“It was him?” Madeline took Jane’s arm and pulled her close. “It was Perry who—”

Jane stared at the perfect pink cupid’s bow of Madeline’s lipstick. Two perfect peaks. “Do you think he’s—”

She never got to finish her sentence because that’s when the two grappling white-satin Elvises, their arms wrapped tightly around each other’s backs as if in a passionate embrace, slammed violently into Jane and Madeline, sending them flying in opposite directions.

As Jane fell, she put one hand to save herself and felt something snap with sickening wrongness near her shoulder as she landed hard on her side.

The tiles of the balcony were wet against Jane’s cheek. Celeste’s screams mingled with the far-off sounds of ambulances and the soft sound of Bonnie sobbing. Jane could taste blood in her mouth. She closed her eyes.

Oh, calamity.

Bonnie: The fighting spilled out onto the balcony, and that’s when poor Madeline and Jane got so badly injured. I didn’t see Perry White fall. I . . . Would you excuse me for just a moment, Sarah? Wait, it is Sarah, isn’t it? Not Susan. My mind went blank. Sorry, Sarah. Sarah. A lovely name. It means “princess,” I think. Listen, Sarah, I need to pick up my daughter now.

78.

Detective-Sergeant Adrian Quinlan: We’re looking at any available CCTV footage, photos taken on the night and mobile phone footage. Obviously we’ll be studying the forensic evidence when it becomes available. We’re currently in the process of interviewing every one of the one hundred and thirty-two parents who attended the event. Rest assured, we will find out the truth about exactly what took place last night, and I’ll charge the bloody lot of them if I have to.

The Morning After the Trivia Night

I don’t think I can do it,” said Ed quietly. He was sitting on a chair next to Madeline’s hospital bed. She had a private room, but Ed kept looking nervously over his shoulder. He looked like he was seasick.

“I’m not asking you to do anything,” said Madeline. “If you want to tell, tell.”

“Tell. For God’s sake.” Ed rolled his eyes. “This isn’t snitching to the teacher! This is breaking the law. This is lying under . . . Are you OK? Are you in pain?”

Madeline closed her eyes and winced. Her ankle was broken. It happened when the two Year 5 dads crashed into her and Jane. At first she thought she wouldn’t fall, but then, it seemed like it happened in slow motion, one of her legs slid behind the other one on the wet balcony as though she were doing a fancy dance move. It was her good ankle too, not the one that kept rolling. She had to lie there on the wet balcony last night in excruciating pain for what seemed like hours while Celeste screamed that awful, endless scream, and Bonnie sobbed, and Nathan swore and Jane lay on her side with blood on her face and Renata yelled at the fighting Year 5 dads to “grow up, for God’s sake!”

Madeline was scheduled for surgery this afternoon. She would be in a cast for four to six weeks, and after that there would be physiotherapy. It would be a long time before she’d be in stilettos again.

She wasn’t the only one who had ended up in the hospital. As Madeline understood it, the final tally this morning of injuries from the trivia night were one broken ankle (Madeline’s contribution), one broken collarbone (poor Jane), a broken nose (Renata’s husband, Geoff—less than he deserved), three cracked ribs (Harper’s husband, Graeme, who had also been sleeping with the French nanny), three black eyes, two nasty cuts requiring stitches and ninety-four splitting headaches.

And one death.

Madeline’s head swirled with a violent merry-go-round of images from the previous night. Jane, with her bright red lipstick, standing in front of Perry and saying, “You said your name was Saxon Banks.” At first Madeline had thought Jane had the two men mixed up, that Perry must resemble his cousin, until Perry said, “It didn’t mean anything.” The look on Celeste’s face after Perry hit her. No surprise at all. Just embarrassment.

What sort of an obtuse, self-absorbed friend had Madeline been to have missed something like that? Just because Celeste didn’t walk around nursing black eyes and split lips didn’t mean there hadn’t been clues, if she’d just bothered to notice them. Had Celeste ever tried to confide in her? Madeline had probably been rattling on about eye cream or something equally superficial and hadn’t given her the opportunity. She’d probably interrupted her! Ed was always calling her out on that. “Let me finish,” he’d say, holding up a hand. Just three little words. Perry hits me. And Madeline had never given her friend the three seconds it took to say them. Meanwhile Celeste had listened while Madeline had talked endlessly about everything from how much she hated the under-seven soccer coordinator to her feelings about Abigail’s relationship with her father.

“She brought around a vegetarian lasagna for us today,” said Ed.

“Who?” said Madeline. Regret was making her nauseous.

“Bonnie! For God’s sake, Bonnie. The woman we’re apparently protecting. She was just bizarrely normal, as if nothing happened. She’s completely nuts. She’s already been talking this morning to a ‘very nice journalist called Sarah.’ God knows what she’s been saying.”

“It was an accident,” said Madeline.

She remembered Bonnie’s face disfigured with rage as she screamed at Perry. That strange guttural voice. We see! We f**king see!