35.
Miss Barnes: After that little drama on orientation day, I was steeling myself for a tough year, but it seemed to get off to a good start. They were a great bunch of kids, and the parents weren’t being too annoying. Then about halfway through the first term it all fell apart.
Two Weeks Before the Trivia Night
Latte and a muffin.”
Jane looked up from her laptop, and then down again at the plate in front of her. There was an artful scribble of whipped cream on the plate next to the muffin. “Oh, thanks, Tom, but I didn’t order—”
“I know. The muffin is on the house,” said Tom. “I hear from Madeline that you’re a baker. So I wanted to get your expert opinion on this new recipe I’m trying. Peach, macadamia nut and lime. Crazy stuff. The lime, I mean.”
“I only bake muffins,” said Jane. “I never eat them.”
“Seriously?” Tom’s face fell a little.
Jane said hurriedly, “But I’ll make an exception today.”
The weather had turned cold this week, a little practice session for winter, and Jane’s apartment was chilly. That gray sliver of ocean she could see from her apartment window just made her feel colder still. It was like a memory of summers lost forever, as if she lived in a gray, brooding, postapocalyptic world. “God, Jane, that’s a bit dramatic. Why don’t you take your laptop and set yourself up at a table at Blue Blues?” Madeline had suggested. So Jane had started turning up each day with her laptop and files.
The café was filled with sun and light, and Tom had a wood-fire stove running. Jane gave a little exhalation of pleasure each time she stepped in the door. It was like she’d gotten on a plane and flown into an entirely different season compared with her miserable, damp apartment. She made sure that she was only there in between the morning rush and the afternoon rush so she didn’t take up a paying table, and of course she ordered coffees and a small lunch throughout the day.
Tom the barista had begun to seem like a colleague, someone who shared the cubicle next to hers. He was good for a chat. They liked the same TV shows, some of the same music. (Music! She’d forgotten the existence of music, like she’d forgotten books.)
Tom grinned. “I’m turning into my grandma, aren’t I? Force-feeding everyone. Just try one mouthful. Don’t eat it all to be polite.” Jane watched him go, and then averted her eyes when she realized she was enjoying looking at the breadth of his shoulders in his standard black T-shirt. She knew from Madeline that Tom was gay, and in the process of recovering from a badly broken heart. It was a cliché, but it also seemed to be so often true: Gay men had really good bodies.
Something had been happening over the last few weeks, ever since she’d read that sex scene in the bathroom. It was like her body, her rusty, abandoned body, was starting up again of its own accord, creaking back to life. She kept catching herself idly, accidentally looking at men, and at women too, but mainly men, not so much in a sexual way, but in a sensual, appreciative, aesthetic way.
It wasn’t beautiful people like Celeste who were drawing Jane’s eyes, but ordinary people and the beautiful ordinariness of their bodies. A tanned forearm with a tattoo of the sun reaching out across the counter at the service station. The back of an older man’s neck in a queue at the supermarket. Calf muscles and collarbones. It was the strangest thing. She was reminded of her father, who years ago had an operation on his sinuses that returned the sense of smell he hadn’t realized he’d lost. The simplest smells sent him into rhapsodies of delight. He kept sniffing Jane’s mother’s neck and saying dreamily, “I’d forgotten your mother’s smell! I didn’t know I’d forgotten it!”
It wasn’t just the book.
It was telling Madeline about Saxon Banks. It was repeating those stupid little words he’d said. They needed to stay secret to keep their power. Now they were deflating the way a jumping castle sagged and wrinkled as the air hissed out.
Saxon Banks was a nasty person. There were nasty people in this world. Every child knew that. Your parents taught you to stay away from them. Ignore them. Walk away. Say, “No. I don’t like that,” in a loud, firm voice, and if they keep doing it, you go tell a teacher.
Even Saxon’s insults had been school yard insults. You smell. You’re ugly.
She’d always known that her reaction to that night had been too big, or perhaps too small. She hadn’t ever cried. She hadn’t told anyone. She’d swallowed it whole and pretended it meant nothing, and therefore it had come to mean everything.
Now it was like she wanted to keep talking about it. A few days ago, when she and Celeste had their morning walk, she’d told her a shorter version of what she’d told Madeline. Celeste hadn’t said all that much, except that she was sorry and that Madeline was absolutely right and Ziggy was nothing like his father. The next day, Celeste gave Jane a necklace in a red velvet bag. It was a fine silver chain with a blue gemstone. “That gemstone is called a lapis,” said Celeste in her diffident way. “It’s supposedly a gemstone that ‘heals emotional wounds.’ I don’t really believe that stuff—but anyway, it’s a pretty necklace.”
Now Jane put a hand to the pendant.
New friends? Was that it? The sea air?
The regular exercise was probably helping too. She and Celeste were both getting fitter. They’d both been so happy when they noticed they didn’t have to stop and catch their breath when they reached the top of the flight of stairs near the graveyard.
Yes, it was probably the exercise.
All she’d needed all this time was a brisk walk in the fresh air and a healing gemstone.
She dug her fork into the muffin and lifted it to her mouth. The walks with Celeste were also returning her appetite. If she didn’t watch out, she’d get fat again. Her throat closed up on cue, and she replaced the fork. So, not quite cured. Still weird about food.
But she must not offend lovely Tom. She picked up her fork and took the tiniest bite. The muffin was light and fluffy, and she could taste all the ingredients that Tom had mentioned: macadamia, peach, lime. She closed her eyes and felt everything: the warmth of the café, the taste of the muffin, the by now familiar smell of coffee and secondhand books. She took another, bigger forkful and scraped up some of the cream.
“OK?” Tom leaned over a table close to hers, cleaning it with a cloth he took from his back pocket.
Jane lifted a hand to indicate her mouth was full. Tom took a book that a customer had left on the table and replaced it on one of the higher shelves. His black T-shirt lifted away from his jeans, and Jane saw a glimpse of his lower back. Just a perfectly ordinary lower back. Nothing particularly notable about it. His skin during the winter was the color of a weak latte. During the summer it was the color of hot chocolate.
“It’s wonderful,” she said.
“Mmmm?” Tom turned around. There were only the two of them in the café right now.
Jane pointed her fork at the muffin. “This is amazing. You should charge a premium.” Her mobile rang. “Excuse me.”
The name on the screen said SCHOOL. The school had only called her once before, when Ziggy had a sore throat.
“Ms. Chapman? This is Patricia Lipmann.”
The school principal. Jane’s stomach contracted.
“Mrs. Lipmann? Is everything all right?” She hated the craven note in her voice. Madeline spoke to Mrs. Lipmann with cheerful, condescending affection, as if she were a dotty old family butler.
“Yes, everything is fine, although I would like to arrange a meeting with you as a matter of some urgency if I could? Ideally today. Would around two p.m. suit you, just before pickup?”
“Of course. Is everything—”
“Lovely. I’ll look forward to seeing you then.”
Jane put down her phone. “Mrs. Lipmann wants a meeting with me.”
Tom knew most of the kids, parents and teachers at the school. He’d grown up in the area and attended the school himself back when Mrs. Lipmann was a lowly Year 3 teacher.
“I’m sure you don’t have anything to worry about,” he said. “Ziggy is a good kid. Maybe she wants to put Ziggy in a special class or something.”
“Mmmm.” Jane took another absentminded forkful of muffin. Ziggy wasn’t “gifted and talented.” Anyway, she already knew from the tone of Mrs. Lipmann’s voice that this wasn’t going to be good news.
Samantha: Renata went off her head when the bullying started. Part of the problem was the nanny hadn’t been communicating, so it had been going on for a while without her knowing. Of course we now know that Juliette had other things on her mind besides her job.
Miss Barnes: What parents don’t understand is that a child can be a bully one minute and a victim the next. They’re so ready to label! Of course, I do see this was different. This was . . . bad.
Stu: My dad taught me: A kid hits you, you hit him back. Simple. It’s like everything these days. A trophy for every kid in the soccer game. A prize in every bloody layer of Hot Potato. We’re bringing up a generation of wimps.
Thea: Renata must surely have blamed herself. The hours she worked, she barely saw her children! My heart just goes out to those poor little mites. Apparently they’re not coping well at the moment. Not coping well at all. Their lives will never be the same again, will they?
Jackie: Nobody says anything about Geoff working long hours. Nobody asks if Geoff knew what was going on with Amabella. It’s my understanding Renata had a higher-paid, more stressful job than Geoff, but nobody blamed Geoff for having a career, nobody said, “Oh, we don’t see much of Geoff at the school, do we?” No! But if the stay-at-home mums see a dad do pickup, they think he deserves a gold medal. Take my husband. He has his own little entourage.
Jonathan: They’re my friends, not my entourage. You have to excuse my wife. She’s in the middle of a hostile takeover. That might be why she’s coming across a bit hostile. I think the school has to take responsibility. Where were the teachers when all this bullying was going on?