'll get used to it. Me and Dan, I mean. And Elliot he was there too. Quite a day. Anyway, I'll get off now. Like I said, I just thought you'd like to know. I hope you're well. Take care. It's Polly, by the way. Did I say that already?'

There were a few seconds' silence before the receiver had gone down, as though there were other things she had wanted to say but hadn't been able to. Of course there were other things to say. Jack knew what they were, and he wished she had said them. His fingers itched to pick up his car keys. He wanted to drive to the hospital and find her. But he couldn't.

He sent an enormous bouquet of primary-coloured gerberas, Cressida's favourite, a bottle of vintage champagne and a blue card that said how pleased he was for all of them. But he couldn't call, and he couldn't go.

August.

Reading Group.

Eden Close.

ANITA SHREVE 1989.