59.
It’s two o’clock. I’m going for my meeting now,” said Perry. “Madeline is picking up the kids. I’m going to be back by four, so just stick them in front of the TV until I’m home. How are you feeling?”
Celeste looked up at him.
It was a kind of lunacy, really. The way he could behave like this. As if she were in bed with a bad migraine. As if this had nothing to do with him. The more time that passed, the less anguished he looked. His guilt slowly seeped away. His body metabolized it, like alcohol. And she colluded in his lunacy. She went along with it. She was behaving as if she were ill. She was letting him take care of her.
They were both crazy.
“I’m all right,” she said.
He’d just given her a strong painkiller. She normally resisted analgesics because she was so susceptible to them, but the pain in her head had finally become more than she could stand. Within minutes the pain had begun to melt away, but everything else was melting as well. She could feel her limbs becoming heavy and somnolent. The walls of the bedroom seemed to soften, and her thoughts became languid, as if she were sunbathing on a hot summer’s day.
“When you were little,” she said.
“Yes?” Perry sat beside her and held her hand.
“That year,” she said. “That year when you were bullied.”
He smiled. “When I was a fat little kid wearing glasses.”
“It was bad, wasn’t it?” she said. “You laugh about it, but it was a really bad year.”
He squeezed her hand. “Yes. It was bad. It was very bad.”
What was her point? She couldn’t turn it into words. Something to do with the frustrated anger of a terrorized eight-year-old and how she always wondered if that’s what this was all about. Each time Perry felt disrespected or humiliated, Celeste bore the brunt of a fat little boy’s violent, suppressed rage. Except that now he was a six-foot man.
“It was Saxon who helped you in the end, wasn’t it?” she said. Her words were melting too. She could hear it.
“Saxon knocked out the ringleader’s front tooth,” said Perry. He chuckled. “Never got picked on again.”
“Right,” said Celeste. Saxon Banks. Perry’s hero. Jane’s tormentor. Ziggy’s father.
Ever since the night of the book club, Saxon had been in the back of her mind. She and Jane had something in common: They had both been hurt by these men. These handsome, successful, cruel cousins. Celeste felt responsible for what Saxon had done to Jane. She was so young and vulnerable. If only Celeste had been there to protect her. She had experience. She could hit and scratch when necessary.
There was some connection she was trying to make. A fleeting thought she couldn’t catch, like something half glimpsed in her peripheral vision. It had been bugging her for a while.
What was Saxon’s excuse for behaving the way he did? He hadn’t been bullied as a child as far as Celeste knew. So did that mean Perry’s behavior wasn’t anything to do with the year he was bullied? It was a family trait they shared?
“But you’re not as bad as him,” she mumbled. Wasn’t that the only point? Yes. That was key. That was key to everything.
“What?” Perry looked bemused.
“You wouldn’t do that.”
“Wouldn’t do what?” said Perry.
“So sleepy,” said Celeste.
“I know,” said Perry. “Go to sleep now, honey.” He pulled the sheets up under her chin and pushed her hair off her face. “I’ll be back soon.”
As she succumbed to sleep she thought she heard him whisper in her ear, “I’m so sorry,” but she might have already been dreaming.
60.
I can’t bloody shut it down,” said Nathan. “If I could have shut it down, don’t you think I would have? Before I called you? It’s a public website held on a server that’s not inside the house. I can’t just flick a switch. I need her log-in details. I need her password.”
“Miss Polly had a dolly!” shouted Madeline. “That’s the password. She’s got the same password for everything. Go shut it down!”
She’d always known Abigail’s passwords for her social media accounts. That was the deal so Madeline could check in any time, along with the understanding that Madeline was allowed to silently creep into Abigail’s bedroom at random moments like a cat burglar and look over her shoulder at the computer screen for as long as it took Abigail to notice she was standing there, which often took a while, because Madeline had a special talent for creeping. It drove Abigail crazy and made her jump out of her skin each time she finally sensed Madeline’s presence, but Madeline didn’t care, that was good parenting in this day and age, you spied on your children, and that was why this would never have happened if Abigail had been at home where she belonged.
“I’ve tried ‘Miss Polly had a dolly,’” said Nathan heavily. “It’s not that.”
“You mustn’t be doing it right. It’s all lowercase, no spaces. It’s always—”
“I told her just the other day that she shouldn’t have the same password for everything,” said Nathan. “She must have listened to me.”
“Right,” said Madeline. Her anger had cooled and solidified into something mammoth and glacial. “Good one. Good advice. Great fathering.”
“It’s because of identity theft—”
“Whatever! Be quiet, let me think.” She tapped two fingers rapidly against her mouth. “Have you got a pen?”
“Of course I’ve got a pen.”
“Try ‘Huckleberry.’”
“Why Huckleberry?”
“It was her first pet. A puppy. We had her for two weeks. She got run over. Abigail was devastated. You were— Where were you? Bali? Vanuatu? Who knows? Don’t ask questions. Just listen.”
She listed off twenty potential passwords in quick succession: bands, TV characters, authors and random things like “chocolate” and “I hate Mum.”
“It won’t be that,” said Nathan.
Madeline ignored him. She was filled with despair at the impossibility of the task. It could be anything, any combination of letters and numbers.
“Are you sure there is no other way to do this?” she said.
“I was thinking I could try to redirect the domain name,” said Nathan, “but then I still need to log in to her account. The world revolves around log-ins. I guess some IT genius might be able to hack into the site, it’s just a Google-hosting account, but that would take time. We’ll get it down eventually, but obviously the fastest way is for her to do it herself.”
“Yes,” said Madeline. She’d already pulled her car keys from her bag. “I’m going to get her out of school early.”
“You, I mean, we, we just have to tell her to take it down.” Madeline could hear the keyboard clattering as he tried the different passwords. “We’re her parents. We have to tell her there will be, er, consequences if she doesn’t listen to us.”
It was sort of hilarious hearing Nathan using modern parenting terminology like “consequences.”
“Right, and that’s going to be so easy,” said Madeline. “She’s fourteen, she thinks she’s saving the world and she’s as stubborn as a mule.”
“We’ll tell her she’s grounded!” said Nathan excitedly, obviously remembering that’s what parents did to teenagers on American sitcoms.
“She’d love that. She’ll see herself as a martyr to the cause.”
“But I mean, for God’s sake, surely she’s not serious,” said Nathan. “She’s not really planning to actually go through with this. To have sex with some stranger? I just can’t . . . She’s never even had a boyfriend, has she?”
“As far as I know, she hasn’t even kissed a boy,” said Madeline, and she wanted to cry, because she knew exactly what Abigail would say in response to that: Those little girls haven’t kissed any boys either.
She squeezed the keys tight in her hand. “I’d better rush. I’ve only just got time before I pick up the little kids.”
She remembered then that Perry had called earlier to ask if she’d pick up the twins because Celeste was sick. Her left eyelid began to twitch.
“Madeline,” said Nathan, “don’t yell at her, will you? Because—”
“Are you kidding? Of course I’m going to yell at her!” yelled Madeline. “She’s selling her virginity on the Internet!”