Tuesday, 25 June

Alix stands outside the estate where Josie was brought up. It’s a low-level estate, no blocks higher than four storeys, built around a playground and several winding pathways. Josie appears a moment later. She is wearing jeans and a chambray top with puffed sleeves. The dog peers out over the top of the denim dog carrier.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ Josie says. ‘Couldn’t get away.’

Alix leans towards her with a kiss and feels the same awkwardness emanate from Josie she’d noticed the first time she’d greeted her this way.

‘No problem! Not at all.’ Alix turns to survey the estate and says, ‘So, this is where you grew up?’

‘It certainly is. My mum’s going to meet us in the community hall. Is that OK? Then you can get yourself all set up.’

‘Perfect,’ says Alix.

She follows Josie through the estate towards a squat building at the back.

Inside, a woman with dyed brown hair and trendy black-framed glasses is pulling chairs around a table. She’s wearing a bright-print summer dress and strappy sandals. She looks up at Alix and Josie and beams. ‘Welcome! Welcome! I got some juice in, and some pastries.’

She is not what Alix was expecting. Where Josie is stiff and unanimated, her mother is all expansive hand gestures and chatter. She’s glamorous, too, clearly takes care of her appearance, sees herself as a woman worthy of attention and respect. She sends Josie to make them teas and coffees in the kitchenette and invites Alix to sit down.

‘So,’ she says, eyeing her frankly. ‘I went and listened to some of your podcasts, when Josie told me about you. So inspiring. I would have had a career to talk to you about, but I devoted all my life to this estate. This estate has been my career, I suppose you’d say. Not that I get paid for it. I do it for love.’

Alix turns slightly to look at Josie. She has her back to them, waiting for the kettle to boil.

‘Of course,’ Pat continues, ‘my first question has to be – why Josie?’

‘Oh!’ Alix laughs nervously. She glances again at Josie’s back. Josie has asked her not to mention the truth to her mother about why Josie wanted to do this. ‘Just tell her you’re making a series about birthday twins,’ she suggested. ‘Make it sound harmless.’

‘Well. Why not Josie?’ Alix says now. ‘That was really my starting point. A woman, born on the same day, in the same place as me. I guess it was a case of the “swapped babies” scenario, but the other way round. We weren’t swapped. We went home with the right parents. But what would have happened if we hadn’t? What would it have been like for me if you’d taken me home? If I’d been brought up here, by you? And Josie had been brought up a mile away by my parents?’

‘Nature/nurture?’ says Pat.

‘Well, yes, to an extent.’

‘You know, I studied Social Anthropology for a while. At Goldsmiths. But then I got pregnant.’ She sighs. ‘Had to drop out. So yes, there’s another “what if” scenario for you. What if I hadn’t got pregnant? What if I’d finished my degree? I’d have got off this estate, wouldn’t I, for a start. And then someone else would have to be here doing what I do. Except they wouldn’t, would they, and then this estate would be a disgrace, like the others round here. So yeah, maybe that’s it. I got pregnant for a reason; I got pregnant so that I could sacrifice my ambitions and save this estate.’ Pat trails off and stares dreamily into the middle distance for a minute. ‘Funny, when you think about it. Strange. But I guess maybe everyone has a purpose. Though some are harder to fathom than others.’ She directs this point towards her daughter as Josie pulls out the chair next to Alix and sits down. Alix squirms. This woman, she strongly suspects, loathes her daughter.

‘So, talking of getting pregnant with Josie – and given that you gave birth to her in the same hospital and on the same day that my mother gave birth to me – what are your memories of that day?’

‘Oh, God. I try not to think about it. I was twenty years old. I wasn’t married. I’d been in denial throughout my whole pregnancy – drinking, smoking. I know that’s horribly frowned upon now, but back then it barely mattered. And I didn’t look pregnant. Not until the very end. Was still wearing my size ten jeans. So I just kind of carried on. And then the contractions kicked in and I tried to pretend it wasn’t happening because I wasn’t ready. I really wasn’t. I had so much I wanted to do. I was halfway through this essay, and I wanted to finish it. And I nearly did, even through the contractions. But then it got too much and my mum got us a taxi to St Mary’s and four hours later, the baby arrived. What happened in those four hours is not something I ever want to think about or talk about ever again.’

‘What time was she born?’

‘God. I don’t know. I suppose about eight in the morning.’

‘And how did you feel, when you first saw her?’

‘I felt—’ Pat stops. Her eyes go across the community hall and stare for a moment, blankly. ‘I felt terrified.’

Alix feels Josie flinch slightly in the chair next to her.

‘Just terrified. Didn’t know what to do. Kept going on about this bloody essay. Finished it.’

‘You finished it?’

‘Yes. Well, newborns, they just sleep, don’t they? Finished it. Submitted it. Got an A. But after that … I suppose I just surrendered to motherhood. Let it subsume me. Always thought I’d go back, finish my degree. But’ – she spreads her hands around the room – ‘here we are. And in fact, I’ve probably learned more about life, more about people , through my experiences here than I ever could have in a lifetime of studying books. So, it all worked out in the end.’

Alix narrows her eyes slightly and clears her throat. ‘And at the hospital, that day, when Josie was born, do you remember any of the other women there? Do you remember this woman?’ She pulls from her bag the photograph that she’d tucked in there last night: her mother, in a grey sweatshirt and jeans, her blonde hair cut into a bob and permed, holding newborn Alix (or Alexis as she had been named by her parents) in her arms, beaming into the camera. ‘I’m about four days old here, just home from the hospital.’

Pat glances at the photo and smiles drily. ‘God,’ she says, ‘Elvis Presley could have been there that day and I wouldn’t remember. It’s all a blur. It really is. How old’s your mum there?’

‘Thirty-one.’

‘Not young.’

‘No. Not young. She was building a career.’

Alix sees a sour look pass across Pat’s face. ‘Well,’ she says. ‘Nice if you can plan it that way, I guess.’

Alix blinks. She wants to ask Pat why she didn’t plan it that way. She was clever and had ambitions. Why did she get pregnant at twenty? Why didn’t she go back to university afterwards? But she doesn’t. Instead, she slides the photo back into her handbag and says, ‘Is it OK if we take a look around the estate? You can show me where Josie was brought up, memories, et cetera.’

‘Finish your tea first,’ says Pat, and there’s an edge to her intonation that makes it sound more like a command than a suggestion. Alix drinks the tea and gets to her feet. For half an hour Pat guides them around the estate and the entire half-hour is a running commentary from Pat about her achievements: what she did, when she did it, how hard it was for her to do it, and how grateful other people were to her for doing it. And it is impressive, the sort of life’s work that could ultimately lead to an honour from the Queen, and Alix can picture Pat in a smart two-piece suit and a slightly eccentric hat, bobbing on one knee in front of the monarch, a haughty smile on her face.

But it is clear to Alix that Pat is actually a raging narcissist, and that no child of a narcissist ever makes it out into the world unscathed. This knowledge adds nuance to her view of Josie, helps make more sense of her.

Pat leads them to her flat, where Josie lived when she was a child. It’s on the ground floor, with a flower bed outside. Pat lets them in.

‘Here,’ says Josie, opening the door into a room that is painted pink and dressed for a young girl. ‘This was my room. And this was where I first saw Walter, through the window.’

Alix stands for a moment and absorbs the energy of the room, pictures a young Josie peering through the slats in the wooden Venetian blinds that had once covered this window. Back in the kitchen she touches the top of the dining table. ‘Is this where you were sitting? When Walter ate your birthday cake?’

Josie smiles. ‘Yes. Not this table, this one is new, but yes, right here.’

Alix turns to Pat. ‘Did you know?’ she asks. ‘That day. Josie’s fourteenth birthday. Did you know what was going to happen?’

‘You mean with Josie and Walter? No, of course not. I mean, come on. He was older than me! How could I have thought? How could I have known?’

‘And what did you think? When you found out? You must have felt quite shocked?’

‘Well, what do you think?’ Pat issues this with a note of dark fury.

Alix looks at Josie. Her face is pinched, and Alix takes a breath and stops herself from asking her next question.

8 p.m.

Nathan has been extra nice since the events of Thursday night. Not that Nathan isn’t always nice. It’s his default setting. But he’s been getting back from work early enough to enjoy time in the garden with the kids, to help make dinner, to watch a show and look at homework and chat and be part of the family. He had no explanation for Thursday night, other than that he ‘lost control’. He has promised that he won’t do it again, and for now, bathed in the warm waters of marital harmony, Alix is choosing to believe him.

Now, as they clear the kitchen together, he says, ‘Oh, by the way, I’ll be working from home tomorrow.’

‘Oh,’ she says. ‘How come?’

‘Just have a ton of paperwork to catch up on and no appointments in the diary, thought I’d make the most of it. Maybe I can take you out for a cheeky lunch?’

She pauses. She hasn’t yet told him about her new podcast project with Josie. But she will be here tomorrow morning at nine thirty and Alix will need to explain her to him. She says, ‘I’ve got an interviewee coming in the morning.’

‘Oh, OK. I thought you’d finished your series. Is this something new?’

‘It is … It’s, well, it’s a kind of experiment, I guess. It’s the woman from the pub the other night, the one who was my birthday twin. I’m doing a thing about, erm, birthday twins, you know, the randomness of life, the otherness of strangers, nature/nurture, that sort of thing.’ Her face flushes with the white lie and she turns away from Nathan so that he can’t see it.

Nathan looks at her sceptically. ‘Sounds … different.’

‘Yes. Exactly. Different.’

‘Difficult to pull off?’

‘Maybe. But actually, there’re a couple of compelling things going on with her already.’

‘What sort of compelling things?’

She draws in her breath: A husband who groomed her as a fourteen-year-old child; a narcissistic mother; two problematic children; and brushes with social services. But the compelling things feel precious somehow, half-formed and delicate, not yet ready for the judgement of her husband. ‘Well,’ she says, ‘you’ll have to listen to the podcast to find out.’

Nathan raises an eyebrow humorously. ‘Fair enough,’ he says. ‘Fair enough.’

Alix pulls a full bag out of the bin, ties a knot in it and takes it to the front garden. She stops after she’s dropped the bag in the wheelie bin and stares into the inky summer sky, waiting for some time to pass. She doesn’t want to talk about this with Nathan. Not right now. He doesn’t deserve her confidences. He doesn’t deserve to know every last thing she does.

Nathan has his own priorities, his own secrets. She should have some too.