“I’ll find out,” she said. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

“It’s probably nothing. Au revoir, darl.” Lorraine hung up.

Madeline picked up her phone and sent Abigail a text: Call me as soon as you get this. Mum x.

She’d be in class now, and the kids weren’t meant to look at their phones until school hours were over.

Patience, she told herself as she put her hands back on the keyboard. Right. What next? The posters to promote next month’s King Lear. Nobody in Pirriwee wanted to see King Lear lurching madly about the stage. They wanted contemporary comedy. They had enough Shakespearean drama in their own lives in the school playground and on the soccer field. But Madeline’s boss insisted. Ticket sales would be sluggish, and she’d subtly blame Madeline’s marketing. It happened every year.

She looked at the phone again. Abigail would probably make her wait till later tonight before she finally called.

“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child, Abigail,” she said to the silent phone. (She could quote great chunks of King Lear, thanks to having to listen to the cast rehearsing so often.)

The phone rang, making her jump. It was Nathan.

“Don’t get upset,” he said.

56.

Violent relationships tend to become more violent over time.

Had she read it in some of that folder of paperwork, or was it something Susi had said in that cool, nonjudgmental voice of hers?

Celeste lay on her side in bed, hugging her pillow to her and looking out the window where Perry had pulled back the curtain so she could see the sea.

“We’ll be able to lie in bed and see the ocean!” he’d crowed when they’d first looked at this house, and the real estate agent had shrewdly said, “I’ll leave you to look on your own,” because, of course, the house spoke for itself. Perry had been like a kid that day, an excited kid running through a new house, not a man about to spend millions on a “prestige ocean-view property.” His excitement almost frightened her; it was too raw and optimistic. She’d been right to be superstitious. They were surely heading for a fall. She was fourteen weeks pregnant at the time, nauseated and bloated, with a permanent metallic taste in her mouth, and she was refusing to believe in this pregnancy—but Perry was high on hope, as if the new house would somehow guarantee the pregnancy would work, because “What a life! What a life for children, living this close to the beach!” That was before he’d ever even raised his voice to her, when the idea of his hitting her would have been impossible, inconceivable, laughable.

She was still so shocked.

It was just so very, very . . . surprising.

She’d tried so hard to convey the depth of her shock to Susi, but something told her that all of Susi’s clients felt the same way. (“But no, you see, for us, it’s really surprising!” she wanted to say.)

“More tea?”

Perry stood at the bedroom door. He was still in his work clothes, but he’d taken off his jacket and tie and rolled the sleeves of his shirt up above his elbows. “I have to go into the office this afternoon, but I’ll work from home this morning to make sure you’re OK,” he’d said after he’d helped her off the hallway floor, as if she’d slipped and hurt herself, or been suddenly overcome by a dizzy spell. He’d called Madeline, without asking Celeste, and asked if she would mind picking the boys up from school today. “Celeste is sick,” she’d heard him say, and the concern and compassion in his voice were so real, so genuine, it was as though he really did believe that she’d suddenly been felled by a mysterious illness. Maybe he did believe it.

“No thanks,” she said.

She looked at his handsome, caring face, blinked and saw his face up close to hers, jeering, “Not good enough,” before he slammed her head against the wall.

So surprising.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Which one was the baddie? She didn’t know. She closed her eyes. The ice pack had helped, but the pain had settled at a certain level and stayed that way, as if it were always going to be there: a tender, throbbing circle. When she put her fingertips to it, she expected it to feel like a pulpy tomato.

“OK, well. Sing out if you need anything.”

She almost laughed.

“I will,” she said.

He left, and she closed her eyes. She’d embarrassed him. Would he feel embarrassed if she really did leave? Would he feel humiliated if the world knew that his Facebook posts didn’t tell the whole story?

“You need to take precautions. The most dangerous time for a battered woman is after she ends the relationship,” Susi had told Celeste more than once at their last session, as though she were looking for a response that Celeste wasn’t giving her.

Celeste had never taken that seriously. For her it was always about making the decision to leave, to stay or to go, as though going would be the end of her story.

She was delusional. She was a fool.

If his anger had burned just a notch higher today, then he would have hit her head once more against the wall. He would have hit harder. He could have killed her, and then he would have sunk to his knees and cradled her body, keening and shouting and feeling really very upset and sorry for himself—but so what? She’d be dead. He could never make it up to her. Her boys would have no mother, and Perry was a wonderful father, but he didn’t give them enough fruit and he always forgot to clean their teeth and she wanted to see them grown up.