The Names

by Florence Knapp

It’s in these moments—domestic, cramped, the three of them bustling about their flat’s small kitchen—that Cora feels most amazed. Oh. We’re actually doing it. We’re all here, and we’re doing okay.

Tower. Gordon drops back and walks with the women, and Cora can tell they’re enjoying him seeking out their company and asking questions about their lives. He is only adding to their already-high opinion of him. A few years earlier, in barely hushed voices, gathered around an end-of-the-evening table, the other women had declared him to be the ideal husband: attentive, accomplished, impeccably dressed, athletic, a good father. Someone who has a way of making whoever he speaks to feel special. The sort of face you instinctively trust. Kind eyes, an open smile, good-looking, but not dangerously so. Cora had listened, blinking. Because, yes, all that is true. “Basically, we’re all in love with your husband, Cora,” Dorie had said. Another laughed, “And our husbands are probably all in love with you.” But Cora knows that is just a kindness; she is a blank, a void. The

“But since Paris, I’ve kept thinking I might have got it wrong. That maybe freedom is just about choosing the life you want. Even if that life’s in one place, doing the food shop together. Arguing over who forgot to buy loo roll.”