49.

Five Days Before the Trivia Night

It was Monday morning just before the bell rang, and Jane was on her way back from the school library where she’d returned two books Ziggy had forgotten to take back. She’d left him happily swinging along the monkey bars with the twins and Chloe. At least Madeline and Celeste weren’t banning their children from playing with Ziggy.

After she dropped the books off, Jane was staying on at school to help out listening to the children practice their reading. She and Lily’s dad, Stu, were the Monday-morning parent volunteers.

As she came out of the library she could see two of the Blond Bobs standing outside the music room, very deep in important, loudly confidential conversation.

She heard one of them say, “Which one is the mother?”

The other one said, “She sort of flies under the radar. She’s really young. Renata thought she was the nanny.”

“Wait, wait! I know the one! She wears her hair like this, right?” The Blond Bob pulled back her blond locks in an exaggeratedly tight ponytail, and at that moment her eyes met Jane’s and widened. She dropped her hands like a child caught misbehaving.

The other woman, who was facing away from Jane, continued talking. “Yes! That’s her! Well, apparently her kid, this Ziggy, has been secretly bullying poor little Amabella. I’m talking really vicious stuff— What?”

The first Blond Bob made frantic head-jerking movements.

“What’s wrong? Oh!”

The woman turned her head and saw Jane. Her face turned pink.

“Good morning!” she said. Normally someone so high on the school parent hierarchy would nod vaguely and graciously at Jane as she walked by, a royal nod for a commoner.

“Hi,” said Jane.

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.”