“It’s nothing, mate,” he’d said to Josh. “I wasn’t looking where I was going and I walked into a tree.”

Celeste couldn’t get the expression on Perry’s face out of her mind. He thought it was funny. He genuinely thought it was funny, and of no particular consequence.

Celeste pressed a finger to her tender lip.

Was it normal?

Perry would say, “No, we’re not normal. We’re not Mr. and Mrs. Average, mediocre people in mediocre relationships. We’re different. We’re special. We love each other more. Everything is more intense for us. We have better sex.”

The starter gun cracked the air, startling her.

“Here they come!” said Renata.

Fourteen women ran straight at them as if they were chasing thieves, arms pumping, chests thrust forward, chins jutting, some of them laughing but most looking deadly serious. The children shouted and hollered. Celeste tried to look for the boys, but she couldn’t see them.

“I can’t run in the mothers race after all,” she’d told them this morning. “I fell down the stairs after you went to bed last night.”

“Awwww,” said Max, but it was an automatic whine. He didn’t seem to really care.

“You should be more careful,” Josh had said quietly, without looking at her.

“I should,” Celeste had agreed. She really should.

Bonnie and Madeline led the pack. They pulled in front. It was neck and neck. Go Madeline, thought Celeste. Go, go, go—YES! Their chests hit the finishing tape. Definitely Madeline.

• • •

Bonnie by a nose!” shouted Renata.

“No, no, I’m sure Madeline was first,” said Bonnie to Renata. Bonnie didn’t seem to have exerted herself at all. The color on her cheeks was just a little higher than usual.

“No, no, it was you, Bonnie,” said Madeline breathlessly, although she knew she’d won because she kept Bonnie in her peripheral vision. She bent over, hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath. There was a stinging sensation on her cheekbone where her necklace had whipped across it.

“I’m pretty sure it was Madeline,” said Celeste.

“Definitely Bonnie,” interrupted Renata, and Madeline nearly laughed out loud. So your vendetta has come to this now, Renata? Not letting me win the mothers race?

“I’m sure it was Madeline,” said Bonnie.

“I’m sure it was Bonnie,” countered Madeline.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, let’s call it a tie,” said a Year 6 mother, a Blond Bob in charge of handing out the ribbons.

Madeline straightened. “Absolutely not. Bonnie is the winner.” She plucked the blue winner’s ribbon from the Year 6 mother’s hand and pressed it into Bonnie’s palm, folding her fingers over it, as if she were entrusting one of the children with a two-dollar coin. “You beat me, Bonnie.” She met Bonnie’s pale blue eyes and saw understanding register. “You beat me fair and square.”

Samantha: Madeline won. We were all killing ourselves laughing when Renata insisted it was Bonnie. But do I think that led to a murder? No, I do not.

Harper: I came in third, if anyone is interested.

Melissa: Technically, Juliette came third. You know, Renata’s nanny? But Harper was all, “A twenty-one-year-old nanny doesn’t count!” And then, of course, these days, we all like to pretend Juliette never existed.

27.

Samantha: Listen, you need to get your head around the demographics of this place. So first of all you’ve got your blue collars—tradies, we call them. We’ve got a lot of tradies in Pirriwee. Like my Stu. Salt of the earth. Or salt of the sea, because they all surf, of course. Most of the tradies grew up here and never left. Then you’ve got your alternative types. Your dippy hippies. And in the last ten years or so, all these wealthy execs and banker wankers have moved in and built massive McMansions up on the cliffs. But! There’s only one primary school for all our kids! So at school events you’ve got a plumber, a banker and a crystal healer standing around trying to make conversation. It’s hilarious. No wonder we had a riot.

Celeste arrived home from the athletics carnival to find her house cleaners’ car parked out front. When she turned the key in the front door, the vacuum cleaner was roaring upstairs.

She went into the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea. The cleaners came once a week on a Friday morning. They charged two hundred dollars and did a beautiful, sparkling job.

Celeste’s mother had gasped when she’d heard how much Celeste spent on cleaning. “Darling, I’ll come and help you once a week,” she’d said. “You can save the money for something else.”

Her mother could not grasp the scale of Perry’s wealth. When she first visited the big house with the sweeping beach views, she’d walked around with the polite, strained expression of a tourist watching a confronting cultural demonstration. She’d finally agreed it was very “airy.” For her, two hundred dollars was a scandalous amount of money to spend on something that you could—should—do yourself. She would be horrified if she could see Celeste right now, sitting down, while other people cleaned her house. Celeste’s mother had never sat down. She’d come home from working night shift at the hospital, walk straight into the kitchen and make the family a cooked breakfast, while Celeste’s dad read the paper and Celeste and her brother fought.

Good God, the fights Celeste had had with her brother. He’d hit her. She’d always hit him back.

Maybe if she hadn’t grown up with a big brother, if she hadn’t grown up with that tough Aussie tomboy mentality: If a boy hits you, you hit him right back! Perhaps if she’d wept softly and prettily the first time that Perry had hit her, then maybe it wouldn’t keep happening.

The vacuum cleaner stopped, and she heard a man’s voice, followed by a roar of raucous laughter. Her cleaners were a young married Korean couple. They normally worked in complete silence when Celeste was in the house, so they mustn’t have heard her come in. They only showed her their professional faces. She felt irrationally hurt, as if she wanted to be their friend. Let’s all laugh and chat while you clean my house!

There were running footsteps above her head and a peal of girlish laughter.

Stop having fun in my house. Clean.

Celeste drank her tea. The mug stung her sore lip.