“But, my God, Abigail, are you thinking about the reality of this? The logistics? How will it actually work? Where is this going to happen? Are you going to meet this person at a hotel? Are you going to ask me for a lift? ‘Oh, Mum, I’m just off to lose my virginity, better stop at a drugstore to buy some condoms’?”

She looked at Abigail’s profile. She had her head dropped and one hand shielding her eyes. Madeline could see her lip trembling. Of course she hadn’t thought it through. She was fourteen.

“And have you thought through what it would be like to have sex with a stranger? To have some horrible man touching you—”

Abigail dropped her hand and turned her head. “Stop it, Mum!” she shouted.

“You’re in la-la land, Abigail. Are you thinking some handsome George Clooney type will take you to his villa, tenderly take your virginity and then write out a generous check to Amnesty International? Because it won’t be like that. It will be vile and painful—”

“It’s vile and painful for those little girls!” cried Abigail, tears sliding down her face.

“But I’m not their mother!” shouted Madeline, and she slammed straight into the back of Renata’s BMW.

Harper: Look, I don’t want to be the one casting aspersions, but Madeline deliberately rammed Renata’s car the day before the trivia night.

63.

Just don’t spread the word I’m doing this.” Mrs. Ponder’s daughter leaned down and spoke quietly in Jane’s ear beneath the cover of roaring hair dryers. “Otherwise I’ll have all the posh mothers coming in here wanting me to delouse their precious little kids.”

At first Mrs. Ponder had told Jane to go to the drugstore to pick up a lice treatment. “It’s easy,” she said. “You just comb through the hair and pick the little bloodsuckers . . .” She stopped as she considered the expression on Jane’s face. “Tell you what,” she said. “I’ll see if Lucy can fit you in today.”

Mrs. Ponder’s daughter Lucy ran Hairway to Heaven, the very popular hairdressing salon in Pirriwee, in between the newsagent and the butcher. Jane had never been in the salon before. Apparently Lucy and her team were responsible for all the blond bobs on the Pirriwee Peninsula.

As Lucy fastened a cape around Ziggy’s neck, Jane looked around surreptitiously for any parents she might know, but she didn’t recognize anyone.

“Shall I give him a trim while I’m here?” asked Lucy.

“Sure, thanks,” said Jane.

Lucy glanced at Jane. “Mum wants me to cut your hair too. She wants me to give you a pixie cut.”

Jane tightened her ponytail. “I don’t really bother with my hair that much.”

“At the very least you’d better let me have a check of your hair,” said Lucy. “You might need a treatment yourself. Lice don’t fly, but they do trapeze from head to head, like leetle lice acrobats.” She put on a Mexican accent and Ziggy chuckled appreciatively.

“Oh, God,” said Jane. Her scalp felt instantly itchy.

Lucy considered Jane. She narrowed her eyes. “Have you ever seen the movie Sliding Doors? Where Gwyneth Paltrow gets her hair all cut off and it looks fantastic?”

“Sure,” said Jane. “Every girl loves that part.”

“So does every hairdresser,” said Lucy. “It’s like a dream job.” She kept looking at Jane for a few seconds longer, then she turned back to face Ziggy and put her hands on his shoulders. She grinned at his reflection. “You’re not going to recognize your mum once I’ve finished with her.”

Samantha: I didn’t recognize Jane when I first saw her at the trivia night. She had this amazing new haircut and she was wearing black capri pants with a white shirt with the collar up and ballet flats. Oh dear. Poor little Jane. She looked so happy at the start of the night!

64.

Celeste really did look ill, thought Madeline as she shepherded the twins in the door. She was wearing a man’s white T-shirt and checked pajama pants and her face was dead white.

“Gosh, is it some sort of virus, do you think? It came on so fast!” said Madeline. “You looked perfectly fine at assembly this morning!”

Celeste gave a strange little laugh and put a hand to the back of her head. “Yes, it came out of nowhere.”

“Why don’t I just take the boys back to my place for a while? Perry can pick them up from there on his way home,” said Madeline. She looked back at her car in the driveway. The smashed headlight stared at her reproachfully and expensively. She’d left Abigail crying in the front seat and Fred and Chloe squabbling in the back (and she’d also noticed Fred giving his head a good, vicious scratch, and she knew from horrible experience exactly what that probably meant; it would be just absolutely marvelous if she also had to deal with a nit outbreak right now).

“No, no, that’s nice of you, but I’m fine,” said Celeste. “I let them have unlimited screen time on Friday afternoons. They’ll just be ignoring me anyway. Thank you so much for picking them up.”

“Do you think you’ll be OK for the trivia night tomorrow?” asked Madeline.

“Oh, I’m sure I’ll be fine,” said Celeste. “Perry is looking forward to it.”

“All right, well, I’d better go,” said Madeline. “Abigail and I were shouting at each other in the car line and I ran into the back of Renata’s car.”