‘So she came home last night with a bite-mark on her arm.’ Lucy raised her eyes and placed her own mug carefully on the table between them.

‘You are kidding,’ Kristen cried. ‘An actual bite? Well, the school has to do something, surely?’

‘You’d think,’ Lucy said. ‘Only when I told the teacher this morning, he said he was sorry but he hadn’t seen anything happen.’

‘That is outrageous, isn’t it?’ Kristin gasped, her voice rising as she looked round at the other two, who nodded their agreement.

‘It is. Something has to be done about that kid,’ Anna said. ‘Before it’s too late. I mean, can you imagine what he’ll be like when he’s in secondary school?’

‘Surely they grow out if it,’ Lucy added.

‘I don’t know,’ Anna shrugged. ‘Show me the boy at seven and I’ll show you the man. That’s what they say, isn’t it? A seven-year-old’s brain is already ninety per cent developed by that time. I think you can tell exactly what type of adult darling Dexter is going to be.’

‘Once a bully, always a bully,’ Kristen chipped in. ‘We’ll read about him in the papers one day: he’ll have beaten someone up outside a convenience store because they looked at him the wrong way. That happened to someone I went to school with. My mum said she could have told anyone that his future was going to be doomed.’

Janie silently sipped her coffee as she listened to the interchange. It was so nice not to have to think about anything other than everyone else’s problems for an hour, but then Anna reached out and took hold of her arm. ‘You’re quiet this morning. Everything all right?’

Janie nodded. Out of all of them, it was always Anna who noticed when there was something on her mind. She was going to miss Anna when her friend started her job. But right then she wished Anna hadn’t asked, because now they were all looking at her expectantly and waiting for Janie to contribute something to the conversation, and she knew she had to give them something.

In the end the only thing she could think of coming up with was, ‘Harry’s got a problem with bullying in his office.’ The words left her lips before she could stop them.

Her mind drifted back to the conversation she had with her husband, when Harry came home and told her the girl had left.

‘Sarah’s gone,’ he’d said, pouring himself a large glass of Malbec, which he’d picked up on their last trip to France. He studied the glass as he swirled the wine, letting it swish to the top as if he were prepared to let it slosh over the edge and onto the oak table.

‘Sarah?’ Janie had asked.

‘The girl who said she was being bullied.’