Madeline stared into Saxon’s face, and he seemed to stare back at her with knowing eyes, as if he knew every despicable thing there was to know about her. A wave of revulsion rushed over her, leaving her feeling clammy and shaky.

A scream sliced like a sword through the house’s sleepy silence: “Mummy! Mummy, Mummy, Mummy!”

Madeline leapt to her feet, her heart hammering, even though she already knew it was just Chloe having another one of her nightmares.

“Coming! I’m coming!” she called as she ran down the hallway. She could fix this. She could so easily fix this, and it was such a relief, because Abigail didn’t want or need her anymore, and there were evil people like Saxon Banks out there in the world waiting to hurt Madeline’s children, in big ways and small ways, and there wasn’t a damned thing she could do about it, but at least she could drag that monster out from under Chloe’s bed and kill it with her bare hands.

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 g*y, 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.