The woman was holding a clipboard up to her chest. She suddenly dropped her arm by her side so that the clipboard hung behind her legs, exactly like a child hiding a stolen treat behind his back.

It’s the petition, thought Jane. It wasn’t just kindergarten parents signing it. They were getting parents in other years to sign it. Parents who didn’t even know her or Ziggy or anything about it.

Jane kept walking past the women. Her hand was on the glass doors leading back out into the playground when she stopped. There was a roaring, ascending feeling in her body, like a plane taking off. It was the disdainful way that woman had used Ziggy’s name. It was Saxon Banks, his breath tickling her ear: Never had an original thought in your life, have you?

She turned. She walked back to the women and stood directly in front of them. The women took tiny steps backward, their eyes comically round. The three of them were almost exactly the same height. They were all mothers. But the Blond Bobs had husbands and houses and absolute certainty about their places in the world.

“My son has never hurt anyone,” said Jane, and all of a sudden she knew it was true. He was Ziggy Chapman. He was nothing whatsoever to do with Saxon Banks. He was nothing to do with Poppy. He wasn’t even anything to do with her. He was just Ziggy, and she didn’t know everything about Ziggy, but she knew this.

“Oh, darling, we’ve all been there! We sympathize! This is just a terrible situation,” began the Blond Bob with the clipboard. “How much screen time do you let him have? I’ve found cutting down on screen time really—”

“He’s never hurt anyone,” repeated Jane.

She turned and walked away.

Thea: So, the week before the trivia night, Jane accosted Trish and Fiona when they were in the middle of a private conversation. They said her behavior was just bizarre, to the point where they even wondered if she had some . . . mental health issues.

• • •

Jane walked into the playground feeling a strange sense of calm. Perhaps she needed to learn from Madeline’s example. No more avoiding confrontation. March up to your critics and bloody well tell them what you think.

A Year 1 girl strolled alongside her. “I’m having a sausage roll for lunch today.”

“Lucky you,” said Jane. This was one of her favorite parts of walking around the school playground: the way children chatted so artlessly, launching into whatever happened to be on their minds at the time.

“I wasn’t meant to be having a sausage roll, because it’s not Friday, but this morning my little brother got stung by a bee, and he was screaming, and my sister broke a glass, and my mum said, ‘I’m losing my mind!’” The little girl put her hands over her head to demonstrate. “And then Mum said I could buy my lunch at the canteen as a special treat, but no juice, but I could still have a gingerbread man, but not the chocolate sort. Bees die after they sting you, did you know that?”

“I did,” said Jane. “That’s the very last thing they do.”

“Jane!” Miss Barnes approached, carrying a laundry basket full of dress-up clothes. “Thank you for coming today!”

“Um. You’re welcome?” said Jane. She’d been doing this every Monday morning since the beginning of the year.

“I mean, in light of, you know, everything.” Miss Barnes winced and shifted the laundry basket onto her hip. She stepped closer to Jane and lowered her voice. “I haven’t heard anything else about this petition. Mrs. Lipmann has been telling the parents involved that she wants it stopped. Also, she’s assigned me a teacher’s aide to do nothing else but observe the children, and in particular Amabella and Ziggy.”

“That’s great,” said Jane. “But I’m pretty sure the petition is still circulating.”

She could feel eyes on her and Miss Barnes from all corners of the playground. It felt like every parent was secretly observing their conversation. This must be what it felt like to be famous.

Miss Barnes sighed. “I noticed you kept Ziggy home on Friday. I hope you’re not feeling intimidated by these tactics.”

“Some parents are telling their children they’re not allowed to play with him,” said Jane.

“For goodness’ sake.”

“Yeah, so I’ve started a petition too,” said Jane. “I want all those kids who won’t play with Ziggy suspended.”

For a moment Miss Barnes looked horrified. Then she threw back her head and laughed.

Harper: It’s all very well, the school saying they were taking the situation seriously, but then you see Jane and Miss Barnes standing in the playground laughing their heads off! To be frank, that got me riled up. That was the same morning as the assault, and yes, I am going to use the word “assault.”

Samantha: Assault. Give me a break.

50.

Parent reading was done outside in the playground. Today Jane was in Turtle Corner, named because of the giant concrete turtle sitting in the middle of a sandy play area. There was room for an adult and a child to sit comfortably together on the turtle’s neck, and Miss Barnes had provided two cushions and a blanket to put across their knees.

Jane loved listening to the children read: watching them frown as they sounded out a word, their triumphant expressions when they untangled the syllables, their sudden bursts of laughter over the story and their random, off-beat observations about the story. Sitting on a turtle with the sun on her face, the sand at her feet and the sea glittering on the horizon made her feel as if she were on holiday. Pirriwee Public was a magical little school, almost a dream school, and the thought of pulling Ziggy out and having to start again somewhere else without a Turtle Corner or a Miss Barnes filled her with regret and resentment.

“Beautiful reading, Max!” she said, double-checking as she did that it was indeed Max and not Josh who had just finished reading Monkey’s Birthday Surprise. Madeline had told her that the trick to differentiating Celeste’s boys was to look for the strawberry-shaped birthmark on Max’s forehead. “I think to myself, Marked Max,” said Madeline.

“You used great expression, Max,” said Jane, although she wasn’t sure that he had. The parents had been told to try to find something specific to compliment after each child read.

“Yep,” said Max coolly. He slid off the turtle’s neck and sat down cross-legged on the sand and began digging.