She watched the rise and fall of his chest.

He was so beautiful. There was no way he hurt that little girl and lied about it.

But all sleeping children were beautiful. Even really horrible children probably looked beautiful when they slept. How could she know for sure that he hadn’t done it? Did anyone really know their child? Your child was a little stranger, constantly changing, disappearing and reintroducing himself to you. New personality traits could appear overnight.

And then there was . . .

Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.

The memory fluttered like a trapped moth in her mind.

It had been trying so hard to escape ever since the little girl had pointed at Ziggy. The pressure on Jane’s chest. Terror rising, flooding her mind. A scream trapped in her throat.

The bruises were black, purple and red.

“She’s going to have bruises!” the child’s mother had said.

No, no, no.

Ziggy was Ziggy. He could not. He would not. She knew her child.

He stirred. His blue-veined eyelids twitched.

“Guess what day it is,” said Jane.

“Christmas!” shouted Ziggy.

He sat up so fast, the side of his head slammed violently against Jane’s nose and she fell back against the pillow, tears streaming.

Thea: I always thought there was something not quite right about that child. That Ziggy. Something funny about his eyes. Boys need a male role model. I’m sorry, but it’s a fact.

Stu: Bloody hell, there was a lot of fuss about that Ziggy kid. I didn’t know what to believe.

11.

Do you fly as high as this plane, Daddy?” asked Josh. They were about seven hours into their flight from Vancouver back home to Sydney. So far so good. No arguments. They’d put the boys on either side of them in separate window seats and Celeste and Perry were in adjacent aisle seats.

“Nope. Remember I told you? I have to fly really low to avoid radar detection,” said Perry.

“Oh yeah.” Josh turned his face back to the window.

“Why do you have to avoid radar detection?” asked Celeste.

Perry shook his head and shared a tolerant “women!” grin with Max, who was sitting on the other side of Celeste and had leaned over to listen to the conversation. “It’s obvious isn’t it, Max?”

“It’s top secret, Mummy,” Max told her kindly. “No one knows that Daddy can fly.”

“Oh, of course,” said Celeste. “Sorry. Silly of me.”

“See, if I got caught, they’d probably want to run a whole battery of tests on me,” said Perry. “Find out just how I developed these superpowers, then they’d want to recruit me for the Air Force, I’d have to go on secret missions.”

“Yeah, and we don’t want that,” said Celeste. “Daddy already travels enough.”

Perry reached across the aisle and put his hand over hers in silent apology.

“You can’t really fly,” said Max.

Perry raised his eyebrows, widened his eyes and gave a little shrug. “Can’t I?”

“I don’t think so,” said Max uncertainly.

Perry winked at Celeste over Max’s head. He’d been telling the twins for years that he had secret flying abilities, going into ridiculous detail about how he’d discovered his secret powers when he was fifteen, which was the age when they’d probably learn to fly too, assuming they’d inherited his powers and eaten enough broccoli. The boys could never tell if he was serious or not.

“I was flying when I skied over that big jump yesterday,” said Max. He used his hand to demonstrate his trajectory. “Whoosh!”

“Yeah, you were flying,” said Perry. “You nearly gave Daddy a heart attack.”

Max chuckled.

Perry linked his hands in front of him and stretched out his back. “Ow. I’m still stiff from trying to keep up with you lot. You’re all too fast.”

Celeste studied him. He looked good: tanned and relaxed from the last five days, skiing and sledding. This was the problem. She was still hopelessly, helplessly attracted to him.

“What?” Perry glanced at her.

“Nothing.”

“Good holiday, eh?”

“It was a great holiday,” said Celeste with feeling. “Magical.”

“I think this is going to be a good year for us,” said Perry. He held her eyes. “Don’t you? With the boys starting school, hopefully you’ll get a bit more time to yourself, and I’m . . .” He stopped, and ran his thumb across his armrest as if he were doing some sort of quality-control test. Then he looked up at her. “I’m going to do everything in my power to make this a good year for us.” He smiled self-consciously.

He did this sometimes. He said or did something that made her feel as besotted with him as she’d been that very first year after they’d met at that boring business lunch, where she’d first truly understood those four words: swept off my feet.

Celeste felt a sense of peace wash over her. A flight steward was coming down the aisle, offering chocolate chip cookies baked on board the plane. The aroma was delicious. Maybe it was going to be a really good year for them.

Perhaps she could stay. It was always such a glorious relief when she allowed herself to believe she could stay.

“Let’s go down to the beach when we get home,” said Perry. “We’ll build a big sand castle. Snowman one day. Sand castle the next. Gosh you kids have a good life.”