Big Little Lies

  there to protect her. She had experience. She could hit and scratch when necessary.

  There was some connection she was trying to make. A fleeting thought she couldn’t catch, like something half glimpsed in her peripheral vision. It had been bugging her for a while.

  What was Saxon’s excuse for behaving the way he did? He hadn’t been bullied as a child as far as Celeste knew. So did that mean Perry’s behavior wasn’t anything to do with the year he was bullied? It was a family trait they shared?

  “But you’re not as bad as him,” she mumbled. Wasn’t that the only point? Yes. That was key. That was key to everything.

  “What?” Perry looked bemused.

  “You wouldn’t do that.”

  “Wouldn’t do what?” said Perry.

  “So sleepy,” said Celeste.

  “I know,” said Perry. “Go to sleep now, honey.” He pulled the sheets up under her chin and pushed her hair off her face. “I’ll be back soon.”

  As she succumbed to sleep she thought she heard him whisper in her ear, “I’m so sorry,” but she might have already been dreaming.

  60.

  I can’t bloody shut it down,” said Nathan. “If I could have shut it down, don’t you think I would have? Before I called you? It’s a public website held on a server that’s not inside the house. I can’t just flick a switch. I need her log-in details. I need her password.”

  “Miss Polly had a dolly!” shouted Madeline. “That’s the password. She’s got the same password for everything. Go shut it down!”

  She’d always known Abigail’s passwords for her social media accounts. That was the deal so Madeline could check in any time, along with the understanding that Madeline was allowed to silently creep into Abigail’s bedroom at random moments like a cat burglar and look over her shoulder at the computer screen for as long as it took Abigail to notice she was standing there, which often took a while, because Madeline had a special talent for creeping. It drove Abigail crazy and made her jump out of her skin each time she finally sensed Madeline’s presence, but Madeline didn’t care, that was good parenting in this day and age, you spied on your children, and that was why this would never have happened if Abigail had been at home where she belonged.

  “I’ve tried ‘Miss Polly had a dolly,’” said Nathan heavily. “It’s not that.”

  “You mustn’t be doing it right. It’s all lowercase, no spaces. It’s always—”

  “I told her just the other day that she shouldn’t have the same password for everything,” said Nathan. “She must have listened to me.”

  “Right,” said Madeline. Her anger had cooled and solidified into something mammoth and glacial. “Good one. Good advice. Great fathering.”

  “It’s because of identity theft—”

  “Whatever! Be quiet, let me think.” She tapped two fingers rapidly against her mouth. “Have you got a pen?”

  “Of course I’ve got a pen.”

  “Try ‘Huckleberry.’”

  “Why Huckleberry?”

  “It was her first pet. A puppy. We had her for two weeks. She got run over. Abigail was devastated. You were— Where were you? Bali? Vanuatu? Who knows? Don’t ask questions. Just listen.”

  She listed off twenty potential passwords in quick succession: bands, TV characters, authors and random things like “chocolate” and “I hate Mum.”

  “It won’t be that,” said Nathan.

  Madeline ignored him. She was filled with despair at the impossibility of the task. It could be anything, any combination of letters and numbers.

  “Are you sure there is no other way to do this?” she said.

  “I was thinking I could try to redirect the domain name,” said Nathan, “but then I still need to log in to her account. The world revolves around log-ins. I guess some IT genius might be able to hack into the site, it’s just a Google-hosting account, but that would take time. We’ll get it down eventually, but obviously the fastest way is for her to do it herself.”

  “Yes,” said Madeline. She’d already pulled her car keys from her bag. “I’m going to get her out of school early.”

  “You, I mean, we, we just have to tell her to take it down.” Madeline could hear the keyboard clattering as he tried the different passwords. “We’re her parents. We have to tell her there will be, er, consequences if she doesn’t listen to us.”

  It was sort of hilarious hearing Nathan using modern parenting terminology like “consequences.”

  “Right, and that’s going to be so easy,” said Madeline. “She’s fourteen, she thinks she’s saving the world and she’s as stubborn as a mule.”

  “We’ll tell her she’s grounded!” said Nathan excitedly, obviously remembering that’s what parents did to teenagers on American sitcoms.

  “She’d love that. She’ll see herself as a martyr to the cause.”

  “But I mean, for God’s sake, surely she’s not serious,” said Nathan. “She’s not really planning to actually go through with this. To have sex with some stranger? I just can’t . . . She’s never even had a boyfriend, has she?”

  “As far as I know, she hasn’t even kissed a boy,” said Madeline, and she wanted to cry, because she knew exactly what Abigail would say in response to that: Those little girls haven’t kissed any boys either.

  She squeezed the keys tight in her hand. “I’d better rush. I’ve only just got time before I pick up the little kids.”

  She remembered then that Perry had called earlier to ask if she’d pick up the twins because Celeste was sick. Her left eyelid began to twitch.

  “Madeline,” said Nathan, “don’t yell at her, will you? Because—”

  “Are you kidding? Of course I’m going to yell at her!” yelled Madeline. “She’s selling her virginity on the Internet!”

  61.

  Jane drove Ziggy up to the school after their morning tea at Blue Blues.

  “Will you tell Max to stop hurting Amabella?” he said to her as she parked the car.

  “A grown-up will talk to him,” said Jane as she turned the key in the ignition. “Probably not me. Maybe Miss Barnes.”

  She was trying to work out the best way to handle this. Should she march straight into the principal’s office right this minute? She’d prefer to speak with Miss Barnes, who would be more likely to believe that this wasn’t a case of Ziggy simply deflecting the blame by pointing the finger at someone else. Also, Miss Barnes knew that Jane and Celeste were friends. She would know this was potentially awkward.

  But Miss Barnes was teaching right now. She couldn’t drag her out of the classroom. She would have to e-mail her and ask her to call.

  But she wanted to tell someone now. Perhaps she should go straight to Mrs. Lipmann?

  It wasn’t like Amabella was in mortal danger. Apparently the teacher’s aide never took her eyes off her. Jane’s impatience simply reflected her own desire to tattle. It wasn’t my son! It was her son!

  And what about poor Celeste? Should she call her first and warn her? Was that what a good friend would do? Maybe it was. There was something awful and underhanded about going behind her back. She couldn’t bear it if this affected their friendship.

  “Come on, Mummy,” said Ziggy impatiently. “Why are you just sitting there staring at nothing?”

  Jane undid her seat belt and turned around to face Ziggy. “You did the right thing telling me about Max, Ziggy.”

  “I didn’t tell you!” Ziggy, who had already unbuckled his belt and had his hand on the car-door handle ready to jump out, flung himself back around to face her. He was outraged, horrified.

  “Sorry, sorry!” said Jane. “No, of course you didn’t tell me. Definitely not.”

  “Because I promised Amabella I would never ever tell anyone.” Ziggy pushed his body between the driver’s seat and the passenger seat so his anxious little face was right next to hers. She could see a smear of sticky sauce above his lip from Tom’s pancakes.

  “That’s right. You kept your promis
e.” Jane licked her finger and tried to use it to clean his face.

  “I kept my promise.” Ziggy ducked away from her finger. “I’m good at keeping promises.”

  “So you remember at the orientation day?” Jane gave up on cleaning his face. “When Amabella said that it was you who hurt her? Why did Amabella say it was you?”

  “Max said if she told on him he would do it again when no grown-ups were looking,” said Ziggy. “So Amabella pointed at me.” He shrugged impatiently, as if he were becoming bored with the whole subject. “She said sorry about that. I said it was OK.”

  “You’re a very nice boy, Ziggy,” said Jane. And you’re not a psychopath! (Max is a psychopath.)

  “Yup.”

  “And I love you.”

  “Can we go into school now?” Ziggy put his hand back on the car-door handle.

  “Absolutely.”

  As they walked down the path toward the school, Ziggy skipped ahead, his backpack bouncing on his back, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  Jane’s heart lifted at the sight of him and hurried to keep up. He hadn’t been anxious because he was being bullied. He’d been anxious because he’d been bravely and foolishly carrying a secret. Even when Mrs. Lipmann had accused him, her brave little soldier hadn’t cracked. He’d stood firm for Amabella. Ziggy wasn’t a bully. He was a hero.

  He was also pretty dumb for not telling on Max straightaway and because he seriously seemed to think writing down a name didn’t count as telling, but he was five, and he was a kid in desperate need of a loophole.

  Ziggy picked up a stick lying on the pavement and waved it over his head.

  “Put down the stick, Ziggy!” she called. He tossed the stick and made a sharp right turn at the grassy alleyway leading past Mrs. Ponder’s house and into the school.

  Jane kicked the stick off the path and followed him. What could Max have said to make a clever little girl like Amabella think that she had to keep his behavior a secret? Had he really told her he would “kill her dead”? And had Amabella genuinely believed that was a possibility?

  She considered what she knew about Max. Apart from Max’s birthmark, she couldn’t differentiate between Celeste’s boys. She’d thought their personalities were identical too. To her, Max and Josh were like cute, naughty little puppies. With their boundless energy and big cheeky grins, they’d always seemed like such uncomplicated children, unlike Ziggy, who was so often unreadable and brooding. Celeste’s boys seemed like the sort of children who needed to be fed and bathed and run about: physically exhausting, but not mentally draining, the way a secretive little boy like Ziggy could be.

  How would Celeste react when she found out what Max had done? Jane couldn’t imagine. She knew exactly how Madeline would react (crazily, loudly), but she had never seen Celeste really angry with her boys; of course she got frustrated and impatient, but she never shouted. Celeste so often seemed jumpy and preoccupied, startled by the existence of her children when they suddenly ran at her.

  “Good morning! Did you sleep in this morning?” It was Mrs. Ponder, calling out from her front yard where she was watering the garden.

  “We had an appointment,” explained Jane.

  “So tell me, love, are you dressing up as Audrey or Elvis tomorrow night?” Mrs. Ponder gave her a sparky, teasing grin.

  For a moment Jane couldn’t think what she was talking about. “Audrey or Elvis? Oh! The trivia night.” She’d forgotten all about it. Madeline had organized a table ages ago, but that was before all the recent events: the petition, the sandpit assault. “I’m not sure if—”

  “Oh, I was teasing, love! Of course you’ll go as Audrey. You’ve got just the figure for it. Actually you’d look lovely with one of those short, boyish haircuts. What do they call it? A pixie cut!”

  “Oh,” said Jane. She pulled on her ponytail. “Thanks.”

  “Speaking of hair, darling”—Mrs. Ponder leaned forward confidentially—“Ziggy is having a good old scratch there.”

  Mrs. Ponder said “Ziggy” like it was a hilarious nickname.

  Jane looked at Ziggy. He was vigorously scratching his head with one hand while he crouched down to examine something important he’d seen in the grass.

  “Yes,” she said politely. So what?

  “Have you checked?” said Mrs. Ponder.

  “Checked for what?” Jane wondered if she was being particularly obtuse today.

  “Nits,” said Mrs. Ponder. “You know, head lice.”

  “Oh!” Jane clapped her hand to her mouth. “No! Do you think—Oh! I don’t— I can’t— Oh!”

  Mrs. Ponder chuckled. “Didn’t you ever have them as a child? They’ve been around for thousands of years.”

  “No! I remember one time there was an outbreak at my school, but I must have missed out. I don’t like anything creepy-crawly.” She shuddered. “Oh God.”

  “Well, I’ve had plenty of experience with the little buggers. All us nurses got them during the war. It’s nothing whatsoever to do with cleanliness or hygiene, if that’s what you’re thinking. They’re just downright annoying, that’s all. Come here, Ziggy!”

  Ziggy ambled over. Mrs. Ponder broke off a small stick from a rosebush and used it to comb through Ziggy’s hair. “Nits!” she said with satisfaction in a nice, clear, loud, carrying voice, at the exact moment that Thea came hurrying by, carrying a lunch box. “He’s crawling with them.”

  Thea: Harriett had forgotten her lunch box, and I was rushing into school to drop it off to her—I had a million things to do that day—when what do I hear? Ziggy is crawling with nits! Yes, she took the child home, but if it weren’t for Mrs. Ponder, she would have brought him into school! And why is she asking an old lady to check her child’s hair in the first place?

  62.

  Whatever,” said Abigail.

  “No. Don’t say ‘whatever.’ This is not a ‘whatever’-type situation. This is grown-up stuff, Abigail. This is serious.” Madeline gripped the steering wheel so hard, she could feel a slick of sweat beneath her palms.

  It was incredible, but she hadn’t yelled yet. She’d gone to the high school and told Abigail’s principal that there was a family emergency and she needed to bring Abigail home. Obviously the school hadn’t yet discovered Abigail’s website. “Abigail is doing very well,” her principal had said, all gracious smiles. “She’s very creative.”

  “She certainly is that,” said Madeline, and had managed not to throw back her head and cackle like a hysterical witch.

  It had taken a Herculean effort, but she hadn’t said a word when they’d gotten in the car. She hadn’t screamed, “What were you thinking?” She’d waited for Abigail to speak. (It seemed important, strategically.) Abigail finally spoke up, defensively, her eyes on the dashboard: “So what’s this family emergency?”

  Madeline said, very calmly, as calmly as Ed, “Well, Abigail, people are writing about having sex with my fourteen-year-old daughter on the Internet.”

  Abigail had flinched and muttered, “I knew it.”

  Madeline had thought the involuntary flinch meant that it was going to be fine; Abigail was probably already regretting it. She’d gotten in too far out of her depth and was looking for a way out. She wanted her parents to order her to take it down.

  “Darling, I understand exactly what you were trying to do,” she’d said. “You’re doing a publicity campaign with a ‘hook.’ That’s great. It’s clever. But in this case the hook is too sensational. You’re not achieving what you want to achieve. People aren’t thinking about the human rights violations; all they’re thinking about is a fourteen-year-old auctioning off her virginity.”

  “I don’t care,” said Abigail. “I want to raise money. I want to raise awareness. I want to do something. I don’t want to say, ‘Oh, that’s terrible,’ and then do nothing.”

  “Yes, but you’re not going to raise money or awareness! You’re raising awareness of yourself! ‘Abigail Mackenzie, the fourteen-year-old who trie
d to auction her virginity.’ Nobody will care or even remember that you were doing it for charity. You’re creating an online footprint for all future employers.”

  That’s when Abigail said, ridiculously, “Whatever.”

  As if this were all a matter of opinion.

  “So tell me, Abigail. Are you planning to go through with this? You do know you’re below the age of consent? You’re fourteen years old. You’re too young to being having sex.” Madeline’s voice shook.

  “So are those little girls, Mum!” said Abigail. Her voice shook.

  She had too much imagination. Too much empathy. That’s what Madeline had been trying to explain to Bonnie at assembly that morning. Those little girls were completely real to Abigail, and of course, they were real, there was real pain in the world, right this very moment people were suffering unimaginable atrocities and you couldn’t close your heart completely, but you couldn’t leave it wide open either, because otherwise how could you possibly live your life, when through pure, random luck you got to live in paradise? You had to register the existence of evil, do the little that you could, and then close your mind and think about new shoes.

  “So we’ll do something about it,” said Madeline. “We’ll work together on some sort of awareness-building campaign. We’ll get Ed involved! He knows journalists—”

  “No,” said Abigail flatly. “You’ll say all this but then you won’t really do anything. You’ll get busy and then you’ll forget all about it.”

  “I promise,” began Madeline. She knew there was truth in this.

  “No,” said Abigail.

  “This is not actually negotiable,” said Madeline. “You are still a child. I will get the police involved if necessary. The website is coming down, Abigail.”

  “Well, I’m not taking it down,” said Abigail. “And I’m not giving Dad the password even if you torture me.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, don’t be so ridiculous. Now you sound like a five-year-old,” said Madeline, regretting the words even while they were coming out of her mouth.

  They were pulling into the kiss-and-drop zone at the primary school. Madeline could see Renata’s shiny black BMW directly in front of her. The windows were too dark to see who was driving—presumably Renata’s slatternly French nanny. She imagined Renata’s face if she found out that Madeline’s daughter was auctioning off her virginity. She’d feel sympathy. Renata wasn’t a bad person. But she’d also feel just a hint of satisfaction, the same way Madeline had when she’d heard about the affair.

  Madeline prided herself on not caring what other people thought, but she cared about Renata thinking less of her daughter.

  “So you’re planning to go through with this? You’re going to sleep with some stranger?” said Madeline. She inched the car forward and tried to wave to Chloe, but she didn’t see her because she was busy talking animatedly to Lily, who looked faintly bored. Chloe’s skirt was hitched up by her backpack so that the entire car line could see her Minnie Mouse underpants. Madeline would normally have found that cute and funny, but at the moment it seemed somehow sinister and wrong, and she wished one of the teachers would notice and fix it.

  “Better than sleeping with some Year 12 guy while we’re both drunk,” said Abigail with her face turned to the window.

  Madeline saw Celeste’s twins being separated by a teacher. They both had red, angry little faces. She remembered with a start that she was picking them up today. She was so distracted, she could easily have forgotten.

  The car line wasn’t moving because whoever was at the front of the line was having some long conversation with a teacher, as expressly forbidden by the Pirriwee Primary Kiss-and-Drop/Pickup Policy. It was probably a Blond Bob, because rules obviously didn’t apply to them.

  “But, my God, Abigail, are you thinking about the reality of this? The logistics? How will it actually work? Where is this going to happen? Are you going to meet this person at a hotel? Are you going to ask me for a lift? ‘Oh, Mum, I’m just off to lose my virginity, better stop at a drugstore to buy some condoms’?”

  She looked at Abigail’s profile. She had her head dropped and one hand shielding her eyes. Madeline could see her lip trembling. Of course she hadn’t thought it through. She was fourteen.

  “And have you thought through what it would be like to have sex with a stranger? To have some horrible man touching you—”

  Abigail dropped her hand and turned her head. “Stop it, Mum!” she shouted.