Tempting Fate by Jane Green

born, would also by-pass the social pressures and bitchy cliques that Olivia had avoided.
    But Alanna, at eleven, is not the sunny, quiet child she used to be. She is suddenly determined to be in with the right crowd, seeing middle school as the opportunity to reinvent herself. Abandoning her old friends, she has been excitedly making new ones since she started middle school in September. Gabby misses Alanna’s old friends, who have been deemed ‘uncool’ by Alanna and her new friends, and these new friends make Gabby nervous. They seem too sure of themselves, too advanced, all of them flicking straightened hair over their shoulders, posting provocative posesonline, chewing gum as they check their iPhones for texts.
    Gabby tucks Alanna in, and heads back to their bedroom. She wants to talk to Elliott about her fears, but Olivia has now talked him out of bed and back downstairs to watch an episode of
The Voice
, and Elliott, who can resist anything except his daughters, is now sitting on the sofa discussing the pros and cons of a one-hit wonder, who came on the show desperate to prove he was more than that but has chosen to sing his one-hit-wonder song.
    Alone, Gabby reaches for the iPad rather than the Kindle, idly flicking through her Facebook newsfeed, before going to Trish’s page. She has a personal page, and a business one with eighty-four thousand likes. Which upsets Gabby.
    She and Trish have always been friendly without being friends, but there is a chasm between them now that can’t be bridged. Gabby knows exactly when the crevice appeared.
    It happened a couple of years ago, when Alanna was nine. Trish had phoned Gabby to organize a playdate, asking what her diary looked like in three weeks’ time. Gabby had resisted the urge to laugh. She barely knew what day of the week it was, let alone what the girls were doing in three weeks’ time. The playdates she organized tended to be last-minute, with neighbourhood kids, and more often than not the girls arranged it all themselves with little or no input from the mothers,other than the picking up or dropping off at the end of the playdate.
    She dutifully looked in the diary and came up with a day. Trish explained she would be dropping Alanna back at five p.m. as she had to take her son to basketball at five thirty, on the other side of town.
    ‘Are you sure I can’t pick her up?’ Gabby offered, knowing it would have been impossible, for Olivia had a dance class in Fairfield, twenty minutes away, which ended at five.
    ‘It’s no problem,’ Trish said.
    ‘Fine. My sitter will be home,’ Gabby said confidently. Gabby didn’t actually have a sitter, but made a mental note to make sure to find one for the day.
    A week before the playdate Trish phoned again to check if Alanna had any food allergies. ‘Don’t worry about snacks,’ Trish had reassured Gabby. ‘We’re a gluten-free, sugar-free household so it’s only healthy snacks!’ Gabby eyed her own snack drawer, stuffed with Pirate’s Booty, Fruit Roll-Ups, crisps and individual packets of chocolate-chip cookies.
    She forced a smile. ‘Great!’
    It was too late to cancel the playdate – Alanna was so excited – but Gabby already suspected these preliminary check-up calls didn’t bode well.
    Trish’s daughter, Skylar, had always seemed lovely, but Gabby had learned not to organize playdates with kids whose parents didn’t share the same sensibilities. Many of the parents at Alanna’s elementary schoolwere helicopter parents, desperately seeking opportunities, any opportunities, to muscle their way into their kids’ classroom. They would always be volunteering to help in some way, to make costumes for shows, to bake class treats. Trish was one of those parents; Gabby was not. She was happy searching the local area for pieces of old furniture to restore at home. She went to a knitting class at the local yarn shop. She volunteered at the town farm. She cooked from scratch every day, proper family