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he’s a bastard. And I’m beginning to think I’m a bastard magnet. If there’s one in range, he’s drawn to me.’
    â€˜I don’t know about that,’ said Phoebe. ‘I seem to remember it was you doing the chasing.’
    â€˜No . . .’ Gemma denied weakly. Had she?
    â€˜You were always complaining how you were the one who had to keep calling him. That he never returned your calls . . .’
    â€˜Where have you been, Luke? I’ve been trying to get on to you since last week.’
    â€˜I didn’t realise I had to report in, babe.’
    â€˜But don’t you ever check your messages?’
    â€˜This conversation is totally not cool, Gem . . .’
    Gemma sighed, pushing the prize-winning peanut butter platter aside. She was feeling a little queasy again.
    â€˜So when do you plan to tell Mum and Dad?’ Phoebe asked.
    Gemma looked at her. ‘I hadn’t exactly planned –’
    â€˜Come on, Gem, you can’t keep a baby from them.’
    â€˜Watch me.’
    Phoebe was visibly horrified.
    â€˜Look, I just need some time,’ Gemma explained defensively. ‘I have to get my shit sorted out before they find out, or else . . . well, you know what they’re like, Phee.’
    Gemma and Phoebe’s parents were typical of first-wave baby boomers – the very model of a modern middle-class family. For Gary and Trish Atkinson life was for living; it was not meant to be a hardship like their parents had made out. Of course if they’d stopped and thought about it, they would have realised their parents had not chosen to live through two world wars and a depression, but that having lived through two world wars and a depression their perspective had been reasonably and irrefutably shaped by those experiences, particularly as compared to their children, who had very little experience of genuine hardship. First-wave baby boomers had a perspective all of their own. They could do anything they wanted, be anything they wanted, and have anything they wanted. And although they had scorned the conservative aspirations of their parents’ generation while they were busy getting high and discovering the soundtrack of their own, they had quickly signed up for mortgages once their free university degrees had landed them plum jobs with nice salaries, thank you very much. They might as well be paying off a house for themselves than for some greedy capitalist pig landlord, after all.
    And their children were going to be brought up differently too, with the freedom to be themselves, their self-esteem nurtured, not restricted by gratuitous discipline, knowing they were deeply loved and cherished just for being who they were. But they were also going to make sure those same children were given the kinds of opportunities they had never had. While they believed absolutely in the principle of public education, and did not begrudge supporting it with their taxes, if they could afford to send their kids to private school, why shouldn’t they? It was the only guaranteed way to nurture each and every child’s special and unique potential.
    So the Atkinson brood was amongst the very first of the hot-housed generation of kids raised by the new breed of permissive, indulgent, ‘modern’ parents who wanted to give their childreneverything and not have them endure even the slightest inconvenience or hardship throughout their young lives. The same parents who were confounded when those same privileged, indulged children appeared ungrateful and barely spoke to them, or else never left home and were incapable of standing on their own two feet.
    Firstborn Ben had done exactly what was expected of him and completed a business degree straight after school, providing himself with formal qualifications to step into the position for which he had been groomed all along in the family’s property development venture. Gary and Trish