Big Little Lies (9 page)

“How did you and Madeline meet?” she asked to make conversation.

Ed brightened. It was obviously a story he liked to tell.

“I lived across the street from her when we were kids,” he said. “Madeline lived next door to a big Lebanese family. They had six sons: big strapping boys. I was terrified of them. They used to play cricket in the street, and sometimes Madeline would join in. She’d come trotting out, half the size of these big lumps, and she’d have ribbons in her hair and those shiny bangles, well
you
know what she’s like, the girliest girl you’d ever seen, but my God, she could play cricket.”

He put down his muffin and stood up to demonstrate. “So out she’d come, flick, flick of the hair, flounce, flounce of the dress, and she’d take the bat, and next thing, WHAM!” He slammed an imaginary cricket bat. “And those boys would fall to their knees, clutching their heads.”

“Are you telling the cricket story again?” Madeline returned from Chloe’s bedroom.

“That’s when I fell in love with her,” said Ed. “Truly, madly, deeply. Watching from my bedroom window.”

“I didn’t even know he existed,” said Madeline airily.

“Nope, she didn’t. So we grow up and leave home, and I hear from my mum that Madeline has married some wanker,” said Ed.

“Shhh.” Madeline slapped his arm.

“Then, years later, I go to this barbecue for a friend’s thirtieth birthday. There’s a cricket game in the backyard, and who’s out there batting in her stilettos, all blinged up, exactly the same, but little Madeline from across the road. My heart just about stopped.”

“That’s a very romantic story,” said Jane.

“I nearly didn’t go to that barbecue,” said Ed. Jane saw that his eyes were shiny, even though he must have told this story a hundred times before.

“And I nearly didn’t go either,” said Madeline. “I had to cancel a pedicure, and I would normally
never
cancel a pedicure.”

They smiled at each other.

Jane looked away. She picked up her mug of tea and took a sip even though it was all gone. The doorbell rang.

“That will be Celeste,” said Madeline.

Great,
thought Jane, continuing to pretend-sip her empty mug of tea.
Now I’ll be in the presence of both great love and great beauty.

All around her was color: rich, vibrant color. She was the only colorless thing in this whole house.

Miss Barnes:
Obviously parents form their own social groups
outside
of school. The conflict at the trivia night might not necessarily have anything to do with what was going on at Pirriwee Public. I just thought I should point that out.

Thea:
Yes, well, Miss Barnes would say that, wouldn’t she?

W
hat did you think of Jane?” Madeline asked Ed that night in the bathroom as he cleaned his teeth and she used her fingertip to apply an eye-wateringly expensive dab of eye cream to her “fine lines and wrinkles.” (She had a marketing degree, for heaven’s sake. She knew she’d just blown her money buying a jar of hope.) “Ed?”

“I’m cleaning my teeth, give me a moment.” He rinsed his mouth out, spat and tapped his toothbrush on the side of the basin.
Tap, tap, tap.
Always three definite, decisive taps, as if the toothbrush were a hammer or wrench. Sometimes, if she’d been drinking champagne, she could get weak from laughter just watching Ed tap his toothbrush on the basin.

“Jane looks about twelve years old to me,” said Ed. “
Abigail
seems older than her. I can’t get my head around her being a fellow parent.” He pointed his toothbrush at her and grinned. “But she’ll be our secret weapon at this year’s trivia night. She’ll know the answers to all the Gen Y questions.”

“I reckon I might know more pop culture stuff than Jane,” said Madeline. “I get the feeling she’s not your typical twenty-four-year-old. She seems almost old-fashioned in some ways, like someone from my mother’s generation.”

She examined her face, sighed and put her jar of hope back on the shelf.

“She can’t be that old-fashioned,” said Ed. “You said she got pregnant after a one-night stand.”

“She went ahead and
had
the baby,” said Madeline. “That’s sort of old-fashioned.”

“But then she should have left him on the church doorstep,” said Ed. “In a wicked basket.”

“A what?”

“A wicker basket. That’s a word, isn’t it? Wicker?”

“I thought you said a
wicked
basket.”

“I did. I was covering up my mistake. Hey, what’s with all the
gum
? She was chewing it all day.”

“I know. It’s like she’s addicted.”

He turned off the bathroom light. They both went to opposite sides of the bed, snapped on their bedside lamps and pulled back the cover in a smooth, practiced, synchronized move that proved, depending on Madeline’s mood, that they either had the perfect marriage or that they were stuck in a middle-class suburban rut and they needed to sell the house and go traveling around India.

“I’d quite like to give Jane a makeover,” mused Madeline as Ed found his page in his book. He was a big fan of Patricia Cornwell murder mysteries. “The way she pulls back her hair like that. All flat on her head. She needs some volume.”

“Volume,” murmured Ed. “Absolutely. That’s what she needs. I was thinking the same thing.” He flipped a page.

“We need to help find her a boyfriend,” said Madeline.

“You’d better get on that,” said Ed.

“I’d quite like to give Celeste a makeover too,” said Madeline. “I know that sounds strange. Obviously she looks beautiful no matter what.”

“Celeste? Beautiful?” said Ed. “Can’t say I’ve noticed.”

“Ha, ha.” Madeline picked up her book and put it straight down again. “They seem so different, Jane and Celeste, but I feel like they’re also sort of similar. I can’t quite work out how.”

Ed put down his own book. “I can tell you how they’re similar.”

“Can you now?”

“They’re both damaged,” said Ed.

“Damaged?” said Madeline. “How are they damaged?”

“Don’t know,” said Ed. “I just recognize damaged girls. I used to date them. I can spot a crazy chick a mile off.”

“So was I damaged too?” asked Madeline. “Is that what attracted you?”

“Nope,” said Ed. He picked up his book again. “You weren’t damaged.”

“Yes I was!” protested Madeline. She wanted to be interesting and damaged too. “I was heartbroken when you met me.”

“There’s a difference between heartbroken and damaged,” said Ed. “You were sad and hurt. Maybe your heart was broken, but
you
weren’t broken. Now, be quiet, because I think I’m falling for a red herring here, and I’m not falling for it, Ms. Cornwell, no I’m not.”

“Mmmm,” said Madeline. “Well,
Jane
might be damaged, but I don’t see what Celeste has got to be damaged about. She’s beautiful and rich and happily married and she doesn’t have an ex-husband stealing her daughter away from her.”

“He’s not trying to steal her away,” said Ed, his eyes back on his book. “This is just Abigail being a teenager. Teenagers are crazy. You know that.”

Madeline picked up her own book.

She thought of Jane and Ziggy walking off hand in hand down
the driveway as they left that afternoon. Ziggy was telling Jane something, one little hand gesticulating wildly, and Jane had her head tipped to one side, listening, her other hand holding out the car keys to open her car. Madeline heard her say, “I know! Let’s go to that place where we got those yummy tacos!”

Watching them brought back a flood of memories from the years when she was a single mother. For five years it had been just her and Abigail. They’d lived in a little two-bedroom flat above an Italian restaurant. They ate a lot of takeout pasta and free garlic bread. (Madeline had put on seven kilos.) They were the Mackenzie girls in unit nine. She’d changed Abigail’s name back to her maiden name (and she refused to change it again when she married Ed. A woman could only change her surname so many times before it got ridiculous). She couldn’t stand having Abigail walk around with her father’s surname when Nathan chose to spend his Christmas lying on a beach in Bali with a trashy little hairdresser. A hairdresser who, by the way, didn’t even have good hair: black roots and split ends.

“I always thought that Nathan’s punishment for walking out on us would be that Abigail wouldn’t love him the way she loved me,” she said to Ed. “I used to say it to myself all the time. ‘Abigail won’t want Nathan walking her down the aisle. He’ll pay the price,’ I thought. But you know what? He’s not paying for his sins. Now he’s got Bonnie, who is nicer and younger and prettier than me, he’s got a brand-new daughter who can write out the whole alphabet, and now he’s getting Abigail too! He got away with it all. He hasn’t got a single regret.”

She was surprised to hear her voice crack. She thought she was just angry, but now she knew she was hurt. Abigail had infuriated her before. She’d frustrated and annoyed her. But this was the first time she’d hurt her.

“She’s meant to love
me
best,” she said childishly, and she tried to laugh, because it was a joke, except that she was deadly serious. “I thought she loved me best.”

Ed put his book back down and put his arm around her. “Do you want me to kill the bastard? Bump him off? I could frame Bonnie for it.”

“Yes please,” said Madeline into his shoulder. “That would be lovely.”

Detective-Sergeant Adrian Quinlan:
We haven’t made any arrests at this stage. I can say that we do believe we have probably already spoken to the person or persons involved.

Stu:
I don’t think anyone, including the police, have got the faintest idea about who did what.

Gabrielle:
I thought there might have been a certain, I don’t know, etiquette about handing out party invitations. I thought what happened on that first day of kindergarten was kind of inappropriate.

S
mile, Ziggy, smile!”

Ziggy finally smiled at the exact same moment that Jane’s father yawned. Jane clicked the shutter and then checked the photo on the screen of her digital camera. Ziggy and her mum were both smiling beautifully, while her dad was captured mid-yawn: mouth agape, eyes scrunched. He was tired because he’d had to get up so early to make it all the way to the peninsula from Granville to see his grandson on his first day of school. Jane’s parents had always gone to bed late and gotten up late, and these days anything that required them leaving the house before nine a.m. was a tremendous effort. Her father had taken early retirement from his job in the public service last year, and since then, he and Jane’s mother had been
staying up late doing their puzzles until three or four in the morning. “Our parents are turning into vampires,” Jane’s brother had said to her. “Jigsaw-playing vampires.”

“Would you like my husband to take a photo of all of you together?” said a woman standing nearby. “I’d offer to take it myself, but technology and I are not friends.”

Jane looked up. The woman wore a full-length paisley skirt with a black singlet. Her wrists seemed to be adorned with twine, and she wore her hair in one long single plait. There was a tattoo of a Chinese symbol on her shoulder. She looked a bit out of place next to all the other parents in their casual beachwear, gym gear or business clothes. Her husband seemed a good deal older than her and was wearing a T-shirt and shorts: standard middle-aged-dad gear. He was holding the hand of a tiny, mouse-like little girl with long scraggly hair, whose uniform looked like it was three sizes too big for her.

I bet you’re Bonnie,
thought Jane suddenly, remembering how Madeline had described her ex-husband’s wife, at the same time as the woman said, “I’m Bonnie, and this is my husband, Nathan, and my little girl, Skye.”

“Thanks so much,” said Jane, handing over the camera to Madeline’s ex-husband. She went to stand with her parents and Ziggy.

“Say cheese and biscuits!” Nathan held up the camera.

“Huh?” said Ziggy.

“Coffee,” yawned Jane’s mother.

Nathan took the photo. “There you go!”

He handed back the camera, just as another little curly-haired girl marched straight up to his daughter. Jane felt sick. She recognized her immediately. It was the girl who had accused Ziggy of trying to choke her. Amabella. Jane looked around. Where was the angry mother?

“What is your name?” said Amabella importantly to Skye. She was carrying a large pile of pale pink envelopes.

“Skye,” whispered the little girl. She was so painfully shy, it hurt to watch her try to squeeze the words out.

Amabella flipped through her envelopes. “Skye, Skye, Skye.”

“Goodness, can you read all those names already?” asked Jane’s mother.

“I’ve actually been reading since I was three,” said Amabella politely. She continued to flip. “Skye!” She handed over a pink envelope. “This is an invitation to my fifth birthday. It’s an
A
party, because my name starts with
A
.”

“Already reading before they start school!” said Jane’s dad chummily to Nathan. “Top of the class already! Must have had tutoring, do you reckon?”

“Well, not to blow our own trumpet or anything, but Skye here is already reading quite well too,” said Nathan. “And we don’t believe in tutoring, do we, Bon?”

“We prefer to let Skye’s growth happen organically,” said Bonnie.

“Organic, eh?” said Jane’s dad. He furrowed his brow. “Like fruit?”

Amabella turned to Ziggy. “What’s your—” She froze. An expression of pure panic crossed her face. She clutched the pink envelopes tight to her chest as if to prevent Ziggy from stealing one and, without saying a word, she turned on her heel and ran off.

“Goodness. What was that all about?” said Jane’s mother.

“Oh, that was the kid who said I hurt her,” said Ziggy matter-of-factly. “But I never did, Grandma.”

Jane looked around the playground. Everywhere she looked she could see children in brand-new, too-big school uniforms.

Every single one was holding a pale pink envelope.

Harper:
Look, nobody in that school knew Renata better than me. We were very close. I can tell you for a fact, she was not trying to make a point that day.

Samantha:
Oh my God, of
course
she was making a point.