As he began to cry, Prue picked him up and dusted him off. ‘You’re all right,’ she said briskly. ‘What have you done? Hurt your leg? If that starts to bleed, you’ll get a special Band-aid. Let’s wash it and see, okay?’

George nodded. He took Prue’s hand. She was heading for retirement and as tough as nails, with a flat, scratchy voice and dyed hair cut in a jagged pageboy. Nothing seemed to faze her. ‘I don’t care if it’s the Second Coming or the Antichrist,’ she’d drawled on our last development day, ‘they’re bound to end up in my classroom eventually.’

A chorus of shrieks rent the air. I whipped around. Kayla had collapsed, and Aaron was standing over her.

Before I could get there, he kicked her in the ribs.

Phoebe cried, ‘He punched her! Aaron punched Kayla!’

‘Aaron!’ I stepped in front of him. ‘Aaron, stop. Stop.’

‘Fuck you!’ he spat, eyes blazing. ‘Gimme back my knife! I’m gunna stab you in the guts!’

I already knew about the parenting order. Every week, from Monday afternoon until Friday morning, Aaron was picked up and dropped off by his father or his grandmother. But because he spent weekends with his mother, she was the one I had to ring.

‘Is that…?’ I checked the list. Yep; she’d dumped her married name. ‘Ms McCall? Krystal McCall?’

‘Uh, yeah.’ She didn’t sound too convinced.

‘This is Robyn Ayres. From the school. I teach your son.’

‘Oh, no!’ Her alarm was instant. I had to yank the phone away from my ear. ‘What happened?’

‘Aaron’s all right. He’s not hurt. But there’s been an incident. He hit a little girl and he’s very upset.’ This was a polite way of saying he’d kicked me, bitten Deb and tried to run away. ‘Can you come and collect him?’

‘Collect him?’

‘Now. He’s in sick bay. Do you know where that is?’

I was going too fast for her. ‘Wait. He—he hit a little girl?’

‘That’s right. And kicked her.’ He’d done it, I gathered, when she wouldn’t play with him. ‘It was quite violent. He should take a break and come back on Monday.’

She sighed. Her voice trembled when she asked, ‘He’s not expelled?’

‘No, no. We just have to put a plan in place.’ Conscious that Deb was minding my class, I said, ‘Mr Bradshaw will discuss it with you when you get here. Thanks, Ms McCall.’

Then I hung up.

Beside me, Howard gave a tired nod. There were bags under his eyes and his grey suit seemed to be leaching the colour out of him. Though solidly built, he sagged a little, like a couch that had lost some stuffing.