Julia started to giggle as she said that. Partly out of shame, but possibly also because it was the first time in ages that she’d thought about how they fell in love. You tend to forget that when you’re in the middle of the life that follows, when you’re going to become a parent with someone, it suddenly feels impossible to remember that you ever loved anyone else.

“How did you meet? You and Ro?” Estelle asked, wine staining the corners of her mouth.

“The first time? She came into my shop. I’m a florist, and she wanted some tulips. That was several months before I went to Australia. I didn’t think much about it, she was… attractive, of course, anyone can see that…”

Estelle nodded eagerly: “Yes, that was the first thing I thought! She really is extremely beautiful! And so exotic!”

Julia sighed. “Exotic? Because her hair’s a different color to yours and mine?”

Estelle looked unhappy. “Aren’t you allowed to say that anymore?”

Julia didn’t know how to begin to explain that her wife wasn’t a piece of fruit, so instead she took a deep breath and carried on: “Either way, she was attractive. Very attractive. Even more attractive than she is now. Not that… don’t tell her that, whatever you do… she’s still attractive! But I, well, I’d certainly have liked to, you know… with her. But I was already taken. But she kept coming back to buy tulips. Several times a week, sometimes. And she made me laugh, out loud, out of nowhere, and you don’t meet many people like that. I happened to mention that to my mom, and she said: ‘You can’t live long with the ones who are only beautiful, Jules. But the funny ones, oh, they last a lifetime!’ ”

“Your mom’s a wise woman,” Estelle said.

“Yes.”

“Is she retired?”

“Yes.”

“What did she used to do?”

“She cleaned offices.”

“What did your dad do?”

“He hit women.”

Estelle looked paralyzed, Anna-Lena appalled. Julia looked at the pair of them and thought about her mom, and how the most beautiful thing about her was the fact that she always stared life right in the eye, and no matter what it threw at her, refused to stop being a romantic. That takes the sort of heart that hardly anyone possesses.

“Poor dear child,” Estelle whispered.

“What a bastard,” Anna-Lena muttered.

Julia shrugged, the way children who grew up too soon do, shaking the feelings off.

“We walked out on him. He didn’t come looking for us. I didn’t even hate him, because Mom didn’t let me. After everything he’d done to her, she wouldn’t even let me hate him. I always wanted her to meet someone new, someone who was kind and made her laugh, but she always said I was enough… But then… when I told her about Ro, Mom saw something in me that made me see something in her. That probably sounds… I don’t know how to explain it. Something she’d experienced once, and given up all hope of, if you get what I mean? And I thought… is this how it feels? That thing everyone talks about? The real thing?”

Anna-Lena wiped some wine from her chin.

“So what happened?”

Julia blinked, first quickly, then slowly.

“My fiancée was still in Australia. And Ro came into the shop. I’d spoken to Mom on the phone that morning, and she just laughed when I said I didn’t know how Ro felt, or even if she felt anything at all. Mom just said: ‘Listen, no one likes tulips that much, Jules!’ I suppose I tried to deny it, but Mom said I was practically being unfaithful already because I was spending so much time thinking about her. She said Ro was my ‘flower shop.’ And I cried. So I was standing there in the shop and Ro came in, and I… well, I laughed so hard at something she said that I accidentally spat on her face. She was laughing, too. So I guess she plucked up the courage, because I couldn’t do it, and asked if I’d like to go for a drink with her. I said yes, but I was so nervous when we got there that I got really drunk. I went outside to smoke, got into a row with a security guard, and wasn’t let back in. So I pointed through the window at Ro, who was standing at the bar, and said she was my girlfriend. The guard went in and told her that, and then she came out, and then she was. I called my fiancée and broke off the engagement. She’s probably been having loads of fun ever since. And I… damn, I love being boring with Ro. Does that sound mad? I love arguing with her about sofas and pets. She’s my everyday. The whole… world.”

“I like the everyday,” Anna-Lena admitted.

“Your mom was right, the ones who make you laugh last a lifetime,” Estelle repeated, thinking of a British author who had written that nothing in the world is so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor. Then she thought about an American author who had written that loneliness is like starvation, you don’t realize how hungry you are until you begin to eat.

* * *

Julia was thinking about how her mom, when she told her she was pregnant, looked first at Julia’s stomach, then at Ro’s, then asked: “How did you decide which of you was going to… get knocked up?” Julia got annoyed, of course, and replied sarcastically: “We played rock-paper-scissors, Mom!” Her mom looked at them both again with deadly seriousness and asked: “So who won?”

That still made Julia laugh. She said to the women in the closet: “Ro’s going to be a brilliant mom. She can make any child laugh, just like my mom, because their sense of humor hasn’t developed at all since they were nine.”

“You’re going to be a brilliant mom, too,” Estelle assured her.

The bags under Julia’s eyes moved softly as she blinked.

“I don’t know. Everything feels such a big deal, and other parents all seem so… funny the whole time. They laugh and joke and everyone says you should play with children, and I don’t like playing, I didn’t like it even when I was a child. So I’m worried the child’s going to be disappointed. Everyone said it would be different when I got pregnant, but I don’t actually like all children. I thought that would change, but I meet my friends’ children now and I still think they’re annoying and have a lousy sense of humor.”

Anna-Lena spoke up, briefly and to the point:

“You don’t have to like all children. Just one. And children don’t need the world’s best parents, just their own parents. To be perfectly honest with you, what they need most of the time is a chauffeur.”

“Thanks for saying that,” Julia replied honestly. “I’m just worried my child isn’t going to be happy. That it’s going to inherit all my anxiety and uncertainty.”

Estelle gently patted Julia’s hair.

“Your child’s going to be absolutely fine, you’ll see. And absolutely fine can cover any number of peculiarities.”

“That’s encouraging,” Julia smiled.

Estelle went on patting her hair softly.

“Are you going to do all you can, Julia? Are you going to protect the child with your life? Are you going to sing to it and read it stories and promise that everything will feel better tomorrow?”