36.
Renata Klein has discovered that her daughter, Amabella, has been the victim of systematic, secret bullying over the last month,” said Mrs. Lipmann without preamble as soon as Jane sat down opposite her. “Unfortunately Amabella won’t say exactly what has been going on or who is involved. However, Renata is convinced that Ziggy is responsible.”
Jane gulped convulsively. It was strange that she still felt shocked, as though some crazily optimistic part of her really had believed that Ziggy was about to be put into some sort of special class for marvelous children.
“What sort of . . .” Jane’s voice disappeared. She cleared her throat with difficulty. She felt as though she were playing a role for which she wasn’t properly qualified. Her parents should be at this meeting. People of the same era as Mrs. Lipmann. “What sort of bullying?”
Mrs. Lipmann made a little face. She looked like a lady who lunched; a society wife with good clothes and an expensive skin care regime. Her voice had that crystal-clear don’t mess with me quality that was very effective, apparently, even with the famously naughty Year 6 boys.
“Unfortunately we’re a little short on details,” said Mrs. Lipmann. “Amabella does have some unexplained bruises and grazes, and a . . . bite mark, and she has only said that ‘someone has been mean to her.’” She sighed and tapped perfectly manicured nails on the manila folder in her lap. “Look, if it weren’t for the incident on the orientation day, I wouldn’t have called you in until we had anything more definitive. Miss Barnes says that incident appeared to be a one-off. She has observed Ziggy closely, because of what happened, and she describes him as a delightful child, who is a joy to teach and appears to be very caring and kind in his interactions with the other children.”
The unexpected kindness of those words from Miss Barnes made Jane want to weep.
“Now, obviously we have a zero tolerance policy for bullying at Pirriwee Public. Zero. But in the rare cases where we do find cases of bullying, I want you to know that we believe we have a duty of care both to the victim and to the bully. So if we do find that Ziggy has been bullying Amabella, our focus won’t be on punishing him, but on ensuring the behavior stops, obviously, immediately, and then on getting to the bottom of why he is behaving this way. He’s a five-year-old boy, after all. Some experts say a five-year-old is incapable of bullying.”
Mrs. Lipmann smiled at Jane, and Jane smiled back warily. But wait, he’s a delightful child. He hasn’t done this!
“Apart from what happened on orientation day, have there ever been any other incidents of this sort of behavior? At day care? Preschool? In Ziggy’s interactions with children outside the classroom?”
“No,” said Jane. “Absolutely not. And he always . . . Well.” She’d been about to say that Ziggy had always steadfastly denied Amabella’s accusation from orientation day, but perhaps that just confused the issue. Mrs. Lipmann would think he had a history of lying.
“So there is nothing out of the ordinary in Ziggy’s past, his home life, his background, that you think we should know, that might be relevant?” Mrs. Lipmann looked at her expectantly, her face kind and warm, as if to let Jane know that nothing would shock her. “I understand that Ziggy’s father is not involved with his upbringing, is that right?”
It always took Jane a moment when strangers casually referred to “Ziggy’s father.” “Father” was a word that Jane associated with love and security. She always thought first of her own father, as if that must be surely whom they meant. She had to do a little leap in her mind to a hotel room and a downlight.
Well, Mrs. Lipmann, is this relevant? All I know about Ziggy’s father is that he was keen on erotic asphyxiation and humiliating women. He appeared to be charming and kind. He could sing Mary Poppins songs. I thought he was delightful—in fact, you’d probably think he was delightful too—and yet, he was not who he appeared to be at all. I guess you could describe him as a bully. So that may be relevant. Also, just to give you the whole picture, there is the possibility that Ziggy is actually my dead grandfather, reincarnated. And Poppy was a very gentle soul. So I guess it depends on whether you believe in a hereditary tendency toward violence, or reincarnation.
“I can’t think of anything relevant,” said Jane. “He has a lot of male role models—”
“Oh, yes, yes, I’m sure he does,” said Mrs. Lipmann. “Goodness. Some children here have fathers who travel or work such long hours, they never see them at all. So I’m certainly not implying that Ziggy is missing out because he’s growing up in a single-parent household. I’m just trying to get the whole picture.”
“Have you asked him about this?” asked Jane. Her heart twisted at the thought of Ziggy’s being questioned by the school principal without her there. He slept with a teddy bear. He sat on her lap and sucked his thumb when he got tired. It still seemed like a minor miracle to her that he could walk and talk and dress himself, and now here he was living this whole other life separate from her, with big, grown-up, scary dramas taking place.
“I have, and he denies it quite emphatically, so without Amabella’s corroboration it really is very difficult to know where to go next—”
She was interrupted by a knock on the door of her office. The school secretary put her head in. She shot a wary look at Jane. “Er, I thought I should let you know, Mr. and Mrs. Klein are already here.”
Mrs. Lipmann blanched. “But they’re not due for another hour.”
“My board meeting was rescheduled,” said a familiar, strident voice. Renata appeared at the secretary’s shoulder, clearly ready to barge on in. “So we just wondered if you could fit us in—” She caught sight of Jane and her face hardened. “Oh. I see.”
Mrs. Lipmann shot Jane an anguished look of apology. Jane knew from Madeline that Geoff and Renata regularly donated ostentatious sums of money to the school. “At last year’s school trivia night, we all had to sit there like grateful peasants while Mrs. Lipmann thanked the Kleins for paying for the entire school to be air-conditioned,” Madeline had told her. Then she’d brightened as a thought struck her. “Maybe Celeste and Perry can take them on this year. They can all play ‘I’m richer than you’ together.”
The school secretary wrung her hands. Mrs. Lipmann made a point of having an “open door” policy for school parents and was flexible about people dropping in without an appointment. The secretary had no experience with a situation like this. “Is it possible you could come back another time?” she said pleadingly to Renata.
“Not really,” said Renata. “Anyway, I assume we’re all here to discuss the same topic, aren’t we?”
Mrs. Lipmann hurried out from behind her desk. “Mrs. Klein, I really think it would be better—”
“This is fortuitous, in fact!” Renata strode past the secretary and straight into the office, followed by a pale, stocky, ginger-haired man in a suit and tie, who was presumably Geoff. Jane hadn’t met him before. Most of the fathers were still strangers to her.
Jane got to her feet and held her arms protectively across her body, her hands clutching at her clothes as if they were about to be ripped off. The Kleins were about to expose her and lay her ugly, shameful secrets bare for all the other parents to see. Ziggy wasn’t the result of nice, normal, loving sex. He was the result of the shameful actions of a young, silly, fat, ugly girl.
Ziggy was not right, and he was not right because Jane had let that man be his father. She knew it was illogical, because Ziggy wouldn’t otherwise exist, but it felt logical, because Ziggy was always going to be her son, of course he was, how could she not be his mother? But he was meant to be born later, when Jane had found him a proper daddy and a proper life. If she’d done everything properly he wouldn’t be marked by this terrible genetic stain. He wouldn’t be behaving this way.
She thought of the first time she’d seen him. He was so upset to be born, screaming with his whole body, tiny limbs flailing as if he were falling, and her first thought was, I’m so sorry, little baby. I’m so sorry for putting you through this. The exquisitely painful feeling that flooded her body reminded her of grief—even though she would have called it “joy,” it felt the same. She had thought the raging torrent of her love for this funny-looking, little red-faced creature would surely wash away the dirty little memory of that night. But the memory stayed, clinging to the walls of her mind like a slimy black leech.
“You need to get that son of yours under control.” Renata stepped directly in front of Jane. Her finger stabbed at the air near Jane’s chest. Her eyes were bloodshot behind her glasses. Her anger was so palpable and righteous in the face of Jane’s doubts.
“Renata,” remonstrated Geoff. He held out a hand to Jane. “Geoff Klein. Please excuse Renata. She’s very upset.”
Jane shook his hand. “Jane Chapman.”
“All right, well perhaps then, if we are all here together, perhaps we could have a constructive chat,” said Mrs. Lipmann with a tinkle of nerves in her cut-glass voice. “Can I offer anyone tea or coffee? Water?”
“I don’t want refreshments,” said Renata. Jane saw with something like sick fascination that Renata’s entire body was trembling. She looked away. Seeing the evidence of Renata’s raw emotions was like seeing her naked.
“Renata.” Geoff held his arm diagonally across his wife’s body, as if she were about to step in front of a car.
“I’ll tell you what I want,” said Renata to Mrs. Lipmann. “I want her child to stay the hell away from my daughter.”