Big Little Lies

  Abigail handed her a printout of an e-mail. “I got this.”

  Ed and Madeline read it together.

  To: Abigail Mackenzie

  From: Larry Fitzgerald

  Subject: Auction Bid

  Dear Miss Mackenzie,

  My name is Larry Fitzgerald and it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. You probably don’t hear from many eighty-three-year-old gentlemen living on the other side of the world in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. My darling wife and I visited Australia many years ago, in 1987, before you were born. We had the pleasure of seeing the Sydney Opera House. (I’m an architect, since retired, and it had always been a dream of mine to see the Opera House.) The people of Australia were so kind and warm to us. Sadly, my beautiful wife passed away last year. I miss her every day. Miss Mackenzie, when I came across your website, I was moved by your obvious passion and your desire to bring attention to the plight of these children. I would not like to purchase your virginity; however I would like to make a bid. This is what I propose: If you close your auction immediately, I will make an immediate donation of $100,000 to Amnesty International. (I will, of course, send you a receipt.) I have spent many years campaigning against the abuse of human rights, and I do so admire what you are trying to achieve, but you are a child yourself, Miss Mackenzie, and I cannot in good conscience stand by and see you take this project to fruition. I look forward to hearing whether my bid is successful.

  Yours sincerely,

  Larry Fitzgerald

  Madeline and Ed looked at each other and over at Abigail.

  “I thought one hundred thousand dollars was quite a big donation,” said Abigail. She was standing at the open fridge as she talked, pulling out containers, opening lids and peering into them. “And that Amnesty could probably do something, you know, pretty good with that money.”

  “I’m sure they could,” said Ed neutrally.

  “I’ve written back to him and told him I’ve taken it down,” said Abigail. “If he doesn’t send back the receipt I’m going to put it straight back up.”

  “Oh, naturally,” murmured Ed. “He’s got to follow through.”

  Madeline grinned at Ed and then back at Abigail. You could see the relief coursing through her daughter’s young body; her bare feet were doing a little dance as she stood at the refrigerator. Abigail had put herself in a corner, and the wonderful Larry Fitzgerald of South Dakota had given her an out.

  “Is this spaghetti Bolognese?” said Abigail, holding up a Tupperware container. “I’m starving.”

  “I thought you were vegan now,” said Madeline.

  “Not when I’m staying here,” said Abigail, taking the container over to the microwave. “It’s too hard to be vegan here.”

  “So tell me,” said Madeline. “What was your password?”

  “I can just change it again,” said Abigail.

  “I know.”

  “You’ll never guess,” said Abigail.

  “I know that,” said Madeline. “Your father and I tried everything.”

  “No,” said Abigail. “That’s it. That’s my password. ‘You’ll never guess.’”

  “Clever,” said Madeline.

  “Thanks.” Abigail dimpled at her.

  The microwave dinged, and Abigail opened the door and took out the container.

  “You know that there are going to have to be, er, consequences for all this,” said Madeline. “When your father and I expressly ask you to do something, you can’t just ignore us.”

  “Yup,” said Abigail cheerfully. “Do what you’ve got to do, Mum.”

  Ed cleared his throat, but Madeline shook her head at him.

  “Can I eat this in the family room while I watch TV?” Abigail lifted the steaming plate.

  “Sure,” said Madeline.

  Abigail virtually skipped off.

  Ed leaned back in his chair with his hands crossed behind his head. “Crisis averted.”

  “All thanks to Mr. Larry Fitzgerald.” Madeline picked up the e-mail printout. “How lucky was . . .”

  She paused and tapped a finger to her lips. Just how lucky was that?

  68.

  There was a CLOSED sign on the door of Blue Blues. Jane pressed her palms to the glass door and felt bereft. She couldn’t remember ever seeing a CLOSED sign at Blue Blues before.

  She’d just gotten herself completely, ridiculously, extravagantly soaked for nothing.

  She dropped her hands from the door and swore. Right. Well. She’d go home and have a shower. If only the hot water at her apartment lasted for more than two minutes and twenty-seven seconds. Two minutes and twenty-seven seconds was not long enough to get yourself warm; it was just long enough to be cruel.

  She turned to go back to the car.

  “Jane!”

  The door swung open.

  Tom was wearing a long-sleeved white T-shirt and jeans. He looked extremely dry and warm and delicious. (In her mind Tom was always associated with good coffee and good food, so she had a Pavlovian response just looking at him.)

  “You’re closed,” said Jane dolefully. “You’re never closed.”

  Tom put his dry hand on her wet arm and pulled her inside. “I’m open for you.”

  Jane looked down at herself. Her shoes were filled with water. She made squelching noises as she walked. Water rolled down her face like tears.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t have an umbrella, and I thought if I just ran really fast—”

  “Don’t worry about it. Happens all the time. People walk through fire and flood for my coffee,” said Tom. “Come out back and I’ll get you some dry clothes. I decided I might as well close up and watch TV. I haven’t had a customer in hours. Where’s my man Ziggy?”

  “Mum and Dad are babysitting so I can go to the school trivia night,” said Jane. “Wild night out.”

  “It probably will be,” said Tom. “Pirriwee parents like a drink or two. I’m going, did you know? Madeline has gotten me on your table.”

  Jane followed him through the café, leaving wet footprints, and to the door marked PRIVATE. She knew that Tom lived at the back of the café, but she’d never been past the private door.

  “Ooh,” she said as Tom opened the door for her. “Exciting!”

  “Yes,” said Tom. “You’re a lucky, lucky girl.”

  She looked around her and saw that his studio apartment was just like an extension of the café—the same polished floorboards and rough white walls, bookshelves filled with secondhand books. The only differences were the surfboard and guitar leaning against the wall, the stack of CDs and stereo.

  “I can’t believe it,” said Jane.

  “What?” asked Tom.

  “You’re into jigsaws,” she breathed, pointing at a half-finished jigsaw on the table. She looked at the box. It was a proper hard-core (as her brother would have said), two-thousand-piece jigsaw featuring a black-and-white photo of wartime Paris.

  “We jigsaw,” said Jane. “My family. We’re kind of obsessed.”

  “I like to always have one on the go,” said Tom. “I find them sort of meditative.”

  “Exactly,” said Jane.

  “Tell you what,” said Tom. “I’ll give you some clothes, and you can have some pumpkin soup with me and help me jigsaw.”

  He pulled some tracksuit pants and a hooded sweatshirt from a chest of drawers, and she went into his bathroom and put her soaked clothes, right down to her underwear, into his sink. The dry clothes smelled like Tom and Blue Blues.

  “I feel like Charlie Chaplin,” she said, with the sleeves hanging below her wrists and pulling up the waist of the tracksuit pants.

  “Here,” said Tom, and he neatly folded up the sleeves of the shirt above her wrists. Jane submitted like a child. She felt unaccountably happy. Cherished.

  She sat down at the table and Tom brought them over bowls of pumpkin soup swirled with sour cream and buttered sourdough bread.

  “I feel like you’re always feeding me,” sai
d Jane.

  “You need feeding,” said Tom. “Eat up.”

  She took a mouthful of the sweet, spicy soup.

  “I know what’s different about you!” said Tom suddenly. “You’ve had all your hair cut off! It looks great.”

  Jane laughed. “I was thinking on the way here that a gay man would notice straightaway that I’d had a haircut.” She picked up a piece of the puzzle and found a spot for it. It felt like being at home, eating and doing a puzzle. “Sorry. I know that’s a terrible cliché.”

  “Um,” said Tom.

  “What?” said Jane. She looked up at him. “That’s where it goes. Look. It’s the corner of the tank. This soup is incredible. Why don’t you have it on the menu?”

  “I’m not gay,” said Tom.

  “Oh yes you are,” said Jane merrily. She assumed he was making a bad sort of joke.

  “No,” said Tom. “No, I’m not.”

  “What?”

  “I know I do jigsaws and make amazing pumpkin soup, but I’m actually straight.”

  “Oh!” said Jane. She could feel her face turning crimson. “I’m sorry. I thought . . . I didn’t think, I knew! How did I know? Someone told me. Madeline told me ages ago. But I remember it! She told me this whole story about how you broke up with your boyfriend and you took it really bad and you just spent hours crying and surfing . . .”

  Tom grinned. “Tom O’Brien,” he said. “That’s who she was talking about.”

  “Tom O’Brien, the smash-repair guy?” Tom O’Brien was big and burly with a black bushy beard. She had never even properly registered the fact that the two Toms had the same name, they were so different.

  “It’s perfectly understandable,” said Tom. “It would seem more likely that Tom the barista was gay than Tom the giant smash-repairer. He’s happy now, by the way, in love with someone new.”

  “Huh,” said Jane. She considered. “His receipts did smell really nice.”

  Tom snorted.

  “I hope I didn’t, um, offend you,” said Jane.

  She hadn’t fully closed the bathroom door when she’d gotten dressed. She’d left it partly ajar, the way she would have if Tom had been a girl, so that they could keep talking. She wasn’t wearing any underwear. She had talked to him so freely. She’d always been so free with him. If she’d known he was straight she would have kept a part of herself safe. She’d let herself feel attracted to him because he was gay, so it didn’t count.

  “Of course not,” said Tom.

  Their eyes met. His face, so dear and familiar to her now after all these months, felt suddenly strange. He was blushing. They were both blushing. Her stomach dropped as if she were at the top of a roller coaster. Oh, calamity.

  “I think that piece goes in the corner there,” said Tom.

  Jane looked at the jigsaw piece and slotted it into place. She hoped the tremor in her fingers looked like clumsiness.

  “You’re right,” she said.

  Carol: I saw Jane having a very, shall we say, intimate conversation with one of the fathers at the trivia night. Their faces were this close, and I’m pretty sure he had his hand on her knee. I was a little shocked, to be frank.

  Gabrielle: It wasn’t a school dad. It was just Tom! The barista! And he’s gay!

  69.

  Half an Hour Before the Trivia Night

  You look so beautiful, Mummy,” said Josh.

  He stood at the bedroom door, staring at Celeste. She was wearing a sleeveless black dress, long white gloves, and the pearl necklace Perry had bought for her in Switzerland. Celeste had even put her hair up in a passable Audrey Hepburn–style beehive bun and had just that moment found a vintage diamond comb. She looked pretty nice. Madeline would be pleased with her.

  “Thank you, Joshie,” said Celeste, more touched than she could remember ever being from a compliment. “Give me a cuddle.”

  He ran to her, and she sat on the end of the bed and let him snuggle into her. He’d never been as snuggly as Max, so when he needed a hug she made sure to take her time. She pressed her lips to his hair. She’d taken more painkillers, even though she wasn’t sure if she really needed them, and was feeling detached and floaty.

  “Mummy,” said Josh.

  “Hmmm?”

  “I need to tell you a secret.”

  “Hmmmm. What’s that?” She closed her eyes and hugged him closer.

  “I don’t want to tell you,” said Josh.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” said Celeste dreamily.

  “But it makes me feel sad,” said Josh.

  “What makes you feel sad?” Celeste lifted her head and made herself focus.

  “OK, so Max isn’t hurting Amabella anymore,” said Josh. “But then, yesterday, he pushed Skye down the stairs near the library again, and I said he shouldn’t do that, and we had a big fight because I said I was going to tell.”

  Max pushed Skye.

  Skye. Bonnie and Nathan’s anxious, waif-like little girl. Max had pushed Skye down the stairs again. The thought of her son hurting that fragile child made Celeste feel instantly sick.

  “But why?” she said. “Why would he do that?” The back of her head had begun to ache.

  “Dunno,” shrugged Josh. “He just does.”

  “Wait a moment,” said Celeste. Her mobile phone was ringing somewhere downstairs. She pressed a fingertip to her forehead. Her head felt fuzzy. “Did you say, ‘Max isn’t hurting Amabella anymore’? What are you talking about? What do you mean?”

  “I’ll answer it!” called out Perry.

  Josh was impatient with her. “No, no, Mummy. Listen! He doesn’t go near Amabella anymore. It’s Skye. He’s being mean to Skye. When no one is looking except me.”

  “Mummy!” Max came running in. His face was ecstatic. “I think my tooth is wobbly!” He put his finger in his mouth. He looked so cute. So sweet and innocent. His face still had that baby-roundness. He was desperate to lose a tooth because he was obsessed with the idea of the Tooth Fairy.

  When the boys turned three, Josh asked for a digger and Max asked for a baby doll. She and Perry had enjoyed watching him cradle the doll, singing it soft little lullabies, and Celeste had loved the fact that Perry didn’t mind at all that their son was behaving in such a nonmasculine way. Of course, he’d soon dropped dolls for lightsabers, but he was still her cuddly son, the most loving of the boys.

  And now he was staking out the quiet little girls in the class and hurting them. Her son was a bully. “How does the abuse affect your children?” Susi had asked. “It doesn’t,” she’d said.

  “Oh, Max,” she said.

  “Feel it!” said Max. “I’m not making it up! It’s definitely loose!” He looked up at his father as Perry came into the room. “You look funny, Daddy! Hey, Daddy, look at my tooth! Look, look!”

  Perry was barely recognizable in his perfectly fitted shiny black wig, gold aviator glasses and, of course, the iconic white Elvis jumpsuit with glittering gemstones. He held Celeste’s mobile phone in his hand.

  “Wow! It’s really loose this time?” he said. “Let me see!”

  He put the phone down on the bed next to Celeste and Josh and got down on his knees in front of Max, pushing his glasses down over his nose so he could see.

  “I have a message for you,” he said, glancing at Celeste. He put his finger on Max’s lower lip. “Let me see, buddy. From Mindy.”

  “Mindy?” said Celeste vaguely. “I don’t know anyone called Mindy.” She was thinking about Jane and Ziggy. The petition that should have Max’s name on it. She needed to tell the school. Should she call Miss Barnes right now? Should she call Jane?

  “Your property manager,” said Perry.

  Celeste’s stomach plunged. She let Josh wriggle off her lap.

  “I bet your tooth isn’t loose!” he said to his brother.

  “Maybe a little loose,” said Perry. He ruffled Max’s hair and straightened his glasses. “They’re putting new smoke alarms in your apartment and want to k
now if they can get access Monday morning. Mindy wondered if nine a.m. was OK with you.” He grabbed both boys by their waists and lifted them up on his hips, where they clung comfortably like monkeys, their faces joyous. Perry tilted his head at Celeste. A white-toothed Elvis smile. “Does that suit you, honey?”

  The doorbell rang.

  70.

  Stu: As soon as you walked in the door you were handed one of these girly-looking pink fizzy cocktails.

  Samantha: They were divine. Only problem was the Year 6 teachers made some sort of miscalculation with quantities, so each drink was worth about three shots. These are the people teaching our kids math, by the way.

  Gabrielle: I was starving because I’d been saving all my calories for that night. I had half a cocktail and—hooeee!

  Jackie: I go to a lot of corporate events with big-drinking highfliers, but let me tell you, I’ve never seen a group of people get so drunk so fast as they did at this school trivia night.

  Thea: The caterer’s car broke down, so everyone was hungry and drinking these very strong alcoholic drinks. I thought to myself, This is a recipe for disaster.

  Miss Barnes: It’s not a good look for teachers to get drunk at school functions so I always sit on one drink, but that cocktail! Like, I’m not even sure exactly what I was saying to people.

  Mrs. Lipmann: We are currently reviewing our procedures in relation to the serving of alcohol at school events.

  The Trivia Night

  Cocktail?” A blond Audrey Hepburn held out a tray.

  Jane took the proffered pink drink and looked about the school assembly hall. All the Blond Bobs must have had a meeting to ensure they all wore identical pearl chokers, little black dresses and updos. Perhaps Mrs. Ponder’s daughter had offered a group discount.

  “Are you new to the school?” asked the Blond Bob. “I don’t think I know your face.”

  “I’m a kindy mum,” said Jane. “I’ve been here since the beginning of the year. Gosh, this drink is good.”