Mr. Gordon. Oh. Dominick.

“Darling,” began Alice, wondering where to start. For one thing she wasn’t sure if it was true. Surely they wouldn’t have had sex in his office? Would they?

“I nearly threw up. I had to take sort of deep breaths and put my hand over my mouth. You didn’t, did you? You never took off your clothes in front of Mr. Gordon, did you?”

Well, if she had, surely Chloe wasn’t privy to the information. Presumably Dominick hadn’t made an announcement about it at school assembly.

“Chloe Harper is a horrible liar,” said Alice decisively.

“I know,” said Madison with relief. “That’s what I said!” She looked out at the water and pushed her hair back behind her ears. “Then she said that I was the ugliest girl in the whole school, but that part wasn’t a lie, that part was true.”

Alice’s heart broke for her. “It certainly was not true.”

“I got this feeling,” said Madison. “A feeling like my head was going to explode. She was standing in front of me and I got out my scissors for art and I cut off her plait. I just went, snip! And it fell straight to the ground. And then when she turned around, I threw my cake at her. It wrecked the cake. Nobody even got to taste it. It was the best cake I ever made.”

“Did you threaten to stab her with the scissors?”

“No! She just made that bit up so I would get into more trouble.”

“Is that the truth?”

“Yes,” said Madison.

“Okay,” said Alice. Well, that was something.

Alice said, “You know, Madison, people are going to say mean things to you all through your life, and if you keep reacting like that, you’re going to end up in jail.”

Madison seemed to consider that. Alice wondered whether her wise, tough-love words were sinking in.

“Actually, I’m too young for jail,” said Madison.

“Well, now you are, but when you’re grown up—”

“When I’m a grown-up it won’t matter.”

“You mean, you won’t care if you go to jail? I think you will.”

Madison rolled her eyes. “No. I won’t care if people say mean things to me, because I’ll be grown up. I can just say, ‘Who cares? I’m going to France.’ ”

Ah. Of course. Alice could remember thinking something similar when she was a child. Once you were a grown-up nobody could hurt your feelings because how could your feelings possibly be hurt when you could drive a car wherever you wanted.

Before she could think of a way to answer without disillusioning her (what was there to look forward to otherwise?), a shadow fell over them.

“Ice cream delivery.” Nick was standing above them, holding three ice cream cones.

“I assume you still like rum and raisin,” he said to Alice.

“Of course.” Fancy having to ask her that.

They sat and ate their ice creams, looking out at the water.

“Madison has just told me what Chloe said to her,” said Alice. “And it was something nasty and untrue.”

“Okay,” said Nick carefully. He licked his ice cream and looked at them both.

“So, I guess we need to help Madison find some better ways to react when she feels angry.”

“I always take ten deep breaths before I say anything when I’m angry,” said Nick.

“No you don’t,” said Madison. “You just yell straightaway. So does Mum. And what about that time Mum threw that pizza box at you?”

Oh my, they’d been setting fine examples for their children.

Alice cleared her throat. “Well, the thing is—”

“Are you going to come home, please, Dad?” said Madison. “I think you should come home now and be Mum’s husband again. I’m pretty sure then I would stop being angry. Then I would never do another bad thing in my whole entire life. I could write that in a contract for you. So that means you could, like, sue me if I was ever bad, which I would not ever be.”

She looked at her father with desperate entreaty.

“Sweetheart,” began Nick, his face screwed tight as if he had a toothache. Then he stopped, distracted by some sort of disturbance on the beach. There were shouts and people running. Alice could see a small crowd of people forming up on the cliff above the aquarium, pointing at something in the water.

“Humpback whales in the harbor!” a man cried at them, running along with a camera bouncing on his chest.

Nick immediately leapt to his feet, still holding his ice cream. Madison and Alice looked up at him.

“What are you waiting for?” he said, and next thing the three of them were running breathlessly along the beach, up onto the foreshore, and running around the walkway, their ice creams held precariously in front of them.

They had to run a steep set of concrete steps and Alice drew ahead, one hand holding her ice cream, the other holding up her skirt as she effortlessly leapt up the steps, two at a time.

As she reached the top, she was in time to see a massive plume of water shoot up from the water below them.

“It’s a mother and her calf,” said a woman to Alice. “Watch. Just there. You’ll see them again.”

Nick and Madison pounded up the stairs behind her. Nick was breathing heavily. (How did he get so unfit?)

“Where? Where?” said Madison. Her face was pink and anxious.

“Just watch,” said Alice.

For a few seconds there was nothing but silence. The surface of the harbor rippled in the breeze and a seagull squawked plaintively.