“Is Chloe here too?” Ziggy bounced about excitedly, the towel slipping off his shoulders.

“Chloe is probably in bed, like you should be.” Jane looked down the stairwell.

“Good evening!” Madeline beamed radiantly up at her as she click-clacked up the stairs in a watermelon-colored cardigan, jeans and high-heeled, pointy-toed boots.

“Hello?” said Jane.

“Brought you some cardboard.” Madeline held up a neatly rolled cylinder of yellow cardboard like a baton.

Jane burst into tears.

30.

It’s nothing! I was happy for an excuse to get out of the house,” said Madeline over the top of Jane’s teary gratitude. “Now, quick sticks, let’s get you dressed, Ziggy, and we’ll knock this project over.”

Other people’s problems always seemed so surmountable, and other people’s children so much more biddable, thought Madeline as Ziggy trotted off. While Jane collected the family photos, Madeline looked around Jane’s small, neat apartment, reminded of the one-bedroom apartment she and Abigail used to share.

She was romanticizing those days, she knew it. She wasn’t remembering the constant money worries or the loneliness of those nights when Abigail was asleep and there was nothing good on TV.

Abigail had been living with Nathan and Bonnie now for two weeks, and it seemed it was all going perfectly well for everyone except Madeline. Tonight, when Jane’s text had come through, the little children were asleep, Ed was working on a story and Madeline had just sat down to watch America’s Next Top Model. “Abigail!” she’d called out as she switched it on, before she remembered the empty bedroom, the four-poster bed replaced by a sofa bed for Abigail to use when she came for weekends, and Madeline didn’t know how to be with her daughter anymore, because she felt like she’d been fired from her position as mother.

She and Abigail normally watched America’s Next Top Model together, eating marshmallows and making catty remarks about the contestants, but now Abigail was happily living in a TV-free house. Bonnie didn’t “believe” in television. Instead, they all sat around and listened to classical music and talked after dinner.

“Rubbish,” scoffed Ed when he heard this.

“Apparently it’s true,” Madeline said. Of course, now when Abigail came to “visit,” all she wanted to do was lie on the couch and gorge on television, and because Madeline was now the treat-giving parent, she let her. (If she’d spent a week just listening to classical music and talking, she’d want to watch TV too.)

Bonnie’s whole life was a slap across Madeline’s face. (A gentle slap, more of a condescending, kindly pat, because Bonnie would never do anything violent.) That’s why it was so nice to be able to help Jane out, to be the calm one, with answers and solutions.

“I can’t find glue to paste on the photos,” said Jane worriedly as they laid everything out on the table.

“Got it.” Madeline pulled a pencil case out of her handbag and selected a black marker for Ziggy. “Let’s see you draw a great big tree, Ziggy.”

It was all going well until Ziggy said, “We have to put my father’s name on it. Miss Barnes said it doesn’t matter if we don’t have a photo, we just put the person’s name.”

“Well, you know that you don’t have a dad, Ziggy,” said Jane calmly. She’d told Madeline that she’d always tried to be as honest as possible with Ziggy about his father. “But you’re lucky, because you’ve got Uncle Dane, and Grandpa, and Great-uncle Jimmy.” She held up photos of smiling men like a winning hand of cards. “And we’ve even got this amazing photo of your great-great-grandfather, who was a soldier!”

“Yes, but I still have to write my dad’s name down in that box,” said Ziggy. “You draw a line from me to my mummy and my daddy. That’s the way you do it.”

He pointed at the example of a family tree that Miss Barnes had included, demonstrating a perfect unbroken nuclear family, with mum, dad and two siblings.

Miss Barnes really needs to rethink this project, thought Madeline. She’d had enough trouble herself when she was helping Chloe with hers. There had been the tricky matter of whether a line should be drawn from Abigail’s picture to Ed. “You’ll have to put in a photo of Abigail’s real dad,” Fred had said helpfully, looking over their shoulders. “And his car?”

“No we don’t,” Madeline had said.

“It doesn’t have to be exactly like the one Miss Barnes gave you,” Madeline said to Ziggy. “Everyone’s project will be different. That’s just an example.”

“Yes, but you have to write down your mother’s and your father’s name,” said Ziggy. “What’s my dad’s name? Just say it, Mummy. Just spell it. I don’t know how to spell it. I’ll get in trouble if I don’t write down his name.”

Children did this. They sensed when there was something controversial or sensitive and they pushed and pushed like tiny prosecutors.

Poor Jane had gone very still.

“Sweetheart,” she said carefully, her eyes on Ziggy, “I’ve told you this story so many times. Your dad would have loved you if he’d known you, but I’m so sorry, I don’t know his name, and I know that’s not fair—”

“But you have to write a name there! Miss Barnes said!” There was a familiar note of hysteria in his voice. Overtired five-year-olds needed to be handled like explosive devices.

“I don’t know his name!” said Jane, and Madeline recognized the gritted-teeth note in her voice too, because there was something in your children that could bring out the child in yourself. Nothing and nobody could aggravate you the way your child could aggravate you.

“Oh, Ziggy, darling, see, this happens all the time,” said Madeline. For God’s sake. It probably did. There were plenty of single mothers in the area. Madeline was going to have a word with Miss Barnes tomorrow to ensure that she stopped assigning this ridiculous project. Why try to slot fractured families into neat little boxes in this day and age?

“This is what you do. You write ‘Ziggy’s dad.’ You know how to write ‘Ziggy,’ don’t you? Of course you do, that’s it.”

To her relief, Ziggy obeyed, writing his name with his tongue out the side of his mouth to help him concentrate. “What neat writing!” encouraged Madeline feverishly. She didn’t want to give him time to think. “You are a much neater writer than my Chloe. And that’s it! You’re done! Your mum and I will stick down the rest of the photos while you’re asleep. Now. Story time! Right? And I’m wondering, could I read you a story? Would that be OK? I’d love to see your favorite book.”