Good Little Liars

by Sarah Clutton

  ‘Yes, Mr Evans told me you’d been unwell. That’s very unfortunate. How are you feeling now?’ He leaned in, concern in the creases of his eyes. Harriet felt a small rush of gratitude. She was unused to being asked about her wellbeing.

  ‘I’m much better, Sir. Thank you for asking. It was just a bad flu.’

  ‘That’s very good news. We can’t have our best student falling behind. It would be a tragedy for everyone.’

  Harriet watched his expression soften as he smiled. Maybe she had misjudged the reason she was here. He seemed genuinely concerned.

  ‘Thank you, Sir.’

  ‘It’s just that with these less than exemplary results, Miss Andrews, I’m in a position where I have to advise the School Board on whether or not their generous patronage should be continued.’ He paused, then took a bunched-up handkerchief out of his pocket and began blowing his nose vigorously, before wiping it down several times over his thick, neat moustache, and returning it to his pocket. ‘Of course, I’m inclined to recommend that after all the investment we have made in your education to date, and given your obvious academic talent, it would be a shame to remove the scholarship,’ he stood up then, quite unexpectedly, and sat down next to Harriet on the couch, ‘but that would be dependent upon my confidence in your ability to cope. I fear you may need some extra encouragement.’ He smiled at her, baring slightly yellow teeth. He was leaning in, so that Harriet could see a tiny ball of snot caught up inside the bushy black hair of his left nostril.

  Harriet smiled back at him tentatively. It was awkward, sitting like this. She already knew she had to work hard to get her marks back up. She could cope. She unfolded her hands that had been sitting on her lap and put them on her knees, at the same time leaning back a little from him. Imperceptibly she hoped. She didn’t want to offend him, but she’d never been very good at one-on-one chats with people she didn’t know well. He was too close. It made her mouth dry and a nerve-like pain had started crawling over her chest like an army of bull ants.

  ‘I can manage, Mr Liddle, I promise,’ said Harriet, looking back up at his face.

  His eyes looked strange, a little glazed. He didn’t say anything, and Harriet began to wonder if the interview was finished. Then without any warning, Mr Liddle put his hand on her knee and slid it up her leg inside her tunic. Without thinking she clamped her legs together and threw herself backwards toward the other end of the couch, leaning backwards on her arms to get away from him.

  Suddenly, Mr Liddle was on top of her. She could feel his hands pushing up her tunic and fumbling for the waistband of her tights, then with two violent tugs, he’d pulled them down.

  ‘Be still, Miss Andrews,’ he hissed at her. His face was red and he stood briefly and undid his pants, breathing heavily. ‘You will be quiet and still or you will be out of this school before you can blink!’

  Suddenly Harriet felt a terrible pressure as he pushed his hand into her breast to balance himself and knelt awkwardly between her thighs. The trousers around his ankles were hampering his balance. He was fumbling and pushing himself between her legs, sour breath in her face, long strands of oiled hair coming away from his bald patch and falling into her eyes as he pushed and heaved on top of her like a wild animal.

  The pain was terrible, a screaming, stretching, ripping pain. His weight was crushing, unbearable. She smelt a sickly mixture of tobacco and sweat and fear.

  Harriet couldn’t breathe. He was breaking her apart. She felt a gagging noise rising in her throat. He was holding her chin and mouth hard in one hand and making small grunting sounds. She tried to move, but his weight felt like concrete. It seemed to go on and on. She felt herself float out of her body, away from the couch.

  Then with an awful guttural moan, he suddenly stopped. His head lolled forward onto her shoulder, his body slumped in a dead weight, pinning her painfully underneath him. She froze back into herself. What was he doing? Was he dead? She forced herself to still her thoughts. No, he couldn’t be. She could hear his ragged breathing. Perhaps he’d passed out. What if someone came in? What if they saw her with him like this? With a herculean effort, Harriet used all her strength to propel her body out from under him and towards the floor. Her legs were trapped and she scrambled on her hands to get away, wrenching her legs out from underneath him. She pushed herself along the floor, back towards the desk. Mr Liddle sat up on the couch suddenly, then stood and pulled his pants up, not looking at her. His breathing was loud and measured, as if he was trying to slow it down.

  ‘Your appalling behaviour in here today will not be spoken about to anyone, Miss Andrews. This is just between us. I’m still prepared to support your scholarship at the School Board meeting if you continue to work hard. But you will report to me once every week until your results are back on track, so I can keep tabs on how you are progressing.’ Mr Liddle finished buckling his belt and went to the mirror. He began smoothing his hair over his bald patch and then poking his hands in precise motions into his waistband, ensuring that his shirt was neatly tucked in.

  Harriet pulled up her tights, biting her lip to stop her whimpering with the pain. She pulled herself up off the floor with wobbly legs, and backed towards the door. The pain in her groin area was terrible. She knew she was bleeding. She was breathing in shallow gasps. She registered vaguely that tears were sliding down her face. She didn’t know what to do next. Was she supposed to say something?

  ‘You look slovenly, Miss Andrews. Fix your hair in the mirror,’ Mr Liddle walked around Harriet and back behind his desk. He picked up his glasses and put them back on his nose then started reading through some papers. Harriet hobbled to the mirror. Her pigtail had come loose and strands of hair fell around her face. She wiped her eyes hard with the heel of her palm and straightened her tie. Her reflection looked pale, sick. She tasted bile, sour and threatening, at the back of her throat.

  ‘Sir,’ the word came out as a hoarse whisper, as if she still had the flu.

  ‘Yes, Miss Andrews?’

  ‘Can I go?’

  ‘Please do. And stand up straight, girl. Your posture is terrible.’

  He looked back down at his papers.

  Harriet walked to the exit door at the back of the room, wincing with the pain.

  ‘I’ll see you next Tuesday, Miss Andrews. 2 p.m. will be satisfactory.’

  Harriet remembered her response clearly. ‘Yes, Sir.’ That’s what she’d said to him, after he’d violated her the first time, when he asked her to come back so he could do it again. Even now, more than forty years later, the words were etched in her brain.

  ‘He raped me, Clementine.’

  Harriet realised she’d spoken those words for the first time. It meant something, but she wasn’t quite sure what. She re-focussed her eyes on the carpet. Clementine had left marks of dirt on the white wool. Usually it would have made her angry, but suddenly she didn’t have the energy to care.

  ‘Mum…’ Clementine leaned forward in her chair. Her voice had taken a quiet, downward turn. ‘That’s awful. That’s… terrible.’

  ‘Yes, well. He’s dead and I’m glad that you’ll never meet him. He was a horrible, nasty, revolting man and now he is dead. And I’m glad.’

  The silence settled around them, sucking up the air. Harriet forced herself to take a sip of her tea, accidentally making a small slurping sound. It was still hot.

  ‘I can’t believe you sent me to the same school that must have made your life hell, Mum.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Clementine. It wasn’t the school’s fault. The headmaster was a lovely man. I owe everything I am to that school and the first-rate education they gave me. The man who fathered you was just a rotten apple. There are always one or two in any institution.’

  ‘But, Mum… still.’

  Harriet looked sadly at Clementine, and wondered how to explain it. ‘Denham House was the best, Clem. And I wanted you to have the best.’

  Clementine made a small sound of disbelief, looked down at
her shoes, then up again at Harriet.

  ‘When did he die, Mum?’

  Harriet stared out the window towards the granny flat. Ben must not be home. There was no light coming from the granny flat window. The idea hit her with a sinking sadness. No light anywhere. So why was she suddenly having to light up this long-dead patch of darkness for Clementine? It wasn’t fair. Except that she knew that it was. For Clementine, it mattered. It wouldn’t stop mattering. For too long Harriet had feared this conversation. Now it was time to have it properly. To reveal all the nasty bits, the fallout, the peel-off-your-skin disgust that overtook her at unexpected moments and made her nauseous with repressed regret about what she’d become.

  ‘He was killed in a hit-and-run accident when you were small. The culprit was never found.’

  ‘Really? What happened?’

  Harriet stayed absolutely still. She could still picture him. ‘It was not far from where we lived. He remained on staff at Denham House after I left. I used to see him walking to get his newspaper in the mornings. He’d walk along Parish Drive to the shops and I would see him from the car on my way to work if I was going in early. I was working at a small firm near the school at the time. You’d just started in primary school and I was still studying part-time at night and working during the day. Every time I drove past I would see him and think Why do you look so smug? You are a monster. One day, someone will discover what you’ve done. But he would just walk along with his head held high, as if he wasn’t the worst type of criminal there was. I couldn’t bear it.’

  Harriet looked up at Clementine, who was now perched on the edge of her armchair, leaning forward, the heel of her palms pushing into her knees. Harriet wondered if she needed to go to the toilet, but the thought floated past quickly.

  ‘One day it suddenly occurred to me that I probably wasn’t the only one. That if he’d done it to me, he’d probably done it to other girls. And perhaps all of them weren’t nearly eighteen like me. Not as equipped to cope as I was. Perhaps some of them were in the younger grades. Still children.’ Harriet felt a rush, as if she was coming up for air after holding her breath under water.

  ‘It occurred to me that Derek Liddle was possibly not just a sex offender, but that he was perhaps also a paedophile.’

  ‘Mum?’ The fear in Clementine’s voice crackled through the air.

  Harriet landed with a thump, back into the living room. Clementine and her dirty boots were still there. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mum, you… you didn’t… Mum, did you…?’

  Clementine’s mouth was hanging open.

  ‘Mum, was it you who ran him down?’

  Harriet took a moment to register the words. Then she let out an explosive laugh, shattering the thin pane of desperation suspended between them.

  ‘Clementine! Goodness me. You think I would run over that terrible man and leave him lying in pain, to die on the road like a dog?’ Harriet looked at Clementine and surprised herself by laughing again, then suddenly tears were welling at the edges of her eyes and running unchecked down her face. She moved her gaze to the window again and looked out into the blackness. The next words slipped out quietly as she pondered the idea.

  ‘Me? Run over Derek Liddle? Good grief.’

  She wiped at her face briskly and looked back at Clementine’s furrowed face.

  ‘It wasn’t me who killed your father, Clementine. But really and truly, it is such an edifying thought.’

  Twenty-Nine

  Emma

  ‘I’m just waiting to find out now, Dad.’ Emma stood in the hospital hallway with the phone hot on her ear, ignoring the laminated paper sign on the wall: Please switch off your mobile phone. Behind her, in reception, a large octagonal fish tank formed a central column in the room and sad-looking goldfish swam through straggly plastic plants. A basket of toys sat next to it on the floor and a small boy sat playing with oversized Lego. Emma turned away and looked through the glass wall that faced the empty courtyard. A large pile of mulch sat seemingly forgotten in one corner of the garden bed, not a single plant in sight.

  Rosie had been on antibiotics for more than two days now. Emma had been given a dose too. But she was still waiting for a definitive diagnosis.

  ‘Mrs Parsons?’

  ‘Dad, I’ve got to go.’ Emma shoved the phone into her handbag in a quick, guilty movement.

  The consultant had a thick head of silver hair and smiled at her kindly. He drew her towards a small breakout area in the hallway.

  ‘Rose’s lumbar puncture results have come back. You’ll be pleased to know it’s not the more serious meningococcal disease. It’s a virus. Viral meningitis is a much less serious form of the disease.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Emma. A rush of relief and exhaustion made tears well in her eyes. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Dr Annaby will be along soon to run you through the test results and talk to you about treatment for the rest of her stay.’

  Emma gave a small sigh of relief that she could talk to the junior doctor a bit later on. All the questions she’d saved up for this moment had suddenly flown out of her head and all she could think of now was, Thank you. Thank you very much, Doctor. But I think I might need a little lie down right about now.

  The time on her phone was 4.06 p.m. Which was impossible. It was four o’clock ages ago. Maybe time warped inside the walls of a hospital. Emma watched Rosie’s chest rise and fall in rhythmic motion. Rosie was in a pleasantly modern hospital room, in isolation, but she would be moved soon. A sign on the door warning all staff and visitors to Wash hands for 15 seconds before and after entering the room, would be moved on to the next child with a notifiable disease.

  Emma wondered when Phillip would arrive. She’d called him on his mobile in London at the soil conference, in a panic after the doctors had sat her down and prepared her for all the possible scenarios when Rosie was first admitted. Meningococcal disease, which the doctors had originally feared, was potentially lethal. The alternative diagnoses of viral meningitis, or a strain of flu or various other infections, were much more likely they assured her, but there were precautions they needed to take.

  It was nearly 11 p.m. in London when she’d called Phillip. He wasn’t answering his phone. She left four frantic voicemails and texts, then updates as the doctors gave her information, so that by the time he checked his phone early the next morning and rang – flustered and contrite, in the late of Hobart’s afternoon – it was just a few hours before his paper was due to be delivered to 250 eminent soil scientists from all over the world.

  ‘I’ll come now. I try to get the ten o’clock flight this morning. What are the doctors saying?’

  ‘But your paper…’ Emma had let the words slide away. The fear in his voice scared her even more. She could sense his anxiety about the lack of control over what was happening, and the word ‘meningococcal’ was frightening to anyone. Phillip was a scientist. He understood things. He wouldn’t panic if he didn’t need to. Plus, he would know the right questions to ask the doctors. She wanted him to come back. Now. Not after the paper was delivered.

  ‘I can’t stay here. The paper doesn’t matter. I’ll be home on the first flight I can get.’

  He would be on the domestic leg of the journey between Melbourne and Hobart now, thirty-two hours after that call. She re-read the text she had sent for when he landed:

  VIRAL MENINGITIS!!! Thank God!!! She’s going to be okay.

  Rosie was still sick, but she would be alright. She could go home sometime soon. Maybe even tomorrow.

  Emma tucked her head towards her armpit and took a quick sniff. She didn’t smell too bad. She hadn’t let Marlee bring in fresh clothes – proximity to a child with suspected meningococcal disease, or the child’s potentially infected mother was not the best idea for a pregnant woman in the early stages. Emma’s father had bought her a few things, but not quite the things she needed. His basket had included homemade shortbread and a thermos of soup from Mrs Salinya next door, a soft blanket for R
osie and the old teddy bear from his spare room. Jon Brownley had come in on the second day, and had brought flowers, a delicious cappuccino and a Beautiful Homes magazine for her to read. She’d been speechless with gratitude. Then she’d sat in the quiet of the hospital room the day after, contemplating her conflicting emotions about his kindness.

  Yesterday she’d ducked down to the chemist and bought deodorant, cleansing wipes and panty liners. Two and half days wearing the same knickers felt disgusting. She was desperate for a shower. Phillip’s flight should be touching down soon and then she could nip home.

  She sat and stared at her daughter’s face. So sweet and sick. Her heart flipped whenever she thought about what the outcome could have been. Death seemed such a strange, distant, terrifying idea. For some reason Tessa’s mother popped into her head. Mrs Terrano – glamorous and snobbish. If Tessa wasn’t the daughter she had hoped for, Emma wasn’t really the sort of friend she had in mind either. Long-legged grace, the easy confidence that came from at least a couple of generations of money, a beautiful complexion and the ability to entice men and keep them intrigued without giving them too much. They were the traits Mrs Terrano was looking for – an It girl who could attract the finest of boys from St Marks. Tessa fought with her mother constantly, not able or willing to be the perfect daughter. But for all her faults, Mrs Terrano still deserved to know why her daughter died. When Rosie was better, Emma would go to the police. She looked at Rosie’s pale, sleeping face. She owed the truth to Tessa and her family, however kind the headmaster might be.

  She dialled Marlee’s number and walked to the far corner of the room, not wanting to wake Rosie. She needed to update her on Rosie’s condition. She dialled, waited as it rang, looked out across the hospital grounds towards a children’s playground. A mother was pushing her child on the swing. She thought of Marlee and her baby. The baby she’d never thought she could have.