“So was I damaged too?” asked Madeline. “Is that what attracted you?”
“Nope,” said Ed. He picked up his book again. “You weren’t damaged.”
“Yes I was!” protested Madeline. She wanted to be interesting and damaged too. “I was heartbroken when you met me.”
“There’s a difference between heartbroken and damaged,” said Ed. “You were sad and hurt. Maybe your heart was broken, but you weren’t broken. Now, be quiet, because I think I’m falling for a red herring here, and I’m not falling for it, Ms. Cornwell, no I’m not.”
“Mmmm,” said Madeline. “Well, Jane might be damaged, but I don’t see what Celeste has got to be damaged about. She’s beautiful and rich and happily married and she doesn’t have an ex-husband stealing her daughter away from her.”
“He’s not trying to steal her away,” said Ed, his eyes back on his book. “This is just Abigail being a teenager. Teenagers are crazy. You know that.”
Madeline picked up her own book.
She thought of Jane and Ziggy walking off hand in hand down the driveway as they left that afternoon. Ziggy was telling Jane something, one little hand gesticulating wildly, and Jane had her head tipped to one side, listening, her other hand holding out the car keys to open her car. Madeline heard her say, “I know! Let’s go to that place where we got those yummy tacos!”
Watching them brought back a flood of memories from the years when she was a single mother. For five years it had been just her and Abigail. They’d lived in a little two-bedroom flat above an Italian restaurant. They ate a lot of takeout pasta and free garlic bread. (Madeline had put on seven kilos.) They were the Mackenzie girls in unit nine. She’d changed Abigail’s name back to her maiden name (and she refused to change it again when she married Ed. A woman could only change her surname so many times before it got ridiculous). She couldn’t stand having Abigail walk around with her father’s surname when Nathan chose to spend his Christmas lying on a beach in Bali with a trashy little hairdresser. A hairdresser who, by the way, didn’t even have good hair: black roots and split ends.
“I always thought that Nathan’s punishment for walking out on us would be that Abigail wouldn’t love him the way she loved me,” she said to Ed. “I used to say it to myself all the time. ‘Abigail won’t want Nathan walking her down the aisle. He’ll pay the price,’ I thought. But you know what? He’s not paying for his sins. Now he’s got Bonnie, who is nicer and younger and prettier than me, he’s got a brand-new daughter who can write out the whole alphabet, and now he’s getting Abigail too! He got away with it all. He hasn’t got a single regret.”
She was surprised to hear her voice crack. She thought she was just angry, but now she knew she was hurt. Abigail had infuriated her before. She’d frustrated and annoyed her. But this was the first time she’d hurt her.
“She’s meant to love me best,” she said childishly, and she tried to laugh, because it was a joke, except that she was deadly serious. “I thought she loved me best.”
Ed put his book back down and put his arm around her. “Do you want me to kill the bastard? Bump him off? I could frame Bonnie for it.”
“Yes please,” said Madeline into his shoulder. “That would be lovely.”
Detective-Sergeant Adrian Quinlan: We haven’t made any arrests at this stage. I can say that we do believe we have probably already spoken to the person or persons involved.
Stu: I don’t think anyone, including the police, have got the faintest idea about who did what.
17.
Gabrielle: I thought there might have been a certain, I don’t know, etiquette about handing out party invitations. I thought what happened on that first day of kindergarten was kind of inappropriate.
Smile, Ziggy, smile!”
Ziggy finally smiled at the exact same moment that Jane’s father yawned. Jane clicked the shutter and then checked the photo on the screen of her digital camera. Ziggy and her mum were both smiling beautifully, while her dad was captured mid-yawn: mouth agape, eyes scrunched. He was tired because he’d had to get up so early to make it all the way to the peninsula from Granville to see his grandson on his first day of school. Jane’s parents had always gone to bed late and gotten up late, and these days anything that required them leaving the house before nine a.m. was a tremendous effort. Her father had taken early retirement from his job in the public service last year, and since then, he and Jane’s mother had been staying up late doing their puzzles until three or four in the morning. “Our parents are turning into vampires,” Jane’s brother had said to her. “Jigsaw-playing vampires.”
“Would you like my husband to take a photo of all of you together?” said a woman standing nearby. “I’d offer to take it myself, but technology and I are not friends.”
Jane looked up. The woman wore a full-length paisley skirt with a black singlet. Her wrists seemed to be adorned with twine, and she wore her hair in one long single plait. There was a tattoo of a Chinese symbol on her shoulder. She looked a bit out of place next to all the other parents in their casual beachwear, gym gear or business clothes. Her husband seemed a good deal older than her and was wearing a T-shirt and shorts: standard middle-aged-dad gear. He was holding the hand of a tiny, mouse-like little girl with long scraggly hair, whose uniform looked like it was three sizes too big for her.
I bet you’re Bonnie, thought Jane suddenly, remembering how Madeline had described her ex-husband’s wife, at the same time as the woman said, “I’m Bonnie, and this is my husband, Nathan, and my little girl, Skye.”
“Thanks so much,” said Jane, handing over the camera to Madeline’s ex-husband. She went to stand with her parents and Ziggy.
“Say cheese and biscuits!” Nathan held up the camera.
“Huh?” said Ziggy.
“Coffee,” yawned Jane’s mother.
Nathan took the photo. “There you go!”
He handed back the camera, just as another little curly-haired girl marched straight up to his daughter. Jane felt sick. She recognized her immediately. It was the girl who had accused Ziggy of trying to choke her. Amabella. Jane looked around. Where was the angry mother?
“What is your name?” said Amabella importantly to Skye. She was carrying a large pile of pale pink envelopes.