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‘I don’t care! Everyone’s going to find out what you did. They’ll all be talking about it. You basically ruined my life.’

Despite her anger at Sally, Mary stifled a smile. ‘I understand where you’re coming from. But that’s a bit of an overstatement, I think.’

‘You don’t understand.’

‘Of course I don’t.’

‘I know what you think. You think I’m overexaggerating—’

‘Exaggerating is enough on its own.’

‘Oh my God! I can’t believe that’s what you have to say.’ Sally turned to look out of the passenger window, her arms folded. After a long pause, she spoke again in what was meant to be a take-me-seriously-I’m-a-grown-up voice. ‘I know you think I don’t mean this, but I do. I actually think I may hate you.’

One of the partners at the firm – Lilian – had recently become a grandmother, and she had told Mary that, one night when she was helping her daughter with a colicky baby, her daughter had said now she was a mom she understood what it meant to be a parent a lot better, and, after thinking about this, she wanted to apologize for being such a pain as a teenager.

Only had to wait until she was thirty, Lilian said, adding, in an uncharacteristically profane codicil, for some fucking acknowledgement.

Mary wondered if she too would have to wait that long.

‘I hope you don’t mean that,’ she said. ‘But it doesn’t change anything. You know you aren’t allowed to be alone with boys – any boys – in a bedroom, and you know you’re not supposed to be with Dylan at all. More to the point, you lied to me.’

‘No I didn’t. I never said Dylan wouldn’t be there. You didn’t ask.’

‘I didn’t think I needed to. And you know perfectly well that you were doing that behind my back.’

Sally didn’t reply.

‘There’s another thing. You’re not going to like this, but I need to know what you were doing.’

‘Just hanging out.’

‘Last time you were just hanging out with Dylan you came home and threw up all the hard seltzers he’d fed you.’

‘We weren’t drinking this time.’

Mary did not want to ask this question, but she had no choice. ‘And sex?’

‘God, Mom. I can’t believe you would even ask.’

‘I have to.’

‘I’m not interested in that right now.’

She might not be interested in it, but seventeen-year-old boys were interested in little else.

‘And has Dylan suggested it? Tried to persuade you?’

‘Mom! No! He’s not as bad as you think.’

Mary was quite sure he was easily that bad, if not worse. He was well known in both parental and legal circles; he had moved high school twice, already picked up a DUI within weeks of getting his driver’s permit, and was a fixture in a group who hung around the bandstand in the park downtown on most evenings, drinking and smoking and generally making a nuisance of themselves.

And she had no intention of allowing Sally to join them, a fact of which Sally had been made well aware.

‘I’m not going to discuss that,’ she said. ‘And maybe you didn’t lie, but you broke our agreement.’

‘What agreement?’ Her tone was sullen.

‘That you wouldn’t see Dylan any more.’