Free The Flood by Maggie Gee

and a cause to believe in, the One Way, which made all things right, and a couple of knapsacks, which were filling up nicely.
    Half an hour later, a fox arrived. He shouldered his way through the fuchsia hedge and splashed through the garden, angled, eager. He had woken up hungry, earlier than usual after mating vigorously last night. His eyes were a good deal sharper than Dirk’s, with an extra layer of light-reflecting cells which made his amber irises glow green in car headlights. He had eaten, to date: three worms, two of which he pounced on from more than two metres away, a thin mouse, and a schoolchild’s discarded packet of raisins. The raisins were his favourite, delicious, but it wasn’t sufficient for a rutting dog-fox. Nearer the house it smelled horribly of humans, but the door to the kitchen swung wide open, the electric human light glared out. On the floor, within view, a plump gold-pink chicken blushed beside broken rashers of bacon. Spittle dripped on to the polished tiles as his jaws snapped shut and crushed the carcass.
    Lottie Segall-Lucas was not in her element: a golden Koi carp in ditch-water. On their way into the bar, which was more bar than wine-bar, slopping out cloudy pints of beer to scruffy students shouting at each other, Paul was hailed by a large, softish-looking man who introduced himself to Lottie as Thomas. For a micro-second he looked interesting – curly dark hair, olive skin – but he turned out to be a special sort of librarian who worked out theories of librarianship. Lottie thought, I bet you make them up, and this government gives you money for it. Besides, he was poor; he was drinking shandy. The two men discussed a forthcoming conference whose finer details escaped Lottie. She perked up a bit when the talk became personal. Thomas had evidently been let down by some pretty young woman who found him dull. Lottie chipped in with some words of comfort – ‘But that’s what today’s young women are like! My daughter and her friends are shockingly shallow. If you’ve got no money or looks, you’re a zero. I’m afraid you’ll have to get used to it.’ Oddly, the man didn’t seem cheered up. In fact, he had looked distinctly sulky. ‘Don’t worry’ she added, ‘you’ll be over her in weeks.’ ‘But Melissa left me a year ago.’ And Paul didn’t flirt with her at all (of course she would have discouraged it, if he had been man enough to do it, but still Lottie felt a bit disappointed). The young woman sticking up the silly posters in the café turned out to have been Paul’s daughter Zoe. ‘My daughter isn’t at all shallow. Rather too earnest, if you ask me.’ So was Lola’s shallowness Lottie’s fault?
    Perhaps in future she’d go straight home.
    Some time after sunset, the rain began. It beat against the window as Shirley cooked tea. We had the best of the day, she thought.
    She got the boys into their bath. They were nearly too big to take it together, but they loved bath-times; with their clothes shucked off in a heap on the floor, they turned into one bucking and dipping body, giggling, slippery, deeply intertwined, spouting and gargling for happiness when they weren’t fighting for space or soap. She left them to it, usually, after standing and watching for a bit.
    Sometimes a question came into her head unbidden as she watched her two naked babes at play.
    They were very alike, but they weren’t identical.
    Franklin was heavier and lighter-skinned, in company the shyer of the two: Winston was slighter, more imaginative, with light brown eyes like his murdered uncle; he made up stories; he was sociable.
    Shirley had slept with another man around the time the twins were conceived. She had confessed to Elroy, but in general terms, not making a point of the dates or times, and he had been too upset to ask. They had never mentioned her confession again. But in her head, the questions whispered. The man had been white, but Mediterranean-looking, with olive