Big Little Lies

Perhaps this man specifically picked out girls who he knew would be vulnerable to his insults.

Or was this line of thought just another form of victim-blaming? This wouldn’t have happened to me. I would have fought. I wouldn’t have stood for it. He wouldn’t have shattered my self-respect. Jane had been completely vulnerable at the time, naked, in his bed, silly girl.

Madeline caught herself. “Silly girl.” She’d just thought exactly the same thing as Ed. She’d apologize in the morning. Well, she wouldn’t apologize out loud, but she might make him a soft-boiled egg, and he’d get the message.

She studied the photo again. She couldn’t see a resemblance to Ziggy. Or, actually, maybe she could? Perhaps a little around the eyes. She read the little biography next to his photo. Bachelor of this, masters of that, member of the Institute of whatever, blah, blah, blah. In his spare time Saxon enjoys sailing, rock climbing and spending time with his wife and three young daughters.

Madeline winced. Ziggy had three half sisters.

Madeline knew this now. She knew something she shouldn’t know, and she couldn’t un-know it. She knew something about Jane’s own son that Jane herself didn’t know. She hadn’t just broken a promise, she’d violated Jane’s privacy. She was a tacky little voyeur poking about the Internet, digging up photos of Ziggy’s father. She’d been angered by what had happened to Jane, but part of her had almost relished the story, hadn’t she? Hadn’t she almost enjoyed feeling outraged over Jane’s sad, sordid little sex story? Her sympathy came from the superior, comfy position of someone with a life in proper middle-class order: a husband, a home, a mortgage. Madeline was just like some of her mother’s friends, who had been so excitedly sympathetic when Nathan left her and Abigail. They were sad and outraged for her, but in such a tut-tut-that’s-oh-so-terrible way that left Madeline feeling brittle and defensive, even as she genuinely appreciated the home-cooked casseroles that were solemnly placed on her kitchen table.

Madeline stared into Saxon’s face, and he seemed to stare back at her with knowing eyes, as if he knew every despicable thing there was to know about her. A wave of revulsion rushed over her, leaving her feeling clammy and shaky.

A scream sliced like a sword through the house’s sleepy silence: “Mummy! Mummy, Mummy, Mummy!”

Madeline leapt to her feet, her heart hammering, even though she already knew it was just Chloe having another one of her nightmares.

“Coming! I’m coming!” she called as she ran down the hallway. She could fix this. She could so easily fix this, and it was such a relief, because Abigail didn’t want or need her anymore, and there were evil people like Saxon Banks out there in the world waiting to hurt Madeline’s children, in big ways and small ways, and there wasn’t a damned thing she could do about it, but at least she could drag that monster out from under Chloe’s bed and kill it with her bare hands.

35.

Miss Barnes: After that little drama on orientation day, I was steeling myself for a tough year, but it seemed to get off to a good start. They were a great bunch of kids, and the parents weren’t being too annoying. Then about halfway through the first term it all fell apart.

Two Weeks Before the Trivia Night

Latte and a muffin.”

Jane looked up from her laptop, and then down again at the plate in front of her. There was an artful scribble of whipped cream on the plate next to the muffin. “Oh, thanks, Tom, but I didn’t order—”

“I know. The muffin is on the house,” said Tom. “I hear from Madeline that you’re a baker. So I wanted to get your expert opinion on this new recipe I’m trying. Peach, macadamia nut and lime. Crazy stuff. The lime, I mean.”

“I only bake muffins,” said Jane. “I never eat them.”

“Seriously?” Tom’s face fell a little.

Jane said hurriedly, “But I’ll make an exception today.”

The weather had turned cold this week, a little practice session for winter, and Jane’s apartment was chilly. That gray sliver of ocean she could see from her apartment window just made her feel colder still. It was like a memory of summers lost forever, as if she lived in a gray, brooding, postapocalyptic world. “God, Jane, that’s a bit dramatic. Why don’t you take your laptop and set yourself up at a table at Blue Blues?” Madeline had suggested. So Jane had started turning up each day with her laptop and files.

The café was filled with sun and light, and Tom had a wood-fire stove running. Jane gave a little exhalation of pleasure each time she stepped in the door. It was like she’d gotten on a plane and flown into an entirely different season compared with her miserable, damp apartment. She made sure that she was only there in between the morning rush and the afternoon rush so she didn’t take up a paying table, and of course she ordered coffees and a small lunch throughout the day.

Tom the barista had begun to seem like a colleague, someone who shared the cubicle next to hers. He was good for a chat. They liked the same TV shows, some of the same music. (Music! She’d forgotten the existence of music, like she’d forgotten books.)

Tom grinned. “I’m turning into my grandma, aren’t I? Force-feeding everyone. Just try one mouthful. Don’t eat it all to be polite.” Jane watched him go, and then averted her eyes when she realized she was enjoying looking at the breadth of his shoulders in his standard black T-shirt. She knew from Madeline that Tom was g*y, and in the process of recovering from a badly broken heart. It was a cliché, but it also seemed to be so often true: Gay men had really good bodies.

Something had been happening over the last few weeks, ever since she’d read that sex scene in the bathroom. It was like her body, her rusty, abandoned body, was starting up again of its own accord, creaking back to life. She kept catching herself idly, accidentally looking at men, and at women too, but mainly men, not so much in a sexual way, but in a sensual, appreciative, aesthetic way.

It wasn’t beautiful people like Celeste who were drawing Jane’s eyes, but ordinary people and the beautiful ordinariness of their bodies. A tanned forearm with a tattoo of the sun reaching out across the counter at the service station. The back of an older man’s neck in a queue at the supermarket. Calf muscles and collarbones. It was the strangest thing. She was reminded of her father, who years ago had an operation on his sinuses that returned the sense of smell he hadn’t realized he’d lost. The simplest smells sent him into rhapsodies of delight. He kept sniffing Jane’s mother’s neck and saying dreamily, “I’d forgotten your mother’s smell! I didn’t know I’d forgotten it!”