Good Little Liars

by Sarah Clutton

  Would love us all to catch up during the holidays. Ivan’s keen on Positano, so I’m hoping I can persuade him to divert for a few days so we can all meet in Lake Como in early July. Would that work?

  P x

  Thirteen

  Marlee

  The waiting room at Dr Anna-Beth Rawson’s surgery was soothing. There were magazines about glossy house renovations and lovely relaxing music that made Marlee think she was about to get a massage, rather than waiting nervously to talk to an obstetrician about all the terrible things she’d done to her foetus before she knew she was carrying it.

  For the last few weeks, Marlee had presumed that she’d picked up a persistent sort of vomiting bug but had continued to drink alcohol at every opportunity that she could stomach it. Thankfully, this had been less than usual due to her all-day ‘morning’ sickness. Even so, her baby had probably picked up foetal alcohol syndrome by now.

  Marlee could barely believe she was pregnant, despite the two pink lines on the test declaring it to be a certainty. A second test brand had announced it in blue – as if the manufacturer felt the need to address the gender bias. Both brands were in complete agreement though. She was definitely in the family way. Unbelievable.

  ‘Marleen Maples.’ A tall woman in her sixties was looking around pleasantly for an unfamiliar face.

  Marlee got up quickly and placed the magazine back on the pile.

  ‘Hi, yes that’s me.’ She followed Dr Rawson into her rooms. ‘We’ve met before actually, Doctor, though you might not remember. My friend is Emma Parsons – I came to her daughter’s birth about thirteen years ago.’

  ‘Well, doesn’t time fly. And call me Anna-Beth. It’s lovely to see you again Marleen. Take a seat.’ The doctor motioned to the chair across her desk.

  ‘I see from your referral that you’re pregnant. Good news?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ A rush of some unknown emotion welled in Marlee’s chest and her eyes became moist. ‘I’m single and I didn’t expect it. But the first problem is I’ve been drinking a lot. I was told a long time ago I’d never be able to get pregnant, so I didn’t realise that feeling sick for a few weeks meant anything, and now I’m terrified. I’ve probably given this kid brain damage or liver failure or something, which I wouldn’t have done if I’d known about it. Obviously.’ She sniffed and looked down, twisting the chunky blue and green resin ring on her finger and plucking a thread of lint off her black pants.

  ‘I understand your concerns. We can do some tests and of course you need to stop drinking completely now,’ said Anna-Beth. ‘But let’s put those worries aside and start from the beginning. When was your last period?’

  ‘Well, I can’t remember. It’s been a bit on and off for the last couple of years. But I know the exact date of conception. It was eight weeks ago – fifteenth of March.’

  ‘Well it’s good to know the date,’ said Anna-Beth. ‘That helps.’

  ‘Actually, I think my period was a couple of weeks before then – it was the week I was packing up my stuff to move to Hobart. So maybe around the first of March.

  Anna-Beth wrote down some notes and consulted a chart.

  ‘Great. Why don’t you pop up on the bed and I’ll do an ultrasound to confirm the pregnancy.’

  ‘What – now?’

  ‘Well, now’s as good a time as any don’t you think?’ said Anna-Beth.

  ‘Alright, yes, well… it’s just that…’ Marlee’s voice trailed off as she lost her train of thought. She wasn’t ready to see whether she had an actual living creature inside her belly. She thought she’d have to go to a specialist ultrasound person for that. It was too soon.

  A few minutes later, Anna-Beth squeezed the cold slimy gel onto her stomach and Marlee closed her eyes. She felt the ultrasound nozzle being pushed around on her stomach, pausing, then restarting, pushing, pausing and moving around lower, left, right, then stopping.

  ‘There’s your baby,’ said Anna-Beth.

  Marlee’s eyes shot open. A tiny jelly bean-shaped figure with a rapidly beating heart jumped out of the screen at her. She felt an overwhelming sense of something huge. Terror or exhilaration. She wasn’t sure.

  ‘Is it healthy? Will the drinking have hurt it?’

  ‘Well, we can’t be sure of anything, but often if a foetus is harmed in the early stages it will spontaneously abort. So, it’s a good sign that it hasn’t. I would try not worry further. As long as you cut out alcohol from now on,’ said Anna-Beth calmly. She was pressing some buttons, clicking, tapping her computer screen, pulling a line across the screen to take measurements. ‘But your baby looks exactly right. You are ten weeks pregnant, Marleen, and everything looks fine.’

  ‘But I can’t be ten weeks!’ said Marlee. ‘It was eight weeks ago, on the fifteenth of March. I’ve only had sex with one guy since I came back to Tassie, and nobody before that for a couple of months!’

  Anna-Beth gave a small laugh. ‘Sure. But we add two weeks at the time of conception when calculating dates – it’s from the date that your last period should have come. It’s just a method. It means…’ she picked up another small moveable chart on the bench next to her and fiddled with it, ‘your baby is due on the sixth of December, give or take.’

  Tears began to roll down Marlee’s face.

  ‘Marleen, if this isn’t good news – if you’re concerned about having this baby –we should talk about that.’

  Marlee wiped her eyes. A huge lump in her throat was constricting her breath.

  ‘I don’t know… I never imagined I could, but now it’s here I don’t know what I want. I hardly know the father!’

  ‘Well, perhaps you need some time to consider it all. It sounds like it’s a big shock.’

  ‘It’s just that, I was told I couldn’t have children because there were issues when I was younger.’

  ‘Could you tell me about the problems you’ve had previously?’

  ‘Sure, but… do you think you could stop calling me Marleen? I’m Marlee. I stopped being Marleen a long time ago.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Marlee paused and stared behind Anna-Beth at the photo of her children and grandchildren, a huge laughing group of people with Anna-Beth and an older-looking man who must have been her husband at its centre. It looked warm, being at the centre.

  ‘I guess it started back in my last term of high school. Some awful… things happened. I went off the rails a bit. Then a few weeks after graduation I found out I was pregnant. My world kind of shattered.’

  The phone on Anna-Beth’s desk rang and she spoke quickly to her secretary then hung up the phone.

  Anna-Beth looked up at her again. ‘Sorry, Marlee, please go on.’

  Marlee squirmed. In the stark daylight of the doctor’s surgery the story felt stale and contrived. But now she had started she didn’t feel she had much choice but to finish.

  ‘It was a huge shock to find myself pregnant. But I couldn’t have told anyone. My mother was terminally ill and I didn’t want to make things worse for her. There were huge expectations that I would go to university and do well. I was dux of the school. It would have been embarrassing for my family if anyone found out – my parents were so proud of me being Head Girl of Denham House. It was like they formed an identity around it.’ Marlee stopped and looked down at her fingers.

  ‘I can imagine,’ said Anna-Beth. ‘I was Head Girl at Ellery. Many years before your time, but the expectations were immense.’

  Marlee smiled at her. ‘Well, anyway, someone told me about this doctor who could help me terminate the pregnancy. I was going to visit him, but I miscarried and it turned out to be an ectopic pregnancy. Then there were some complications and I just remember them telling me I wouldn’t be able to get pregnant again.’

  ‘What a tough time you’ve had,’ said Anna-Beth.

  ‘Yeah, it was. Mainly because I fought with my dad, because he wanted me to keep the truth from Mum. Not long after that, Mum died and I moved to Melbourne and st
arted architecture. I slept with pretty much every attractive man I met and they were right. I couldn’t get pregnant. Until now.’

  Anna-Beth was looking at her kindly. ‘That sounds like a very difficult period of your life.’

  ‘Well, I topped my year at the end of the degree. So that was a small consolation.’ Marlee wiped at her eyes with a tissue from the box on the desk.

  ‘Goodness,’ said Anna-Beth. ‘Well, this pregnancy must have come as a huge surprise. I’d like to schedule another appointment with you in a few days if you’re okay with that. We have a few things we should talk about and a few investigations I would recommend we do. I’d also like to see your old medical files from your last pregnancy if you can get them.’

  ‘Okay. I suppose I can,’ said Marlee. The tiny beany-baby was bouncing up and down inside her, making her want to heave up the oats and chia she’d had for breakfast. That would teach her for switching to healthy food since those lines on the test had turned pink and blue, just to prove she could be a good mother.

  ‘In the meantime, I’ve written down a few things that I’d like you to do to encourage the healthiest possible pregnancy, Marlee,’ said Anna-Beth, pushing a piece of paper across the desk to her. ‘If you could manage those, you’ll be covering all bases, and at the next appointment we can explore a few of the issues you’ve touched on today and decide how you’d like to proceed. I’m afraid that phone call was my receptionist letting me know that I am needed at a delivery, so unfortunately we seem to have run out of time.’

  Marlee wondered if it would be inappropriate to ask Anna-Beth to come home with her and tuck her into bed. She didn’t want to explore the issues. She just needed to sleep.

  Fourteen

  Harriet

  Harriet watched the young mother at the next table. She had perched the baby on the edge of the table and was jiggling her up and down whilst simultaneously reading something on the screen of her phone. Intermittently the woman would look up and blow faces at the child and make inane, cooing noises. Harriet looked back down at the file she was reading. The case was tedious and there was little chance that the meeting she was about to have with the instructing solicitor would improve her attitude towards it. But still, it would have been nice to be able to read it without having to listen to gibberish. Although it probably wasn’t the woman’s fault she was in this mood.

  She was annoyed that she’d agreed to meet Clementine for lunch at a café. Harriet had moved a meeting to be able to fit in a completely unnecessary thirty-minute lunch date in the busiest part of her day, when she could just as easily have seen Clementine tonight when she returned from work. Although she had been staying at work late in the evenings these past weeks, so they didn’t see each other every day. She looked at her watch again. Seven minutes late. Typical.

  Harriet ran her eyes over the decor of Clementine’s choice of waterfront venue. Paint-stripped recycled brickwork formed two of the walls and there were odd items suspended from the ceiling masquerading, she supposed, as artwork. An old bicycle. Rusty farm implements. Dead tree branches. The effect was somewhat bewildering. The door opened and Clementine weaved her way through the tables.

  ‘Hello, Mumsy, how are you?’

  ‘I’m fine. Did you have something else on at 1.30 p.m. that clashed with our lunch, darling?’ Harriet was annoyed with herself for pointing out Clementine’s lateness. It made her feel socially uptight. Her usual rule was to not mention someone’s lateness unless it had reached the ten-minute mark. That seemed to Harriet to be more than fair and it provided her with a framework that made people think she was actually more flexible than she was.

  Clementine laughed. ‘I’ve just been out to MONA again. That museum is mind-blowing.’ She took off her jacket and put down the bag she was carrying onto the floor.

  ‘Mmmm,’ said Harriet. ‘Well it gives me a headache. A whole wall of plaster cast vaginas? I mean really.’

  ‘Come on, Mumma-bear. Open your mind. That exhibit shines a light on the dark and saggy bits of life.’

  ‘Well, that’s a stretch,’ said Harriet, and they both burst into laughter. Harriet recovered her composure and poured them both a glass of water from the bottle on the table. ‘They do take some things too far though, Clem. I mean, you have to admit, the exhibit of the chocolate-coated entrails of that suicide bomber – that was just awful. How is that art?’

  ‘Oh, Mum. It’s a museum about sex and death. You can’t expect sunshine and lollipops. Anyway, I was a tiny bit late because I had to buy some shoes.’ She opened the box on the floor and pulled out some bright purple suede boots with a three-inch square rubber heel and green laces. ‘You can borrow them next time you need to seduce a grumpy old judge.’

  Harriet burst into laughter again. ‘They’re hideous, you crazy girl! Honestly, I don’t know where you get your style.’ She shook her head and picked up the menu, burying her grin. There was always something so unsettling about outings with Clementine.

  ‘What looks good?’ asked Clementine, picking up her own menu.

  ‘I’m going to have the salmon salad and a mineral water,’ said Harriet, trying to wave down the waitress who was now fawning all over the baby at the next table. ‘I don’t have much time.’

  ‘Well you never seem to get home early enough to see me before I go out at night,’ said Clementine cheerily, ‘so I thought lunch would give us time to catch up on some mother-daughter stuff,’

  ‘Oh,’ said Harriet again, wondering what sort of stuff she could mean. ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘No, Mumma-bear. Not at all. But there is something I wanted to ask you,’ said Clementine, putting down the menu.

  Harriet was having difficulty getting the waitress’ attention. She stood chatting to the mother of the baby and making all sorts of gurgling noises at the child. She was saying things like ‘such a little stunner!’ and ‘she’s just way too cute!’ The child was actually quite unattractive.

  ‘What do you need to ask?’ said Harriet, turning back to Clementine.

  ‘Why has Jonno been single for so long? Seems a bit weird to me.’

  Clementine was the only one who called Jonathan, Jonno. It didn’t really suit him, in Harriet’s opinion. But Clementine liked to do things her own way.

  ‘What sort of question is that?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘I just want to know. He’s a nice guy. Good looking. I’m just interested.’

  Harriet took a few moments to consider the question.

  ‘Yes, he’s all those things.’

  ‘And smart,’ said Clementine. ‘So… why still single?’

  ‘Perhaps he just hasn’t met the one,’ mused Harriet. She had wondered the same thing herself over the years. Her brother was in many ways an anathema to Harriet. She adored him because he was her little brother, and she’d as good as raised him. Plus, he was one of the few people who didn’t make her feel in the least bit uptight. She could tell him anything. She could share her worries about Clementine and Scarlett and he always had sensible advice to share. But sometimes she felt that she didn’t really know him.

  ‘Why do you ask, darling? Do you have someone in mind for him?’

  ‘No, I’m just being nosey. Has he even been on a casual date since Carol died? I mean, I know he loved her and everything, but they were only together for a few months before her cancer came back. She’s been gone twelve years. It just seems bonkers.’

  ‘Well perhaps he didn’t want to risk being hurt again. He takes things to heart too much.’

  Clementine seemed to ponder this. ‘Remember when I was at high school and Tessa Terrano was killed? He seemed to take that really hard.’

  Harriet felt herself stiffen. She didn’t want to talk about this. It was all so long ago. She would try for the food after all. By some miracle the waitress was walking past.

  ‘Could you bring me the quickest salad the kitchen can muster please? I need to leave in fifteen minutes.’

  ‘I’ll have whatever sh
e’s having,’ said Clementine smiling at the girl.

  Clementine spoke again as the girl left. ‘I remember, during those school holidays, he was in the kitchen with you and he was crying about it. I always wondered why he would have cared so much. It was weeks afterwards.’

  Harriet recalled the time clearly. Her brother had been in his first job out of teachers’ college. The girl had been his student – a musical protégé of sorts. After she died, he’d spent the summer moping like a lost dog. Clementine hadn’t been any better. Harriet had told them both they needed to snap out of it. Luckily, they had had the long school holidays to do it.

  ‘Well, he’s always been soft-hearted. And that accident was a terrible tragedy. You yourself were very affected.’

  ‘He wasn’t keen on her, was he?’ asked Clementine.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Harriet.

  ‘I’m not. He was young. He took it hard. And everyone at school had a crush on him, Mum. Tessa would have been no different. I… I just thought there might have been more to it,’ said Clementine, fiddling with small packet of sugar she’d removed from the cup in the centre of the table.

  She must be wearing mascara, thought Harriet, as she marvelled at Clementine’s huge brown eyes. Although she’d never known Clementine to wear make-up. Harriet sighed. ‘Leave the past in the past, Clementine. I haven’t cancelled meetings this morning to come here and discuss the Terrano girl’s accident. It was nothing to do with Jonathan anyway.’

  ‘How do you know that, Mum?’

  ‘Clementine, that’s enough.’

  Clementine sighed and tipped her head to one side. Resigned to defeat, Harriet was pleased to see. She got out her phone and began checking her emails. Her appetite had disappeared.

  From the corner of her eye, Harriet saw the baby at the next table drop a small pink teddy bear on the ground. Clementine leaned down and picked it up, then stretched over and handed it to the baby’s mother.