“I’m cleaning my teeth, give me a moment.” He rinsed his mouth out, spat and tapped his toothbrush on the side of the basin. Tap, tap, tap. Always three definite, decisive taps, as if the toothbrush were a hammer or wrench. Sometimes, if she’d been drinking champagne, she could get weak from laughter just watching Ed tap his toothbrush on the basin.

“Jane looks about twelve years old to me,” said Ed. “Abigail seems older than her. I can’t get my head around her being a fellow parent.” He pointed his toothbrush at her and grinned. “But she’ll be our secret weapon at this year’s trivia night. She’ll know the answers to all the Gen Y questions.”

“I reckon I might know more pop culture stuff than Jane,” said Madeline. “I get the feeling she’s not your typical twenty-four-year-old. She seems almost old-fashioned in some ways, like someone from my mother’s generation.”

She examined her face, sighed and put her jar of hope back on the shelf.

“She can’t be that old-fashioned,” said Ed. “You said she got pregnant after a one-night stand.”

“She went ahead and had the baby,” said Madeline. “That’s sort of old-fashioned.”

“But then she should have left him on the church doorstep,” said Ed. “In a wicked basket.”

“A what?”

“A wicker basket. That’s a word, isn’t it? Wicker?”

“I thought you said a wicked basket.”

“I did. I was covering up my mistake. Hey, what’s with all the gum? She was chewing it all day.”

“I know. It’s like she’s addicted.”

He turned off the bathroom light. They both went to opposite sides of the bed, snapped on their bedside lamps and pulled back the cover in a smooth, practiced, synchronized move that proved, depending on Madeline’s mood, that they either had the perfect marriage or that they were stuck in a middle-class suburban rut and they needed to sell the house and go traveling around India.

“I’d quite like to give Jane a makeover,” mused Madeline as Ed found his page in his book. He was a big fan of Patricia Cornwell murder mysteries. “The way she pulls back her hair like that. All flat on her head. She needs some volume.”

“Volume,” murmured Ed. “Absolutely. That’s what she needs. I was thinking the same thing.” He flipped a page.

“We need to help find her a boyfriend,” said Madeline.

“You’d better get on that,” said Ed.

“I’d quite like to give Celeste a makeover too,” said Madeline. “I know that sounds strange. Obviously she looks beautiful no matter what.”

“Celeste? Beautiful?” said Ed. “Can’t say I’ve noticed.”

“Ha, ha.” Madeline picked up her book and put it straight down again. “They seem so different, Jane and Celeste, but I feel like they’re also sort of similar. I can’t quite work out how.”

Ed put down his own book. “I can tell you how they’re similar.”

“Can you now?”

“They’re both damaged,” said Ed.

“Damaged?” said Madeline. “How are they damaged?”

“Don’t know,” said Ed. “I just recognize damaged girls. I used to date them. I can spot a crazy chick a mile off.”

“So was I damaged too?” asked Madeline. “Is that what attracted you?”

“Nope,” said Ed. He picked up his book again. “You weren’t damaged.”

“Yes I was!” protested Madeline. She wanted to be interesting and damaged too. “I was heartbroken when you met me.”

“There’s a difference between heartbroken and damaged,” said Ed. “You were sad and hurt. Maybe your heart was broken, but you weren’t broken. Now, be quiet, because I think I’m falling for a red herring here, and I’m not falling for it, Ms. Cornwell, no I’m not.”

“Mmmm,” said Madeline. “Well, Jane might be damaged, but I don’t see what Celeste has got to be damaged about. She’s beautiful and rich and happily married and she doesn’t have an ex-husband stealing her daughter away from her.”

“He’s not trying to steal her away,” said Ed, his eyes back on his book. “This is just Abigail being a teenager. Teenagers are crazy. You know that.”

Madeline picked up her own book.

She thought of Jane and Ziggy walking off hand in hand down the driveway as they left that afternoon. Ziggy was telling Jane something, one little hand gesticulating wildly, and Jane had her head tipped to one side, listening, her other hand holding out the car keys to open her car. Madeline heard her say, “I know! Let’s go to that place where we got those yummy tacos!”

Watching them brought back a flood of memories from the years when she was a single mother. For five years it had been just her and Abigail. They’d lived in a little two-bedroom flat above an Italian restaurant. They ate a lot of takeout pasta and free garlic bread. (Madeline had put on seven kilos.) They were the Mackenzie girls in unit nine. She’d changed Abigail’s name back to her maiden name (and she refused to change it again when she married Ed. A woman could only change her surname so many times before it got ridiculous). She couldn’t stand having Abigail walk around with her father’s surname when Nathan chose to spend his Christmas lying on a beach in Bali with a trashy little hairdresser. A hairdresser who, by the way, didn’t even have good hair: black roots and split ends.