‘Well, I could have said something. They didn’t force me exactly.’ Marlee’s head throbbed. Her shirt felt damp.
‘Yeah. Right. Except we both know my mother,’ said Clementine.
‘But why did they want it covered up?’ asked Emma.
Marlee hung her head. A wave of nausea rose up as her headache began shooting down behind her eyes.
‘Because Tessa had been in Brownley’s cottage and left a naked photo of herself in there. Harriet thought he’d get in trouble. Tessa was waiting to seduce him when I got there… threatened to say he’d lured her for sex.’ Marlee let out her breath as the truth rolled off her tongue after all this time. Her shoulders sagged.
‘So she was going to seduce him,’ said Clementine. ‘I really thought she was changing her exam results.’
Emma and Marlee swivelled their heads towards her in unison.
‘I saw her break in. Locked her in there when I saw Jon coming down the path, then I ran off. I was late to meet Mum,’ said Clementine, almost to herself. She shook her head, as if a fog was lifting. ‘Girls, whatever you two decide, I’ll go along with it. I’ll support you, Marlee. Just do what you have to do and let me know. But I have to go to Mum now. She needs me. Scarlett needs me.’
Marlee watched her as she slammed the car door and jogged towards the glass entrance, the brightly lit sign above it announced Accident & Emergency. Clementine disappeared through the doors and they slid shut, blocking out the cold night.
Marlee felt Emma’s stare. She closed her eyes. The last twenty-five years of their friendship, forged on her lie. But somehow it was a relief to have arrived at the truth. She waited in the darkness, listening to the wail of another distant siren. Then she felt Emma’s hand on her arm, warm and gentle.
‘This isn’t good for the baby. You need to go home, get some rest. And I need to go up now and see Rosie.’ Emma nodded towards the hospital.
‘Okay.’ Marlee hesitated for a moment. ‘Would you mind if I come up with you? I know you probably don’t want to even talk to me, but I’d like to see Rosie. And maybe we can find out if Scarlett’s okay.’ Marlee looked at Emma’s kind, lovely face, her pretty blond hair, her old grey coat, not even stylish ten years ago when she’d bought it.
‘Of course you can. Whatever happened, I know you’d only have been trying to help. It doesn’t change who you are.’
‘Yes, it does. It changes something in you. But I can’t change it back now. I have to live with what I did – my decision to stay silent. Just like you’ll have to decide, now that you know what happened. I can’t tell you what to do with this.’ She gave Emma’s hand a squeeze.
Emma looked behind Marlee and pointed as a man ran through the carpark. Suddenly his face was lit by the bright, fluorescent lights of the ambulance parking bay. Ben.
‘He’s going to need you, Marl. And so is your baby. Come on. Let’s go up.’
Thirty-Nine
Marlee
Marlee turned off the ignition and let the silent shadows settle around her. At the northern edge of the school grounds a wall of gum trees loomed over the broken bitumen in front of the last house on the road. She was surprised to see the Witch’s House was still standing. Paint was peeling off the weatherboards in great curling chunks. By the side of the path, a rusted skeleton of a long-forgotten child’s pram was woven into long tussocks of grass. Cranky old Mrs Pemberton – the witch, as she’d always been called during their early school years – would be long dead by now.
Marlee yawned. She hadn’t slept properly since the night of the accident. She needed to do something to sort out this mess. But her head was fuzzy, confused. The idea of reporting the whole thing to the police, lifting the silent weight of her guilt over Tessa’s death after all these years, made her feel giddy with relief. But in the next breath, she’d be swamped by the heavy dread of anticipation. Did she have the right to ruin so many lives? Jonathan’s and Harriet’s – and by association Scarlett’s and Ben’s. Did she really want little Ned to know that his mother was a killer? How had she been so weak and easily led?
The baby made a fluttering movement and Marlee’s hand dropped from the steering wheel onto the small swell of her belly. She rubbed at it, still staring out of the car at the sagging windows of the house, boarded up and broken. She wondered what would become of the old place. It looked completely abandoned. She supposed the school would soon snap it up if they hadn’t already done so. They could bulldoze the house and build something fabulous on the block. It was prime adjoining real estate and the last annual appeal had been all about improving educational opportunities by extending the school campus to build another boarding house. They’d probably raised millions. Enough, anyway, for the last house at the end of the road with its wild acres to be swept into the coffers and under the cloak of privilege that shrouded Denham House.
She closed her eyes, the burden of the decision heavy and unpleasant. Her lashes felt like lead weights against her lower lids. She felt the fluttering movement again in her stomach, and she knew then what she needed to do. Had to do. There had been no excuse for keeping silent all these years, whatever Clementine might say about Harriet and her iron-fisted tactics. She needed to do the right thing. For her younger self, and for Tessa, and all those lost years of replaying that moment in her head when the photograph had flipped away and she had reached out to grab it. A pure moment of instinct that had punctuated two childhoods like a full stop.
This morning she’d woken up next to Ben for the first time since the morning of Scarlett’s accident. He’d been staying at the hospital all week, taking only snatched naps in the granny flat during the day. But that couldn’t go on indefinitely. The warmth of him as he stroked her face this morning had made her feel safe. As if she could face whatever were to come.
He hadn’t asked her about Tessa’s death yet, although she knew Clementine had talked to him about it. And Marlee hadn’t volunteered anything about it either. It was as if they were both holding their breath until they knew what would happen with Scarlett. It felt to Marlee as if their new relationship sat on the edge of a narrow precipice – not so big that it couldn’t be jumped over, if only she could navigate to the right crossing point.
Now, finally, Marlee could see where that was. She turned on the ignition and swung the car around, leaving the crumbling witch’s relic behind her. She ignored the pull of the willow tree at Emma’s driveway and drove around the block and along the road until she came to a concealed entrance. This one was marked by a large maple tree, the remnants of some fading autumn leaves still clinging to its branches in the grey winter light. She turned in, noticing the gnarled old trees, bare and forlorn, that formed a piteous welcome line along the length of the driveway. How pretty they must be in autumn. She pulled to a stop in front of an imposing double-storey house made from convict-hewn sandstone and opened the car door before she had a chance to reconsider. She shivered as a freezing gust of wind rustled through the gum trees ahead of her. Then she took a deep breath, thinking about what she would say.
‘Hello.’
The voice startled her. Jon Brownley was sitting on a faded timber garden bench behind a bare bed of leafless, hard-pruned rose bushes. He wore jeans and a navy woollen jumper and his blond hair was swept back off his face. When he stood and walked towards her, she felt her breath stop. He was still so unbearably beautiful.
‘Hello, Mr Brownley. Sorry… Doctor Brownley.’
‘Surely you can call me Jon by now?’
‘Jon…’ She frowned, chewed on the idea of it, closed her car door. Then she let out a small sigh. ‘It doesn’t feel right.’
‘Mmmm. Sometimes we’re stuck with our history.’ He gave her a sad smile.
‘Do you think I could come in. I need to talk to you.’
‘Of course.’
He pushed open the front door and beckoned her into the dim hallway. The high ceilings and old stone walls announced an elegant history. A lush Persian rug, red-patt
erned and intricate, ran the length of it. The walls were lined with photographic prints, black and white images of forests, mountains and beaches, ethereal and spooky, bright and sharp-edged, blurry and moody. There were twenty or more in huge chunky black frames placed at thoughtful intervals – a gallery of good taste that seemed to stretch on forever as she followed him through.
He ushered her into a surprisingly light and cosy kitchen at the rear of the house and motioned to the worn timber table.
‘Would you like a coffee? Tea?’
‘No. Thank you.’ Marlee watched him flick the kettle on anyway. She looked around at the tidy bench surfaces, a neat bookshelf in the corner, a photograph of a boy and a young woman holding a toddler in a silver frame next to the television. It had been so many years since she’d sat alone in a room with him. The tarnish of their lie began to rub at her, thick and dirty. She felt the old panic rising in her chest.
She nodded at the photograph. ‘Is that your mother?’
Jonathan followed her gaze. ‘No. It’s Harriet. I was eight. That’s Clementine on her hip.’
She nodded.
‘I need to tell the police what happened, with Tessa. I can’t live with it anymore.’
Jonathan nodded slowly, as if he’d been expecting it. But he didn’t speak.
‘I know I’m not the only one, that it’s not just my decision. It affects you and Harriet and your family. I don’t want to bring any more trouble your way. Not after what’s happened to Scarlett.’ She stopped, looked out the kitchen window as the afternoon light caught the top of the trees, filtering through their bare branches.
‘I’m going to tell the police it was just me who was there. You did nothing anyway. I was the one who did it.’
Jonathan gave her a piercing look. He turned as the boiling of the kettle reached a rumbling crescendo then clicked off. He pulled out a cup and a tea bag, poured the water, dunked it; small swift motions, repetitive and familiar. He walked to the fridge, opened it for the milk then turned to her unexpectedly as he held it open.
‘Marleen, if you’re going to tell the truth, it needs to be the actual truth.’ The look he gave her was paternal, all-knowing.
She let out a choking laugh. It was like history repeating itself – him telling her how it needed to be. The easy confidence he wore like a birth-right; his power around this place; the privilege of being the one who didn’t push her in – all rolled into a huge egotistical assumption that he knew best. How dare he?
‘I’ll be doing you a favour, Jon. You’re not the one who killed her.’
He gave a short, strangled exhalation. Disbelief or maybe amusement.
‘Marleen, I’ve run this school long enough to know when I’m only getting half a story. I assume the police get pretty good at that too. They’ll see straight through it. They’ll wonder why on earth you didn’t just report an accident straight away and if you can’t explain that, they’ll have to assume there was some sort of malice involved. You’ll be facing a murder charge before you can blink. What other possible motive would you have had for not raising the alarm?’
‘No, I don’t… I don’t think so.’
‘Yes, Marleen. There are loose ends. I spoke to Emma at the hospital the other night. She told me she saw me that afternoon from the art room arguing with Tessa. If the police pursue you, you’ll be making her live with a lie too, if you try to keep me out of this. And there might be others who come forward. Those who didn’t speak up then, but will now.’
‘I need to take responsibility – don’t you get it? Tessa’s parents deserve to know what really happened.’
‘Do they?’ He closed the fridge and poured the milk into his tea.
‘What do you mean? Of course they should damn well know the truth.’
‘Leaving aside that it wouldn’t actually be the truth you’ll be spinning in this scenario for police, Tessa’s parents saw the coroner’s report when it came out. She hadn’t eaten for more than twenty-four hours. She’d reported feeling dizzy in class and was supposed to go to see Sister at sick bay. They assumed she’d deviated out of the way for some unknown reason. They accepted the coroner’s verdict that she just became dizzy and fell in. Do you really want them to know that she was pushed? Because the whole story of how it came to happen will come out Marleen, and when it does, the fact that it was an accident won’t matter anymore. They won’t see it like that. Not when we concealed it, and not when they hear about what she’d been up to. They’ll fight back. The only thing they’ll see is that you’re trying to besmirch the good memory of their daughter by dragging up a sleazy story about her breaking into a staff member’s house so she could have sex with him. How do you think that will sound to them? Do you think that’s the sort of truth they’ll want the world to hear?’
‘I… maybe…’
‘They won’t accept it. They’ll fight back, Marleen. They will. Enzo Terrano isn’t someone you want to take on, even at his age. It will be all over the media. All over the world. Is that what you really want for Tessa’s parents in their old age? Is that what you want for Tessa?’
Marlee put her head in her hands. She wanted to cry, scream, scratch the words out of his perfect mouth, but she could hardly breath. After a while she looked up. He was staring out the window.
‘So you’re telling me I have to carry this god-awful secret forever, because telling the truth is worse? Jesus Christ.’
‘I’m just saying, if you tell the truth, Marleen, it has to be the whole truth.’
‘And nothing but the truth?’ Marlee let out a hollow laugh. She felt her reserves crumbling. She was suddenly back on her eighteenth birthday, Harriet Andrews berating her, pulling her away from the ghastly site of Tessa down in the hole, telling her she had to protect her parents from the truth so her mother could die in peace. She already knew the price of playing God with the truth.
‘I was only there trying to help you. And to help Tessa. I was just trying to get us all through that stupid bloody last week. Next thing I know I have a huge, terrible secret that I never asked for. I wanted to shout it out, to tell anyone who’d listen, but I couldn’t. The silence tore me apart. I spent the next years drinking myself stupid and getting into the bed of any poor sod who’d have me just so I could hold onto someone in the dark.’
Then as soon as it had come, Marlee’s anger was fading. Tears she’d held in for years began pouring down her face.
Marlee looked out the window, remembering that terrible time, feeling so alone. The months when her father was so hollowed out by the grief of losing her mother that he couldn’t even remember to buy food. She stood up and put her hands on the edge of the table.
‘I couldn’t even grieve my own mother properly when she died that Christmas because I was so screwed up about this. I had nothing left in me except fear. But that’s gone now. I don’t think I can keep quiet anymore.’
‘Then don’t. But don’t think about keeping me or Harriet out of it. Tell it how it happened.’
‘You’ll lose your job,’ said Marlee.
He tipped his head to one side. ‘I’ve resigned already. I told the Board I’d stay for as long as it takes to find a suitable replacement.’
‘What? Why?’
‘I’m sick of not making a difference, Marleen. I’m a teacher. I want to teach.’
She gave a bitter laugh. ‘Everyone talks about you like you’re the bloody Messiah.’
He made a strangled sound. ‘As you well know, I’m not. These girls don’t need me. Whether I’m here or not, they’ll have the same opportunities, every privilege money can buy.’
‘What will you do?’
‘Who knows? I might do some volunteer teaching. There’s plenty out there.’
‘How noble.’ But her cynicism felt ugly and cheap. She could see that he meant it.
Jonathan sat down opposite her and took a sip of his tea.
‘It is what it is.’ He sighed. ‘Do what you have to do, Marleen, and don’t worr
y about Harriet either. She could do a plea bargain with the devil and still come out smelling of roses. The Bar Association will probably strike her off for perverting the course of justice, but she’ll find something else to do.’ He smiled at her then, and she forced herself to look properly at him. His eyes were sad and tired, like a priest who’d heard one too many confessions. He seemed to be waiting for an answer.
‘Believe me, Harriet isn’t my major concern. But since I’m carrying Scarlett’s baby brother, I suppose I should also care about Scarlett’s mother.’ Marlee watched his face as the words settled between them. ‘I guess Harriet’s part of my family now.’
‘What? You… I mean, you and Ben?’
‘Yes.’
‘That makes things… Jesus.’ He stared down at the table for another long moment. ‘Marleen, you need to understand, Harriet, she… she was protecting me. She raised me like her son. I guess she saw how it would all play out, that it would all be over for me if rumours spread about Tessa in my cottage. She’s not a bad person.’
Marlee sighed.
‘If it was your child, your boy, maybe you’d have done the same thing,’ he said.
‘I doubt it. But I don’t suppose I’ll ever have to find out.’
Marlee stared past Jonathan and out the window again. Her furious, jumbled thinking began to slow down. Clink, clink, clink. The thoughts were falling into place, finding order, just as they did when she was working on a complex design. She gave a loud sigh.
‘Emma thinks I shouldn’t go to the police either. Maybe you’re both right. Maybe there’s some other way to pay for what I did.’ Marlee wondered if her words had any meaning. They felt light and false, but true at the same time.
Good Little Liars Page 29