Big Little Lies (25 page)

M
adeline stood in her living room and wondered what to do.

Ed and the kids were asleep, and thanks to Celeste, all the cleaning up after book club was done. She should go to bed, but she didn’t feel tired enough. Tomorrow was Friday, and Friday mornings were hectic because she had to drive Abigail to her math tutor before school, and Fred did chess club and Chloe—

She stopped.

She didn’t need to get Abigail to her math tutor by seven-thirty a.m. That was no longer her responsibility. Nathan or Bonnie would have to take Abigail. She kept forgetting her services as Abigail’s mother were no longer required. Her life was theoretically easier with only two children to get out of the house each day, but each time she remembered a task relating to Abigail that was no longer hers, she felt that sharp sense of loss.

Her whole body jangled with anger she couldn’t release.

She picked up Fred’s toy lightsaber from where he’d conveniently left it on the floor for someone to trip over tomorrow morning. She
turned on the switch so it burned red and green and sliced it through the air like Darth Vader, taking down each of her enemies.

Damn you to hell for stealing my daughter, Nathan.

Damn you to hell for helping him, Bonnie.

Damn you to hell, Renata, for that nasty petition.

Damn you to hell, Miss Barnes, for letting poor little Amabella get secretly bullied in the first place.

She felt bad for damning poor dimpled Miss Barnes to hell and quickly moved on with her list.

Damn you to hell, Saxon Banks, for what you did to Jane, you nasty, nasty man.
She swung the lightsaber so enthusiastically over her head that it clanged against the hanging light and sent it swinging back and forth.

Madeline dropped the lightsaber on the couch and reached up to hold the light fixture steady.

Right. No more playing with the lightsaber. She could just imagine Ed’s face if she’d broken a light fixture pretending to be Darth Vader.

She went back into the kitchen and picked up the iPad from where she’d left it after showing Celeste the pictures of Saxon Banks. She would play some nice soothing Plants vs. Zombies. It was important to keep her skills up-to-date. She liked hearing Fred say, “Mum, that’s awesome!” when he looked over her shoulder and saw she’d gone up a level and gotten a new fancy weapon for taking on the zombies.

First she’d have another quick look at Abigail’s Facebook and Instagram accounts. When Abigail was living at home Madeline had dutifully checked in every now and then on her daughter’s online presence, just to be a good responsible modern mother. But now she did it addictively. It was like she was stalking her own daughter, pathetically seeking out bits of information about her life.

Abigail had changed her profile picture. It was a full-length photo
of her facing the camera, doing a yoga pose, hands folded in prayer, one skinny leg propped on the other knee, her hair falling over one shoulder. She looked beautiful. Happy. Radiant, even.

Only the most selfish of mothers could feel resentful toward Bonnie for introducing her daughter to something that made her so obviously happy.

Madeline must be the most selfish of mothers.

Perhaps Madeline should take up yoga so she and Abigail would have something in common? But every time she tried yoga she found herself silently chanting her own mantra:
I’m so boooored, I’m so boooored.

She scrolled down the comments from Abigail’s friends. They were all supportive, but then she stopped on one from Abigail’s friend Freya, who Madeline had never liked all that much. One of those toxic friends. Freya had written:
Is this the shot you’re going to use
on your “project”? Or not sexy/slutty enough?

“Sexy/slutty”? Madeline’s nostrils flared. What was the little witch Freya talking about? What “project” required Abigail to be sexy/slutty? It sounded like a project that needed to be stopped.

This was the thing with the murky world of the Internet. You swam along through cyberspace, merrily picking up this and that, and next thing you knew you’d stumbled upon something unsavory and ugly. She thought of how she’d felt seeing the face of Saxon Banks on her computer screen. This was what happened when you spied.

Abigail had replied to Freya’s comment:
Shhhhhh!!! Top secret!!!!

The reply had been sent five minutes ago. Madeline looked at the time. It was nearly midnight! She always insisted that Abigail had an early night before math tutoring, because otherwise she had to be dragged out of bed and the tutoring money would be wasted if Abigail was too tired to concentrate.

She sent her a private message:
Hey! What are you doing up so late? You’ve got tutoring tomorrow! Go to bed! Mum xxx.

She noticed that her heart was beating after she pressed Send. As if she’d broken a rule. But she was Abigail’s mother! She still had the right to tell her to go to bed.

Abigail answered immediately:
Dad has canceled the tutor. He’s going to tutor me instead. Go to bed yourself! x

“He
what
?” said Madeline to the computer screen. “He fucking
what
?”

Nathan
had canceled the math tutor. He’d made a unilateral decision about Abigail’s education. The very same man who had missed school plays and parent-teacher interviews and athletics carnivals and preparing a trembly little five-year-old for show-and-tell every Monday morning and projects on big sheets of cardboard and projects that needed to be submitted for the first time online with log-in instructions that didn’t make any sense and homework forgotten until late the night before and covering books with contact paper and exam nerves and the meeting with that lovely teacher with the crazy jewelry who said all those years ago that Abigail would probably always struggle with math so
give her all the support she needs
.

How
DARE
he?

She dialed Nathan’s number without a moment’s thought, trembling with righteous rage. There was no way she could wait till the morning. She needed to yell at him now, right now, before her head exploded.

He answered with slurred, sleepy surprise: “Hello?”

“You canceled Abigail’s math tutor? You just canceled without even checking with me first!?”

There was silence.

“Nathan?” said Madeline sharply.

She heard him clear his throat. “Maddie.” He sounded wide awake now. “Did you seriously ring me at midnight to talk to me about Abigail’s math tutor?”

It was an entirely different tone of voice than the one he normally
used. For years her interactions with Nathan had reminded her of dealing with an unctuous, eager-to-please salesman working on commission only. Now that he had Abigail, he thought he was her equal. He didn’t need to be apologetic anymore. He could be irritable. He could be like a regular ex-husband.

“We’re all asleep,” he continued. “Could it seriously not have waited until tomorrow morning? Skye and Bonnie are both very light—”

“You’re not all asleep!” said Madeline. “Your fourteen-year-old daughter is wide awake and on the Internet! Is there any supervision in that house? Do you have
any
idea what she’s doing right now?”

Madeline could hear the soft, melodious tones of Bonnie saying something sweet and understanding in the background.

“I’ll go check on her,” said Nathan. He sounded more conciliatory now. “I thought she was asleep. And look, she wasn’t getting anywhere with that math tutor. He’s just a kid. I can do a better job than him. But you’re right, of course I should have talked to you about it. I
meant
to talk to you about it. It just slipped my mind.”

“That tutor was making real progress with her,” said Madeline.

She and Abigail had tried out two other tutors first before they’d gotten Sebastian. The kid got such good results, he had a waiting list of students. Madeline had begged him to squeeze in Abigail.

“No, he wasn’t,” said Nathan. “But let’s talk about it when I’m not half-asleep.”

“Fabulous. Look forward to it. Will you be letting me know of any other changes you’ve made to Abigail’s schedule? Just curious.”

“I’m hanging up now,” said Nathan.

He hung up.

Madeline threw her mobile phone so hard against the wall it bounced back, landing faceup on the carpet, right at her feet, so she could see the shattered screen, like the sharp reprimand of an adult to a child.

Stu:
Look, I didn’t think poor old Nathan was a bad bloke. I saw him a bit about the school. The place is overrun by women, and half the time they’re all so busy rabbiting away to each other, it’s hard to get a word in edgewise. So I’d always made a point of talking to the other dads. I remember one morning Nathan and I were having a good old natter about something when Madeline comes stalking by on her high heels and, jeez Louise—if looks could kill!

Gabrielle:
I couldn’t stand to live in the same suburb as
my
ex-husband. If our kids attended the same school, I’d probably end up murdering him. I don’t know how they thought that arrangement could work. It was just crazy.

Bonnie:
It was not crazy. We wanted to be as close as possible to Abigail, and then we happened to find the perfect house in the area. What’s crazy about that?

Five Days Before the Trivia Night

I
t was Monday morning just before the bell rang, and Jane was on her way back from the school library where she’d returned two books Ziggy had forgotten to take back. She’d left him happily swinging along the monkey bars with the twins and Chloe. At least Madeline and Celeste weren’t banning their children from playing with Ziggy.

After she dropped the books off, Jane was staying on at school to help out listening to the children practice their reading. She and Lily’s dad, Stu, were the Monday-morning parent volunteers.

As she came out of the library she could see two of the Blond Bobs standing outside the music room, very deep in important, loudly confidential conversation.

She heard one of them say, “Which one is the mother?”

The other one said, “She sort of flies under the radar. She’s
really
young. Renata thought she was the nanny.”

“Wait, wait! I know the one! She wears her hair like this, right?”
The Blond Bob pulled back her blond locks in an exaggeratedly tight ponytail, and at that moment her eyes met Jane’s and widened. She dropped her hands like a child caught misbehaving.

The other woman, who was facing away from Jane, continued talking. “Yes! That’s her! Well, apparently her kid, this
Ziggy
, has been
secretly
bullying poor little Amabella. I’m talking really vicious stuff— What?”

The first Blond Bob made frantic head-jerking movements.

“What’s wrong? Oh!”

The woman turned her head and saw Jane. Her face turned pink.

“Good morning!” she said. Normally someone so high on the school parent hierarchy would nod vaguely and graciously at Jane as she walked by, a royal nod for a commoner.

“Hi,” said Jane.

The woman was holding a clipboard up to her chest. She suddenly dropped her arm by her side so that the clipboard hung behind her legs, exactly like a child hiding a stolen treat behind his back.

It’s the petition,
thought Jane. It wasn’t just kindergarten parents signing it. They were getting parents in other years to sign it. Parents who didn’t even know her or Ziggy or anything about it.

Jane kept walking past the women. Her hand was on the glass doors leading back out into the playground when she stopped. There was a roaring, ascending feeling in her body, like a plane taking off. It was the disdainful way that woman had used Ziggy’s name. It was Saxon Banks, his breath tickling her ear:
Never had an original thought in your life, have you?

She turned. She walked back to the women and stood directly in front of them. The women took tiny steps backward, their eyes comically round. The three of them were almost exactly the same height. They were all mothers. But the Blond Bobs had husbands and houses and absolute certainty about their places in the world.

“My son has never hurt anyone,” said Jane, and all of a sudden she knew it was true. He was Ziggy Chapman. He was nothing whatsoever to do with Saxon Banks. He was nothing to do with Poppy. He wasn’t even anything to do with her. He was just
Ziggy
, and she didn’t know everything about Ziggy, but she knew this.

“Oh, darling, we’ve all been there! We
sympathize
! This is just a terrible situation,” began the Blond Bob with the clipboard. “How much screen time do you let him have? I’ve found cutting down on screen time really—”

“He’s never hurt anyone,” repeated Jane.

She turned and walked away.

Thea:
So, the week before the trivia night, Jane accosted Trish and Fiona when they were in the middle of a private conversation. They said her behavior was just bizarre, to the point where they even wondered if she had some . . .
mental health issues
.

•   •   •

J
ane walked into the playground feeling a strange sense of calm. Perhaps she needed to learn from Madeline’s example. No more avoiding confrontation. March up to your critics and bloody well tell them what you think.

A Year 1 girl strolled alongside her. “I’m having a sausage roll for lunch today.”

“Lucky you,” said Jane. This was one of her favorite parts of walking around the school playground: the way children chatted so artlessly, launching into whatever happened to be on their minds at the time.

“I wasn’t meant to be having a sausage roll, because it’s not Friday, but this morning my little brother got stung by a bee, and he was
screaming, and my sister broke a glass, and my mum said, ‘I’m losing my mind!’” The little girl put her hands over her head to demonstrate. “And then Mum said I could buy my lunch at the canteen as a special treat, but no juice, but I could still have a gingerbread man, but not the chocolate sort. Bees die after they sting you, did you know that?”

“I did,” said Jane. “That’s the very last thing they do.”

“Jane!” Miss Barnes approached, carrying a laundry basket full of dress-up clothes. “Thank you for coming today!”

“Um. You’re welcome?” said Jane. She’d been doing this every Monday morning since the beginning of the year.

“I mean, in light of, you know, everything.” Miss Barnes winced and shifted the laundry basket onto her hip. She stepped closer to Jane and lowered her voice. “I haven’t heard anything else about this petition. Mrs. Lipmann has been telling the parents involved that she wants it stopped. Also, she’s assigned me a teacher’s aide to do nothing else but observe the children, and in particular Amabella and Ziggy.”

“That’s great,” said Jane. “But I’m pretty sure the petition is still circulating.”

She could feel eyes on her and Miss Barnes from all corners of the playground. It felt like every parent was secretly observing their conversation. This must be what it felt like to be famous.

Miss Barnes sighed. “I noticed you kept Ziggy home on Friday. I hope you’re not feeling intimidated by these tactics.”

“Some parents are telling their children they’re not allowed to play with him,” said Jane.

“For goodness’ sake.”

“Yeah, so I’ve started a petition too,” said Jane. “I want all those kids who won’t play with Ziggy suspended.”

For a moment Miss Barnes looked horrified. Then she threw back her head and laughed.

Harper:
It’s all very well, the school saying they were taking the situation seriously, but then you see Jane and Miss Barnes standing in the playground laughing their heads off! To be frank, that got me riled up. That was the same morning as the assault, and yes, I am going to use the word “assault.”

Samantha:
Assault.
Give me a break.