Not here, you idiot. Let’s not talk about family business with sharp-eared mothers all around us.

“I said to Nathan we have to get better with our communication skills,” continued Bonnie. “This is all a process.”

“Right,” said Madeline. Ed fractionally increased the pressure of his hand on her knee. Madeline looked over toward him, and to Perry and Celeste on the other side, to see if she could naturally become involved in conversation with someone else, but Perry and Celeste were looking at something on Celeste’s phone, and the two of them were laughing, their heads close together like young dating teenagers. That strangeness between them over the signing of the petition had obviously been nothing.

She looked back to the front of the hall, where there was still a hubbub of noisy activity, with kids being asked to sit down please, and teachers fiddling with sound equipment, and the Blond Bobs hurrying about looking very involved and important as they did each Friday morning.

“Abigail is really developing a social conscience,” said Bonnie. “It’s amazing to see. Did you know she has some sort of secret charity project she’s working on?”

“Just as long as her social conscience doesn’t get in the way of school marks,” said Madeline in a clipped tone, firmly establishing herself as the awful, misanthropic parent. “She wants to do physiotherapy. I’ve been talking to Samantha about it. Lily’s mum. Samantha says Abigail needs math.”

“Actually, I don’t think she wants to do physiotherapy anymore,” said Bonnie. “She seems to be developing an interest in social work. I think she’d make a wonderful social worker.”

“She’d make a terrible social worker!” snapped Madeline. “She’s not tough enough. She’d kill herself trying to help people and she’d get too involved with their lives—and my God, that would just be so wrong a career choice for Abigail.”

“Do you think?” said Bonnie dreamily. “Oh, well, there’s no rush to make any decisions right now, is there? She’ll probably change her mind a dozen times before then.”

Madeline could hear herself making little puffing noises through her lips, as if she were in labor. Bonnie was trying to turn Abigail into somebody that she wasn’t, that she couldn’t be. There would be nothing left of the real Abigail. Madeline’s daughter would be a stranger to her.

Mrs. Lipmann walked gracefully onto the stage and stood silently in front of the microphone, her hands clasped, smiling benignly as she waited for her royal presence to be noticed. A Blond Bob rushed onto the stage and did something important to the microphone before rushing off again. Meanwhile a Year 6 teacher began clapping a catchy, rhythmic beat that had magical, hypnotic powers over the children, immediately causing them to stop talking, look to the front and begin clapping in the same rhythm. (It didn’t work at home. Madeline had tried.)

“Oh!” said Bonnie, as the clapping rose in volume and Mrs. Lipmann lifted her hands for silence. She leaned over and spoke in Madeline’s ear, her breath sweet and minty. “I nearly forgot. We’d love to have you and Ed and the children over to celebrate Abigail’s fifteenth birthday next Tuesday! I know Abigail would just love to have all her family together. Would that be too awkward, do you think?”

Awkward? Are you kidding, Bonnie, that would be wonderful, glorious! Madeline would be a guest at her daughter’s fifteenth-birthday dinner. Not the host. A guest. Nathan would offer her drinks. When they left, Abigail wouldn’t come in the car with them. She’d stay there. Abigail would stay there because that was her home.

“Lovely! What shall I bring?” she whispered back, while she put one hand on Ed’s arm and squeezed hard. It turned out that a conversation with Bonnie was just like being in labor: The pain could always get much, much worse.

53.

Ziggy is a lovely little boy,” said the psychologist. “Very articulate and confident and kind.” She smiled at Jane. “He expressed concern over my health. He’s the first client this week who has even noticed I have a cold.”

The psychologist blew her nose noisily as if to demonstrate that she did indeed have a cold. Jane watched impatiently. She wasn’t as nice as Ziggy. She couldn’t care less about the psychologist’s cold.

“So, er, you don’t think he’s a secret psychotic bully?” said Jane with a little smile to show that she was sort of joking, except of course she wasn’t. That’s why they were here. That’s why she was paying the huge fee.

They both looked at Ziggy, who was playing in a glassed-off room adjoining the psychologist’s office where he presumably couldn’t hear them. As they watched, Ziggy picked up a stuffed doll, a toy for a much younger child. Imagine if Ziggy suddenly punches the doll, thought Jane. That would be pretty conclusive. Child pretends to care about psychologist’s cold and then beats up toys. But Ziggy just looked at the doll, then put it back down, not noticing that he’d missed the corner of the table and it had slid to the floor, proving only that he was pathologically messy.

“I don’t,” said the psychologist. She was silent for a moment, her nose twitching.

“You’re going to tell me what he said, right?” said Jane. “You don’t have any client/patient confidentiality thing, do you?”

“Achoo!” The psychologist sneezed a massive sneeze.

“Bless you,” said Jane impatiently.

“Patient confidentiality only starts to apply when they get to about fourteen,” said the psychologist sniffily, “which is just when they’re telling you all sorts of stuff you’d really quite like to share with their parents, know what I mean? They’re having sex, they’re taking drugs, and so on and so forth!”

Yes, yes, little people, little problems.

“Jane, I don’t think Ziggy is a bully,” said the psychologist. She steepled her fingers and touched her fingertips to the outside of her red nostrils. “I brought up the incident you mentioned at the orientation day, and he was very clear that it wasn’t him. I’d be very surprised if he’s lying. If he’s lying, then he’s the most accomplished liar I’ve ever seen. And frankly, Ziggy does not show any of the classic signs of a bullying personality. He’s not narcissistic. He most certainly demonstrates empathy and sensitivity.”