from her shoulder, his face alert and inquisitive. “Hear it?”
Someone was buzzing the security door for their apartment.
Jane carried him out into the living room.
“Who is it?” said Ziggy. He was thrilled. There were still tears on his cheeks but his eyes were bright and clear. He’d moved on as if that whole terrible incident had never taken place.
“I don’t know,” said Jane. Was it someone complaining about the noise? The police? The child protection authorities coming to take him away?
She picked up the security phone. “Hello?”
“It’s me! Let me in! It’s chilly.”
“Madeline?” She buzzed her in, put Ziggy down and went to open the front door of the apartment.
“Is Chloe here too?” Ziggy bounced about excitedly, the towel slipping off his shoulders.
“Chloe is probably in bed, like you should be.” Jane looked down the stairwell.
“Good evening!” Madeline beamed radiantly up at her as she click-clacked up the stairs in a watermelon-colored cardigan, jeans and high-heeled, pointy-toed boots.
“Hello?” said Jane.
“Brought you some cardboard.” Madeline held up a neatly rolled cylinder of yellow cardboard like a baton.
Jane burst into tears.
30.
It’s nothing! I was happy for an excuse to get out of the house,” said Madeline over the top of Jane’s teary gratitude. “Now, quick sticks, let’s get you dressed, Ziggy, and we’ll knock this project over.”
Other people’s problems always seemed so surmountable, and other people’s children so much more biddable, thought Madeline as Ziggy trotted off. While Jane collected the family photos, Madeline looked around Jane’s small, neat apartment, reminded of the one-bedroom apartment she and Abigail used to share.
She was romanticizing those days, she knew it. She wasn’t remembering the constant money worries or the loneliness of those nights when Abigail was asleep and there was nothing good on TV.
Abigail had been living with Nathan and Bonnie now for two weeks, and it seemed it was all going perfectly well for everyone except Madeline. Tonight, when Jane’s text had come through, the little children were asleep, Ed was working on a story and Madeline had just sat down to watch America’s Next Top Model. “Abigail!” she’d called out as she switched it on, before she remembered the empty bedroom, the four-poster bed replaced by a sofa bed for Abigail to use when she came for weekends, and Madeline didn’t know how to be with her daughter anymore, because she felt like she’d been fired from her position as mother.
She and Abigail normally watched America’s Next Top Model together, eating marshmallows and making catty remarks about the contestants, but now Abigail was happily living in a TV-free house. Bonnie didn’t “believe” in television. Instead, they all sat around and listened to classical music and talked after dinner.
“Rubbish,” scoffed Ed when he heard this.
“Apparently it’s true,” Madeline said. Of course, now when Abigail came to “visit,” all she wanted to do was lie on the couch and gorge on television, and because Madeline was now the treat-giving parent, she let her. (If she’d spent a week just listening to classical music and talking, she’d want to watch TV too.)
Bonnie’s whole life was a slap across Madeline’s face. (A gentle slap, more of a condescending, kindly pat, because Bonnie would never do anything violent.) That’s why it was so nice to be able to help Jane out, to be the calm one, with answers and solutions.
“I can’t find glue to paste on the photos,” said Jane worriedly as they laid everything out on the table.
“Got it.” Madeline pulled a pencil case out of her handbag and selected a black marker for Ziggy. “Let’s see you draw a great big tree, Ziggy.”
It was all going well until Ziggy said, “We have to put my father’s name on it. Miss Barnes said it doesn’t matter if we don’t have a photo, we just put the person’s name.”
“Well, you know that you don’t have a dad, Ziggy,” said Jane calmly. She’d told Madeline that she’d always tried to be as honest as possible with Ziggy about his father. “But you’re lucky, because you’ve got Uncle Dane, and Grandpa, and Great-uncle Jimmy.” She held up photos of smiling men like a winning hand of cards. “And we’ve even got this amazing photo of your great-great-grandfather, who was a soldier!”
“Yes, but I still have to write my dad’s name down in that box,” said Ziggy. “You draw a line from me to my mummy and my daddy. That’s the way you do it.”
He pointed at the example of a family tree that Miss Barnes had included, demonstrating a