It was a photo of three children in school uniforms. It was obviously a posed shot because they were sitting in a row on a step with their elbows on their knees and their chins in their hands. There were two girls and a boy.

The boy was in the middle. He had messy white-blond hair, ears that stuck out, and a turned-up nose. He had tipped his head to one side and clenched his teeth together in a grotesque grimace that Alice knew was meant to be a smile. She knew this because she must have seen at least a hundred photos of her sister pulling an identical face. “Why do I do that?” Elisabeth would say sadly when she saw the photo.

On the boy’s left side was a girl who looked older. She was a chunky, stolid-looking girl with a long face and straight brown hair in a ponytail that had fallen over one shoulder. She was slumped forward in a way that clearly said, “I do not want to sit in this ridiculous position.” Her mouth was compressed in a straight line and she was looking grimly off to the right of the camera. She had a nasty graze on one chunky knee, and both her shoelaces were undone. There was nothing remotely familiar about her.

To the boy’s right was a little girl with blond curls bunched together in fat pigtails on either side of her head. She was smiling ecstatically with a dimple denting her cherubic cheeks. There was something stuck to both the shirt collars of her uniform; Alice held the photo up closer. They were shiny dinosaur stickers just like the one on Alice’s own shirt.

Alice turned the photo over and saw there was a typewritten label stuck to the back. It said:Children (left to right): Olivia Love (Kindergarten), Tom Love (Yr4B), Madison Love (Yr5M)

Parent: Alice Love

Number of copies ordered: 4

Alice turned the photo back over and looked again at the three children.

I have never seen you before in my life.

There was a distant buzzing sound in her ears; she could feel herself breathing short, shallow breaths, her chest rising and falling quickly as if she were at high altitude. (Oh, it was so funny! So, I’m looking at this photo, right, of three kids? And it’s my own children! And I don’t even recognize them! Hilarious!)

Another nurse Alice hadn’t seen before came into the room, glanced briefly at Alice, and picked up the clipboard at the end of her stretcher. “I’m so sorry we’re still keeping you waiting. The powers that be assure me it should only be a few more minutes and we’ll have a bed free for you. How are you feeling?”

Alice put crazily trembling fingertips to her head. “The thing is, I don’t actually remember the last ten years of my life.” There was a quiver of hysteria in her voice.

“I think we might try and organize a nice cup of tea and sandwiches for you.” The nurse looked at the photo lying in Alice’s lap and said, “Your kids?”

“Apparently,” said Alice, and gave a little laugh that turned into a sob, and the taste of tears in her mouth felt so familiar, and the thought came into her head, Stop it! I’m so sick, sick, sick of crying, but what did that mean, because she hadn’t cried like this since she was little, and anyway she couldn’t stop even if she wanted.

Chapter 6

Elisabeth’s Homework for Dr. Hodges

In the afternoon tea break I called Ben on his mobile and he said, over a babble of noise that sounded like twenty kids, not three, that he’d picked up the children from school and he was driving them to their swimming lessons now. He said he’d been informed it was impossible to miss even one swimming lesson because Olivia had just become a crocodile or a platypus or something and I heard Olivia’s gurgling laugh as she shouted, “A DOLPHIN, silly billy!” I could also hear Tom, who must have been in the front next to Ben, saying monotonously, “You are now five kilometers OVER the speed limit, you are now four kilometers OVER the speed limit, you are now two kilometers UNDER the speed limit.”

Ben sounded stressed, but happy. Happier than I’ve heard him in weeks. Picking up the children and driving them to swimming is not something Alice would normally ask (trust) us to do and I knew that Ben was probably exhilarated by the responsibility. I imagined how people glancing over at traffic lights would see a standard dad (maybe a bit bigger and bushier than average) with his three kids.

If I think too much about this, it will hurt a great deal, so I won’t.

Ben told me that Tom had just spoken on the mobile to Alice and according to Tom she didn’t say anything about falling over at the gym and she sounded “just like Mum except maybe ten to fifteen percent grumpier than usual.” I think he’s learning percentages at school right now.

Weirdly, I’d never even thought of just ringing Alice’s mobile myself. So I immediately dialed her number.

When she answered, she sounded so strange that I didn’t recognize her voice and thought that a nurse must have picked up the phone. I said, “Oh, sorry, I was just trying to reach Alice Love,” and then I realized it was Alice and she was sobbing, “Oh, Libby, thank God it’s you!” She sounded terrible, hysterical really, babbling about a photo and dinosaur stickers and a red dress that couldn’t possibly fit her but was really beautiful and being deliriously drunk in a gym and why was Nick in Portugal and she didn’t know if she was pregnant or not and she thought it was 1998 but everybody else said it was 2008. It gave me a fright. I can’t remember when I last saw or heard Alice cry (or call me Libby). Even though she has had so much to cry about over the past year, she doesn’t cry in front of me, and there is such a horrible polite restraint in all our conversations recently, with both of us putting on these oh-so-reasonable voices.