7.
Oh, calamity, thought Madeline.
Wonderful. She’d just made friends with the mother of a little thug. He’d seemed so cute and sweet in the car. Thank God he hadn’t tried to choke Chloe. That would have been awkward. Also, Chloe would have knocked him out with a right hook.
“Ziggy would never . . .” said Jane.
Her face had gone completely white. She looked horrified. Madeline saw the other parents take tiny steps back, forming a circle of space around Jane.
“It’s all right.” Madeline put a comforting hand on Jane’s arm. “They’re children! They’re not civilized yet!”
“Excuse me.” Jane stepped past two other mothers and into the middle of the little crowd, like she was stepping onto a stage. She put her hand on Ziggy’s shoulder. Madeline’s heart broke for them both. Jane seemed young enough to be her own daughter. In fact Jane reminded her a little of Abigail: that same prickliness and shy, dry humor.
“Oh dear,” fretted Celeste next to Madeline. “This is awful.”
“I didn’t do anything,” said Ziggy in a clear voice.
“Ziggy, we just need you to say sorry to Amabella, that’s all,” said Miss Barnes. Bec Barnes had taught Fred when he was in kindergarten. It had been her first year out of teachers college. She was good, but still very young and a bit too anxious to please the parents, which was absolutely fine when the parent was Madeline, but not when Renata Klein was the parent, and out for revenge. Although to be fair, any parent would want an apology if another child tried to choke theirs. (It probably hadn’t helped that Madeline had made Renata look silly for thinking Jane was the nanny. Renata didn’t like to look silly. Her children were geniuses, after all. She had a reputation to uphold. Board meetings to attend.)
Jane looked at Amabella. “Sweetheart, are you sure it was this boy who hurt you?”
“Could you say sorry to Amabella, please? You really hurt her quite badly,” said Renata to Ziggy. She was speaking nicely, but firmly. “Then we can all go home.”
“But it wasn’t me,” said Ziggy. He spoke very clearly and precisely and looked Renata straight in the eye.
Madeline took her sunglasses off and chewed on the stem. Maybe it wasn’t him? Could Amabella have gotten it wrong? But she was gifted! She was actually quite a lovely little girl too. She’d been on playdates with Chloe and was very easygoing and let Chloe boss her about, taking the supporting role in whatever game they were playing.
“Don’t lie,” Renata snapped at Ziggy. She’d dropped her well-bred, “I’m still nice to other people’s kids even when they hurt mine” demeanor. “All you need to do is say sorry.”
Madeline saw Jane’s body react instantly, instinctively, like the sudden rear of a snake or pounce of an animal. Her back straightened. Her chin lifted. “Ziggy doesn’t lie.”
“Well, I can assure you Amabella is telling the truth.”
The little audience became very still. Even the other children were quiet, except for Celeste’s twins, who were chasing each other around the playground, yelling something about ninjas.
“OK, so we seem to have reached a stalemate here.” Miss Barnes clearly didn’t know what in the world to do. She was twenty-four years old, for heaven’s sake.
Chloe reappeared at Madeline’s side, breathing hard from her exertions on the monkey bars. “I need a swim,” she announced.
“Shhh,” said Madeline.
Chloe sighed. “May I have a swim, please, Mummy?”
“Just shhhh.”
Madeline’s ankle ached. This was not turning out to be a very good fortieth birthday, thank you very much. So much for the Festival of Madeline. She really needed to sit back down. Instead she limped into the middle of the action.
“Renata,” she said. “You know how children can be—”
Renata swung her head to glare at Madeline. “The child needs to take responsibility for his actions. He needs to see there are consequences. He can’t go around choking other children and pretend he didn’t do it! Anyway, what’s this got to do with you, Madeline? Mind your own beeswax.”
Madeline bristled. She was only trying to help! And “mind your own beeswax” was such a profoundly geeky thing to say. Ever since the conflict over the theater excursion for the gifted and talented children last year, she and Renata had been tetchy with each other, even though they were ostensibly still friends.
Madeline actually liked Renata, but right from the beginning there had been something competitive about their relationship. “See, I’m just the sort of person who would be bored out of my mind if I had to be a full-time mother,” Renata would say confidentially to Madeline, and that wasn’t meant to be offensive because Madeline wasn’t actually a full-time mother, she worked part-time, but still, there was always the implication that Renata was the smart one, the one who needed more mental stimulation, because she had a career while Madeline had a job.
It didn’t help that Renata’s older son Jackson was famous at school for winning chess tournaments, while Madeline’s son Fred was famous for being the only student in the history of Pirriwee Public brave enough to climb the giant Moreton Bay Fig tree and then leap the impossible distance onto the roof of the music room to retrieve thirty-four tennis balls. (The Fire Brigade had to be called to rescue him. Fred’s street cred at school was sky-high.)
“It doesn’t matter, Mummy.” Amabella looked up at her mother with eyes still teary. Madeline could see the red finger marks around the poor child’s neck.
“It does matter,” said Renata. She turned to Jane. “Please make your child apologize.”
“Renata,” said Madeline.
“Stay out of it, Madeline.”
“Yes, I don’t think we should get involved Madeline,” said Harper, who was predictably nearby and spent her life agreeing with Renata.
“I’m sorry, but I just can’t make him apologize for something he says he didn’t do,” said Jane.
“Your child is lying,” said Renata. Her eyes flashed behind her glasses.
“I don’t think he is,” said Jane. She lifted her chin.
“I just want to go home now, please, Mummy,” said Amabella. She began to sob in earnest. Renata’s weird-looking new French nanny, who had been silent the whole time, picked her up, and Amabella wrapped her legs around her waist and buried her face in her neck. A vein pulsed in Renata’s forehead. Her hands clenched and unclenched.
“This is completely . . . unacceptable,” Renata said to poor distraught Miss Barnes, who was probably wondering why they hadn’t covered situations like this at teachers college.
Renata leaned down so that her face was only inches away from Ziggy. “If you ever touch my little girl like that again, you will be in big trouble.”
“Hey!” said Jane.
Renata ignored her. She straightened and spoke to the nanny. “Let’s go, Juliette.”
They marched off through the playground, while all the parents pretended to be busy tending to their children.
Ziggy watched them go. He looked up at his mother, scratched the side of his nose and said, “I don’t think I want to come to school anymore.”
Samantha: All the parents have to go down to the police station and make a statement. I haven’t had my turn yet. I feel quite sick about it. They’ll probably think I’m guilty. Seriously, I feel guilty when a police car pulls up next to me at the traffic lights.