A seagull squawked, and for a moment she was confused by the sound.

Well, she’d chosen this. She’d chosen to live by the beach, as if she had as much right as anyone else. She could reward herself for two hours’ work with a walk on the beach. A walk on the beach in the middle of the day. She could go back to Blue Blues, buy a coffee to go and then take an arty photo of it sitting on a fence with the sea in the background and post it on Facebook with a comment: Work break! How lucky am I? People would write, Jealous!

If she packaged the perfect Facebook life, maybe she would start to believe it herself.

Or she could even post, Mad as hell!! Ziggy the only one in the class not invited to a birthday party!! Grrrrr. And everyone would write comforting things, like, WTF? and Awwww. Poor little Ziggy!

She could shrink her fears down into innocuous little status updates that drifted away on the news feeds of her friends.

Then she and Ziggy would be normal people. Maybe she’d even go on a date. Keep Mum happy.

She picked up her mobile phone and read the text her friend Anna had sent yesterday.

Remember Greg? My cousin u met when we were like 15?! He’s moved to Syd. Wants your number to ask u for a drink! OK? No pressure! (He’s pretty hot now. Got my genes!! Ha ha.) x

Right.

She remembered Greg. He’d been shy. Short. Reddish hair. He’d made a lame joke that no one got, and then when everyone said, “What? What?” he’d said, “Don’t worry about it!” That had stuck in her head because she’d felt sorry for him.

Why not?

She could handle a drink with Greg.

It was time. Ziggy was in school. She lived by the beach.

She sent back the text: OK x.

She took a sip of her tea and put her hands on the keyboard.

It was her body that reacted. She wasn’t even thinking about the text. She was thinking about Pete the Plumber’s receipt for wastes and plugs.

A violent swoop of nausea made her fold in two, her forehead resting against the table. She pressed her palm across her mouth. Blood rushed from her head. She could smell that scent. She could swear it was real, that it was actually here in the apartment.

Sometimes, if Ziggy’s mood changed too fast, without warning, from happy to angry, she could smell it on him.

She half straightened, gagging, and picked up her phone. She texted Anna with shaky fingers: Don’t give it to him! Changed my mind!

The text came back almost instantly.

Too late.

Thea: I heard Jane had a quote-unquote fling with one of the fathers. I’ve no idea which one. Except I know it wasn’t my husband!

Bonnie: She did not.

Carol: You know there was a man in their Erotic Book Club? Not my husband, thank goodness. He only reads Golf Australia.

Jonathan: Yes, I was the man in the so-called Erotic Book Club, except that was just a joke. It was a book club. A perfectly ordinary book club.

Melissa: Didn’t Jane have an affair with the stay-at-home dad?

Gabrielle: It wasn’t Jane who had the affair! I always thought she was born-again. Flat shoes, no jewelry, no makeup. But good body! Not an ounce of fat. She was the skinniest mother in the school. God, I’m hungry. Have you tried the 5:2 diet? This is my fast day. I am dying of starvation.

21.

Celeste arrived early for school pickup. She ached for her twins’ compact little bodies, and for that all too brief moment when their hands curled, suffocatingly, possessively, around her neck and she kissed their hot, hard, fragrant little heads before they squirmed away. But she knew she would probably be yelling at them within fifteen minutes. They’d be tired and crazy. She couldn’t get them to sleep until nine p.m. last night. Much too late. Bad mother. “Just go to sleep!” she’d ended up shrieking. She always had trouble getting them to bed at a reasonable hour, except when Perry was at home. They listened to Perry.

He was a good dad. A good husband too. Most of the time.

“You need a bedtime routine,” her brother had said on the phone from Auckland today, and Celeste had said, “Oh, what a revolutionary idea! I would never have thought of it!”

If parents had children who were good sleepers, they assumed this was due to their good parenting, not good luck. They followed the rules, and the rules had been proven to work. Celeste must therefore not be following the rules. And you could never prove it to them! They would die smug in their beds.

“Hi, Celeste.”

Celeste startled. “Jane!” She pressed a hand to her chest. As usual, she’d been dreaming and hadn’t heard footsteps. It bugged her the way she kept jumping like a lunatic when people appeared.

“Sorry,” said Jane. “I didn’t mean to creep up on you.”

“How was your day?” asked Celeste. “Did you get lots of work done?”

She knew that Jane supported herself doing bookkeeping work. Celeste imagined her sitting at a tidy desk in her small bare apartment (she hadn’t been there, but she knew the block of plain redbrick apartments on Beaumont Street down by the beach, and she assumed inside would be unadorned, like Jane. No fuss. No knickknacks). The simplicity of her life seemed so compelling. Just Jane and Ziggy. One sweet (putting aside the strange choking incident, of course), quiet, dark-haired child. No fights. Life would be calm and uncomplicated.

“I got a bit done,” said Jane. Her mouth made tiny little mouse-like movements as she chewed gum. “I had coffee this morning with my parents and Madeline and Ed. Then the day sort of disappeared.”

“The day goes so fast,” agreed Celeste, although hers had dragged.

“Are you going back to work now that the kids are at school?” asked Jane. “What did you do before the twins?”

“I was a lawyer,” said Celeste. I was someone else.

“Huh. I was meant to be a lawyer,” said Jane. There was something wry and sad in her voice that Celeste couldn’t quite interpret.

They turned down the grassy laneway that led past a little white weatherboard house that almost seemed to be part of the school.

“I wasn’t really enjoying it,” said Celeste. Was this true? She had hated the stress. She ran late every day. But didn’t she once love some aspects of it? The careful untangling of a legal issue. Like math, but with words.

“I couldn’t go back to practicing law,” said Celeste. “Not with the boys. Sometimes I think I might do teaching. Teach legal studies. But I’m not sure that really appeals either.” She had lost her nerve for work, like she’d lost her nerve for skiing.