Cecilia looked for Isabel on the Year 6 balcony and saw her standing in between her best friends, Marie and Laura. The three girls had their arms slung around one another, indicating that their tumultuous three-way relationship was currently at a high point, where nobody was being ganged up on by the other two and their love for one another was pure and intense. It was lucky that there was no school for the next four days, because their intense times were inevitably followed by tears and betrayal and long, exhausting stories of she said, she texted, she posted and I said, I texted, I posted.
One of the mothers discreetly passed around a basket of Belgian chocolate balls, and there were moans of drunken, sensual pleasure.
I’m a murderer’s wife, thought Cecilia while Belgian chocolate melted in her mouth. I’m an accessory to murder, she thought as she set up playdates and pickups and Tupperware parties, as she scheduled and organized and set things in action. I’m Cecilia Fitzpatrick, and my husband is a murderer, and look at me, talking and chatting and laughing and hugging my kids. You’d never know.
This was how it could be done. This was how you lived with a terrible secret. You just did it. You pretended everything was fine. You ignored the deep, cramplike pain in your stomach. You somehow anesthetized yourself so that nothing felt that bad, but nothing felt that good either. Yesterday, she’d thrown up in the gutter and cried in the pantry, but this morning she’d woken up at six a.m. and made two lasagnas to go into the freezer, ready for Easter Sunday, and ironed a basket of clothes, and sent three e-mails inquiring about tennis lessons for Polly, and answered fourteen e-mails about various school matters, and put in her Tupperware order from the party the other night, and put a load of laundry on the line, all before the girls and John-Paul were out of bed. She was back on her skates, twirling expertly about the slippery surface of her life.
“Give me strength. What is that woman wearing?” said someone as the school principal appeared in the center of the yard. Trudy was wearing long rabbit ears and a fluffy tail pinned to her bottom. She looked like a motherly Playboy Bunny.
Trudy hopped to the microphone in the middle of the yard with her hands curled up in front of her like paws. The mothers rocked with fond laughter. The kids on the balconies cheered.
“Ladies and jelly beans, girls and boys!” One of Trudy’s rabbit ears slipped down over her face, and she brushed it away. “Welcome to the St. Angela’s Easter Hat Parade!”
“I love her to death,” said Mahalia, who was sitting on Cecilia’s right. “But it really is hard to believe she runs a school.”
“Trudy doesn’t run the school,” said Laura Marks, who was sitting on her other side. “Rachel Crowley runs the school. Together with the lovely lady on your left.” Laura Marks leaned in front of Mahalia and waggled her fingers at Cecilia.
“Now, now, you know that’s not true.” Cecilia smiled roguishly. She felt like a demented parody of herself. Surely she was overdoing it? Everything she did felt exaggerated and clownlike, but nobody seemed to notice.
The music began, pounding out through the state-of-the-art sound system that Cecilia’s highly successful art show raffle had paid for last year.
The conversation rippled around Cecilia.
“Who chose the playlist? It’s quite good.”
“I know. Makes me feel like dancing.”
“Yes, but is anybody listening to the lyrics? Do you know what this song is about?”
“Best not to.”
“My kids know them all anyway.”
The kindergarten class was first to file out, led by their teacher, the rather beautiful busty brunette Miss Parker, who had made the best use of her natural assets by dressing up in a fairy princess dress that was two sizes too small for her, and was dancing along to the music in a manner perhaps not quite befitting a kindergarten teacher. The tiny kindergarteners followed her, grinning proudly and self-consciously, carefully balancing the familiar Easter hat creations on their heads.