Big Little Lies

“It’s all fine and dandy for you to sleep with random women, but when a woman does, it’s silly. That’s a double standard!”

“Madeline,” said Ed. “I was not blaming her.”

He was still speaking in his I’m-the-grown-up-you’re-the-crazy-one voice, but she could see a spark of anger in his eyes.

“You are! I can’t believe you would say that!” The words bubbled out of her. “You’re like those people who say, ‘Oh, what did she expect? She was drinking at one o’clock in the morning, so of course she deserved to be raped by the whole football team!’”

“I am not!”

“You are so!”

Something changed in Ed’s face. His face flushed. His voice rose.

“Let me tell you this, Madeline,” he said. “If my daughter goes off one day with some wanker she’s only just met in a hotel bar, I reserve the right to call her silly!”

It was stupid for them to be fighting about this. A rational part of her mind knew this. She knew that Ed didn’t really blame Jane. She knew her husband was actually a better, nicer person than she was, and yet she couldn’t forgive him for that “silly girl” comment. It somehow represented a terrible wrong. As a woman, Madeline was obliged to be angry with Ed on Jane’s behalf, and for every other “silly girl,” and for herself, because after all, it could have happened to her too, and even a soft little word like “silly” felt like a slap.

“I can’t be in the same room as you right now.” She hopped out of bed, taking the iPad with her.

“Be ridiculous, then,” said Ed. He put his glasses back on. He was upset, but Madeline knew that he would read his book for twenty minutes, turn off the light and fall instantly asleep.

Madeline closed the door firmly (she would have preferred to slam it, but she didn’t want the kids waking up) and marched down the stairs in the dark.

“Don’t hurt your ankle on the stairs!” called out Ed from behind the door. He was already over it, thought Madeline.

She made herself a cup of chamomile tea and settled down on the couch. She hated chamomile tea, but it was supposedly soothing and calming and whatever, so she was always trying to make herself drink it. Bonnie only drank herbal tea, of course. According to Abigail, Nathan avoided caffeine now too. This was the problem with children and marriage breakups. You got all this information about your ex-husband that you would otherwise never know. She knew, for example, that Nathan called Bonnie his “bonnie Bon.” Abigail had mentioned this in the kitchen one day. Ed, who had been standing behind her, silently stuck his finger down his throat, making Madeline laugh, but still, she could have done without hearing that. (Nathan had always been into alliteration; he used to call her his “mad Maddie”—not quite as romantic.) Why had Abigail felt the need to share those sorts of things? Ed thought it was deliberate, that she was trying to bait Madeline, to purposely hurt her, but Madeline didn’t believe that Abigail was that malicious.

Ed always saw the worst in Abigail these days.

That’s what was behind her sudden fury with him in the bedroom. It wasn’t really anything to do with the “silly girl” comment. It was because she was still angry with Ed over Abigail moving in with Nathan and Bonnie, because the more time that passed, the more likely it seemed that it was Ed’s fault. Maybe Abigail had been teetering on the edge of her decision, playing around with the idea but not really seriously considering it, and Ed’s “calm down” comment had been just the shove she’d needed. Otherwise she’d still be here. It might have just been a passing phase. Teenagers did that. Their moods came and went.

Lately, Madeline’s mind had been so filled with memories of the days when it was just her and Abigail that she sometimes had the strangest feeling that Ed, Fred and Chloe were interlopers. Who were these people? It was like they’d marched into Madeline and Abigail’s life with all their noise and their stuff, their noisy computer games and their fighting, and they’d driven poor Abigail away.

She laughed at the thought of how outraged Fred and Chloe would be if they knew she dared question their existence, especially Chloe. “But where was I?” she always demanded when she looked at old photos of Madeline and Abigail. “Where was Daddy? Where was Fred?” “You were in my dreams,” Madeline would say, and it was true. But they weren’t in Abigail’s dreams.

She sipped her tea and felt the anger slowly drain from her body. Nothing to do with the stupid tea.

Really it was that man’s fault.

Mr. Banks. Saxon Banks.

An unusual name.

She rested her fingertips on the cool, smooth surface of the iPad.

“Don’t Google him,” Jane had begged, and Madeline had promised, so this was very wrong, but the desire to see the bastard was so irresistible. It was like when she read a story about a crime, she always wanted to see the offender, to study his or her face for signs of evil. (She could always find them.) And it was so easy, just a few keystrokes in that little rectangle, it was like her fingers were doing it without her permission and, while she was still deciding whether or not to break her promise, the search results were already on the screen in front of her, as if Google were an extension of her mind and she only had to think of it for it to happen.

She would just take a very, very quick look, she’d just skim it with her eyes, and then she’d close the page and delete all references to Saxon Banks from her search history. Jane would never know. It wasn’t like Madeline could do anything about him. She wasn’t going to plan some elaborate, satisfying revenge (although, already part of her mind had split off and was traveling down that path: Some sort of scam? To steal his money? To publicly humiliate or discredit him? There must be a way.)

She double-clicked, and one of those well-lit corporate head shots filled her screen. A property developer called Saxon Banks based in Melbourne. Was that him? A strong-jawed, classically handsome man with a pleased-with-himself smirk and eyes that seemed to look straight into Madeline’s in a combative, bordering on aggressive way.

“You prick,” said Madeline out loud. “You think you can do whatever you want to whomever you choose, don’t you?”

What would she have done in Jane’s situation? She couldn’t imagine herself reacting the way Jane had. Madeline would have slapped him. She wouldn’t have been undone by the words “fat” and “ugly,” because her self-confidence about her looks was too high, even when she was nineteen—or especially when she was nineteen. She got to decide how she looked.