All around, gasps and exclamations and comments, but they don’t register, they simply merge with the clak-clak rhythm of the train, until it is all one long, jolting song. Lea is too tired to pick out the words. Happy tired. She leans against the window, pulls her hoodie over the garish sheep costume she wears underneath.

The train lurches and stops at King’s Cross, people spill out of the doors, stepping on each other’s toes, briefcases flying as they scatter in all directions. So many people, running, all running at 8:45 in the morning. Except them. Daddy never runs. Life should be played leisurely, he likes to say.

The line made her laugh when she first heard it — as if life was a game to be played.

But today they are playing for real.

“Look, a man in an orange rabbit suit! And that girl, she’s half a sheep,” someone says.

Amy stirs near her and pokes her in the ribs. “You should’ve kept the whole costume on, now they’re wondering if you’re a sheep with a hoodie.”

“Hey, I thought you were sleeping.”

“Sleep through London rush hour?”

They both turn to look at their father. He clutches a collapsible tent between orange furred hands, rabbit buck teeth grinning merrily overhead, fast, fast asleep on the packed train.

“Only Daddy,” they say together.

“A sleep-out. Yeah, we did it when I was 12.”

“A sleep what?”

“A sponsored sleep-out, to raise money for a charity that supports homeless people. You know, ‘Simon on the Streets’?” Lea says, looking around the circle of women for a flicker of recognition.

The women are silent. She can hear the soft breathing of Tobi’s slumbering baby.

“Never heard of it,” Bracha says finally. “And I don’t know, it sounds a bit odd.”

Odd, Lea thinks, and I haven’t told them the half of it. The costumes, the farm animal theme…

And she can’t, she realizes, they’d never understand, they’d think she was weird. If they didn’t already.

“Any other ideas for the Mothers’ Guild fundraiser?” Miri asks, throwing her an apologetic look.

No apologies needed, she wants to say, I’m just suggesting something a little more fun than the bake sales, and bric-a-brac markets, and oh, the Chinese auction, always the Chinese auction.

Instead, she fishes in her purse for her diary. She’ll write a shopping list, while the others go round and round in circles and come back to the Chinese auction. The women babble about prizes and sponsors and a chairlady with oomph in her voice. Lea bites the inside of her cheek and wills herself not to laugh.