Big Little Lies (7 page)

D
o you fly as high as this plane, Daddy?” asked Josh. They were about seven hours into their flight from Vancouver back home to Sydney. So far so good. No arguments. They’d put the boys on either side of them in separate window seats and Celeste and Perry were in adjacent aisle seats.

“Nope. Remember I told you? I have to fly really low to avoid radar detection,” said Perry.

“Oh yeah.” Josh turned his face back to the window.

“Why do you have to avoid radar detection?” asked Celeste.

Perry shook his head and shared a tolerant “women!” grin with Max, who was sitting on the other side of Celeste and had leaned over to listen to the conversation. “It’s obvious isn’t it, Max?”

“It’s top secret, Mummy,” Max told her kindly. “No one
knows
that Daddy can fly.”

“Oh, of course,” said Celeste. “Sorry. Silly of me.”

“See, if I got caught, they’d probably want to run a whole
battery
of tests on me,” said Perry. “Find out just how I developed these
superpowers, then they’d want to recruit me for the Air Force, I’d have to go on secret missions.”

“Yeah, and we don’t want that,” said Celeste. “Daddy already travels enough.”

Perry reached across the aisle and put his hand over hers in silent apology.

“You can’t really fly,” said Max.

Perry raised his eyebrows, widened his eyes and gave a little shrug. “Can’t I?”

“I don’t
think
so,” said Max uncertainly.

Perry winked at Celeste over Max’s head. He’d been telling the twins for years that he had secret flying abilities, going into ridiculous detail about how he’d discovered his secret powers when he was fifteen, which was the age when they’d probably learn to fly too, assuming they’d inherited his powers and eaten enough broccoli. The boys could never tell if he was serious or not.

“I was flying when I skied over that big jump yesterday,” said Max. He used his hand to demonstrate his trajectory. “Whoosh!”

“Yeah, you were flying,” said Perry. “You nearly gave Daddy a heart attack.”

Max chuckled.

Perry linked his hands in front of him and stretched out his back. “Ow. I’m still stiff from trying to keep up with you lot. You’re all too fast.”

Celeste studied him. He looked good: tanned and relaxed from the last five days, skiing and sledding. This was the problem. She was still hopelessly, helplessly attracted to him.

“What?” Perry glanced at her.

“Nothing.”

“Good holiday, eh?”

“It was a great holiday,” said Celeste with feeling. “Magical.”

“I think this is going to be a good year for us,” said Perry. He held
her eyes. “Don’t you? With the boys starting school, hopefully you’ll get a bit more time to yourself, and I’m . . .” He stopped, and ran his thumb across his armrest as if he were doing some sort of quality-control test. Then he looked up at her. “I’m going to do everything in my power to make this a good year for us.” He smiled self-consciously.

He did this sometimes. He said or did something that made her feel as besotted with him as she’d been that very first year after they’d met at that boring business lunch, where she’d first truly understood those four words:
swept off my feet
.

Celeste felt a sense of peace wash over her. A flight steward was coming down the aisle, offering chocolate chip cookies baked on board the plane. The aroma was delicious. Maybe it was going to be a really good year for them.

Perhaps she
could
stay. It was always such a glorious relief when she allowed herself to believe she could stay.

“Let’s go down to the beach when we get home,” said Perry. “We’ll build a big sand castle. Snowman one day. Sand castle the next. Gosh you kids have a good life.”

“Yep,” Josh yawned, and stretched out luxuriously in his business-class seat. “It’s pretty good.”

Melissa:
I remember I saw Celeste and Perry and the twins down on the beach during the school holidays. I said to my husband, “I think that’s one of the new kindergarten mums.” His eyes nearly popped out of his head. Celeste and Perry were all loving and laughing and helping their kids make this really elaborate sand castle. It was kind of sickening, to be honest. Like, even their
sand castles
were better than ours.

Detective-Sergeant Adrian Quinlan:
We’re looking at all angles, all possible motives.

Samantha:
So we’re, like, seriously using the word . . . “
murder
”?

Four Months Before the Trivia Night

I
want to have a playdate with Ziggy,” announced Chloe one warm summer night early in the new year.

“All right,” said Madeline. Her eyes were on her older daughter. Abigail had taken an age cutting up her steak into tiny precise squares, and now she was pushing the little squares back and forth, as if she were arranging them into some sort of complicated mosaic. She hadn’t put a single piece in her mouth.

Ed said quietly to Madeline, “Wasn’t Ziggy the one who . . . you know?” He put his hands to his throat and made his eyes bulge.

“What are you doing, Daddy?” Chloe giggled fondly. “Daft Daddy.”

“You should have a playdate with Skye.” Abigail put down her fork and spoke to Chloe. “She’s very excited about being in the same class as you.”

“That’s nice, isn’t it?” said Madeline in the strained, sugary tone she knew she used whenever her ex-husband’s daughter came up in conversation. “Isn’t that
nice
.”

Ed spluttered on his wine, and Madeline gave him a dark look.

“Skye is sort of like
my
sister, isn’t she, Mummy?” said Chloe now. Unlike her mother, she’d been thrilled to learn she was going to be in the same kindergarten class as Skye, and she’d asked this question about forty thousand times.

“No, Skye is
Abigail’s
half sister,” said Madeline with saint-like patience.

“But I’m Abigail’s sister too!” said Chloe. “So that means Skye and I must be sisters! We could be twins, like Josh and Max!”

“Speaking of which, have you seen Celeste since they got back from Canada?” asked Ed. “Those photos Perry put on Facebook were amazing.
We
should have a white Christmas one day. When we win the lottery.”

“Brrrr,” said Madeline. “They looked cold.”

“I’d be an
awesome
snowboarder,” said Fred dreamily.

Madeline shuddered. Fred was her little adrenaline junkie. If something could be climbed he climbed it. She could no longer bear to watch him skateboard. At just seven, he flipped and spun and hurled his skinny body through the air like a kid twice his age. Whenever she saw those cool, laid-back dudes interviewed on TV about their latest BASE-jumping/rock-climbing/how-can-we-do-our-best-to-kill-ourselves adventure, she thought,
There’s Fred
. He even looked the part with his scruffy, too-long surfer-boy hair.

“You need a haircut,” she said.

Fred wrinkled his freckled nose in disgust. “I don’t!”

“I’ll call Ziggy’s mum,” said Madeline to Chloe, “and arrange a playdate.”

She’d actually been meaning to call Jane since before Christmas, but work had gotten busy, and they’d been away up the coast in between Christmas and New Year’s. Poor Jane didn’t know anyone in the area, and she’d seemed so devastated that day after that awful incident at orientation.

“Madeline, are you sure that’s a good idea?” said Ed quietly. “He sounds like he might be a bit rough.”

“Well, we don’t know for sure,” said Madeline.

“But you said Amabella Klein pointed him out in a lineup.”

“Innocent people have been picked out of police lineups before,” said Madeline to Ed.

“If that kid lays a finger on Chloe—” began Ed.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said Madeline. “Chloe can look after herself!” She looked at Abigail’s plate. “Why aren’t you eating?”

“We like Renata and Geoff,” said Ed. “So if their daughter says this kid, this Ziggy, hurt her, then we should be supportive. What sort of a name is Ziggy, anyway?”

“We don’t like Renata and Geoff that much,” said Madeline. “Abigail,
eat
!”

“Don’t we?” said Ed. “I thought I liked Geoff.”

“You tolerate him,” said Madeline. “He’s the bird-watcher, Ed, not the golfer.”

“Is he?” Ed looked disappointed. “Are you sure?”

“You’re thinking of Gareth Hajek.”

“Am I?” Ed frowned.

“Yep,” said Madeline. “Chloe, stop waving your fork around. Fred nearly lost an eye just then. Are you sick, Abigail? Is that why you’re not eating?”

Abigail laid down her knife and fork. “I think I’m going vegan,” she said grandly.

Bonnie was a vegan.

“Over my dead body you are,” said Madeline.

Or over somebody’s dead body, anyway.

Thea:
You know that Madeline has a fourteen-year-old daughter, Abigail, from her previous marriage? I feel so sorry for children from broken homes, don’t you? I’m just so glad I can offer my children a stable environment. I’m sure Madeline and Bonnie were fighting about Abigail at the trivia night.

Harper:
I actually heard Madeline say, “I’m going to kill someone before the night is out.” I assumed it was something to do with Bonnie. Not that I’m pointing fingers, of course.

Bonnie:
Yes, Abigail is my stepdaughter, and it’s absolutely true that Abigail had a few, well, issues, just typical teenage girl issues, but Madeline and I were working together as a team to help her. Can you smell lemon myrtle? I’m trying this new incense for the first time. It’s good for stress. Take a deep breath. That’s it. You look like you need a little stress relief, if you don’t mind my saying.

I
t was one of those days. It had been a while. Not since well before Christmas. Celeste’s mouth was dry and hollow. Her head throbbed gently. She followed the boys and Perry through the school yard with her body held stiffly, carefully, as if she were a tall fragile glass in danger of spilling.

She was hyperaware of everything: the warm air against her bare arms, the straps of her sandals in between her toes, the edges of the leaves of the Moreton Bay Fig tree, each sharply delineated against the blue of the sky. It was similar to that intense way you felt when you were newly in love, or newly pregnant, or driving a car on your own for the very first time. Everything felt significant.

“Do you and Ed fight?” she’d asked Madeline once.

“Like cats and dogs,” Madeline had said cheerfully.

Celeste could somehow tell she was talking about something else entirely.

“Can we show Daddy the monkey bars first?” cried Max.

School started back in two weeks, but the uniform shop was
open for two hours this morning so parents could get what they needed for the new year. Perry had the day off, and after they picked up the boys’ uniforms they were going around the point to take the boys snorkeling.

“Sure,” said Celeste to Max. He ran off, and as she watched him go she realized it wasn’t Max. It was Josh. She was losing her grip. She thought she was concentrating too hard when she wasn’t concentrating enough.

Perry ran his fingertip down her arm and she shivered.

“You OK?” he asked. He lifted his sunglasses so she could see his eyes. The whites were very white. Her eyes were always bloodshot the morning after an argument, but Perry’s eyes were always clear and shining.

“Fine.” She smiled at him.

He smiled back and pulled her to him. “You look beautiful in that dress,” he said in her ear.

This was the way they always behaved with each other the day after: tender and tremulous, as if they’d been through something terrible together, like a natural disaster, as if they’d barely escaped with their lives.

“Daddy!” shrieked Josh. “Come and watch us!”

“Coming!” cried Perry. He banged his fists against his chest like a gorilla and ran after them with his back hunched and his arms swinging, making gorilla noises. The boys went crazy with delighted terror and ran off.

It was just a bad fight,
she told herself.
All couples fight.

The previous night the boys had stayed overnight at Perry’s mother’s place. “Have a romantic dinner without these little ruffians,” she’d said.

It had started over the computer.

She’d been double-checking the opening times for the uniform shop when the computer said something about a “catastrophic error.”
“Perry!” she’d called from the office, “there’s something wrong with the computer!” and a tiny part of her warned:
No, don’t tell him. What if he can’t fix it?

Stupid, stupid, stupid. She should have known better. But it was too late. He came into the office, smiling.

“Step aside, woman,” he’d said.

He was the one who was good with computers. He liked being able to solve problems for her, and if he could have fixed it then, everything would have been fine.

But he couldn’t fix it.

The minutes passed. She could see by the set of his shoulders that it wasn’t going well.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Leave it.”

“I can do it,” he said. He moved the mouse back and forth. “I know what the problem is; I just need to . . .
Damn
it
.
”

He swore again. Softly at first, and then louder. His voice became like a blow. She winced each time.

And as his fury rose, a kind of matching fury rose within her, because she could already see exactly how the night was going to proceed, and how it could have proceeded if she hadn’t made such a “catastrophic error.”

The seafood platter she’d prepared would sit there uneaten. The pavlova would slide straight from the tray into the bin. All that time and effort and money wasted. She hated waste. It made her feel sick.

So when she said, “Please, Perry, just
leave
it,” there was frustration in her voice. That was her fault. Maybe if she’d spoken nicely. Been more patient. Said nothing.

He swiveled the chair to face her. His eyes were already shiny with rage. Too late. He was gone. It was all over, red rover.

And yet
she didn’t retreat
. She refused to retreat. She kept fighting right to the end because of the injustice of it, the ridiculousness of it.
I asked him to help fix the computer. It should not be like this,
a part of her
continued to inwardly rage, even as the yelling began and her heart pounded and her muscles tensed in readiness.
It’s not fair. It’s not right.

It was even worse than usual because the boys weren’t at home. They didn’t have to keep their voices down, to hiss at each other behind closed doors. The house was too big for the neighbors to hear them shout. It was almost like they both relished the opportunity to fight without boundaries.

Celeste walked down toward the monkey bars. They were in a cool, shady bottom corner of the playground. The boys would love playing here when they started school.

Perry was doing chin-ups on the monkey bars while the boys counted. His shoulders moved gracefully. He had to hold his legs up high because the monkey bars were so low to the ground. He’d always been athletic.

Was there some sick, damaged part of Celeste that actually
liked
living like this and wanted this shameful, dirty marriage? That’s how she thought of it. As if she and Perry engaged in some sort of strange, disgusting and perverted sexual practice.

And sex was part of it.

There was always sex afterward. When it was all over. At about five a.m. Fierce, angry sex, with tears that slid onto each other’s faces and tender apologies and the words murmured over and over:
Never again, I swear on my life, never again, this has to stop, we have to stop this, we should get help, never again.

“Come on,” she said to the boys. “Let’s get to the uniform shop before it closes.”

Perry dropped easily to the ground and grabbed a twin under each arm. “Gotcha!”

Did she love him as much as she hated him? Did she hate him as much as she loved him?

“We should try another counselor,” she’d said to him early this morning.

“You’re right,” he’d said, as if it were an actual possibility. “When I get back. We’ll talk about it then.”

He was going away the next day. Vienna. It was a “summit” his firm was sponsoring. He would be delivering the keynote address on something terribly complex and global. There would be a lot of acronyms and incomprehensible jargon, and he’d stand there with a little pointer, making a red dot of light zip about on the PowerPoint presentation prepared by his executive assistant.

Perry was away often. He sometimes felt like an aberration in her life. A visitor. Her real life took place when he wasn’t there. What happened never mattered all that much because he was always about to leave, the next day or the next week.

Two years ago, they’d gone to a counselor. Celeste had been buoyant with hope, but as soon as she saw the cheap vinyl couch and the counselor’s eager, earnest face, she knew it was a mistake. She watched Perry weigh up his superior intelligence and social standing relative to the counselor and knew that this would be their first and last visit.

They never told her the truth. They talked about how Perry found it frustrating that Celeste didn’t get up early enough and was always running late. Celeste said that sometimes “Perry lost his temper.”

How could they admit to a stranger what went on in their marriage? The shame of it. The ugliness of their behavior. They were a fine-looking couple. People had been telling them that for years. They were admired and envied. They had all the privileges in the world. Overseas travel. A beautiful home. It was ungracious and ungrateful of them to behave the way they did.

“Just stop it,” that nice eager woman would have surely said, disgusted and disapproving.

Celeste didn’t want to tell her either. She wanted her to guess.
She wanted her to ask the right question.
But she never did.

After they left the counselor’s office, they were both so exhilarated to be out of there, their performance over, that they went to a hotel bar in the middle of the afternoon and had a drink, and flirted with each other, and they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Halfway through his drink, Perry suddenly stood, took her hand and led her to the reception desk. They literally “got a room.” Ha ha. So funny, so sexy. It was as though the counselor really had fixed everything. Because after all, how many married couples did
that
? Afterward she felt seedy and sexy and disheveled and filled with despair.

“So where’s the uniform shop?” said Perry as they walked back up into the school’s main quadrangle.

“I don’t know,” said Celeste.
How should I know? Why should I know?

“The uniform shop, did you say? It’s over here.”

Celeste turned around. It was that intense little woman with the glasses from the orientation day. The one whose daughter said Ziggy tried to choke her. The curly-haired little girl was with her.

“I’m Renata,” said the woman. “I met you at the orientation day last year. You’re friends with Madeline Mackenzie, aren’t you? Amabella, stop that. What are you doing?” The little girl was holding on to her mother’s white shirt and shyly twisting her body behind her mother’s. “Come and say hello. These are some of the boys who will be in your class. They’re
identical twins
. Isn’t that so interesting?” She looked at Perry, who had deposited the boys at his feet. “How in the world do you ever tell them apart?”

Perry held out his hand. “Perry,” he said. “We can’t tell them apart either. No idea which is which.”

Renata pumped Perry’s hand enthusiastically. Women always took to Perry. It was that Tom Cruise, white-toothed smile and the way he gave them his full attention.

“Very pleased to meet you. Here to get the boys their uniforms, are you? Exciting! Amabella was going to come with her nanny, but then my board meeting finished early so I decided to come myself.”

Perry nodded along, as if this were all very fascinating.

Renata lowered her voice. “Amabella has become a little anxious ever since the incident at the school. Did your wife tell you? A little boy tried to choke her on the orientation day. She had bruises on her neck. A little boy called
Ziggy
. We seriously considered reporting it to the police.”

“That’s terrible,” said Perry. “Jesus. Your poor little girl.”

“Da-ad,” said Max, pulling on his father’s hand. “Hurry up!”

“Actually, I’m sorry,” said Renata, looking brightly at Celeste. “I might have put my foot in it! Didn’t you and Madeline have some sort of little birthday party with that boy’s mother? Jane? Was that her name? A very young girl. I mistook her for an au pair. You might all be best friends, for all I know! I hear you were all drinking champagne! In the morning!”

“Ziggy?” frowned Perry. “We don’t know anyone with a kid called Ziggy, do we?”

Celeste cleared her throat. “I met Jane for the first time that day,” she said to Renata. “She gave Madeline a lift after she hurt her ankle. She was . . . well, she seemed very nice.”

She didn’t particularly want to be aligned with the mother of a bully, but on the other hand she’d liked Jane, and the poor girl had looked quite sick when Renata’s daughter pointed out Ziggy.

“She’s deluded, that’s what she is,” said Renata. “She absolutely refused to accept that her precious child did what he did. I’ve told Amabella to stay well away from this Ziggy. If I were you I’d tell your boys to steer clear too.”

“Probably a good idea,” said Perry. “We don’t want them getting in with a bad crowd from day one.” His tone was light and humorous, as if he weren’t really taking any of it seriously, although, knowing Perry, the lightness was probably a cover. He had a particular paranoia about bullying because of his own experiences as a child. He was like a secret service guy when it came to his boys, his eyes darting
about suspiciously, monitoring the park or the playground for rough kids or savage dogs or pedophiles posing as grandfathers.

Celeste opened her mouth. “Um,” she said.
They’re five. Is this a bit over the top?

But then again, there was something about Ziggy. She’d only seen him briefly at the school, and she couldn’t put her finger on exactly what it was about his face, but there was something about him that made her feel off-balance, something that filled her with mistrust. (But he was a beautiful little five-year-old boy, just like her boys! How could she feel like that about a five-year-old?)

“Mum! Come on!” Josh yanked on Celeste’s arm.

She clutched at her tender right shoulder. “Ow!” For a moment the pain was so sharp, she fought nausea.

“Are you all right?” said Renata.

“Celeste?” said Perry. She could see the shameful recognition in his eyes. He knew exactly why it had hurt so much. There would be an exquisite piece of jewelry in his bag when he returned from Vienna. Another piece for her collection. She would never wear it, and he would never ask why.

For a moment Celeste couldn’t speak. Big blocky words filled her mouth. She imagined letting them spill out.

My husband hits me, Renata. Never on the face of course. He’s far too classy for that. Does yours hit you?

And if he does, and this is the question that really interests me: Do you hit back?

“I’m fine,” she said.