After she moved in she would have Jane and Madeline over to visit. She would show them her lamp and they’d cram onto that tiny balcony and have afternoon tea.

If she left Pirriwee, she’d miss her morning walks around the headland with Jane. For the most part they’d walked in silence. It was like a shared meditation. If Madeline had walked with them, they would have all three talked the whole time, but it was a different dynamic when it was just Jane and Celeste.

Recently, they’d both began to tentatively open up. It was interesting how you could say things when you were walking that you might not otherwise have said with the pressure of eye contact across a table. Celeste thought of the morning when Jane had told her about Ziggy’s biological father, the repulsive man who had more or less raped her. She shuddered.

At least sex with Perry had never been violent, even when it followed violence, even when it was part of their strange, intense game of making up, of forgiving and forgetting. It was always about love, and it was always very, very good. Before she met Perry, she had never felt as powerful an attraction to a man, and she knew she never would again. It wasn’t possible. It was too specific to them.

She would miss sex. She would miss living near the beach. She would miss coffee with Madeline. She would miss staying up late and watching DVD series with Perry. She would miss Perry’s family.

When you divorce someone, you divorce their whole family, Madeline had told her once. Madeline had been close to Nathan’s older sister, but now they rarely saw each other. Celeste would have to give up Perry’s family as well as everything else.

There was too much to miss, too much to sacrifice.

Well. This was just an exercise.

She didn’t have to go through with any of it. It was all just a theoretical exercise to impress her counselor, who probably wouldn’t be all that impressed, because in the end this was really just about money. Celeste wasn’t showing any particular courage. She could afford to rent and furnish an apartment that she would probably never use, using money that her husband had earned. Most of Susi’s clients probably had no access to money, whereas Celeste could withdraw large chunks of cash from different accounts without Perry even noticing, or if he did, she could easily make up an excuse. She could tell him a friend needed cash and he wouldn’t blink. He’d offer to give more. He wasn’t like those other men who kept their wives virtually imprisoned by restricting their movements, their access to money. Celeste was as free as a bird.

She looked around the room. No built-in wardrobe. She’d have to buy a closet. How had she missed that at the inspection? The first time Madeline had seen Celeste’s enormous walk-in wardrobe, her eyes had gotten shiny, as if she’d heard a piece of beautiful music or poetry. “This, right here, is my dream come true.”

Celeste’s life was another person’s dream come true.

“No one deserves to live like this,” Susi had said, but Susi hadn’t seen the whole of their lives. She hadn’t seen the expression on the boys’ faces when Perry spun his crazy stories about early-morning flights across the ocean. “You can’t really fly, Daddy. Can he fly, Mummy? Can he?” She hadn’t seen Perry rap-dancing with his kids or slow-dancing with Celeste on their balcony, the moon sitting low in the sky, shining on the sea as if it were there just for them.

“It’s almost worth it,” she’d told Susi.

Perhaps it was even fair. A little violence was a bargain price for a life that would otherwise be just too sickeningly, lavishly, moonlit perfect.

So then what the hell was she doing here, secretly planning her escape route like a prisoner?

39.

Ziggy,” said Jane.

They were on the beach, building a sand castle out of cold sand. The late afternoon sky hung low and heavy, and the wind whistled. It was mid-autumn, so tomorrow could easily be beautiful and sunny again, but today the beach was virtually deserted. Far in the distance, Jane could see someone walking a dog, and one lone surfer in a full-body wet suit was walking toward the water, his board under his arm. The ocean was angry, chucking wave after wave—boom!—on the beach. White water churned and bubbled as if it were boiling and spat up crazy fountains of spray into the air.

Ziggy hummed as he worked on the sand castle, patting it with a spade Jane’s mother had bought him.

“I saw Mrs. Lipmann yesterday,” she said. “And Amabella’s mummy.”

Ziggy looked up. He was wearing a gray beanie pulled down over his ears and covering his hair. His cheeks were flushed with the cold.

“Amabella says that someone in her class has been secretly hurting her when the teacher isn’t looking,” said Jane. “Pinching her. Even . . . biting her.”

God. It was too awful to contemplate. No wonder Renata was out for blood.

Ziggy didn’t say anything. He put down the spade and picked up a plastic rake.

“Amabella’s mummy thinks it’s you,” said Jane.

She nearly said, It’s not you, is it? but she stopped herself.

Instead she said, “Is it you, Ziggy?”

He ignored her. He kept his eyes on the sand, carefully raking straight lines.

“Ziggy,” said Jane.

He put down the rake and looked at her. His smooth little face was remote. His eyes looked off somewhere behind her head.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.

40.

Samantha: Have you heard about the petition? That’s when I knew things were getting out of hand.

Harper: I’m not ashamed to say that I started the petition. For heaven’s sake, the school was doing nothing! Poor Renata was at her wit’s end. You need to be able to send your child to school and know that she’s in a safe environment.

Mrs. Lipmann: I most emphatically disagree. The school was not “doing nothing.” We had an extremely comprehensive plan of action. And let me be clear: We actually had no evidence that Ziggy was the one doing the bullying.

Thea: I signed it. That poor little girl.

Jonathan: Of course I didn’t sign it. That poor little boy.

Gabrielle: Don’t tell anyone, but I think I accidentally signed it. I thought it was the petition about getting the council to put in a pedestrian crossing on Park Street.

One Week Before the Trivia Night

Welcome to the inaugural meeting of the Pirriwee Peninsula Erotic Book Club!” said Madeline as she opened her front door with a flourish. She’d already treated herself to half a glass of champagne.