Good Little Liars

by Sarah Clutton

  ‘Emma! Shit!’ His erection began to wilt.

  For a flickering moment, the sight of Phillip’s failing hard-on struck Emma as both hilarious and completely mortifying for all three of them. She let out a startled choking sound. Her feet were cemented to the spot. She noticed that the scene was bathed in a beautiful incandescent glow as the sun penetrated the room’s picture windows – every single, terrible detail was awash with bright, yellow-white light.

  The scene seemed to unravel in slow motion, like a dream sequence. From somewhere, Phillip grabbed a towel. Then he hurdled over Pia, who was still squatting in the doorway.

  The room was revolving. Then finally, reality hit her with a forceful thud. Emma’s knees began to buckle. The blood in her head fell away, like a tide that had turned. She held onto the wall, teetering with sick comprehension. Phillip was coming towards her, wrapping the towel around his waist and saying something she couldn’t hear. His mouth looked strange. She needed to get out.

  Emma spun around and stumbled through the kitchen, then pushed blindly at the cottage door. She ran across the paddock, her feet still in socks, not caring about the rabbit holes or the thistles that bit at her ankles. When she’d covered the fifty metres uphill to the house she was panting. Her hand slid off the door handle as the sweat pooled in her palms. She jerked again at the door and ran down the hall towards the bathroom. Inside, she locked it behind her then clutched at the sink. A noise began rushing in her head. She felt a choking sensation, a spluttering, as she tried to calm her ragged breath. Then, as if from nowhere, wailing erupted, piercing the walls, the floors, splintering the silence of the house.

  The noise of her grief grew, taking on a life of its own. It was the sort of crying she hadn’t managed since her mother died. Another bitter betrayal that had made her surprised and stupid and had caught her unawares. She quashed the thought as she heard footsteps running down the hall.

  ‘Emma! Emma, let me in.’ Phillip was jiggling the door handle. His voice was like a jug of cold water in her face. Her sobs slowed into jagged snorting breaths. She dug her fingernails into the palm of her hand to stop them. Her face was blotchy in the mirror, stricken, strange.

  She had an unsettling desire to open the door and apologise to Phillip for embarrassing him, just as she would have if she’d interrupted him in his office on a phone call, asking him if he wanted lunch and he’d point angrily to the earbuds hidden in his ears and mouth at her indignantly – I’m on the phone! – and she’d slink away, berating herself for not paying better attention, and wondering if he’d want seeded mustard, or the smoky tomato relish with his ham sandwich, because he seemed to have changed his preferences lately and she never seemed to be able to get it right.

  But suddenly fury welled up and burned in her throat. It was unbelievable what she’d seen, and… horrible. She ignored the knocking, noticed her heart pounding, sat heavily on the rim of the bath before sliding down onto the floor and slumping against the toilet. She pulled a towel off the rail and rested her head on it. Please God, let me wake up. This day cannot be real.

  Phillip knocked again, tentatively this time.

  ‘Emma, can I come in?’

  Emma wanted to get up but it was like gravity had condensed around her. An invisible weight pushed down on her shoulders.

  ‘Go away.’ The words were raspy.

  She unrolled some toilet paper from the wall beside her and pushed it hard against her eyes. How could he be sleeping with Pia? Was she an idiot? How dare they sully her cottage! She hadn’t even had a chance to tell him about the email.

  How silly the email seemed now, and yet she felt another sob rising in her chest. She should be sharing that story with Phillip. The pain was like a tightening noose, making it hard to breathe again.

  ‘Emma? I’ll leave you alone… if that’s what you want. We can talk later.’

  After another minute she heard his footsteps walking away. A prickling rush of sadness made her shiver. How dare he leave her?

  Her mind and her stomach were spinning. Emma opened her eyes and stared at the pink art deco tiles of the old bathroom, noticed a daddy-long-legs spider and a web, high up in the corner of the ceiling above the shower. She sighed, then looked at her watch, bit her lip. She’d been in the bathroom for half an hour. She shook her head, trying to stop the awful images that seemed to have been branded into her brain. Maybe this was the end of her marriage. The idea made her chest pain spike.

  What were her options? Did he expect her to want to talk about it? To forgive what he’d done? Could she really be one of those tolerant wives who stayed for the sake of their child? Fury bubbled at the edges of her thoughts. She spat into the toilet and flushed. And then, inexplicably, she began to giggle – the strangeness of the idea that she could be the wronged party who would, from now on, have the upper hand in the relationship.

  A flicker of righteous anger gave Emma a surge of energy. Lying, cheating arse! How dare he? How dare he! She would never have believed it if she hadn’t seen it for herself. It just wasn’t… Phillip.

  She unlocked the door and poked her head out into the silence. Suddenly the shadowy high ceilings in the old farmhouse hallway took on an uneasy edge. She felt a strange disconnection from the place, as if it wasn’t really her home.

  She wondered what Phillip would say to try to justify himself. She’d always thought men who cheated were weak. Pathetic, selfish slaves to their inner caveman. Phillip knew her views on this. He’d agreed with her, hadn’t he? She distinctly remembered him agreeing with her last Saturday night during Midsomer Murders, when she’d said something mean about the wealthy playboy socialite who was having an affair with the pretty librarian. Although, Phillip was asleep on the couch for a bit of it, so maybe he hadn’t been following the plot. Then a terrible thought occurred to her. If this wasn’t his first time with Pia, it meant anything he said last Saturday didn’t count anyway. He’d been supervising Pia’s PhD for two years. What if they’d already been getting their gear off in his office at the university before he recommended her for the cleaning job? Do not think about it.

  She shuddered and pulled out an overnight case from the hall cupboard. Her head was throbbing a sick, constant beat. She would go to her dad’s place for the night. Rosie was going to her friend’s place after school for a sleepover so it wouldn’t matter. She needed time to think. It all seemed too unreal. Too ridiculous.

  She went into the bedroom and threw the suitcase onto the bed she’d made hastily that morning, ignoring the lump under Phillip’s side where he’d left the wheat bag she warmed up every night to soothe his sore neck. She tossed in a jumper, a clean pair of knickers, her pyjamas and slippers and zipped it up, then she dropped it onto the floor with a loud bang, extended the handle and pulled it down the hallway. She listened to the clatter of the wheels on Phillip’s precious polished floorboards. Hopefully they’d leave a mark.

  Two

  Harriet

  Harriet drummed her fingers noiselessly underneath the table, wondering how long she could endure Justin Broderick’s incessant nasal whine. Honestly, the man was a wind bag. She looked down at her fidgeting fingers and stilled them. Something suspiciously like a liver spot seemed to have appeared amid the fine wrinkles and veins of her right hand. She sighed with irritation and flicked her robes off her knees, readying herself to interject.

  The judge saved her the trouble. ‘Mr Broderick, I’m sure the jury understand the distinction. It’s not a difficult one. Do you have anything else, or could we perhaps finish on time today?’ Justice Sadler looked pointedly at the wall clock over the door. It was ticking around to 4.04 p.m.

  ‘Apologies, Your Honour. If Your Honour pleases, there is one further witness I was hoping to call this afternoon. Perhaps Your Honour might consider…’ He paused and raised his eyebrows at the Judge then tilted his head to one side. The courtroom remained perfectly silent as Justice Sadler returned his gaze without speaking.

  ‘No? O
f course. Well, I’m sure arrangements could be made to bring her back again on Monday, Your Honour.’

  ‘Very good, Mr Broderick. If we can move through questioning the witnesses a little faster on Monday, we should be in a position for closing statements after lunch wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Certainly, Your Honour. The Jury could expect to retire to consider its verdict well before the end of the day.’

  ‘What do you say, Ms Andrews?’

  Harriet stood as Broderick sat back down.

  ‘Yes, Your Honour. I’d say even before lunch if my learned friend can be less loquacious on the points of law that aren’t at issue.’

  ‘Quite. Well, I’ll see you back here on Monday at 10 a.m. then, Counsel,’ said the Judge.

  Harriet gathered her papers as the jury was warned about not discussing the case with anyone over the weekend. Then the court clerk’s voice boomed across the room. ‘All rise!’

  There was rustle and scrape of activity as everyone in the courtroom stood. The judge straightened up her wig, picked up her files and left through the back door. The courtroom hummed into life.

  Harriet sat back down at the bar table and pulled her phone from her jacket pocket beneath her robes. As she turned it on, half a dozen text messages flitted onto the screen. Jonathan had sent one an hour ago asking her to call when she finished in court. She wondered if it was about the drink they’d arranged to have.

  ‘Your girl’s not standing up very well. I don’t think the jury like her,’ said Broderick, after the last juror had disappeared through the jury room door. His robes fell open, revealing the strain of his generous belly against a well-cut suit. ‘Pity you didn’t take the manslaughter deal.’

  Harriet’s smile was more of a grimace. She was tired of the game. She kept her voice low so the defendant, still in the dock across the room, wouldn’t hear her. ‘It’s the cricket bat that gets me, Justin. He used his son’s Christmas present. And not just once or twice. Fourteen strikes. Was he practicing his cover drive, do you think? Or just a good hook to the boundary? It’s all there you know.’ Harriet motioned vaguely to the brief of evidence as she picked up her papers. ‘It was self-defence and you know it. I’m just surprised she didn’t kill him years ago.’ Harriet took no pleasure in her flippant response, but she couldn’t help it – thirty years at the bar did something to your soul. She picked up her folders and zipped them into her wheelie case.

  Justin Broderick was an old-fashioned chauvinist. In his world view, a bit of wife-beating was a distasteful reality of life, best left behind closed doors. Still, her client had been losing the plot on the stand today. The woman was sounding unsure of herself. Unreliable. She was in the throes of major depression and certainly wasn’t the same woman who had given her witness account to police straight after she’d fatally stabbed her husband in his sleep and then turned herself in. But Harriet wasn’t about to give Broderick the satisfaction of seeing this case had her worried yet.

  Harriet turned to the solicitor next to her. ‘Better run. Let’s meet at my office at seven-thirty on Monday morning to go through the evidence before closing statements.’ She leaned down and lowered her voice. ‘And… check on her, will you?’ Harriet motioned towards their client who sat motionless, staring down at her knees. The young man nodded fervently, making his glasses jiggle on his nose.

  Harriet walked out of the courtroom. As she crossed the foyer, she nodded farewell to the clerk behind the glass panel and caught a glimpse of her own small, black-swathed figure in the window as she waited for a large, defeated-looking woman in front of her to exit through the sliding doors. She grimaced, snatched the wig off her head and smoothed her black hair back into its chignon, aware that a firm line of grey regrowth would start to show along her part if she missed her hairdresser’s appointment again this week.

  Outside, she watched the woman grasp at the balustrade as she made her way heavily down the sandstone steps and turn right towards the enticing waterfront. The late afternoon street noises of the city centre blared and receded and the old buildings threw shadows in the deepening light. Harriet looked briefly down the street towards Salamanca Place with its fringe of pretty tourist shops and restaurants, warehouses and wharves that extended invitingly out into the freezing Southern Ocean. She turned in the opposite direction and pulled her case up towards Davey Street and walked briskly towards her chambers, tallying the list of work to be done before the weekend set in.

  It occurred to her that she hadn’t returned Ben’s call from this morning. Since his announcement six weeks ago that he wanted to separate, neither of them had come up with any sort of idea about how to proceed with dismantling things. Resting heavily between them was the problem of Scarlett. Harriet could barely imagine the tantrum that would follow if Scarlett returned from her gap year job in England to find her childhood home had been sold. Perhaps Ben had been calling about that.

  This morning, Harriet had spotted him from inside the main house as he came out from their garden flat to go for his run. She’d spent the next half hour fighting the urge to go and check the mailbox or prune the roses so she could be there at the gate when he came back, sweaty and endorphin-happy. She longed to inhale the musky scent of him. Instead she had sat back down at the table and finished a complex insurance law advice and sent four more emails.

  Her phone buzzed, jolting her back into Friday afternoon. Jon Brownley. The beautiful face of her brother on her phone screen made Harriet’s heart lift. She swiped her finger.

  ‘Jon, I was about to call you. Are we still on for that drink?’

  ‘Yes, sure, Hat, but I’m about to go into a meeting and was ringing to say I’ll be a bit late. Something urgent has come up with a couple of the Year Ten girls. Six-thirty alright instead?’

  The extra hour would give her time to send some emails.

  ‘No problem. See you then.’ She ended the call, hoping Jon wasn’t going to be faced with another student scandal. When you were in charge of a high school, problems were forever springing up without notice. Drugs, sex, social media bullying. But when it was a boarding school that housed the children of Tasmania’s oldest and wealthiest families, the newspapers loved to air details of the scandals on the front page. All those moneyed brats and their indulgent parents paying for privileges that most children couldn’t even dream of. When they messed up, it was not an event to be missed. There would be weeks of head shaking and tut-tutting about how ungrateful the children were and how unfair it was that they got so much government funding. The general public adored a private-school scandal.

  As Harriet neared her chambers, her phone began vibrating again in her hand. A photo of her youngest daughter flashed up on the screen. Harriet did a quick calculation – it was about five-thirty on Friday morning in London. Way too early for a social call from Scarlett.

  ‘Hello, darling. You’re up with the birds.’ Harriet waited for the slight delay of the overseas call to pass, but it continued.

  ‘Scarlett? Are you there?’

  ‘Hi, Mum, I’m… yeah.’

  Scarlett’s voice sounded coarse and full. There was the faintest hint that she was on the verge of tears. Harriet felt a flicker of annoyance. She wished she could be more tolerant of her daughter’s endless little problems, but Good Lord, it was hard. The traffic noise and the clicking of the light signals seemed to rise to a loud buzzing distraction. Harriet realised she was standing directly outside her accountant’s office. She hesitated, then pulled her suitcase through the rotating doorway and into the quiet sanctuary of the empty foyer. She spoke in her calmest voice.

  ‘Scarlett, what’s wrong?’

  The silence on the line continued and she prepared herself for another teenage drama. Whatever it was, she had a few minutes to sort it out. Scarlett wasn’t particularly resilient – a word that seemed to be endlessly bandied around these days in parenting conversations. She’d probably had an argument with her roommate, or another night with her asthma keeping her up.
She and Ben had sat Scarlett down before she left for her gap year and had lectured her on the importance of taking control of her asthma when they weren’t there to remind her. So far though, she’d blamed her two bad bouts on the terrible London smog. Harriet was certain she just wasn’t bothering to take her inhaler.

  ‘I’m being sent home.’ Scarlett’s words spilled out, and were promptly followed by loud sobs. ‘I’m s-sorry Mum.’ Then her voice began to rise with barely controlled hysteria. ‘I just made a stupid mistake!’

  Harriet took a moment to register the words. They were not what she’d been expecting.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Scarlett. The school can’t send you home for making a mistake at work. What do you mean?’

  She steeled herself in readiness for whatever was going to come out next. The sobbing continued, then after a while there was a loaded silence. Harriet could almost feel her daughter drawing up her reserves to force out the next words.

  ‘They found a couple of tablets in my drawer. The form master searched my room without asking. Ollie got them for a party we’re going to, and I was keeping them in my room.’

  Harriet felt an electric stab of fear. The veneer of her perfect life was coming badly unstuck. Marriage breakdown. Tick. Daughter in trouble with drugs. Tick. Now all she needed was a major health crisis or a scandal at work. Bad things always happen in threes, as her mother would so gloomily say at all appropriate opportunities.

  Harriet took a deep breath and waited. Her legal training had taught her that silence was often the fastest way to get at the truth. Plus, she needed to think.

  ‘Mum? Mum, I’m really sorry,’ said Scarlett miserably.

  Harriet felt a flame of unexpected rage.

  ‘Jonathan went out of his way to pull strings to get you that job, Scarlett! It’s one of the most prestigious schools in England. Minor royalty go there, for pity’s sake! Are you really telling me that you were idiotic enough to keep illicit drugs in the school boarding house?’