I had my eye on Rita at school. Single mum of two boys, six and eight. Evan was in Max’s class. They weren’t best buddies, but they liked each other enough. I’d chatted to her a few times at school assemblies and at a fundraising event. She was a passionate Italian who had her own successful handbag design label. She was very skinny (unfortunately), had short dark hair that she wore in a bob, and when she spoke her eyes were often searching for one of her boys. She wore a lot of eye makeup and her foundation was on the orange side of the spectrum, but she had a pretty face. She was very confident, a little over-critical of Max and Evan’s current teacher for my liking, but overall she ticked lots of boxes.
I tried to find out more about her from the other school mums. My friend Stacey thought that Rita’s husband had cheated on her and was now living in Queensland with the other woman. But my friend Jacinta said that they’d broken up amicably, that her ex was living in Brunswick and had the boys every second weekend. Bianca told me that Rita didn’t even have to work, that her ex was still taking care of them financially. And Megan thought that Rita’s ex had moved to the UK for work and he only saw the boys some school holidays. Whatever had happened, she was definitely a single mum, but she seemed like the good sort.
I observed Evan one morning in class while I was helping out with the kids’ reading. He seemed like a nice boy. His hair was brushed, his uniform was worn neatly, and he did what the teacher asked him to do. He wasn’t a rowdy kind of boy. He seemed to be able to concentrate when the teacher asked them all to read to themselves for five minutes. When I got the chance, I asked him to come and read his book to me, and I discovered that he was as good a reader as Max, which must mean that his mum spent time with him and cared about his learning.
‘Do you like books, Evan?’ I asked at the end.
‘Yep.’
‘What do you read?’
‘Zac Power.’
‘Zac Power’s great, isn’t he? So funny.’
‘Yep.’
‘I work with books. I’m an editor.’ He looked at me strangely, as if the reading mums weren’t supposed to have conversations with the kids. ‘Would you like to come over for a play one day?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Is your mum a happy lady?’
‘I guess so.’
‘Is your brother a nice boy?’
‘Most of the time. Except he won’t let me play with the iPad. He’s always on it. He scratched me this morning.’ Evan showed me some nail marks on his wrist.
‘Is he rough much?’
‘Not really. Just sometimes. If he gets angry.’
‘What does your mum do if he’s naughty?’
‘Sends him to his room.’
Well, at least there was some sort of punishment. She wasn’t one of those lazy parents who let their kids get away with whatever they wanted.
‘Is that all?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, yeah. Excellent reading. Thanks for that. You can get the next kid to come over.’