Big Little Lies

Ed jumped. “Jesus Christ, Nathan, you scared the life out of me.”

“Sorry, mate,” said Nathan. “How are you, Maddie?”

“I’m fine,” said Madeline. There was something unsettling about having your husband and your ex-husband standing next to each other, looking down at you while you lay in bed. It was weird. She wished they would both leave.

“There you go! Poor girl!” Nathan dumped the flowers on her lap. “I hear you’re going to be on crutches for quite a while.”

“Yes, well—”

“Abigail has already said she’s moving back home to help you.”

“Oh,” said Madeline. “Oh.” She fingered the pink petals of the flowers. “Well, I’ll talk to her about it. I’ll be perfectly fine. She doesn’t need to look after me.”

“No, but I think she wants to move back home,” said Nathan. “She’s looking for an excuse.”

Madeline and Ed looked at each other. Ed shrugged.

“I always thought the novelty would wear off,” said Nathan. “She missed her mum. We’re not her real life.”

“Right.”

“So. I should get going,” said Ed.

“Could you stay for a moment, mate?” said Nathan. The big positive-thinking smile had gone, and now he looked like the man in the wrong at a car accident. “I wouldn’t mind talking to the two of you for a bit—about, um, about what happened last night.”

Ed grimaced, but he pulled over a nearby chair and placed it next to his, gesturing for Nathan to sit.

“Oh, thanks, thanks, mate.” Nathan looked pathetically grateful as he sat down.

There was a long pause.

Ed cleared his throat.

“Bonnie’s father was violent,” said Nathan without preamble. “Very violent. I don’t think I even know half the stuff he did. Not to Bonnie. To her mum. But Bonnie and her little sister saw it all. They had a very tough childhood.”

“I’m not sure I should—” began Ed.

“I never met her dad,” continued Nathan. “He died of a heart attack before I met Bonnie. Anyway, Bonnie is . . . well, one psychiatrist diagnosed post-traumatic stress. She’s fine most of the time, but she has very bad nightmares and just, um, some difficulties sometimes.”

He looked blankly past Madeline to the wall behind her head. His eyes were blank as he considered all the secrets of what Madeline now realized was his complicated marriage.

“You don’t have to tell us any of this,” said Madeline.

“She’s a good person, Maddie,” said Nathan desperately. He wasn’t looking at Ed. His eyes were fixed on Madeline. He was calling on their history. He was calling on past memories and past love. Even though he’d walked out on her, he was asking her to forget all that and remember the days when they were obsessed with each other, when they woke up smiling goofily at each other. It was crazy, but she knew that’s what he was asking. He was asking twenty-year-old Madeline for a favor.

“She’s a wonderful mother,” said Nathan. “The best mother. And I can promise you, she never ever meant for Perry to fall. I think it was just that when she saw him hit Celeste like that . . .”

“Something snapped,” said Madeline. She saw Perry’s hand swinging back in its graceful, practiced arc. She heard Bonnie’s guttural voice. It occurred to her that there were so many levels of evil in the world. Small evils like her own malicious words. Like not inviting a child to a party. Bigger evils like walking out on your wife and newborn baby or sleeping with your child’s nanny. And then there was the sort of evil of which Madeline had no experience: cruelty in hotel rooms and violence in suburban homes and little girls being sold like merchandise, shattering innocent hearts.

“I know you don’t owe me anything,” said Nathan, “because obviously what I did to you when Abigail was a baby was completely unforgivable and—”

“Nathan,” interrupted Madeline. It was crazy and it made no sense because she did not forgive him, and she chose to never forgive him, and he would drive her to distraction for the rest of her life, and one day he’d walk Abigail down the aisle and Madeline would be grinding her teeth the whole way, but he was still family, he still belonged on her piece of cardboard showing her family tree.

How could she possibly explain to Ed that she didn’t particularly like Bonnie, or understand her, but that it turned out she was prepared to lie for her in the same way that she would automatically lie for Ed, her children, her mother? It turned out, as strange and improbable as it seemed, that Bonnie was family too.

“We’re not going to say anything to the police,” said Madeline. “We didn’t see what happened. We didn’t see a thing.”

Ed stood with a sudden backward scrape of his chair and left the room without looking back.

Detective-Sergeant Adrian Quinlan: Someone is not telling the truth about what happened on that balcony.

79.

The policeman looked like a nice young soccer dad, but there was something cool and knowing about his tired green eyes. He was sitting next to Jane’s hospital bed with a pen poised over his yellow notepad.

“Let me get this straight: You were standing on the balcony but you were looking back inside?”

“Yes,” said Jane. “Because of all the noise. People were throwing things.”

“And then you heard Celeste White scream?”

“I think so,” said Jane. “It’s all so confusing. Everything is muddled. Those champagne cocktails.”

“Yes,” sighed the policeman. “Those champagne cocktails. I’ve heard a lot about them.”

“Everyone was very drunk,” said Jane.

“Where were you standing in relation to Perry White?”

“Um, I think sort of off to one side.” The last nurse had said that someone would be taking her for an X-ray soon. Her parents were on their way with Ziggy. She looked at the door of her room and wished for someone, anyone, to come and save her from this conversation.

“And what was your relationship with Perry? Were you friends?”

Jane thought of the moment when he took off his wig and became Saxon Banks. She never got to tell him that he had a son called Ziggy who liked pumpkin. She never got an apology. Was that what she’d come to Pirriwee for? Because she wanted his remorse? She actually thought she’d get his remorse?