Kate raises a plucked eyebrow. “Don’t fob me off, Nicki. That wasn’t what you were going to say.”

The urge to tell her—something, anything—is overwhelming.

“I lied to you.”

“Ooh! This sounds promising.” She moves closer, rubbing her hands together. No one else I know would react so enthusiastically to hearing they’d been deceived. If only they would. “Lied to me about what?”

“First time I came in to look around,” I say, “you asked me why we wanted to leave London and move to Spilling.”

“And you said what so many people who have moved from London say: better schools, bigger garden, cleaner air, perfect rural childhood, yada yada. Whenever parents tell me that, I think, ‘Ha, just wait till your fourteen-year-old’s roaming those big green fields you prize so highly, off his tits on illegal substances because there’s no subway to take him anywhere worth going, and absolutely nothing to do in his local idyll.’”

I laugh. “Are you this frank with all the parents?”

Kate considers my question, then says, “I tone it down a bit for the squeamish ones. So, come on—the lie?”

“My real reason for moving here was entirely selfish, nothing to do with fresher air and bigger gardens. I wasn’t thinking about my children, or my husband. Only myself.”

“Well . . . good,” says Kate.

“Good?”

“Absolutely. It’s when we imagine we know how others feel and presume to know what’s best for them that mistakes are made. Whereas no one knows our own needs better than us.” She glances at her watch. “Looking after number one’s not as daft a policy as it sounds: make the only person happy that you can, let everyone else do the same and take care of themselves. So why did you want to move to Spilling?”

I shake my head, look away. “It doesn’t matter. It stopped being relevant shortly after we got here anyway. Sod’s Law. I just wanted you to know: that’s the reason I get anxious about Ethan.”

“I get it,” says Kate. “His suffering is your punishment. You don’t believe you can avoid retribution for being as selfish as you’ve been, therefore Ethan must be suffering horribly?”

“Something like that,” I mutter.

“I wouldn’t think that way if I were you. Women need to be ruthlessly selfish. You know why? Because men are, and so are children. Both will turn you into their slave unless you give back as good as you get on the selfish front.” I find myself looking at her left hand to see if she’s wearing a wedding band; I’ve never noticed, and her name gives nothing away: she’s Dr. Zilber, not Miss or Mrs.

She is wearing a wedding ring. A thin one—either white gold or platinum. The skin around it is pink, chapped and flaky, as if she’s allergic to it.