She told herself she’d taken Ziggy to Pirriwee for the day and seen a flat for lease and “on a whim” she decided to move here. She pretended it so fiercely she almost believed it, and as the months went by and it seemed less and less likely that Saxon Banks lived here at all, it had become the truth. She stopped looking for him.
When she told Madeline the story about the night at the hotel with Saxon, it hadn’t even occurred to her to tell her that he was part of the reason she’d moved to Pirriwee. It was preposterous and embarrassing. “You wanted to run into him?” Madeline would have said, trying her best to understand. “You wanted to see that man?” How could Jane explain that she did and she didn’t want to see him? Anyway, she’d forgotten all about that real estate brochure! She had moved to Pirriwee on a whim.
And Saxon clearly wasn’t here.
But now here he was. Celeste’s husband. He must have been married to Celeste at the time he met Jane.
“We had a really hard time getting pregnant with the boys,” Celeste had told Jane once on one of their walks. That was why he’d looked sad when she had mentioned children.
Jane felt her face flush warm with humiliation in the cool night air.
• • •
It meant nothing,” Perry said again to Celeste.
“It meant something to her,” said Celeste.
It was his shrug that did it. The almost imperceptible shrug that said Who cares about her? He thought this was about infidelity. He thought he’d been caught out in a garden-variety business-executive-goes-on-an-interstate-trip one-night stand. He thought it was nothing to do with Jane.
“I thought you were . . .”
She couldn’t speak.
She thought he was kind. She thought he was a good person with a bad temper. She thought that his violence was something private and personal between them. She thought he wasn’t capable of casual cruelty. He always spoke so nicely to waitresses, even the incompetent ones. She thought she knew him.
“Let’s talk about this at home,” said Perry. “Let’s not make a spectacle of ourselves.”
“You’re not looking at her,” whispered Celeste. “You’re not even looking at her.”
She threw the contents of her half-full glass of champagne cocktail straight in his face.
The champagne splashed across his face.
Perry’s right hand rose instantly, instinctively, gracefully. It was as though he were an athlete catching a ball, except he didn’t catch anything.
He hit Celeste with the back of his hand.
His hand curved in a perfect, practiced, brutal arc that flung back her head and sent her body flying across the balcony where she fell, clumsily and hard on her side.
• • •
The air rushed from Madeline’s lungs.
Ed sprang to his feet so fast, his bar stool tipped over. “Whoa! Whoa there!”
Madeline rushed to Celeste’s side and dropped to her knees. “My God, my God, are you—”
“I’m fine,” said Celeste. She pressed her hand to her face and half sat up. “I’m perfectly fine.”
Madeline looked back at the little circle of people on the balcony. Ed stood with his arms held wide, one hand up like a stop sign directed at Perry, the other held protectively in front of Celeste.
Jane’s glass had slipped from her fingers and shattered at her feet.
Renata rummaged through her handbag. “I’m calling the police,” she said. “I’m calling the police right now. That’s assault. I just witnessed you assaulting your wife.”
Nathan had his hand on Bonnie’s elbow. As Madeline watched, she shook his hand free. She was blazing with passion as though lit from within.
“You’ve done that before,” she said to Perry.
Perry ignored Bonnie. His eyes were on Renata, who had her phone to her ear. “OK, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he said.
“That’s why your son has been hurting little girls,” said Bonnie. It was that same rough-edged voice Madeline had heard her use earlier in the night, except it was even more pronounced now. She sounded so . . . well, she sounded like she came from the “wrong side of town,” as Madeline’s mother would say.
She sounded like a drinker. A smoker. A fighter. She sounded real. It was strangely exhilarating to hear that guttural, angry voice coming out of Bonnie’s mouth. “Because he’s seen what you do. Your little boy has seen you do that, hasn’t he?”
Perry exhaled. “Look, I don’t know what you’re implying. My children haven’t ‘seen’ anything.”
“Your children see!” screamed Bonnie. Her face was ugly with rage. “We see! We f**king see!”
She shoved him, both her small hands flat on his chest.
He fell.
77.
If Perry had been just a few inches shorter.
If the balcony railing had been just a few inches higher.
If the bar stool had been at a slightly different angle.
If it hadn’t been raining.
If he hadn’t been drinking.
Afterward Madeline could not stop thinking of all the ways it could have happened differently.
But it happened the way that it happened.
Celeste saw the expression on Perry’s face when Bonnie screamed at him. It was the same mildly amused face as when Celeste lost her temper with him. He liked it when women got angry with him. He liked getting a reaction. He thought it was cute.
She saw his hand grab for the railing and slip.
She saw him flip back, his legs high, like he was romping on the bed with the boys.
And then he was gone without making a sound.
An empty space where he’d been.
It all happened too fast. Jane’s mind was dull with shock. As she groped for comprehension she became aware that there was a commotion going on inside the hall: yells, bangs, thuds.
“Jesus Christ Almighty!” said Ed. He leaned over the balcony railing, both hands gripping the edge as he peered over, his gold Elvis cape stretched out behind him like foolish little wings.
Bonnie had sunk down on to her haunches, her body curved into a ball, her hands clasped tightly over the back of her head as though she were waiting for a bomb to explode.
“No, no, no, no.” Nathan took little agitated steps, dancing around his wife, bending to touch her back and then straightening up and pressing his hands to his temples.