Big Little Lies

  “You’re in la-la land, Abigail. Are you thinking some handsome George Clooney type will take you to his villa, tenderly take your virginity and then write out a generous check to Amnesty International? Because it won’t be like that. It will be vile and painful—”

  “It’s vile and painful for those little girls!” cried Abigail, tears sliding down her face.

  “But I’m not their mother!” shouted Madeline, and she slammed straight into the back of Renata’s BMW.

  Harper: Look, I don’t want to be the one casting aspersions, but Madeline deliberately rammed Renata’s car the day before the trivia night.

  63.

  Just don’t spread the word I’m doing this.” Mrs. Ponder’s daughter leaned down and spoke quietly in Jane’s ear beneath the cover of roaring hair dryers. “Otherwise I’ll have all the posh mothers coming in here wanting me to delouse their precious little kids.”

  At first Mrs. Ponder had told Jane to go to the drugstore to pick up a lice treatment. “It’s easy,” she said. “You just comb through the hair and pick the little bloodsuckers . . .” She stopped as she considered the expression on Jane’s face. “Tell you what,” she said. “I’ll see if Lucy can fit you in today.”

  Mrs. Ponder’s daughter Lucy ran Hairway to Heaven, the very popular hairdressing salon in Pirriwee, in between the newsagent and the butcher. Jane had never been in the salon before. Apparently Lucy and her team were responsible for all the blond bobs on the Pirriwee Peninsula.

  As Lucy fastened a cape around Ziggy’s neck, Jane looked around surreptitiously for any parents she might know, but she didn’t recognize anyone.

  “Shall I give him a trim while I’m here?” asked Lucy.

  “Sure, thanks,” said Jane.

  Lucy glanced at Jane. “Mum wants me to cut your hair too. She wants me to give you a pixie cut.”

  Jane tightened her ponytail. “I don’t really bother with my hair that much.”

  “At the very least you’d better let me have a check of your hair,” said Lucy. “You might need a treatment yourself. Lice don’t fly, but they do trapeze from head to head, like leetle lice acrobats.” She put on a Mexican accent and Ziggy chuckled appreciatively.

  “Oh, God,” said Jane. Her scalp felt instantly itchy.

  Lucy considered Jane. She narrowed her eyes. “Have you ever seen the movie Sliding Doors? Where Gwyneth Paltrow gets her hair all cut off and it looks fantastic?”

  “Sure,” said Jane. “Every girl loves that part.”

  “So does every hairdresser,” said Lucy. “It’s like a dream job.” She kept looking at Jane for a few seconds longer, then she turned back to face Ziggy and put her hands on his shoulders. She grinned at his reflection. “You’re not going to recognize your mum once I’ve finished with her.”

  Samantha: I didn’t recognize Jane when I first saw her at the trivia night. She had this amazing new haircut and she was wearing black capri pants with a white shirt with the collar up and ballet flats. Oh dear. Poor little Jane. She looked so happy at the start of the night!

  64.

  Celeste really did look ill, thought Madeline as she shepherded the twins in the door. She was wearing a man’s white T-shirt and checked pajama pants and her face was dead white.

  “Gosh, is it some sort of virus, do you think? It came on so fast!” said Madeline. “You looked perfectly fine at assembly this morning!”

  Celeste gave a strange little laugh and put a hand to the back of her head. “Yes, it came out of nowhere.”

  “Why don’t I just take the boys back to my place for a while? Perry can pick them up from there on his way home,” said Madeline. She looked back at her car in the driveway. The smashed headlight stared at her reproachfully and expensively. She’d left Abigail crying in the front seat and Fred and Chloe squabbling in the back (and she’d also noticed Fred giving his head a good, vicious scratch, and she knew from horrible experience exactly what that probably meant; it would be just absolutely marvelous if she also had to deal with a nit outbreak right now).

  “No, no, that’s nice of you, but I’m fine,” said Celeste. “I let them have unlimited screen time on Friday afternoons. They’ll just be ignoring me anyway. Thank you so much for picking them up.”

  “Do you think you’ll be OK for the trivia night tomorrow?” asked Madeline.

  “Oh, I’m sure I’ll be fine,” said Celeste. “Perry is looking forward to it.”

  “All right, well, I’d better go,” said Madeline. “Abigail and I were shouting at each other in the car line and I ran into the back of Renata’s car.”

  “No!” Celeste put her hand to her face.

  “Yes, I was shouting because Abigail is auctioning off her virginity online in a bid to stop child marriage,” continued Madeline. Celeste was the first person she’d been able to tell; she was desperate to talk about it.

  “She’s what?”

  “It’s all for a good cause,” said Madeline with mock nonchalance. “So I’m fine with it, of course.”

  “Oh, Madeline.” Celeste put her hand on her arm, and Madeline felt like she might cry.

  “Take a look,” said Madeline. “The address is www.buymyvirginitytostopchildmarriageandsexslavery.com. Abigail refuses to take it down, even while people are writing the most disgusting things about her.”

  Celeste winced. “I guess it’s better than prostituting herself to finance a drug addiction?”

  “There is that,” said Madeline.

  “She’s making one of those grand symbolic gestures, isn’t she?” mused Celeste. She pressed one hand to the back of her head again. “Like when that American woman swam the Bering Strait between the US and the USSR during the Cold War.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It was in the eighties. I was at school at the time,” said Celeste. “I remember thinking that it seemed so silly and pointless to swim across icy waters, but apparently it did have an effect, you know?”

  “So you think I should go ahead and let her sell her virginity? Is this virus making you delirious?”

  Celeste blinked. She seemed to sway a little on her feet and put out a hand to the wall to steady herself. “No. Of course not.” She closed her eyes briefly. “I just think you should be proud of her.”

  “Mmmm,” said Madeline. “Well I think you should go and lie back down.” She kissed Celeste’s cool cheek good-bye. “Hope you feel better soon, and when you do, you might want to check your kids for nits.”

  65.

  Eight Hours Before the Trivia Night

  It had been raining steadily all morning, and as Jane drove back into Pirriwee it got so heavy she had to turn up the radio and put the wipers on fast, panicky mode.

  She was on her way back from dropping Ziggy off at her parents’ house, where he was going to stay the night so that Jane could go to the trivia night. It was an arrangement they’d made a couple of months back when the invitations for the trivia night had first come out and Madeline had gotten all excited about planning fancy dress costumes and putting together a table with the right mix of accumulated knowledge.

  Apparently her ex-husband was known for his pub trivia skills (“Nathan has spent a lot of time in pubs, you see”) and it was very important to Madeline that their table beat his. “And obviously it would be nice to beat Renata’s table,” said Madeline. “Or anyone with a gifted and talented child, because I know they all secretly think their children inherited their genius brains from them.”

  Madeline had said that she herself was hopeless at trivia, and Ed didn’t know anything that happened after 1989. “My job will be to bring you drinks and rub your shoulders,” she’d said.

  With all the dramas going on over the last week, Jane had told her parents she wouldn’t go. Why put herself through it? Besides, it would be a kindness not to go. The petition organizers would see it as a good opportunity to collect more signatures. If she went, some poor person might find themselves in the embarrassing predicament of a
sking her if she’d like to sign a petition to have her own child suspended.

  But this morning, after an excellent night’s sleep, she’d woken to the sound of rain and a strange sense of optimism.

  Nothing was sorted yet, but it would be.

  Miss Barnes had e-mailed back, and they’d arranged a time to meet before school on Monday morning. After the hairdresser yesterday, Jane had texted Celeste and asked her if she wanted to meet for coffee, but Celeste had replied that she was sick in bed. Jane was in two minds about whether to try to tell her about Max before Monday. (The poor girl was sick. She didn’t need to hear bad news.) Perhaps it wasn’t necessary. Celeste was too nice to let it affect their friendship. It would all be fine. The petition would discreetly disappear. Maybe, once the news got out, some parents might even apologize to Jane. (She would be gracious.) It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility, was it? She didn’t want to hand her bad-mother title over to poor Celeste, but people would react differently when they knew it was Celeste’s child who was the bully. There wouldn’t be a petition for Max to be suspended. Rich, beautiful people weren’t asked to leave anywhere. It was going to be distressing for Celeste and Perry, but Max would get the help he needed. It would all blow over. A storm in a teacup.

  She could stay in Pirriwee and keep working at Blue Blues and drinking Tom’s coffee. Everything would be fine.

  She knew she was prone to these bouts of crazy optimism. If a strange voice said “Ms. Chapman?” on the phone, Jane’s first thought was often something ridiculous and impossible, like, Maybe I’ve won a car! (Even though she never entered competitions.) She’d always quite liked this particular quirk of her personality, even when her insane optimism proved to be once again unfounded, as it invariably did.

  “I think I’m going to go to the trivia night after all,” she’d told her mother on the phone.

  “Good for you,” her mother had said. “You hold your head high.”

  (Jane’s mother had whooped when she’d heard Ziggy’s revelation about Max. “I knew all along it wasn’t Ziggy!” she’d cried, but so exuberantly it was obvious she must have harbored some secret doubts.)

  Ziggy and Jane’s parents were going to spend the afternoon working on a brand-new Star Wars jigsaw, in the hope of finally passing the jigsaw passion to Ziggy. Tomorrow morning Dane was going to take him to an indoor rock-climbing center, then bring him back later in the afternoon.

  “Have some time to yourself,” said Ziggy’s mother. “Relax. You deserve it.”

  Jane was planning to catch up on laundry, pay some bills online and do a clean-out of Ziggy’s room without him there to untidy as she tidied. But as she got closer to the beach, she decided to stop at Blue Blues. It would be warm and cozy. Tom would have his little potbelly stove going. Blue Blues, she realized, had begun to feel like home.

  She pulled up in a non-metered spot down near the boardwalk. There were no cars about. Everyone was indoors. All the Saturday-morning sports would have been canceled. Jane looked at the passenger-seat floor where she normally kept a fold-up umbrella and realized it was back at the apartment. Rain splattered so hard on her windshield, it was as though someone were pouring buckets of water. It looked like very determined, very wet and cold rain, the sort that would make her gasp.

  She put a hand to her head, considering. At least she didn’t have as much hair to get wet. That was the other thing that was responsible for her good mood. Her new haircut.

  She pulled down the rearview mirror to study her face.

  “I love it,” she’d told Mrs. Ponder’s daughter yesterday afternoon. “I absolutely love it.”

  “You tell everyone you see I gave you that cut,” said Lucy.

  Jane couldn’t believe how the short cut had transformed her face, giving her cheekbones and enlarging her eyes. The new darker color did something good to her skin.

  For the first time since before that night in the hotel, when those words had wormed their malevolent way into her head, she looked at herself in the mirror and felt uncomplicated pleasure. In fact she couldn’t stop looking at herself, sheepishly grinning and turning her head from side to side.

  It was embarrassing just how much genuine happiness she was gaining from something so superficial. But maybe it was natural? Normal even? Maybe it was OK to enjoy her appearance. Maybe she didn’t need to analyze it any further than that, or to think about Saxon Banks and society’s obsession with beauty and youth and thinness and Photoshopped models setting unrealistic expectations and how a woman’s self-worth shouldn’t rest on her looks, it was what was on the inside that mattered, and blahdy, blah, blah . . . Enough! Today she had a new haircut and it suited her and that made her happy.

  (“Oh!” said her mother when she’d seen her walk in the door, and she’d clamped her hand over her mouth and looked like she might burst into tears. “You don’t like it?” said Jane, putting a self-conscious hand to her head, suddenly doubting herself, and her mother had said, “Jane, you silly girl, you look gorgeous.”)

  Jane put her hand on the keys in the ignition. She should go back home. It was ridiculous to go out in the rain.

  But she had such an irrational craving for Blue Blues and everything about it: the smell, the warmth, the coffee. Also she wanted Tom to see her new haircut. Gay men noticed haircuts.

  She took a deep breath, opened the car door and ran.

  66.

  Celeste woke late to the sound of rain and classical music. The house smelled of bacon and eggs. It meant that Perry was downstairs in the kitchen with both boys sitting up on the island bench in their pajamas, legs swinging, crazy-happy faces. They adored cooking with their father.

  Once, she’d read an article about how every relationship had its own “love account.” Doing something kind for your partner was like a deposit. A negative comment was a withdrawal. The trick was to keep your account in credit. Slamming your wife’s head against a wall was a very large withdrawal. Getting up early with the kids and making bacon and eggs was a deposit.

  She pulled herself upright and felt the back of her head. It still felt tender, but it was OK. It was amazing how fast the healing and forgetting process had begun again. The cycle was endless.

  Tonight was the trivia night. She and Perry would dress up as Audrey Hepburn and Elvis Presley. Perry had ordered his Elvis outfit online from a premium costume supplier in London. If Prince Harry wanted to dress up as Elvis, he would probably get his outfit there. Everyone else would be wearing polyester and props from the two-dollar shop.

  Tomorrow Perry was flying to Hawaii. It was a junket, he’d admitted. He’d asked her a few months back if she’d wanted to go with him, and for a moment she’d seriously considered it, as that might be the answer. A tropical holiday! Cocktails and spa treatments. Away from the stress of day-to-day life! What could go wrong? (Things could go wrong. He had hit her once in a five-star hotel because she’d teased him about his mispronunciation of the word “menial.” She would never forget the horrified humiliation on his face when he realized he’d been mispronouncing a word his whole life.)

  While he was in Hawaii she would move herself and the boys into the McMahons Point apartment. She would make an appointment with a family lawyer. That would be easy. The legal world wasn’t scary to her. She knew lots of people. It would be fine. It would be awful, of course, but it would be fine. He wasn’t going to kill her. She was always so dramatic after they had an argument. It seemed especially silly to use a word like “kill” while her supposed “killer” was downstairs frying eggs with her children.

  It would be terrible for a while, but then it would be fine. The boys could still make breakfast with Daddy when they had their weekends with him.

  Yesterday was the last time he would hurt her.

  It was over.

  “Mummy, we’ve made breakfast for you!” The boys came running in, scrabbling up on the bed next to her like eager little crabs.

  Perry appeared at the door with a plate balanc
ed high on his bunched-together fingertips like a waiter in a fine-dining establishment.

  “Yum!” said Celeste.

  67.

  I know what to do,” said Ed.

  “No you don’t,” said Madeline.

  They were sitting at the living room table, listening to the rain and gloomily eating Jane’s muffins. (It was terrible the way she kept giving them to Madeline, as if she were on a mission to urgently expand Madeline’s waistline.)

  Abigail was in her bedroom, lying on the sofa bed they’d moved in to replace her beautiful four-poster bed. She had headphones on and was lying on her side with her knees up to her chest.

  The website was still up. Abigail’s virginity was still available for purchase anywhere in the world.

  Madeline had a grimy, exposed feeling, as if the eyes of the world were peering in her windows, as though strange men were right now silently creeping down her hallway to leer and sneer at her daughter.

  Last night Nathan had come over and he and Madeline had sat with Abigail for more than two hours: begging, reasoning, cajoling, yelling, crying. It had been Nathan who cried, finally, with frustration, and Abigail had been visibly shocked, but the ridiculous child still would not budge. She would not give them the password. She would not take it down. She might or might not go ahead with the auction, but that wasn’t really the point, she’d said; they needed to stop “obsessing over the sex part.” She was leaving the website up to raise awareness of the issue and because she was “the only voice those little girls have.”

  The egocentricity of the child, as if international aid organizations were sitting around twiddling their thumbs while little Abigail Mackenzie on the Pirriwee Peninsula was the only one taking decisive action. Abigail said she couldn’t care less about the horrible sexual comments. Those people were nothing to her. That was completely irrelevant. People were always writing mean stuff on the Internet.

  “Don’t suggest calling the police,” said Madeline to Ed now. “I really don’t—”

  “We contact the Australian office of Amnesty International,” said Ed. “They don’t want their name associated with something like this. If the organization that really does represent the rights of these children tells her to take it down, she’ll listen.”

  Madeline pointed her finger at him. “That’s good. That might actually work.”

  There were bangs and crashes from down the hallway. Fred and Chloe did not respond well to being stuck indoors on a rainy day.

  “Give it back!” screamed Chloe.

  “No way!” shouted Fred.

  They came running into the room, both of them gripping a sheet of scrap paper.

  “Please don’t tell me you’re fighting over that piece of paper,” said Ed.

  “He’s not sharing!” screamed Chloe. “Sharing is caring!”

  “You get what you get and you don’t get upset!” screamed Fred.

  In normal circumstances that would have made Madeline laugh.

  “It’s my paper airplane,” said Fred.

  “I drew the passengers!”

  “You did not!”

  “Well, you can stop all your stressing.” Madeline turned to see Abigail leaning against the doorjamb.

  “What?” Madeline said.

  Abigail said something that she couldn’t hear over the yelling of Fred and Chloe.

  “Bloody hell!” Madeline snatched the piece of paper from Fred’s hand and tore it in half, handing them a piece each.

  “Now get out of my sight!” she roared. They ran.

  “I’ve taken down the website,” said Abigail with a world-weary sigh.

  “You have? Why?” Madeline resisted the urge to throw her arms above her head and run around in circles like Fred did when he kicked a goal.