Good Little Liars Page 14

  ‘Cute baby, how old is she?’ asked Clementine.

  ‘This is Harlequin. She’s five months next week,’ said the woman, smiling at Clementine then back at the baby and jiggling her up and down.

  Good Lord, thought Harriet. What is the world coming to? Harlequin! It wasn’t even a name. Harriet understood the desire to provide your children with slightly distinctive names – to give them their own special identity. There was no need to be pedestrian about these things. Clementine and Scarlett certainly weren’t common choices although both were beautiful, traditional names. But Harlequin? The child was sure to be bullied.

  ‘Cool name,’ said Clementine.

  ‘Thanks. She named herself really. She had such a great aura when she popped out.’ The woman turned back to the baby, ‘Didn’t you my poppet! You are one wild and wonderful tiny person aren’t you, Harley?’

  The woman dug her fingers into the baby’s stomach and the baby giggled.

  Harriet felt a tinge of regret. Parenting seemed like such an enjoyable sport these days. The rules had changed. Parents gave so much more credence to their children. It was as if the woman truly believed that the child had arrived with some sort of colourful calling card that announced itself into the ether and she had miraculously picked up on its vibe. Ta dah! I bring rainbows and kaleidoscopic brilliance into your life. Name me Harlequin! It was mystifying.

  ‘Apparently Scarlett has run out of money in Italy,’ said Harriet loudly. ‘She’s asked me to book her flight home in a week.’

  ‘Cool,’ said Clementine, turning back to her.

  ‘So, there will be three of us in the house then,’ said Harriet, a pang of anxiety striking again at the thought of her two daughters under one roof for more than a couple of nights. It was unprecedented. Scarlett and Clementine were both very strong personalities who should be handled carefully, and in separate locations if possible. It was like adding hydrogen peroxide and sulfuric acid together. One could easily predict a spontaneous detonation – a fact she had been required to research in detail for a recent insurance case. She wondered what she’d done to deserve such challenging children. Some people had lovely, close families who actually didn’t mind spending time together. They got along when they gathered for special occasions. Good Lord, some of them even looked forward to it.

  ‘You’ll manage, Mum. Don’t sweat it.’

  Their salads arrived and Clementine picked up her fork and started shovelling the salmon salad into her mouth, her fork flying up and down, without a break. It was as if she was deliberately ignoring Harriet’s forty-two years of meticulous guidance about the importance of table manners. It was infuriating.

  ‘Your mouth is full, Clementine. Put down that fork!’ Harriet controlled the urge to smack Clementine’s hand. Why did Clementine always have to drive her towards the worst version of herself? Clementine raised her eyebrows at her mother, eyes twinkling, fully distended cheeks moving up and down with brazen disregard for propriety. It was almost as if she was laughing at Harriet. It felt like an unfair slap after all she had borne – the fight to keep Clementine out of the hands of the government social workers who insisted she be put up for adoption; the shame she’d had to bear before and after Clementine’s birth; the lack of respect for all she’d sacrificed. How could she be so ungrateful? A tiny snake of buried anger uncoiled itself inside Harriet and lodged its fangs in her throat. It caused her next words to come out in a hiss.

  ‘Clementine, you’re eating like a pig!’

  Fifteen

  Emma

  Saturday morning used to be Emma’s favourite. She could lie in for a little while – longer if the cottage guests had checked in on Friday night and there were no last-minute preparations to finish for guests coming in during the weekend. Emma would read a novel or catch up on her Facebook feed or go for a long walk. Phillip would be out riding with his cyclist friends, dressed up in lycra that clung mercilessly to his backside and middle-aged belly. Rosie would be doing whatever Rosie did before she turned into a morning-monster who hated getting up. Usually it involved watching something on television or searching the internet for new types of craft to assist in turning her room into a junk pile. It was lovely. Nobody cared what the other was doing.

  But now that Rosie was in high school, and now that single motherhood had been forced on her, Saturday was a chore. Rosie’s school sport was compulsory and usually early and very often at some location on the other side of the city that didn’t respect Rosie’s need for sleep.

  Emma stood in the doorway of Rosie’s bedroom and watched the lump in the bed roll over and tug the blankets up higher over its head.

  ‘Go away, Mum!’

  Emma shivered and went to her own bedroom to dig out a second jumper. The cottage had terrible heating. May in Hobart was cold. Some mornings it barely reached eight degrees in the cottage. Emma didn’t blame her daughter for not wanting to get out from under the warmth of her bedcovers.

  ‘Dad will be here in twenty minutes, Rosie. You need to hurry.’

  Emma retreated to the kitchen and shoved some toast in the toaster. She looked around at the mess. From the corner of her eye, she saw Rosie skitter across the hall to the bathroom.

  ‘Quickly get your gear on and come and eat this toast, darling.’ Emma picked up her cup of tea and took a sip. It was cold. She sighed and tipped it down the sink.

  ‘Mum, where are my shin pads?’

  ‘In your shoe cupboard?’ she offered. She wondered why she might be expected to know.

  ‘I looked in there, Mum! They won’t let me play if I don’t have them!’ Rosie stood in the doorway of the kitchen, glaring. The hysteria in her voice had a rough edge. She was bordering on tears and she’d only been out of bed for five minutes.

  ‘What did you do after training on Thursday, sweetie? Could they be in the car?’

  Rosie looked at Emma as if she had just announced a cure for cancer.

  ‘I think they’re in the boot! Can you get them, Mum? I have to find my mouthguard!’ Rosie ran back to her bedroom.

  Emma felt her gloom spilling out, spreading like a stain across the room. Her parenting book had said that indulging your children by doing things for them made them incapable of becoming independent people. You weren’t supposed to give in to their demands. But Phillip would be arriving in a few minutes to take Rosie for the weekend. Nothing was ready. She didn’t want him to think she wasn’t coping without him. She took the car keys off the hook and walked outside. The cold sucked at her bones. There was ice on her windscreen and crisp white frost on the grass – the first of the year.

  She pulled her dressing gown tighter around her neck as she opened the car boot. The offending bright pink shin pads glared at her accusingly. Bad mother. She should have checked the boot earlier and now she was compounding her poor mothering by saving Rosie from having to look for them herself. She scooped them up. The crunch of tyres on the driveway behind her made her freeze. Oh no. Why did Phillip have to turn up when she was still in her pyjamas?

  She closed the boot with deliberate care and walked back inside without turning around. She handed the shin pads to Rosie.

  ‘Thanks, Mum.’

  Rosie was brushing her hair over the dining table and drawing it up into a ponytail. Emma looked at the cold pieces of toast on the board. She buttered them, then put jam on top.

  ‘Rosie, you need to eat something. Come and have this toast. Dad’s here already.’ She tried to keep the rising panic out of her voice as she put the plate on the table.

  ‘I’m not ready. Who cares if Dad has to wait?’ Rosie’s face was twisted into a sullen, angry mask.

  ‘Don’t be rude about your dad, darling.’

  ‘Why are you sticking up for him, Mum? He’s the one who ruined everything.’

  ‘Don’t say that, darling. He’s still your dad and he still loves you.’

  ‘Mum! No wonder he got a new girlfriend! You don’t even care, do you? You don’t even care that
he’s wrecked everything. We could have still been all together if you didn’t let him get away with being horrible to you!’ Rosie swiped angrily at a tear that had run down her cheek.

  Emma thought her heart might break. But she didn’t have time to think about it now. She needed to calm her down. Get everything back on an even keel so Rosie would go with her dad.

  ‘Please, Sweetheart. Yes, I’m angry at Dad too, but it’s not going to get us anywhere by fighting with each other. We have to stick together.’ She reached out and put her hand on Rosie’s shoulder. Rosie shrugged it off.

  ‘Please have some toast, Sweetie. You don’t want to be late for hockey.’

  Rosie scrunched up her nose and picked a piece up by the corner.

  ‘Gross. The butter’s all thick and it’s cold.’ She dropped the toast back onto the plate and picked the shin pads. ‘I’ll just get something at the hockey canteen.’

  Without saying goodbye, Rosie picked up the overnight bag that Emma had packed for her and walked out the door, leaving it wide open. The freezing air swirled into the corners of the old cottage.

  Emma shivered again as she closed the door. She walked across to the window to watch the car retreating down the driveway and noticed a third head in the car. She wondered who it was, then felt herself slipping, panicking as the understanding set in. Pia.

  The hide of the man! How dare he expect Rosie to accept Pia so quickly? Emma hadn’t even really talked through the whole thing with Rosie yet, although she knew that Phillip had talked about Pia to her. For Emma, it was too new. Too horrible. And now Pia was going along to watch Rosie’s hockey game, hand in hand with Phillip as if she was part of a perfect family group – two parents watching their child run around the sports ground, leaning idly against the fence, chatting to the other parents. The other mothers would have a field day with such fantastic gossip material. They’d make heartfelt remarks about ‘poor Rosie’ to their daughters in the car on the way home to show how empathetic they were, when really, they just wanted their children to know how lucky they were that their family wasn’t so dysfunctional.

  Emma wanted to sit down and sob. Last night she’d woken again at 3 a.m., worrying about Rosie and about the paltry amount of maintenance Phillip had agreed to pay. Then it had spiralled into her worry about Tessa and about her own silence during the crucial police investigation. Admitting what she had seen all those years ago to Clementine had opened up a hairline crack in Emma’s conscience. And now there was the photograph.

  Emma clenched her fingers around the edge of the sink and forced the thoughts away. What she really wanted to do was climb back into bed, but she had to start setting up the school hall for the art exhibition soon. She’d promised to help Lena. It was going to take a week and the artists were going to start bringing in their works this morning. For some reason the task of setting up an art exhibition right now made her feel weak. Overwhelmed. There was too much to organise.

  A knock at the door made Emma freeze. She straightened her bathrobe and smoothed down her hair then rubbed her finger across her teeth. Who would be visiting this early on a Saturday morning? She hoped it wasn’t Alan Lenstaat, the new science teacher who had just moved into the next cottage. He was awkwardly shy and seemed to be looking for a new friend.

  ‘Hello, sleepyhead.’

  Marlee was standing at the door smiling, sleek and effortlessly glamorous in tight jeans, divine ankle boots and a gorgeous black roll-neck jumper.

  ‘What are you doing here so early? I thought we were meeting at eleven,’ said Emma, unaccountably annoyed that Marlee was dressed and out of the house so early. It was unheard of on weekends.

  ‘I’ve given up alcohol and it turns out that the mornings are much easier to face,’ said Marlee walking towards the kettle and flicking it on. She sat herself down at the table and crossed her legs, leaning back to look around the kitchen.

  ‘Oh. Good for you,’ said Emma, trying to hide her surprise about Marlee’s new stance on alcohol.

  ‘I like what you’ve done to the place,’ said Marlee.

  Emma watched as she surveyed the open boxes and the mess scattered in every corner and piling up on the benches.

  ‘It’s a work in progress.’

  ‘Is Rosie still asleep?’

  ‘No, Phillip just picked her up and took her to hockey,’ said Emma.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘He had Pia in the car,’ said Emma miserably.

  ‘Bastard.’

  ‘It should be against the law.’

  ‘Mmmm. Good idea,’ said Marlee, distractedly.

  ‘Anyway, why are you here?’

  ‘Just to hang out… and to let you download about the bits of your life that are, you know… kind of shitty.’

  ‘You mean the bit where my little girl is having the innocence of her childhood ruined by her idiot father at this very minute?’

  Marlee tilted her head to one side. ‘Yeah. Something like that.’ Marlee picked up Rosie’s cold toast off the plate and bit into it, looking pensive as she chewed. ‘Emma… would you have another baby, you know, if you… met another guy?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, it’s possible isn’t it? At our age… no reason why you wouldn’t. I mean lots of people are having babies in their forties, aren’t they?’ Marlee walked to the cupboards and got out the cups and began making tea for them both.

  ‘Well, some I suppose. But there are so many risks when you’re older – Down’s Syndrome for a start, and other things too.’ Emma took the cup of tea and put it down on the table. She started folding up the basket of washing that was sitting on the kitchen floor.

  ‘But I guess you can test for all those things to set your mind at rest,’ said Marlee.

  ‘Well, I’m not sure why you think I will ever be inviting another man into my life. Although… maybe if he was gorgeous… and young. Obviously, I wouldn’t be wanting another one like Phillip. But even then… all those sleepless nights and nappies… uuuggh.’ She shuddered and stared thoughtfully at the shirt she was folding. ‘And with a younger guy, he’d probably be out partying all night anyway and leaving me to do all the hard work. So no, I don’t think so. Although I’d make an exception for Prince Harry if he was still single.’

  Emma wondered why Marlee was trying to distract her from thinking about Phillip by talking about other men. It wasn’t helping. She knew she was probably too old to get another guy now anyway. Plus, she had outgrown all her jeans in the last few weeks by ‘comfort eating’, despite it making her more depressed and much less comfortable. She needed to buy a bigger pair. She wasn’t about to take her clothes off for anyone. Her tummy looked much flabbier than it had a few months ago, and even then, Phillip had been in the habit of poking his finger into her tummy fat and wobbling it around and laughing. He and Pia were probably laughing about her flabby bits at this very moment. Although, they had Rosie in the car, so maybe not.

  ‘Yeah, we’d all like Harry. But seriously, the hard work and sleepless nights bit, that’s all temporary,’ said Marlee.

  ‘No, it really isn’t,’ said Emma. ‘It just goes on and on.’ She shook her head, thinking of the terrible sleep she’d had last night, half of it because of Rosie and their uncertain future. ‘I’m not sure why we’re even talking about this though, since the likelihood of either of us having a baby is pretty close to zero.’

  Marlee didn’t say anything. Emma wondered if she’d sounded too insensitive about Marlee’s infertility. Although it was an open discussion topic that had never bothered her before. Probably safest to change the subject though. She put two pieces of toast in the toaster and got an avocado out of the fridge.

  ‘Marl, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about something.’

  ‘Mmmm.’

  ‘Well, I went out a couple of weeks ago with Clementine Andrews. You know, the artist we went to school with.’

  ‘Clementine Andrews. Mmm, she told me she saw you.’

  ‘Did she? W
ell, anyway, we got a bit tipsy and—’

  ‘Since when do you go out with celebrities and get drunk?’

  ‘I know. We went to the pub and ended up drinking lots of wine and then we went up the mountain and drank quite a lot of vodka.’

  ‘Party animal.’

  ‘Mmmm. Anyway, I told her something. Something I’ve never told anyone except Phil before.’

  ‘What?’

  Emma paused and noticed her mouth had gone dry. Marlee was looking at her expectantly. ‘Well… before Tessa was found dead, I saw her having an argument with Jon Brownley – near that building site.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I saw it from the upstairs drama storeroom.’

  ‘Saw what?’

  ‘Tessa. She was yelling at him and he was saying something to her, holding onto her…’

  ‘What… what was she saying?’

  ‘I couldn’t hear. I don’t…’ Emma trailed off, remembering the moment clearly. Ms Telston had given her the set of keys to the main storeroom. She had remembered the sombrero hats from a play they did a couple of years ago. She thought they might still be there – perfect for their Three Amigos of Denham House skit to be performed on the last day of term.

  Emma had the hats in her hand when she saw it through the window – a movement below her. A student was running, her backpack banging heavy blows against her back in time with her steps. She’d come through the sculpture gardens and was running across towards the building site area that was out of bounds. Emma was about to turn away, when from behind the old hedge she saw someone else running. Someone following the girl. As the figure got closer, she was startled to realise it was Mr Brownley. The blond hair and masculine form were unmistakeable. The girl stopped and turned back towards him and as she turned her head, Emma saw clearly that it was Tessa. Strange. Tessa had left drama class early, feeling sick, so she should be at sick bay or in the boarding house. Then it occurred to Emma that the illness thing was a ruse. She felt a thrill of fear in her chest. Tessa had implied that it would be today, but they weren’t sure whether to believe her. It was a crazy plan. They’d told her so. But you had to admire Tessa. She was nuts, but she was brave too.