Madeline was scheduled for surgery this afternoon. She would be in a cast for four to six weeks, and after that there would be physiotherapy. It would be a long time before she’d be in stilettos again.
She wasn’t the only one who had ended up in the hospital. As Madeline understood it, the final tally this morning of injuries from the trivia night were one broken ankle (Madeline’s contribution), one broken collarbone (poor Jane), a broken nose (Renata’s husband, Geoff—less than he deserved), three cracked ribs (Harper’s husband, Graeme, who had also been sleeping with the French nanny), three black eyes, two nasty cuts requiring stitches and ninety-four splitting headaches.
And one death.
Madeline’s head swirled with a violent merry-go-round of images from the previous night. Jane, with her bright red lipstick, standing in front of Perry and saying, “You said your name was Saxon Banks.” At first Madeline had thought Jane had the two men mixed up, that Perry must resemble his cousin, until Perry said, “It didn’t mean anything.” The look on Celeste’s face after Perry hit her. No surprise at all. Just embarrassment.
What sort of an obtuse, self-absorbed friend had Madeline been to have missed something like that? Just because Celeste didn’t walk around nursing black eyes and split lips didn’t mean there hadn’t been clues, if she’d just bothered to notice them. Had Celeste ever tried to confide in her? Madeline had probably been rattling on about eye cream or something equally superficial and hadn’t given her the opportunity. She’d probably interrupted her! Ed was always calling her out on that. “Let me finish,” he’d say, holding up a hand. Just three little words. Perry hits me. And Madeline had never given her friend the three seconds it took to say them. Meanwhile Celeste had listened while Madeline had talked endlessly about everything from how much she hated the under-seven soccer coordinator to her feelings about Abigail’s relationship with her father.
“She brought around a vegetarian lasagna for us today,” said Ed.
“Who?” said Madeline. Regret was making her nauseous.
“Bonnie! For God’s sake, Bonnie. The woman we’re apparently protecting. She was just bizarrely normal, as if nothing happened. She’s completely nuts. She’s already been talking this morning to a ‘very nice journalist called Sarah.’ God knows what she’s been saying.”
“It was an accident,” said Madeline.
She remembered Bonnie’s face disfigured with rage as she screamed at Perry. That strange guttural voice. We see! We f**king see!
“I know it was an accident,” said Ed. “So why don’t we just say the truth? Tell the police exactly what happened? I don’t get it. You don’t even like her.”
“That’s not relevant,” said Madeline.
“It was Renata who started it,” said Ed. “And then everyone else jumped on board. ‘I didn’t see. I didn’t see.’ We didn’t even know if the man was dead or alive and we were already planning the cover-up! I mean, Jesus, does Renata even know Bonnie?”
Madeline thought she understood why Renata ha’d said what she’d said. It was because Perry had cheated on Celeste, like Geoff cheated on Renata. Madeline had seen the expression on Renata’s face when Perry said, “It didn’t mean anything.” At that moment Renata had wanted to shove Perry off the balcony herself. Bonnie just got there first.
If Renata hadn’t said, “I didn’t see him fall,” then perhaps Madeline’s mind wouldn’t have moved fast enough to even consider the consequences for Bonnie, but as soon as Renata said what she did, Madeline had thought of Bonnie’s daughter. That fluttery thing Skye did with her eyelashes, the way she always hid behind her mother’s skirt. If ever there was a child who needed her mother, it was Skye.
And maybe it was more than that.
Maybe it was actually an unspoken instant agreement between the four women on the balcony: No woman should pay for the accidental death of that particular man. Maybe it was an involuntary, atavistic response to thousands of years of violence against women. Maybe it was for every rape, every brutal backhanded slap, every other Perry that had come before this one.
“Bonnie has a little girl,” said Madeline.
“Perry had two little boys—so what?” said Ed. He looked off to a space above Madeline’s bed. His face was haggard in the harsh single light. She could see the old man he’d one day be. “I just don’t know if I can live with this, Madeline.”
He was the first one to get to Perry. He was the one who saw the broken, twisted body of a man who had just moments before been talking and laughing with him about golf handicaps. It was too much to ask of him. She knew this.
“Perry was not a good person,” said Madeline. “He’s the one who did those things to Jane. Did you get that? He’s Ziggy’s father.”
“That’s not relevant,” said Ed.
“It’s up to you,” said Madeline. Ed was right. Of course he was right, he was always right, but sometimes doing the wrong thing was also right.
“Do you think she meant to kill him?” she asked.
“I don’t,” said Ed. “But so what? I’m not judge and jury. It’s not my job to—”
“Do you think she’ll do it again? Do you think she’s a danger to society?”
“No, but again, so what?” He gave her a look of genuine anguish. “I just don’t think I can knowingly lie in a police investigation.”
“Haven’t you already?” She knew he’d spoken to the police briefly last night before he came to the hospital, as she’d been taken off in one of the three ambulances that had pulled up in the kiss-and-drop zone out in front of the school.
“Not officially,” said Ed. “Some officer wrote down a few notes and I said . . . God, I don’t really know what I said, I was drunk. I didn’t mention Bonnie, I know that, but at one o’clock this afternoon I’ve agreed to go down to the police station and give an official witness statement. They’ll tape it, Madeline. They’ll have two officers sitting in a room, looking at me while I knowingly lie. I’ll have to sign an affidavit. That makes me an accessory—”
“Hey there.” It was Nathan, charging into the room holding a big bunch of flowers and smiling a big wide celebrity smile, as if he were a motivational speaker walking onto a stage.