Page 99 of Mad Mabel

Daphne, as it turned out, was spot-on about how she did it. She’d hit him in the head with a wrought iron poker from the fireplace, then dragged him to the car to dispose of his body and saw the flat tire. That’s what gave her the idea of framing it to look like an accident. So you could say, in a way, I helped.

The fact that Tessa’s confession did nothing to quell rumors about my involvement was sad but not surprising, particularly when it became apparent that my father was the one fueling the rumors.

“Maree Stephenson told me today that I should tell Mabel to confess!” I overheard Cess saying to Ness one evening after they thought I was in bed. “Never mind that the police already have a confession. Maree said she had it on good authority that Mabel had pressured the woman into a false confession—though she was unclear on how a fifteen-year-old girl could have convinced a young woman to do this. The only thing Maree was clear on was that if the child’s own father believed she did it, it was good enough for her. Honestly, Ness, I’m understanding my sister more and more every day. If I’d been married to that man I’d have jumped off a balcony as well.”

“Why is he doing this?” Ness asked. “I know he wants the house, but putting his daughter in the line of fire is a special kind of evil.”

“The manisa special kind of evil. How he sired that darling child will forever be a mystery to me.”

But while Cess and Ness raged by night, whenever I was around, they were more measured.

“You just ignore them, Mabel,” Cess would say, when I’d report what someone had said at school that day. “It doesn’t matter a jot what anyone thinks because people are idiots and only an idiotwould care what another idiot thought of them, and you aren’t an idiot, are you, Mabel?”

“No,” I’d say, feeling like I was the one comforting her rather than the other way around. “I’m not an idiot.”

Ness was slightly more thoughtful. “People tend to go with the pack, Mabel. They believe what other people tell them rather than thinking for themselves. If they thought about it for even a second, they would realize that it is ridiculous to suggest that you would be capable of doing anything like this.”

But I wasn’t so sure. Other than Cess and Ness, possibly Christos, and of course, Daphne, no one knew me well enough to know what I was capable of. There was no one out there discounting me because no one had ever known me. The fact that no one had known me created suspicion and kept people away. And the self-perpetuating hamster wheel kept whirling.

“It’s never too late,” my mother was fond of saying when she was alive. But in a lot of scenarios, it wasn’t true. It was definitely too late for me to have the kind of life that most kids took for granted—a life with a loving family, a friend or two, a supportive community. A life of people who noticed you were there… or, dare I say it, wanted you there? It was a simple goal for most, but a lofty dream for me. And while it might have been possible at one point, it was too late now. Perhaps it had been too late from the moment I was born.

“I’m sorry,” I said to Cess and Ness one night. They’d been sitting up at the bar in the front room having a drink while I eavesdropped from the bottom step of the staircase. Cess had been smoking and raging and drinking and raging some more. Ness had mostly been placating her, but even she had raged a couple of times. It was only when Cess said, “Is this the pain of motherhood? This tiny, littlestabbing pain in the heart?” that I’d revealed myself, in my pajamas. Cess and Ness immediately slid off their barstools. “Mabel!”

“I’m sorry.” I was crying, but they weren’t sad tears. I wasn’t sure what they were.

Cess looked alarmed. “Why are you sorry, child?”

“For… the tiny, little stabbing pain in your heart.”

They exchanged a look. “Darling,” Cess said, smiling. “You’ve nothing to be sorry for. That stabbing pain is the greatest gift you’ve given us.”

I didn’t understand. “But… how is pain a gift?”

“I’m not sure either of us can properly explain it, Mabel,” Ness said. “Other than to say it’s the pain of loving and being loved. One day you’ll understand.”

Cess nodded. “All I can say is that once you’ve felt it, you’ll realize that the only thing worse than the stabbing pain is the absence of it.”

They were both emotional, so I let them hug me and I didn’t ask any more questions. But I didn’t understand it. And I didn’t share Ness’s confidence in her assertion that one day I would.

67

NOW

Italk. I talk and I talk and I talk. As Adeem and Libby listen, their faces move in the most pure and unusual ways, morphing before my very eyes from childlike youth in one breath, to wise and empathetic the next. It’s almost as though the angles of their faces become more defined with every vulnerability I reveal. There’s a magic to it—a beauty. Sometimes I wish young people knew how beautiful they were, and I’m not just talking about pretty ones. Even Adeem has a beauty to him. Even I did once, I suppose. It’s fascinating, watching people. Miraculous, really.

Adeem gets three calls from Meera over the morning and only answers one. Libby gives him a high five as he lets the second one roll over to voicemail. By the time he answers the third, the underarms of his pale blue shirt are drenched almost down to the waist.

“Time for a break,” Libby says finally. “Answer your bloody phone, Ads, you’re giving me anxiety. Elsie—cup of tea?”

Libby likes a cuppa almost as much as I do. I nod and she heads to the kitchen. She’s become very comfortable here, moving about my house, making tea, rearranging furniture as the light fades. At one point she says: “Your tea towel needs a wash. Where’s the laundry, I’ll throw it in the machine.”

I can’t decide whether I’m embarrassed that the tea towel hadn’t been washed or touched that she offered to do it. I think mostly I’m warmed through at the idea of someone being so familiar with me and my home that they are comfortable enough to suggest it.

While she makes the tea, I go outside to check the mailbox. The street is quiet, no one lurking about. I almost miss Persephone, sitting on the pavement outside my house, part hidden by the rosebushes. “What are you doing in the gutter, child?”

She doesn’t turn around. Her arms are crossed and resting over her knobbly knees. Her shins are covered in the scrapes and bruises of childhood. “You’re not selling your house,” she says. “I’m not letting you.”

At first I’m confused, but then she points to a sign—FORTHCOMING AUCTION—lying on the ground beside her. It is apparent that it’s been pulled out of the grass.