‘You know Mel tried to incriminate us,’ Tara had told me. ‘She put Bella’s shoe in our garbage bin. I had terrible thoughts about Josh. I can’t believe Mel was calling herself a guardian angel! More like an avenging demon. Was she gonna take Zoe away next because I swear and spend too much time on Facebook? How dare she judge us?’

Mel had played us all. Not just me and Marty, but the other playgroup mums too. Sergeant Caruso told us that Sammy’s father wasn’t a violent, stalking ex-boyfriend. The happily married bloke was living in Scotland and barely remembered his backpacker week partying in Byron Bay with Mel four and a half years ago. He didn’t even know he had a son. Mel had concocted the story of a violent ex to persuade Deirdre to help her. However, the long list of Mel’s lies didn’t include Sarah. Like me, she had lost a baby. Mel was a late, unexpected addition for her parents, ten years younger than her brother, difficult and rebellious. Pregnant at sixteen, she’d been forced to hand her baby to her older sister. Her aunt Deirdre had taken Mel in after she’d been banished from her family.

When I’d first joined playgroup, I’d been too scared to trust anyone after my experience in Manchester, but maybe if I’d opened up sooner about my own grief it might have helped Mel. The hospital would have offered counselling to Sally and David Hayden but not to Mel, the teenage mother who had lost her baby twice over. Mel was a good mum to Sammy; I could see that at playgroup each week. And the others had said their kids loved going to day care at her house. But her pain about Sarah had made her irrational.

And that was why we needed playgroup—to share our heartache, our secrets and our joy with other mums.

With Bella back in my arms, I’d accepted Tara’s apology, but I was still wary. And then, two days ago, she’d sent an email to all of us mums, as dramatic as she was in person: