Big Little Lies (28 page)

M
adeline had often said that living and working in Pirriwee was like living in a country village. Mostly she adored that sense of community—except, of course, on those days when PMS had her in its malicious grip, and she longed to walk through the shopping village without people smiling and waving and being so goddamned nice. Everyone was connected to everyone in Pirriwee, often in multiple ways, through the school or the surf club, the kids’ sporting teams, the gym, the hairdresser and so on.

It meant that when she sat at her desk in her tiny, crammed office in the Pirriwee Theatre and made a quick call to the Pirriwee local paper to see if she could get a last-minute quarter-page ad in next week’s paper (they urgently needed more numbers for the preschoolers’ drama class to help bring in some cash), she wasn’t just calling Lorraine, the advertising representative. She was calling
Lorraine
, who had a daughter, Petra, in the same year as Abigail, and a son in Year 4 at Pirriwee Public, and was married to Alec, who
owned the local bottle shop and played in an over-forty soccer club with Ed.

It wouldn’t be a quick call, because she and Lorraine hadn’t talked for a while. She realized this as the phone was ringing, and nearly hung up and sent an e-mail instead—she had a lot to do today and she was already running late from going to the assembly—but still, just a quick chat with Lorraine would be nice, and she did want to hear what Lorraine had heard about the petition and so on, but then again, Lorraine did go
on
sometimes, and—

“Lorraine Edgely!”

Too late. “Hi, Lorraine,” said Madeline. “It’s Madeline.”

“Darling!”
Lorraine should really work for the theater, not the local paper. She had that flamboyant theater-talk down pat.

“How are you?”

“Oh my God, we should have coffee! We must have coffee! There’s so much to talk about,” said Lorraine. She lowered her voice so much, it became muffled. Lorraine worked in a busy open-plan office. “I have gossip hot off the press. I have sizzling-hot gossip.”

“Give it to me now,” said Madeline happily, settling back and resting her feet. “Right this minute.”

“OK, here’s a hint,” said Lorraine.
“Parlez-vous anglais?”

“Yes, I do speak English,” said Madeline.

“That’s all I can say in French,” said Lorraine. “So this is a French matter.”

“A French matter?” said Madeline confusedly.

“Yes, and um, and it relates to our mutual friend Renata.”

“Is this something to do with the petition?” said Madeline. “Because I hope you haven’t signed it, Lorraine. Amabella hasn’t even said that it
is
Ziggy who has been hurting her, and the school is monitoring the class now every single day.”

“Yeah, I thought a petition was a bit dramatic, although I did hear
the child’s mother made Amabella cry and then kicked Harper in the sandpit, so I guess there are two sides to every story—but no, this is nothing to do with the petition, Madeline, I’m talking about a
French
matter.”

“The nanny,” said Madeline with a flash of inspiration. “Is that who you mean? Juliette? What about her? Apparently, this bullying had been going on for ages and that Juliette didn’t even—”

“Yes, yes, that’s who I mean, but forget the petition! It’s, ah, how can I say this? It’s related to our mutual friend’s husband.”

“And the nanny,” said Madeline.

“Exactly,” said Lorraine.

“I don’t under—
No
.” Madeline put her feet back on the floor and sat up straight. “You’re not serious?
Geoff
and the
nanny
?” It was impossible not to feel a rush of pleasure at the tabloid-type shock of it. Rule-following, righteous, bird-watching, paunchy Geoff and the young French nanny. It was such an appallingly delicious cliché. “They’re having an affair?”

“Yup. Just like Romeo and Juliet, except it’s, you know, Geoff and Juliette,” said Lorraine, who had apparently given up hope of trying to keep the details of her conversation secret from her colleagues.

Madeline felt a slightly sick feeling, as if she’d scoffed down something sickly sweet and bad for her. “That’s awful. That’s horrendous.” She wished Renata ill, but she didn’t wish her this. The only woman who deserved a philandering husband was a philandering wife. “Does Renata know?”

“Apparently not,” said Lorraine. “But it’s confirmed. Geoff told Andrew Faraday at squash, and Andrew told Shane, who told Alex. Men are such shocking gossips.”

“Someone has to tell her,” said Madeline.

“Well, it won’t be me,” said Lorraine. “Shoot the messenger and all that.”

“It can’t be
me
,” said Madeline. “I’m the last person she should hear it from.”

“Just don’t tell anyone,” said Lorraine. “I promised Alex I wouldn’t tell a soul.”

“Right,” said Madeline. No doubt this juicy piece of gossip was hurtling its way like a pinball across the peninsula, bouncing from friend to friend, husband to wife, and would soon enough hit poor Renata smack in the face, just when the poor woman thought the most stressful thing going on in her life was her daughter being bullied at school.

“Apparently little Juliette wants to take him to meet ’er parents in France,” said Lorraine, putting on a French accent. “Ooh la la.”

“Oh, enough, Lorraine!” said Madeline sharply. “It’s not funny. I don’t want to hear anymore.” It was completely unfair, seeing as she’d relished receiving the gossip in the first place.

“Sorry, darling,” said Lorraine unperturbed. “What can I do for you, anyway?”

Madeline made the booking, and Lorraine handled it with her usual efficiency, and Madeline wished she’d just sent her an e-mail.

“So I’ll see you Saturday night,” said Lorraine.

“Saturday night? Oh, of course, the trivia night,” said Madeline. She spoke warmly to make up for her earlier sharpness. “Looking forward to it. I’ve got a new dress.”

“I bet you have,” said Lorraine. “I’m going as Elvis. No rules that say the women have to go as Audrey and the men have to go as Elvis.”

Madeline laughed, feeling fond of Lorraine again, whose big, loud, raucous laugh would set the tone for a fun night.

“I’ll see you then,” said Lorraine. “Oh, hey! What’s this charity thing that Abigail is doing?”

“I’m not sure exactly,” said Madeline. “She’s raising money for
Amnesty International doing something. Maybe a raffle? Actually, I should tell her she needs to get a permit to run a raffle.”

“Mmmm,” said Lorraine.

“What?” said Madeline.

“Mmmm.”

“What?”
Madeline swung her swivel chair around and her elbow knocked a manila folder off the corner of her desk. She caught it in time. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” said Lorraine. “Petra just mentioned something about this project Abigail was doing, and I got the feeling there was something, I don’t know, a bit off about it. Petra was giggling, being all irritating and silly, and making these obscure references about some of the other girls not approving of what Abigail was doing, but
Petra
approved, which is no great endorsement. Sorry. I’m being a bit vague. Just that my mother instincts went a little, you know, wah, wah, wah.” She made a sound like a car alarm.

Madeline remembered now that strange comment that somebody had made on Abigail’s Facebook page. She’d forgotten all about it because she’d been distracted by her rage over the cancellation of the math tutor.

“I’ll find out,” she said. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

“It’s probably nothing.
Au revoir
, darl.” Lorraine hung up.

Madeline picked up her phone and sent Abigail a text:
Call me as soon as you get this. Mum x.

She’d be in class now, and the kids weren’t meant to look at their phones until school hours were over.

Patience
, she told herself as she put her hands back on the keyboard.
Right. What next?
The posters to promote next month’s
King Lear
. Nobody in Pirriwee wanted to see
King Lear
lurching madly about the stage. They wanted contemporary comedy. They had enough Shakespearean drama in their own lives in the school playground and on the soccer field. But Madeline’s boss insisted. Ticket sales would be
sluggish, and she’d subtly blame Madeline’s marketing. It happened every year.

She looked at the phone again. Abigail would probably make her wait till later tonight before she finally called.

“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child,
Abigail
,” she said to the silent phone. (She could quote great chunks of
King Lear
, thanks to having to listen to the cast rehearsing so often.)

The phone rang, making her jump. It was Nathan.

“Don’t get upset,” he said.

V
iolent relationships tend to become more violent over time.

Had she read it in some of that folder of paperwork, or was it something Susi had said in that cool, nonjudgmental voice of hers?

Celeste lay on her side in bed, hugging her pillow to her and looking out the window where Perry had pulled back the curtain so she could see the sea.

“We’ll be able to lie in bed and see the ocean!” he’d crowed when they’d first looked at this house, and the real estate agent had shrewdly said, “I’ll leave you to look on your own,” because, of course, the house spoke for itself. Perry had been like a kid that day, an excited kid running through a new house, not a man about to spend millions on a “prestige ocean-view property.” His excitement almost frightened her; it was too raw and optimistic. She’d been right to be superstitious. They were surely heading for a fall. She was fourteen weeks pregnant at the time, nauseated and bloated, with a permanent metallic taste in her mouth, and she was refusing to
believe in this pregnancy—but Perry was high on hope, as if the new house would somehow guarantee the pregnancy would work, because “What a life! What a life for children, living this close to the beach!” That was before he’d ever even raised his voice to her, when the idea of his hitting her would have been impossible, inconceivable, laughable.

She was still so shocked.

It was just so very, very . . . surprising.

She’d tried so hard to convey the depth of her shock to Susi, but something told her that all of Susi’s clients felt the same way. (“But no, you see, for
us
, it’s really surprising!” she wanted to say.)

“More tea?”

Perry stood at the bedroom door. He was still in his work clothes, but he’d taken off his jacket and tie and rolled the sleeves of his shirt up above his elbows. “I have to go into the office this afternoon, but I’ll work from home this morning to make sure you’re OK,” he’d said after he’d helped her off the hallway floor, as if she’d slipped and hurt herself, or been suddenly overcome by a dizzy spell. He’d called Madeline, without asking Celeste, and asked if she would mind picking the boys up from school today. “Celeste is sick,” she’d heard him say, and the concern and compassion in his voice were so real, so genuine, it was as though he really did believe that she’d suddenly been felled by a mysterious illness. Maybe he did believe it.

“No thanks,” she said.

She looked at his handsome, caring face, blinked and saw his face up close to hers, jeering, “Not good enough,” before he slammed her head against the wall.

So surprising.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Which one was the baddie? She didn’t know. She closed her eyes. The ice pack had helped, but the pain had settled at a certain level
and stayed that way, as if it were always going to be there: a tender, throbbing circle. When she put her fingertips to it, she expected it to feel like a pulpy tomato.

“OK, well. Sing out if you need anything.”

She almost laughed.

“I will,” she said.

He left, and she closed her eyes. She’d
embarrassed
him. Would he feel embarrassed if she really did leave? Would he feel humiliated if the world knew that his Facebook posts didn’t tell the whole story?

“You need to take precautions. The most dangerous time for a battered woman is after she ends the relationship,” Susi had told Celeste more than once at their last session, as though she were looking for a response that Celeste wasn’t giving her.

Celeste had never taken that seriously. For her it was always about making the decision to leave, to stay or to go, as though going would be the end of her story.

She was delusional. She was a fool.

If his anger had burned just a notch higher today, then he would have hit her head once more against the wall. He would have hit harder. He could have killed her, and then he would have sunk to his knees and cradled her body, keening and shouting and feeling really very upset and sorry for himself—but so what? She’d be dead. He could never make it up to her. Her boys would have no mother, and Perry was a wonderful father, but he didn’t give them enough fruit and he always forgot to clean their teeth and she wanted to see them grown up.

If she left he would probably kill her.

If she stayed, and they remained on this trajectory together, he would probably, eventually, find something to be angry enough about that he would kill her.

There was no way out. An apartment with neatly made beds was no escape plan. It was a joke.

It was just so very
surprising
that the good-looking, worried man who had just offered her a cup of tea, and was right now working at his computer down the hallway, and who would come running if she called him, and who loved her with all of his strange heart, would in all probability one day kill her.

A
bigail has built a website,” said Nathan.

“OK,” said Madeline. She had stood up from her desk, as if she had to leave for somewhere, right now. The school? The hospital? Jail? What could be so momentous about a website?

“It’s to raise funds for Amnesty International,” said Nathan. “It’s very professionally put together. I’ve been helping her with this Web design course she’s doing at school, but obviously, I didn’t . . . um . . . yes, well I didn’t foresee this.”

“I don’t get it. What’s the problem?” said Madeline sharply. It wasn’t like Nathan to see a problem when there wasn’t one. He was more likely to miss a problem that was staring him in the face.

Nathan cleared his throat. He spoke in a strangled voice. “It’s not the end of the world, but it’s certainly not ideal.”

“Nathan!”
Madeline stamped her foot in frustration.

“Fine,” said Nathan. He spoke in a rush: “Abigail is auctioning off her virginity to the highest bidder as a way of raising awareness for
child marriage and sex slavery. She says, um, ‘If the world stands by while a seven-year-old is sold for sex, then the world shouldn’t blink an eye if a privileged white fourteen-year-old girl sells herself for sex.’ All the money raised will go to Amnesty International. She can’t spell ‘privileged.’”

Madeline sank back down in her chair. Oh, calamity.

“Give me the address,” said Madeline. “Is the site live? Are you telling me the site is actually live right now?”

“Yes,” said Nathan. “I think it went up yesterday morning. Don’t look at it. Please don’t look at it. The problem is that she hasn’t set it up so she can moderate comments, and naturally, the Internet trolls are in a feeding frenzy.”

“Give me the address right now.”

“No.”

“Nathan, you give me the address right now!”
She stomped her foot again, almost in tears of frustration.

“It’s www.buymyvirginitytostopchildmarriageandsexslavery.com.”

“Fabulous,” said Madeline as she typed in the address with shaky hands. “That’s going to attract a wonderful class of charitable person. Our daughter is an idiot. We raised an idiot. Oh, wait, you didn’t raise her. I raised her. I’ve raised an idiot.” She paused. “Oh God.”

“You’re looking at it?” said Nathan.

“Yes,” said Madeline. It was a professional-looking website, which made it worse for some reason, more real, more official, as if the right for some stranger to purchase Abigail’s virginity had been officially endorsed. The home page featured the photo of Abigail doing her yoga pose that Madeline had seen on her Facebook page. Viewed in the context of “buy my virginity,” the photo took on a sinister sexuality: the hair falling over her shoulder, the long, skinny
limbs, the small, perfect breasts. Men were looking at her daughter’s photo on their computer screens and thinking about having sex with her.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” said Madeline.

“I know,” said Nathan.

Madeline took a breath and clicked through the site with her professional marketing and PR eye. Along with the photo of Abigail, there were also images from the Amnesty International website about child marriage and sex slavery; Abigail had presumably helped herself without asking permission. The copy was good. Straightforward. Persuasive. Emotional without being over-the-top. Apart from the typo in the word “privileged” and the fact that the entire premise was horrifyingly flawed, it was hugely impressive for a fourteen-year-old.

“Is this even legal?” she said after a moment. “It must be illegal for an underage child to sell her virginity.”

“It would be illegal for someone to buy it,” said Nathan. She could tell he was speaking through gritted teeth.

For a moment Madeline felt disoriented as she realized that she was talking to
Nathan
. She must have subconsciously felt as though she were dealing with Ed, because she’d never before had to discuss a tricky parenting problem with Nathan. She set the rules and Nathan followed them. They weren’t a team.

But the thought simultaneously occurred to her that if it were Ed, it wouldn’t be the same. Ed would be horrified at the thought of a man buying Abigail’s virginity, of course he would, but he wouldn’t be experiencing the visceral agony that Nathan was feeling. If it were Chloe, yes. But there was that subtle distance in Ed’s relationship with Abigail, the distance Madeline had always denied and yet Abigail had always felt.

She clicked on the section for “bids and donations.” Abigail
had set it up so that people could leave comments and register their “bids.”

The words swam in front of her:

How much for a gang bang?

You can suck my cock for $20! Any time, any place.

Hey, pretty little girl, I’ll fuck that tight little cunt of yours for free.

Madeline pushed herself back away from her desk, the taste of bile in her mouth. “How do we shut this website down right now? Do you know how to shut it down?”

She was pleased to note that she hadn’t lost control, that she was speaking as if this were a work crisis: a leaflet that needed reprinting, a mistake on the theater website. Nathan was tech savvy. He must know what to do. But as she clicked off the comments page and saw the photo of Abigail again, her innocent, ridiculous, misguided daughter—vile men were thinking and saying vile things about her
little girl
—her anger rose volcanically from the pit of her stomach and burst from her mouth.

“How the hell did this happen? Why weren’t you and Bonnie watching what she was doing? You fix it! Fix it now!”

Harper:
Has anyone told you about Madeline’s daughter’s little drama? I mean, I hate to say it, but as I said to Renata at the time, she was over at my place for dinner I think, I said, “Now, that wouldn’t happen at a private school.
”
I’m not saying there’s anything
wrong
with public high schools per se, I just think your children are more likely to interact with, you know, a better class of person.

Samantha:
That Harper is so up herself. Of course it could have happened at a private school. And Abigail’s
intentions were so noble! It’s just that fourteen-year-old girls are stupid. Poor Madeline. She blamed Nathan and Bonnie, although I don’t know if that was fair.

Bonnie:
Yes, Madeline did blame us. I accept that. Abigail was in my care at the time. But that had absolutely nothing to do with . . . with the tragedy. Nothing at all.