‘I can see your dilemma,’ Bronnie says, her face full of sympathy.
‘So that’s it?’ Elise says. ‘That’s the whole truth?’
‘That’s the truth,’ I say.
‘I can see how it all could have happened,’ Carolyn says, ‘and I can also see how the other students could believe Ruby would have done the pushing.’
Even at her most compassionate, Carolyn can’t resist the dig. I wish all the mums could have seen Ruby during those nights after Vee died, when she was sobbing and terrified. They have no idea what it’s like to hold and comfort their children night after night, and then day after day, as the rumors swirled. They’ve never had to flee a country only to find themselves in a new pit of vipers.
It’s so easy to sit in judgment when your daughter is the one getting the parts, not the one coveting them; when your daughter hasn’t had her beloved grandfather die at the same time she watched her mother battle cancer; when their children haven’t been through what Ruby has or seen what she has. And sure, they don’t know everything she’s done, but I don’t know everything about them or their daughters, and I’m okay with that. I’m not going to paw through their garbage or fuck their husbands to find out. There are lines I won’t cross, ever. Can they say the same? One of them might have tried to kill a child. My child.
I have to save Ruby. No matter what. It’s what Ruby and I always say to each other, but they’re not just words. We’ve lived it. She knows I’ll always be there for her, no matter what. I’ve proven it. She’s proven the same.
This is the story she wanted me to tell. These are the lies that will hopefully keep her alive. So why do I still feel so guilty?
It’s just how moms are, I guess.
I use a cocktail napkin to blot my eye makeup. It’s exhausting, crying in front of these bitches.
‘Has anyone from that story shown up in London?’ Elise asks, always the first to return to the business at hand. But right now, I don’t mind. At least she’s searching for other suspects instead of accusing Ruby again.
That means she bought what I was selling.
For the first time that night, I want to smile. But instead, I shake my head. ‘Vee’s parents are still in LA and, as far as I know, they believed the results of the investigation that ruled it an accident. Vee wasn’t well-liked at the school. Ruby was her only friend. I can’t come up with anyone who’d want to get revenge on her behalf.’
‘Seems like we’re back at square one,’ Elise says. ‘Unless we think Imogen is behind everything. Do we think that?’
Carolyn raises a hand. Bronnie and Elise look dubious. So basically, I’ve got nothing.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ I say. ‘When Ruby gets out of the hospital, do I bring her back to the school, the scene of the crime? Will any of your girls treat her with kindness or will they avoid her? Will they smile in her face and eviscerate her on Snapchat? Whatever happens, she’ll be on the outside, because tomorrow everyone’s getting their photos taken for the show’s program, and she’ll still be locked in a psychiatric ward—’
‘That’s it,’ Bronnie cuts in. ‘I know where I saw Imogen’s tattoo.’
8
Picture Perfect
Clare Mackintosh
ELISE
‘Holy crap, Bronnie, what the hell do you have in here?’ Kendall helps Bronnie pull the large trunk from beneath the window of her kitchen, where it acts as a table between two shabby armchairs, threadbare on the arms. We drag chairs from the scrubbed pine table and sit in a circle around the trunk, and I’m reminded of being at school, of the arrival of a package from overseas parents and the reverence with which each treat would be lifted and unwrapped. Chocolate, new clothes, cans of drink . . . exotic sweets with foreign names, to be passed around after lights out to salve the pangs of homesickness. We’ve all cancelled our plans for today, following Bronnie’s revelation, which she flatly refused to act on last night.
‘Carl will be asleep— he has to be up in the morning.’
God forbid Bronnie’s husband doesn’t get his beauty sleep . . . And so here we all are, at a sodding tea party, sifting through junk in the hope of finding out where Bronnie has seen Imogen’s tattoo before.
Carolyn lifts the lid. ‘What hasn’t she got in here, you mean,’ she says with a low whistle. The trunk is large and battered, with tatty remnants of the leather straps that would once have been buckled tight around it. The corners are dented, and every surface is peppered with stickers, from holiday destinations and anti-fracking declarations to Disney characters and easy-peel satsuma labels. I imagine Bel or one of Bronnie’s boys taking a piece of fruit from the bowl and absentmindedly scraping the sticker off, pressing it onto the trunk. I wonder if Bronnie doesn’t notice or simply doesn’t care. Her kitchen is large—originally two rooms, judging by the beam that runs above our heads, and filled with color. A dresser groans with china, much of it hand-fired and painted by toddlers, and every wall is covered in postcards, photographs, and framed certificates for everything from university degrees to twenty-five-meter swimming.
‘It’s my keepsake box,’ Bronnie says. There’s a defensive edge to her voice, but as she looks down, her eyes are soft. It’s a mess, I think, but something stops me from saying it. At some point the trunk had sections—you can see the runners where boards would have been inserted to partition it into thirds—but now the contents are free to roam where they please. A pile of papers slides in among bits of plastic—toys from McDonald’s Happy Meals and 3-D glasses from cinema films. Newspaper cuttings crumple against photographs, against leaflets from National Trust houses and steam train days out. Perished rubber bands poke from between tin foil packages and stack upon stack of gift tags from birthdays and Christmases past. It looks like the contents of a recycling box.
‘And this is where you think you saw the tattoo?’ I say, my heart sinking at the scale of the task before us. This trunk—this box of landfill—is not what I imagined when Bronnie said she knew where she’d seen Imogen Curwood’s tattoo. This is not what I envisaged when, infected by Bronnie’s excitement, we raced to her house, interrogating her on the way.
‘I don’t know!’ she said in the end, exasperated by our questions about whether the tattoo was exactly the same or just similar; in a photograph or described; on a real person or a character or . . . ‘I just know it’s somewhere in the trunk in my kitchen.’ I had thought the offer of tea when we arrived redundant—we surely wouldn’t be here long enough to drink it—but as I look at the heap of stuff in front of us, I’m glad of the pot of Earl Grey, peeking out from its knitted cozy, and of the plate of homemade scones Bronnie produced from an old tin that once held Christmas chocolates.
‘It was in a photograph, I think,’ Bronnie says. She doesn’t sound convinced. We’re all still staring at the pile of memories, not knowing where to start. At least, three of us are. Kendall is somewhere else, her eyes haunted with everything that’s happened. An unfamiliar feeling tugs at my insides. I feel sorry for her, I realize, in spite of the lies she’s told.
I wonder what else she’s kept from us. I wonder what secrets the others have—nothing would surprise me now. This room is filled with hidden truths. Carolyn knows something’s up with the school records, and Kendall knows Bronnie has access to the computer system, but only I know why those two facts might be significant. Did Bronnie create records for students that don’t exist? Is it down to her that Imogen Curwood hasn’t been enrolled?
‘It was definitely a theater show.’ Bronnie hesitates. ‘Or TV. Or I guess it could have been a film . . . but definitely an actress.’ An actress—you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you? Butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth Bronnie Richardson . . . could she really be a fraudster? And if so, for what purpose? Unless she gets a raise if there are more students . . . but that wouldn’t make sense. I wonder if Racki knows, if they’re working together, even.
‘Come on.’ Carolyn rolls up her sleeves.
�
�Is there any kind of filing system?’ I say hopefully. Carolyn snorts. I sigh. ‘Let’s get started, then.’ We dive in, each picking out items and putting on the kitchen table anything that might help us with our search. Theater programs, old copies of The Stage, newspaper clippings, cinema tickets stapled to their magazine reviews. Everything else, we leave on the floor. The kitchen looks like a beach after a storm, flotsam thrown up by the waves and caught by the shore. I pick up a small wooden fork. ‘Why?’ I ask Bronnie.
She smiles shyly. ‘Whitstable, May 2005. Bel was four. It was the first time she’d seen the sea. We drank lemonade and ate fish and chips on the beach, and the kids fell over in the surf and got soaked through.’
I look at the others, expecting to see rolled eyes, but I’ve misjudged it.
‘You can’t beat chips on the beach,’ Carolyn says.
‘What a lovely memory.’ Kendall’s eyes glisten, and it’s clear she’s thinking of Ruby, of her own family holidays.
‘She’ll be okay,’ Bronnie says softly. Kendall nods, and swallows hard.
The smirk on my lips dies. I imagine eating fish and chips on the beach with Nick and Sadie instead of retreating to our rooms with a plate of food Yuliya’s left in the fridge. Maybe I’ll suggest it when Nick gets back from Glasgow. I can almost see the confusion on his face. Why would we do that, Elise?
I imagine taking lemonade on a picnic, instead of gin-in-a-tin. I imagine getting a buzz from the beach, instead of from pills. Shame washes over me as I think of Sadie taking the blame, hiding the dirty secret I thought I hid so well.
‘How long have you known?’ I asked Sadie. Bronnie had left, and Sadie was home from school, and I knew I couldn’t leave it a moment longer. I had trembled as I waited for her key in the lock, and it took all my reserves not to reach for something to counterbalance the adrenaline.
‘Like . . . always, I guess.’ Sadie was tearful, suddenly younger than her years. No—I stopped myself. Suddenly the age she really is. A teenager. Not the adult Nick and I made her be, with our laissez-faire attitude to bedtimes and TV and alcohol. Sadie had to be an adult, I realize now. One of us had to be.
‘I’m going to stop,’ I told Sadie.
And I know I can. I’ll approach it like any other challenge: with timelines and objectives and project plans. Operation Clean-and-Sober Elise starts now. I haven’t yet done anything with the leaflet Bronnie gave me—the first step is admitting you have a problem—but I will.
I pull myself back to the present and pick up a receipt. I show it to Bronnie, who thinks for a second.
‘July 2015,’ she concludes. ‘Jon’s graduation. We’d hired his gown and mortarboard but when we went to pick it up they mixed up the order and handed him a choir boy outfit instead. We only realized when we got to the college and he went to get changed.’
We all laugh, and suddenly, instead of being frustrated by the time this is taking—by the time I’m spending away from the office, and by the inadequacies of caffeine without an accompanying Xanax—I feel a surge of warmth. I’m not good at friendships—not like Sadie is. I say the wrong thing, try to be helpful but end up offending. So I don’t tend to bother. I tell myself I don’t need friends. I have Nick, and Sadie, and colleagues who know exactly where I’m coming from—who don’t take offense when I’m blunt about their work. But this . . . this is nice. I take a bite of scone, spread with Bronnie’s homemade jam.
I’m finding it hard to reconcile this woman who bakes and crafts and keeps a trunk filled with family memories with a woman who might have created records for students that don’t exist. A sudden thought strikes me that Adam Racki might have forced her to do it. But I picture him in his black roll-neck sweaters, and the scarves that only just stop short of being foppish, and the idea is laughable. Adam Racki couldn’t force his way out of a paper bag.
I sift through a pile of finger paintings, and put them on the floor. ‘You know, you could scan most of this.’ I pull out my phone. ‘Look, there’s an app for it.’ I swipe through Sadie’s nursery efforts. ‘It’s filed in date order, or you can use themes—nature, family, craft activities, and so on. Then there’s no need to keep the originals.’
‘I don’t think . . .’
‘It’s easy, I promise. I’ll send you a link.’ I feel that warm glow again, in spite of everything. This is what friends do, isn’t it? They help each other out. Bronnie’s probably a bit daunted by the idea of digital life, but once she gets the hang of it, she won’t look back.
Friends. Can you be friends with someone you know is lying? Here we all are, sitting like best buddies in Bronnie’s cozy kitchen, all with secrets to hide. All pretending, all acting. How long before someone cracks?
‘I declutter twice a year,’ Kendall says as she pulls out a signed T-shirt and refolds it like she works at GAP. I peeked into her wardrobe in Pacific Palisades, when Greg went to use the bathroom. Every garment was color-coded, the rail like a graduated paint chart. At the bottom, racks of shoes slid silently out for inspection.
‘I was holding on to a lot of negative energy,’ she says. ‘Decluttering makes me look forward, not back.’ I think of the self-help books on Kendall’s Californian shelves; no doubt there is a whole section devoted to tidy house, tidy mind . . . Thinking of Kendall’s house brings a flush to my face and I root around in the trunk to hide it. I broke the rules by sleeping with Greg. No photos, no personal details, no follow-ups. No friends’ husbands.
‘How about you, Carolyn?’ Kendall asks. ‘Are you a hoarder?’
Every time I look at Kendall I feel an unfamiliar stab of guilt. I was on a secret mission, I remind myself. I bet James Bond isn’t troubled by remorse. But nevertheless, the memory of Greg’s skin on mine lodges uncomfortably inside me, like indigestion or a splinter.
‘My office is packed to the gunwales,’ Carolyn says. ‘But that’s less about hoarding and more about just not throwing anything out.’ While the rest of us have been sifting through the trunk (and, incidentally, leaving it in significantly better shape for Bronnie), Carolyn has been reading the huge array of theater programs that now litter the kitchen table. I’m not even convinced she’s looking for the tattoo picture. ‘I keep thinking I should have a clear-out, but there’s always something more important to do. Ah! I think I saw this production of Annie!’ She flicks through the program, then gives a bark of laughter. ‘I definitely did. I remember thinking the orphans weren’t exactly starving.’ She points to a photograph of a fat kid leaning on a mop, a mournful expression on her chubby face. We all laugh.
‘Christmas 2010,’ Bronnie says. ‘I wasn’t working then, and Carl put all his loose change in a big pickle jar at the end of each day, so we had enough for the tickets. We didn’t tell the children till we were on the way to the theater—you should have seen their faces!’
‘You have such a great family,’ Kendall says. Her eyes are shining and there’s a tremor in her voice. She squeezes Bronnie’s arm. I think of the casual way Nick and I book tickets for La Traviata or Hamlet or Death of a Salesman, and of the numerous times we’ve had to cancel because of work, and have left the tickets unused. I think of Bronnie, working part-time at the school, full-time as a mum to Bel and her brothers.
‘You really do,’ I say softly, and Bronnie looks up in surprise. Of all the mothers, Bronnie and I have the least in common, and because of that, I’ve never taken time to get to know her. But I wonder now if Bronnie might be just as driven as I am. She just happens to be headed in a different direction. I survey her for a second while I make up my mind. Do I want to do this? Do I want to risk blowing everything apart, just when we’re all getting along?
‘Your job at the Academy must have made things easier on the money front,’ I say. I guess I’m doing it. I feel Carolyn’s eyes on me, curious at my change in tone, and I see a nervousness creep over Bronnie’s face.
‘Y-yes.’ Bronnie reaches for something—anything—from the trunk. ‘I think this is from—’ But I’m not
letting her off that easily. ‘Although I can’t imagine part-time wardrobe mistress jobs are especially well paid. Unless, of course, you bolt on a few . . . extras?’ I take a punt, implying I know more than I do. ‘Creating student records, for example . . .’
I should be getting a surge of adrenaline from the game-playing, but something’s missing. It feels like I’m acting, and my heart isn’t in it. I tell myself I’m missing the edge I get from pills, but it isn’t that.
It’s Bronnie’s face.
My instincts were right, but Bronnie isn’t defensive or angry. She’s hurt. And it doesn’t feel like a game anymore but like a wolf rounding on a deer. It feels unfair. It feels like bullying.
I drop the pseudo-innocent tone. ‘You created fake student records, didn’t you?’
Bronnie crumples like she’s screwed-up paper, covering her face with her hands and sobbing noisily. Kendall instantly moves to her side, rubbing Bronnie’s back.
‘What are you talking about? What student records?’
‘Ah!’ Carolyn is quick on the uptake. ‘There are more students on paper than there are in the school,’ she says succinctly. ‘And I’m guessing our Bronnie created them.’
‘What? Why?’ Kendall stops rubbing Bronnie’s back. We wait for Bronnie to get her choking sobs under control.
‘The . . . school . . . gets . . . grants . . .’ Bronnie starts. She pauses, taking a long, juddery breath before continuing, calmer now. ‘Based on the number of students on the books.’
‘And you pocketed the extra cash?’ Carolyn said. Bronnie’s head jerks upward.
‘No! I would never do that!’ She looks wildly around the room. ‘I never took a penny. It all went to the school. You know what a terrible state the building’s in, and we simply don’t make enough to cover the outgoings. Adam said it wasn’t hurting anyone—it was Arts Council money, being used for the arts . . . he said the school would close without it.’
The Understudy Page 22