Jane drove Ziggy up to the school after their morning tea at Blue Blues.
“Will you tell Max to stop hurting Amabella?” he said to her as she parked the car.
“A grown-up will talk to him,” said Jane as she turned the key in the ignition. “Probably not me. Maybe Miss Barnes.”
She was trying to work out the best way to handle this. Should she march straight into the principal’s office right this minute? She’d prefer to speak with Miss Barnes, who would be more likely to believe that this wasn’t a case of Ziggy simply deflecting the blame by pointing the finger at someone else. Also, Miss Barnes knew that Jane and Celeste were friends. She would know this was potentially awkward.
But Miss Barnes was teaching right now. She couldn’t drag her out of the classroom. She would have to e-mail her and ask her to call.
But she wanted to tell someone now. Perhaps she should go straight to Mrs. Lipmann?
It wasn’t like Amabella was in mortal danger. Apparently the teacher’s aide never took her eyes off her. Jane’s impatience simply reflected her own desire to tattle. It wasn’t my son! It was her son!
And what about poor Celeste? Should she call her first and warn her? Was that what a good friend would do? Maybe it was. There was something awful and underhanded about going behind her back. She couldn’t bear it if this affected their friendship.
“Come on, Mummy,” said Ziggy impatiently. “Why are you just sitting there staring at nothing?”
Jane undid her seat belt and turned around to face Ziggy. “You did the right thing telling me about Max, Ziggy.”
“I didn’t tell you!” Ziggy, who had already unbuckled his belt and had his hand on the car-door handle ready to jump out, flung himself back around to face her. He was outraged, horrified.
“Sorry, sorry!” said Jane. “No, of course you didn’t tell me. Definitely not.”
“Because I promised Amabella I would never ever tell anyone.” Ziggy pushed his body between the driver’s seat and the passenger seat so his anxious little face was right next to hers. She could see a smear of sticky sauce above his lip from Tom’s pancakes.
“That’s right. You kept your promise.” Jane licked her finger and tried to use it to clean his face.
“I kept my promise.” Ziggy ducked away from her finger. “I’m good at keeping promises.”
“So you remember at the orientation day?” Jane gave up on cleaning his face. “When Amabella said that it was you who hurt her? Why did Amabella say it was you?”
“Max said if she told on him he would do it again when no grown-ups were looking,” said Ziggy. “So Amabella pointed at me.” He shrugged impatiently, as if he were becoming bored with the whole subject. “She said sorry about that. I said it was OK.”
“You’re a very nice boy, Ziggy,” said Jane. And you’re not a psychopath! (Max is a psychopath.)
“And I love you.”
“Can we go into school now?” Ziggy put his hand back on the car-door handle.
“Absolutely.”
As they walked down the path toward the school, Ziggy skipped ahead, his backpack bouncing on his back, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
Jane’s heart lifted at the sight of him and hurried to keep up. He hadn’t been anxious because he was being bullied. He’d been anxious because he’d been bravely and foolishly carrying a secret. Even when Mrs. Lipmann had accused him, her brave little soldier hadn’t cracked. He’d stood firm for Amabella. Ziggy wasn’t a bully. He was a hero.
He was also pretty dumb for not telling on Max straightaway and because he seriously seemed to think writing down a name didn’t count as telling, but he was five, and he was a kid in desperate need of a loophole.
Ziggy picked up a stick lying on the pavement and waved it over his head.
“Put down the stick, Ziggy!” she called. He tossed the stick and made a sharp right turn at the grassy alleyway leading past Mrs. Ponder’s house and into the school.
Jane kicked the stick off the path and followed him. What could Max have said to make a clever little girl like Amabella think that she had to keep his behavior a secret? Had he really told her he would “kill her dead”? And had Amabella genuinely believed that was a possibility?
She considered what she knew about Max. Apart from Max’s birthmark, she couldn’t differentiate between Celeste’s boys. She’d thought their personalities were identical too. To her, Max and Josh were like cute, naughty little puppies. With their boundless energy and big cheeky grins, they’d always seemed like such uncomplicated children, unlike Ziggy, who was so often unreadable and brooding. Celeste’s boys seemed like the sort of children who needed to be fed and bathed and run about: physically exhausting, but not mentally draining, the way a secretive little boy like Ziggy could be.
How would Celeste react when she found out what Max had done? Jane couldn’t imagine. She knew exactly how Madeline would react (crazily, loudly), but she had never seen Celeste really angry with her boys; of course she got frustrated and impatient, but she never shouted. Celeste so often seemed jumpy and preoccupied, startled by the existence of her children when they suddenly ran at her.
“Good morning! Did you sleep in this morning?” It was Mrs. Ponder, calling out from her front yard where she was watering the garden.
“We had an appointment,” explained Jane.
“So tell me, love, are you dressing up as Audrey or Elvis tomorrow night?” Mrs. Ponder gave her a sparky, teasing grin.
For a moment Jane couldn’t think what she was talking about. “Audrey or Elvis? Oh! The trivia night.” She’d forgotten all about it. Madeline had organized a table ages ago, but that was before all the recent events: the petition, the sandpit assault. “I’m not sure if—”
“Oh, I was teasing, love! Of course you’ll go as Audrey. You’ve got just the figure for it. Actually you’d look lovely with one of those short, boyish haircuts. What do they call it? A pixie cut!”
“Oh,” said Jane. She pulled on her ponytail. “Thanks.”
“Speaking of hair, darling”—Mrs. Ponder leaned forward confidentially—“Ziggy is having a good old scratch there.”
Mrs. Ponder said “Ziggy” like it was a hilarious nickname.
Jane looked at Ziggy. He was vigorously scratching his head with one hand while he crouched down to examine something important he’d seen in the grass.
“Yes,” she said politely. So what?
“Have you checked?” said Mrs. Ponder.
“Checked for what?” Jane wondered if she was being particularly obtuse today.
“Nits,” said Mrs. Ponder. “You know, head lice.”
“Oh!” Jane clapped her hand to her mouth. “No! Do you think—Oh! I don’t— I can’t— Oh!”
Mrs. Ponder chuckled. “Didn’t you ever have them as a child? They’ve been around for thousands of years.”
“No! I remember one time there was an outbreak at my school, but I must have missed out. I don’t like anything creepy-crawly.” She shuddered. “Oh God.”
“Well, I’ve had plenty of experience with the little buggers. All us nurses got them during the war. It’s nothing whatsoever to do with cleanliness or hygiene, if that’s what you’re thinking. They’re just downright annoying, that’s all. Come here, Ziggy!”
Ziggy ambled over. Mrs. Ponder broke off a small stick from a rosebush and used it to comb through Ziggy’s hair. “Nits!” she said with satisfaction in a nice, clear, loud, carrying voice, at the exact moment that Thea came hurrying by, carrying a lunch box. “He’s crawling with them.”
Thea: Harriett had forgotten her lunch box, and I was rushing into school to drop it off to her—I had a million things to do that day—when what do I hear? Ziggy is crawling with nits! Yes, she took the child home, but if it weren’t for Mrs. Ponder, she would have brought him into school! And why is she asking an old lady to check her child’s hair in the first place?