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great, Mother Superior. Is one going to start singing ‘Climb Every Mountain’ now?”
    “Teas up!” I trilled. “And I’ve got homemade muffins!”
    Daniel and Mark looked at each other, more horrified than by anything before.
    —
    The three of us sat at the kitchen table, struggling to eat the, by my own admission, disgusting Crossover broccoli muffins.
    Suddenly, Mark started choking. He pulled a large piece of glass out of his mouth.
    “What’s this?”
    “Oh shit! I broke a glass when I was doing the mixture. I thought I’d got it all out. Are you all right?”
    Daniel leapt up and SPAT his muffin into the sink. He picked up another piece of broken glass and held it out. “I feel like my life is disintegrating before my very eyes. Is this what parenthood is? Vomit in my car? Chocolate on my suits? Broccoli-and-glass-chip muffins in my stomach?”
    “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I thought I’d got it all out. I’ve just made a terrible mess of everything. I can’t do this.”
    I slumped at the table, head on my arms. I just wanted it all to stop. Apart from the baby.
    Mark came over and put his arms round me. “It’s all right, it’s all right. You’re doing fantastically well.”
    “You haven’t actually killed us, “said Daniel, freakishly clearing out the sink. “Unless powdered glass is at this moment puncturing all our intestines.”
    “It has actually been a near-death experience for us all,” said Mark, starting to laugh.
    “So now can we all sort of unite and pull together?” I said, hopefully.
    “Push, surely,” said Daniel.
    —
    Everyone settled down then, and we drank our tea nicely like the sort of well-behaved family you see in old-fashioned movies from the 1950s: unlike modern TV shows where the children snap out sassy and slightly insulting lines at their gay parents written by sophisticated writers’ rooms in Hollywood.
    “What about our parents?” I said, suddenly sitting bolt upright.
    “We have to tell them, of course,” said Mark.
    Oh God, I thought. The village! Grafton Underwood! Admiral and Elaine Darcy! Mum, Una and Mavis Enderbury!
    “Parents?” said Daniel.
    “Yes,” said Mark. “Do you have parents?”
    “Not that I’m ever going to tell.”
    “Interesting. It is the Queen’s visit rehearsal next Saturday, Bridget. I understand you are planning to be there?”
    “You mean we should tell them there?” I said, horrified.
    “Separately, privately, of course.”
    “You can’t tell I’m pregnant yet, can you? I can’t go if everyone in the village is going to notice.”
    There was a slight pause, then they said:
    “No.”
    “Nope.”
    “Can’t tell at all.”
    “I seriously think the baby’s going to come out flat, Jones.”

E IGHT

F AMILY V ALUES

S ATURDAY 28 O CTOBER
    Grafton Underwood: Queen’s visit rehearsal. “Family values!” Mark’s father, Admiral Darcy, was bellowing into the microphone.
    The entire village was assembled, together with the Lord Mayor, and representatives from the Palace, who were checking out the scene.
    “Family Values and Village Life shall be our theme,” the Admiral thundered on, “as, for the first time in her thousand-year history, the Ethelred Stone, and its gracious vestibule, the village of Grafton Underwood, welcomes a reigning monarch to our strawy rooftops!”
    “Strawy rooftops!” said Uncle Geoffrey, way too loudly. “Is he on the sauce already?”
    I glanced at Mark, on the other side of the group, who was trying not to laugh. We had arrived in Mark’s car, driven by his driver, but I’d jumped out first, round the corner from Mum’s house, so we could appear to arrive separately. We didn’t want to set everyone off just yet.
    “And today,” Admiral Darcy went on, “we are honoured to have with us the Clerk to the Northamptonshire Lieutenancy here to approve our plans for the visit of Her Majesty, and guide us in our protocol for the Reception Committee, and for the seating