Jill’s name was on the screen. Mimi looked at the phone with surprise. Jill didn’t normally call while she was driving. She said she found hands-free too difficult.

‘It’s your mum,’ Mimi said before answering the call. ‘Jill? Is everything okay?’

‘Mimi, I think I know what’s been wrong with Callie.’

‘What? What do you mean?’

‘I . . . I think it’s got something to do with Tony.’

Chapter Eighteen

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Same day — Christmas Eve

Jill

The first time something a little unusual happened with Tony, Jill brushed it off. After all, he was only young. He didn’t mean anything by it. He thought it was a game. It was the middle of winter and she’d let all three boys have friends over after school. They’d all gone off to their various rooms to play.

But after only half an hour, Darren’s little friend Tamara had come to see her.

‘Mrs Lewis,’ she’d said, ‘I don’t like the game we’re playing.’

‘Oh dear, is Darren not letting you have a turn?’ Jill was used to playground politics from school.

‘Not Darren. Tony. He keeps squashing me and I don’t like it.’

‘Squashing you? Goodness, what game are you playing? Where’s Darren?’

‘Tony told Darren he couldn’t come in. I don’t know what the game is, he made it up.’

Later, he had explained the game to Jill. ‘I was the good knight and she was the evil witch and I had to stop her from escaping.’

‘And how did you do that?’

‘Well, I had to lie on top of her so she couldn’t escape.’

Jill had carefully explained to Tony that Tamara hadn’t liked the game. And that it wasn’t okay for him to lie on top of anyone and hold them down, and especially not someone much smaller and younger than him.

Tony had said okay, and that was the end of it. Jill didn’t mention it to Frank.

But then a couple of years later there was a phone call from the boys’ school. There had been an incident with Tony, and Jill needed to come in. As the principal of another school, it had felt very strange to be on the other side of the desk.

It turned out that a girl had complained that Tony had slapped her leg on the school bus that morning. Even worse, Tony was twelve, the girl was only nine.

When Jill tried to talk to Tony about it, he told her it was because she’d ripped his favourite basketball card. But then the story changed when Jill found the card unharmed in his school bag. ‘She was mean to me, Mum,’ he’d said. ‘She called me names.’