Good Little Liars

by Sarah Clutton

  Marlee watched Ben come in through the front door of the office. She wondered why she hadn’t mentioned her fling with him to Emma yet. Probably because Emma had sworn off men forever. Somehow it didn’t feel right talking about a one-night stand. Or maybe it was because he was her boss and she didn’t want Emma telling her she was crazy. She’d been doing a good enough job of that herself.

  She turned back to her concept diagrams and stared at the screen blankly. Her creativity seemed to have deserted her. She had designed a perfectly luxurious and interesting home, but it wasn’t jaw-dropping. Certainly not good enough to prove her worth to Ben or Finton. She had an overwhelming desire to climb into bed. She had spent last night with an old family friend. They’d had some food at a new craft brewery on the docks and had sampled the beers. The midnight finish wouldn’t usually have been a problem, but today she was feeling unusually tired and mildly nauseous.

  She looked up again to see Ben approaching her desk.

  He smiled at her. ‘Hi, have you got a moment? I just wanted to discuss a development proposal for some work on a heritage site down at Port Arthur.’

  ‘Now?’

  He nodded. ‘Let’s use the meeting room.’

  Marlee picked up her note pad and pen and watched him walk into their meeting room. It was glass-sided and not at all private. She hit ‘print’ on her concept plans and walked in the direction of the printer before following him in – she needed his perspective on her design while she had a chance.

  ‘How are you?’ Ben smiled and waited for her to choose a seat at the conference table, before he took her lead and sat opposite.

  ‘Not too bad, thanks.’ His presence seemed to calm her and, inexplicably, stir up her stomach with butterflies at the same time. Today that was just adding to her general feeling of illness.

  ‘How are things with your daughter?’ asked Marlee.

  ‘Oh, well, Scarlett’s in Rome. She wanted to hang around for a trip to Ibiza and after that she decided Italy was essential. She had some money saved, so…’ He raised his eyebrows and gave her a rueful smile.

  ‘Lucky girl,’ said Marlee.

  ‘Well, underneath it all she’s a good person. She’s very much like Harriet in some ways – kind and intelligent if you can get past the spiky exterior. But she surprises you with how immature she can be in the next breath. I suppose letting her loose on the world, to go and discover who she is without insisting she do one thing or the other, may help her grow up.’

  ‘Wow. I wish I had parents who thought like you when I was eighteen,’ said Marlee. A wave of nausea suddenly surprised her and she felt herself getting hot.

  ‘Marlee, are you alright?’ asked Ben.

  She must look as bad as she felt. ‘Sorry.’

  She got up unsteadily and walked to the bar fridge to get a bottle of cold water. ‘I had a late night catching up with an old friend. We got a bit carried away tasting some beers. I suppose you’re the last person I should be telling that to.’ She sat down, giving him a sheepish grin. ‘Let’s discuss this project and just ignore me if I look off-colour. It’s self-inflicted.’

  Ben showed her the new brief and when he was satisfied that she was able to take on further work, he delegated some of it to her before she unrolled her house design and they pored over it.

  ‘That’s looking great. I think the topography of that site’s tricky and you’ve used it well. The glass walls bring those pavilions together nicely and you’ve maintained privacy with the angles of each bedroom. Nicely done.’ Marlee felt herself flushing as Ben went on to give her some suggestions for maximising the passive solar design. With his ideas in the mix, her concept would improve no end.

  Ben’s phone buzzed on the table and Marlee saw the word ‘Clementine’ pop up on the screen.

  ‘Sorry, I just need to take this call.’

  Marlee nodded as he slid his finger across the screen. She listened to him confirming some arrangements for a time and a place to meet later that day.

  She looked out the window and wondered who Clementine might be. A new girlfriend? The sky was grey and rain drops began spitting and swirling on the window panes. Wind swept through the gum trees in the adjoining garden, dragging slices of stringy bark away from the trunks. The bark strips made her feel untethered as they swayed and swung, whipping back and forth onto the half-stripped bareness of the pale trunks. She’d known a Clementine once. At school. She was famous now. The nausea began churning in her stomach again. She felt like she needed to lie down.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ he said, as he ended the call.

  ‘Ben, I have to run. I promised to deliver some plans to a client before two o’clock and I need to have them done in A3 at the printers.’ She forced a smile as she gathered up her paperwork. ‘Perhaps we can catch up on all of this next week?’ She gestured to the table. She needed to go home to bed, right now. She felt dizzy and weak.

  ‘Sure. You don’t look well. Why don’t you go home after you drop off the plans?’

  Marlee felt a twinge of guilt. Your boss wasn’t meant to be solicitous when your hangover was costing him money.

  ‘Thanks. I might go home for lunch and come back later.’ She hurried out the door, the salivary glands in the back of her mouth working overtime. Lunch was actually the last thing on her mind. Her reactions seemed to be lagging, as if she was moving and thinking in slow motion. A few seconds after the thought occurred to her that she might throw up, she realised it was urgent. She needed a toilet. Immediately. She hurried down the corridor, dumping her paperwork on the tea bench, then pulling open the back door of the building. The wind and rain hit her with a fierce, cooling welcome but she didn’t have time to acknowledge the relief. She hurled herself through the door of the staff toilet and put one hand on the cistern, then with the other she pushed back some stray red curls that had escaped the ponytail. Her faintness solidified into a wave of prickly heat over her face. Then finally the swirling in her stomach gave way to retching convulsions as the vomiting began.

  Ten

  Emma

  Emma stared through the office window across the sculpture gardens and watched girls hurrying in and out of the new music centre. She could hear the faint tinkling of piano tunes drifting into the office.

  She looked back at her computer and saw that a new email had landed in her inbox. She could tell it was a response to her ‘reply all’ email by the topic line. The name of the sender was familiar, and she took a moment to conjure up the face of the girl she hadn’t seen for at least twenty years. She toyed with the idea of ignoring it, but the email taunted her like a ripe pimple that was crying out to be squeezed.

  From: Lola Bailey

  To: Emma Parsons

  Re: Fabulous formal photo… the countdown is on, girls!

  * * *

  Hello Emma,

  I’ve been wondering whether to write after your email when it clearly wasn’t meant for me. But I decided what the heck? I hope you’re well and it will be good to catch up at the reunion. I’ve been thinking about what you said about Tessa… do you think her death was suspicious? I know she’d fought with her brother that day on the phone. I was on the phone switch that afternoon in the senior boarding house and I put his call through to the common room opposite which meant I could hear what she was saying. They’d planned to meet after school and she sounded really upset about their fight. It always bothered me. I’m not saying he did anything, but I wonder if the police knew. Is that what you were talking about? Anyway, it always felt like unfinished business, leaving school without her. I never felt like it was an accident, but it sounds so unbelievable to say it out loud, doesn’t it? Perhaps we can chat at the reunion. I’d love to hear about how you are and what you’ve been doing.

  See you soon,

  Lola

  Emma felt fatigue dragging at her limbs. She was so tired of thinking about that day at school. She didn’t know much about Tessa’s brother, except that he had a reputation as a bit o
f a bad boy and had ignored her both times she’d been to Tessa’s beautiful sprawling farmhouse, an hour outside Hobart. He hadn’t been interested in conversation with plump, boring virgins. She wondered again why she had opened this can of worms with the email? But there was more to Tessa’s death, Emma knew it. And what she had found this morning had confirmed it with a cold certainty.

  It was after Lenny the groundsman had come in to remove the bat and inspect the fireplace when Emma had noticed it – a tiny triangular corner of something poking out of the gap between the fireplace and the mantelpiece, where the timber had started to come away from the wall last night. A small card, or piece of paper that had slipped down and at some stage in the history of the little old cottage, and become hidden. She coaxed it up the wall with her fingernail, finally getting it up past the lip of the mantelpiece where it had fallen through the crack. She pulled it out with a flourish. It was an old photograph, date stamped in the corner: 24 November 1993.

  The photograph was of a naked girl, reclining on a sofa. Her hands were arranged artfully on her thighs, covering her pubic area. Her brown wavy hair was teased and sat like a soft, puffy cloud around her head before it fell down one side over her shoulder and rested gently across her breast. From beneath her hair, the girl smiled lazily at the camera. Emma must have been focussing on the girl’s slim figure, her firm breasts, the curious tilt of her head, as if she hadn’t quite been sure whether to show her profile or look directly into the camera, because Emma had held the photo for a long moment before her eyes properly focussed on the familiar terrain of the girl’s face. But when she did, she had dropped it and let out a muted cry. The girl in the photograph was Tessa.

  What on earth was Tessa doing? Why had a naked photo of her been hidden behind the mantelpiece of the old staff cottage?

  Poor, poor Tessa. It seemed somehow disrespectful to be looking at her naked photo when it was clearly never meant for Emma’s eyes. And if she was honest, there was something unsettling, even a little bit sinister, that Tessa seemed to be everywhere now, when for so many years no one had spoken about her. It was as if Emma had conjured up her naked body by disturbing her ghost with that stupid group email. It made her shiver to think about it. That’s why she hadn’t said anything to Marlee about the photo yet. She’d upset some sort of karmic balance and she wasn’t sure what to do about it.

  Emma shook her head and focussed her attention back to the present. She sent a vague reply to Lola and then got back to designing a flyer for the school art show, wishing she could just shut out the niggling, dark thoughts of Tessa and the photograph.

  Emma looked up as Jonathan Brownley walked past her office window, more formally dressed than usual today in a well-cut charcoal suit and tie, probably off to charm a gathering of wealthy parents or speak to the Board of Governors. He was walking towards a group of junior girls. One of the girls was wearing an exquisite birthday cape, embroidered in shades of green and blue. There were about a dozen capes in circulation at Denham House, a special marker to be worn on a student’s birthday, tied around her shoulders from the moment she dressed in the morning and entered the dining hall for breakfast, until after she retired to the boarding house at night when homework supervision was finished. Or if she was a day girl who went home after classes, she would wear it the whole time that she was on school grounds. It was considered a privilege. Once each year, the girl in the cape would have special breakfast cooked for her, doors opened and books carried for her by other students. She would often be given a reprieve if her homework wasn’t finished or some other issue arose during the day. All of the capes were hand-stitched with the initials of girls who had worn them over the years, and then further decorated with ribbons and beautiful handmade fabric flowers by the students who were artistically inclined – exquisite heirlooms to be worn once each year to mark out a girl as special for the day.

  The girls in the group had been laughing and whispering about something, but stopped when Dr Brownley approached. He said something and they all started chattering at once and pointing towards the main office, pigtails and ribbons bouncing with excitement. She wondered what had made them so animated. He had a lovely way with the girls, a lovely way with everyone. It felt like she was the only one who hadn’t fallen under his spell.

  She looked back at her very long ‘to-do’ list. Jon Brownley wasn’t a distraction she could afford. Emma already had more on her plate than she could manage. For the last few weeks, as a single mother, every day felt like a marathon, even though Phillip had rarely helped with managing the house or with organising things for Rosie when they were together. She closed her eyes at the thought, remembering the moment she’d stood up to Phillip – had stood in the doorway of his office the day after the birthday dinner with her arms crossed.

  ‘When are you going to tell Rosie you’re leaving?’

  Phillip had looked at her with an expression of puzzled annoyance. He swivelled around on his chair and took off his glasses then rubbed slowly at the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.

  ‘What?’

  She sighed loudly, dropped her arms to her side.

  ‘Just answer me, Phillip. Think of Rosie. The least you can do is tell us when you plan to leave.’

  ‘I’m not planning to, Emma. You know I can’t leave. My lab is here.’

  ‘Sorry?’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘You can’t be suggesting that Rosie and I should move out instead? You can’t seriously be proposing that your thirteen-year-old daughter be uprooted from her home just because you decided to have sex with our cleaner and ruin our lives!’

  Phillip shook his head slowly and took his time to answer.

  ‘No, I’m not suggesting that. I can’t afford to help you to pay rent on another house anyway. Not if I’m going to have to pay those ridiculous fees for that school that you and my mother are so hell-bent on. You and Rosie can stay in the house. Pia and I will just have to move into the cottage. That way the impact of this breakup is minimised for Rosie with me being around, and I still have access to the greenhouses.’

  Emma felt like she had been punched in the stomach. She held onto the windowsill as her legs became weak. The cottage? She looked down across the lawn and into the paddock – she could see directly into its kitchen window. Phillip actually thought it was alright to move Pia onto their property? That it would minimise the hurt to Rosie? Had he lost his mind? She was so gobsmacked she was unable to speak.

  ‘I’ve already thought it through,’ said Phillip. ‘I’ve told Pia we just need to wait a few weeks until she moves in so that Rosie has time to get used to the idea that we’ve decided to split.’

  Emma let out a guttural sound so monstrous that even she had been shocked.

  ‘You have to be joking! You think Rosie and I want to see you with your girlfriend in our garden every day? And this was you, Phillip! You decided to break up this family. There was no we!’

  Tears were streaming down her face. Their cottage? It was her cottage really. She was the one who had stripped the boards and painted the walls and sewed the curtains so she could find some joy in moving out of the city when Phillip wanted to follow his dream of having acreage. It was true, their setup in the countryside had helped his career flourish. But it was Emma who had worked on bringing the cottage back to life every weekend for the first year, sanding, tiling, using more tubes of Polyfilla than should rightfully be legal, so she could rent it out for short stays to earn some money to help pay for Rosie’s school fees.

  The cottage had become their second source of income and Emma had weekend bookings confirmed stretching forward three months. She couldn’t just cancel them. It was people’s holiday plans. They were important.

  But more to the point, was he so seriously untethered that he thought that moving Pia into the cottage in their garden would have no impact on their impressionable teenage daughter? Emma slammed the office door as she left.

  With Rosie staying at a friend’s house for the night,
Emma collapsed onto Rosie’s bed and sobbed until her eyes were so puffy, she looked as if she’d had a severe allergic reaction.

  Eventually she rang Marlee. She would not allow her daughter to witness her father’s disgraceful behaviour. She told Marlee she wasn’t sure how she would finance it, but she would need to move out. Rosie was now at Denham House in Year Seven. It was the most expensive girls’ school in Tasmania and without Vivien and Roger’s contribution, they could never have afforded it. Emma knew it was the best though – she had gone there herself, with Marlee, and now she worked there.

  Marlee had tried to convince her to see a lawyer to force Phillip to move out. And she’d also been adamant that if Rosie had to change to a public high school, she would be absolutely fine. Emma agreed to think about a lawyer, but the thought of pulling Rosie out of Denham House made her feel panicked. Rosie was thriving. Pulling her out of the school so she could afford to pay rent wasn’t an option. There had to be another way.

  From the moment Rosie was born, Emma had dreamed about seeing her in the gorgeous blue and white uniform with the Peter Pan collar, topped with the navy and red blazer and matching red felt hat. Just because Marlee didn’t care about their old school didn’t mean that it wasn’t a perfect fit for Rosie. Her daughter deserved to have all the privileges that the best school could offer – the exclusive opportunities, the right doors opening for her, the right circles open to her. Emma’s parents had only been able to afford for Emma to go to Denham House for her final two years. They had scrimped and saved to give her the chance to start in Year Eleven. But by then the friendship groups had all been formed, the special ways of doing things so woven into the fabric of the girls’ days that they didn’t understand why a newcomer might fall behind, watchful and quiet. Emma had felt constantly bewildered and anxious for nearly her whole two years. Her lifelong friendship with Marlee, forged on the street corner of their childhood homes, had been what had made it tolerable, sometimes fun even, but the feeling of not quite fitting had never gone away. And she had so wanted to fit. She wanted that for Rosie too. The women in Phillip’s family had all gone to Denham House for generations. His mother was an old girl, so were his cousins and his sister. Rosie was born into a long line of Denham House old girls. Rosie fitted.