Fuck you, she thinks. Fuck all of you.

She digs the spoon into the jar. She pulls it out. Titch watches her. Then she flicks the spoon, and a dollop of jam sails across the room onto the sofa.

Aaron claps his hand to his mouth in glee.

Titch’s jaw drops.

The jam has drawn a purple-black spatter along the floor and onto the arm of the sofa.

The three of them wait, on the cusp of something. Rose is light headed. She smiles. Aaron smiles at her.

She has wings. She can step up and dance on the air. She is nothing.

‘I’m calling the police,’ says Titch.

Aaron turns and, like a baseball pitcher, hurls his jar as hard as he can against the wall. It bursts with a sticky thunk.

Titch flinches and raises her hands to her head. She lets out a little shriek. She scrabbles for her phone. Rose steps forward and knocks it out of her hand. It skitters along the floor.

Aaron howls like a dog.

In the garden, a magpie hops across the lawn. The grass is damp, neat. Its tail bounces up and down. It dances between apples, lying rotting in the warm autumn sun. Its eye is a shiny black pebble, a hard, bright hole.

Rose takes Titch by the hair. She pulls her to the larder door. She slams the door on her head until the blood runs on the terracotta tiles. And when she’s finished, they break the house.

Will Bradman has come into school with his union representative. He waits at reception. Paula’s secretary ushers him into the office.

Paula tries to mask her shock.

Will’s large, hearty body occupies a similar space, but the shape of it is newly angular. His face is pale, and his eyes glisten. When she looks up again, his gaze is fixed on her still.

‘He had left school for almost a year before anything happened. He was twenty,’ he says, in careful tones.

Paula nods.

‘I am not a pervert.’

At the last word his composure cracks, and a fleck of spit comes from his mouth.

‘I know, Will.’

He looks at her, and she forces herself to meet his gaze.

‘This is not prosecutable,’ she says. ‘It is not a police matter. But there are legitimate concerns about conduct at play here. We will have to write you a letter of management advice, based on our discussions here, warning you about inappropriate contact with students.’

‘A hug,’ says Will firmly.

Paula carries on. ‘And about the importance of separating your professional life from your personal life.’

The rep gives him a glance and Will says nothing.

‘This letter will be on file.’

Will listens to the rest in silence.

He returns to work. On the first day, Paula sees him sitting in his car in the carpark and crying, huge heaving sobs that make his broad shoulders shake.