21.
Celeste arrived early for school pickup. She ached for her twins’ compact little bodies, and for that all too brief moment when their hands curled, suffocatingly, possessively, around her neck and she kissed their hot, hard, fragrant little heads before they squirmed away. But she knew she would probably be yelling at them within fifteen minutes. They’d be tired and crazy. She couldn’t get them to sleep until nine p.m. last night. Much too late. Bad mother. “Just go to sleep!” she’d ended up shrieking. She always had trouble getting them to bed at a reasonable hour, except when Perry was at home. They listened to Perry.
He was a good dad. A good husband too. Most of the time.
“You need a bedtime routine,” her brother had said on the phone from Auckland today, and Celeste had said, “Oh, what a revolutionary idea! I would never have thought of it!”
If parents had children who were good sleepers, they assumed this was due to their good parenting, not good luck. They followed the rules, and the rules had been proven to work. Celeste must therefore not be following the rules. And you could never prove it to them! They would die smug in their beds.
“Hi, Celeste.”
Celeste startled. “Jane!” She pressed a hand to her chest. As usual, she’d been dreaming and hadn’t heard footsteps. It bugged her the way she kept jumping like a lunatic when people appeared.
“Sorry,” said Jane. “I didn’t mean to creep up on you.”
“How was your day?” asked Celeste. “Did you get lots of work done?”
She knew that Jane supported herself doing bookkeeping work. Celeste imagined her sitting at a tidy desk in her small bare apartment (she hadn’t been there, but she knew the block of plain redbrick apartments on Beaumont Street down by the beach, and she assumed inside would be unadorned, like Jane. No fuss. No knickknacks). The simplicity of her life seemed so compelling. Just Jane and Ziggy. One sweet (putting aside the strange choking incident, of course), quiet, dark-haired child. No fights. Life would be calm and uncomplicated.
“I got a bit done,” said Jane. Her mouth made tiny little mouse-like movements as she chewed gum. “I had coffee this morning with my parents and Madeline and Ed. Then the day sort of disappeared.”
“The day goes so fast,” agreed Celeste, although hers had dragged.
“Are you going back to work now that the kids are at school?” asked Jane. “What did you do before the twins?”
“I was a lawyer,” said Celeste. I was someone else.
“Huh. I was meant to be a lawyer,” said Jane. There was something wry and sad in her voice that Celeste couldn’t quite interpret.
They turned down the grassy laneway that led past a little white weatherboard house that almost seemed to be part of the school.
“I wasn’t really enjoying it,” said Celeste. Was this true? She had hated the stress. She ran late every day. But didn’t she once love some aspects of it? The careful untangling of a legal issue. Like math, but with words.
“I couldn’t go back to practicing law,” said Celeste. “Not with the boys. Sometimes I think I might do teaching. Teach legal studies. But I’m not sure that really appeals either.” She had lost her nerve for work, like she’d lost her nerve for skiing.
Jane was silent. She was probably thinking that Celeste was a spoiled trophy wife.
“I’m lucky,” said Celeste. “I don’t have to work. Perry is . . . well, he’s a hedge fund manager.”
Now she sounded show-offy, when she’d meant to sound grateful. Conversations with women about work could be so fraught. If Madeline had been there, she would have said, “Perry earns a shitload, so Celeste can live a life of leisure.” And then she would have done a typical Madeline about-face and said something about how bringing up twin boys wasn’t exactly a life of leisure and that Celeste probably worked harder than Perry.
Perry liked Madeline. “Feisty,” he called her.
“I have to start doing some sort of exercise routine while Ziggy is at school,” said Jane. “I’m so unfit. I get breathless going up a tiny slope. It’s terrible. Everyone around here is so fit and healthy.”
“I’m not,” said Celeste. “I do no exercise at all. Madeline is always after me to go to the gym with her. She’s crazy for those classes, but I hate gyms.”
“Me too,” said Jane with a grimace. “Big sweaty men.”
“We should go walking together when the kids are at school,” said Celeste. “Around the headland.”
Jane gave her a quick, shy, surprised grin. “I’d love that.”
Harper: You know how Jane and Celeste were supposedly great friends? Well, obviously it wasn’t all roses, because I did overhear something at the trivia night, quite by accident. It must have been only minutes before it happened. I was going out on the balcony to get some fresh air—well, to have a cigarette, if you must know, because I had a number of things on my mind—anyway, Jane and Celeste were out there, and Celeste was saying, “I’m sorry. I’m just so, so sorry.”
It was about an hour before school pickup when Samira, Madeline’s boss at the Pirriwee Theatre, called to discuss marketing for the new production of King Lear. Just before she hung up (finally! Madeline didn’t get paid for the time she spent on these phone calls, and if her boss offered to pay, she’d have said no, but still, it would have been nice to have had the opportunity to graciously refuse), Samira mentioned that she had a “whole stack” of complimentary front-row Disney On Ice tickets if Madeline wanted them.
“When for?” asked Madeline, looking at her wall calendar.
“Um, let’s see. Saturday, February twenty-eighth, two p.m.”
The box on the calendar was empty, but there was something familiar about the date. Madeline reached for her handbag and pulled out the pink envelope that Chloe had given her that morning.
Amabella’s A party was at two p.m., Saturday, February 28.
Madeline smiled. “I’d love them.”
Thea: The invitations for Amabella’s party went out first. And then next thing, that very same afternoon, Madeline is handing out free tickets for Disney On Ice, like she’s Lady Muck.
Samantha: Those tickets cost a fortune, and Lily was so desperate to go. I didn’t realize it was the same day as Amabella’s party, but then again, Lily didn’t know Amabella from a bar of soap, so I felt bad, but not that bad.
Jonathan: I always said the best part of being a stay-at-home dad was leaving behind all the office politics. Then first day of school I get caught up in some war between these two women!
Bonnie: We went to Amabella’s party. I think Madeline forgot to offer us one of the Disney tickets. I’m sure it was just an oversight.
Detective-Sergeant Adrian Quinlan: We’re talking to parents about everything that went on at that school. I can assure you it wouldn’t be the first time that a dispute over a seemingly inconsequential matter led to violence.