The park is busy, full of women with prams and pushchairs, myriad kids in tow. High-pitched shrieks of childish delight punctuate the temperate spring afternoon as the play park fills up with little people, their mothers attempting to have conversations with each other that are inevitably broken as they attend to their overexcited offspring.

‘This is George’s special day… yes it is,’ she coos at him, picking him up from his state-of-the-art pushchair and securing him into the baby swing.

‘Weeeeeeeee!’ she laughs as she beings to push him gently, her heart filling with something close to joy as his little face lights up. He laughs, a cute, gurgling, infectious giggle. Today is going to be his best day ever and if he could, he’d remember it as such. She will forever hold it dear in her heart and memory, treasuring his final smiles and chuckles. His eyes widen as she pushes him back and forth, and feeds him ice cream that his mother would disapprove of. After his stint on the swings she takes him down to a grassy area by the pond where he can see the ducks and swans.

‘Look Baby Bear, duckie ducks…’ she points at the birds on the water as George makes excited, appreciative noises from his pushchair. He really does love the ducks. They watch them together as they glide effortlessly across the still water like little floating boats, but she knows that beneath the surface their tiny webbed feet are paddling furiously like motors. The ducks are deceptive; they make it look easy, effortless, and she suddenly has the urge to throw a stone at one of them, to watch the animal’s distress, ruffle its feathers, cause ripples in the water. She reaches into her tote bag for the bread she had brought with her and begins to tear it up roughly before handing some to George. He puts it straight into his own mouth and she laughs.

‘No, no Baby Bear… the bread is for the ducks.’ She throws some into the water and watches as the birds do a 180-degree turn and propel themselves towards it, racing each other in a bid to get to the bread first; it’s survival of the fittest. There’s a mother with her ducklings, though they are notably older, not fluffy but feathered now, and she bypasses her offspring to feed herself first. ‘Selfish Mummy Duck, ’she says and it makes her think of her own mother and George’s simultaneously.

A woman appears alongside her with two preschool-age children.

‘Don’t get too close to the edge now, Spencer…’ her voice is clipped and stern. ‘Spencer are you listening to me? Let Camilla see the ducks… Spencer! Camilla wants to see the ducks too! Hold her hand… that’s it, hold your sister’s hand.’

The woman briefly glances at her with the faint acknowledgement of a smile, a silent code of recognition between mothers that she’s observed, like they’re all secretly thinking the same things.

‘Beautiful day,’ she remarks to the woman.

‘Lovely isn’t it,’ the woman agrees, sizing her up, presumably to determine whether she is deemed worthy enough of her conversation. But she’s not worried; she has the right pram and George is impeccably dressed in Petit Bateau’s finest, Breton stripes and brand-new Converse boots, and he’s clutching his squidgy Sophie giraffe, a giraffe that seems to be a benchmark among mothers in the clique, a rubber toy that is akin to a VIP pass to an exclusive club. George begins to uncharacteristically grumble.

‘He wants the bread for himself.’ She rolls her eyes, smiles.

‘You’re not supposed to feed them, you do realise,’ the woman says bossily.

‘Children or the ducks?’

The woman glances at her, unsure of how to take the remark. ‘There’s a sign,’ she points to it, a wooden placard down at the water’s edge that clearly requests, in peeling red paint, that patrons refrain from feeding the birds. ‘Recently some hideous teenagers injured one of the swans you know, threw sticks and stones at the poor thing and tried to feed it crisps and chocolate…’

‘That’s horrible,’ she says. ‘Do you know if they prefer salt-and-vinegar flavour…? Think I have some Pom-Bears in my baby bag.’

The woman doesn’t appear to have heard her. ‘Little sods… their parents should be ashamed.’

‘Yes, they should be locked up, the parents.’

Sensing a kindred spirit, the woman moves closer now.

‘Spenny and Camilla adore animals. We have two dogs, a cat and some chickens in our garden. They’re so at one with nature and animals, they love the flora and fauna… I’ve brought them up vegan… They tried chicken once but never again, neither of them enjoyed it. You live around here?’

‘Yes, in Beckenham.’

‘Ah lovely. We used to live there, moved to Langley Park this year.’

‘Moving house with two little ones and all those animals – bet that was a joy. How old are they, Spencer and Camilla?’

‘Three and a half, they’re twins. And yours?’

‘He’s almost ten months.’

‘Gosh, believe me it goes so fast, like a whirlwind. Not sure how I’ve gotten through it all really, Pinot and Dominos mainly… the two ‘o’s mainly.’ She laughs loudly, like gunshot across the pond. ‘Yours is at the age when they’re still so dependent, my two are just beginning to find their feet. I can’t even go to the bathroom alone for a few minutes now.’ She guffaws, a horrible horsey laugh that makes ‘Rachel’ want to spit in her face.

‘It’s tough, yes,’ she says, ‘but so rewarding.’ These are the things she’s overheard mothers saying, words and phrases they seem to share with each other, lying to each other and themselves.

‘I’m still bloody recovering from the birth three and half years later… Fifteen hours of sheer hell, but I still managed to have them naturally, only a little gas and air. Spenny was the most difficult because they thought he was breach at first, they were going to attempt to turn him but I got a second opinion, which turned out to be correct. He was the right way round after all… so glad my husband insisted in the end. Had them in The Portland, the private place up near St John’s Wood.’

‘I was just five hours with him, not even gas and air. Chose a water birth. He came into the world listening to Mozart. I had him at home.’ Ha! Take that! She senses the woman is one of those middle-class, pompous, competitive baby mothers who is always trying to best other mothers with her birth stories and children’s milestones. That should royally piss on her fireworks.

‘That’s unusual for your first, a home birth,’ the woman looks put out.

‘Easy pregnancy,’ she shoots back, ‘midwife and doula were present, no complications.’

George is still grumbling and he throws his giraffe onto the floor and begins to cry. The woman stoops to pick it up and leans over to give it to him.

‘There we go little man, here’s your… Oh, it’s George!’ she says, taking a step back and looking at her. ‘This is George, isn’t it?’ The woman looks confused. ‘Magenta’s boy… are you?’ she looks at her with a puzzled expression, ‘are you Mags’ new nanny?’

She feels her sphincter muscles contract. The stupid woman has only gone and recognised George, only knows that silly cunt of a mother of his. They must be friends.

‘No,’ she says calmly, ‘this is Milo isn’t it say hello Milo.’

The woman is staring at her blankly. ‘But, but this is George… I’m Mags’s friend, Lavinia, we come here all the time together… I didn’t see his face until now, but…’ she points, ‘that’s George.’

She can see that Lavinia’s mind has gone into overdrive.

‘You must have that wrong,’ she says coolly, ‘maybe he looks like George, whoever George is, but I assure you this is Milo, MY Milo.’

The woman is closer now, fearlessly inspecting the pushchair and looking at George in the way posh and privileged people are want to do.

‘You have the same pushchair and pram toys… George has a Guess How Much I Love You? buggy book and a Sophie the Giraffe toy. Look, that’s definitely George. I recognise him, that’s definitely Mags’s George. I see them here in the park all the time. Who are you?’ Concern suddenly flashes across her face.

‘Sorry, you’re mistaken. Like I said, this is my son, Milo. We don’t know any Georges and I don’t know anyone called Mags or Magenta.’ George is still grumbling and she hands him some bread, instantly silencing him.

The woman steps forward defiantly and she feels a rush of adrenaline flush through her body. Lavinia starts to speak but suddenly Rachel gasps, ‘Watch out!’ and points behind her, to where Lavinia’s two children are standing dangerously close to the water’s edge. ‘I think you should be more concerned about your own children than mine,’ she says before grabbing the pushchair and steering it away.

‘Camilla! Spencer! Away from the edge now!’ The children scramble obediently back up the small bank towards their mother. ‘Hold on a moment,’ Lavinia barks, following Rachel and placing a hand on her shoulder to stop her from trying to leave.

She looks down at the hand on her shoulder and then back up at the woman. ‘Put your fucking hand on me again and I’ll chop it off and feed it to those fucking swans,’ she hisses, ‘do you understand me, you jumped-up, sour-faced old cunt?’

The woman springs backwards, visibly shocked.

Rachel walks away at a steady pace and, once she’s sure that she’s not being followed, she glances back over her shoulder back.

Lavinia is already on the phone.