Page 111 of Mad Mabel

“Mother… fucker!” Shane shouts, dropping Persephone. She lands hard on the ground, then scrambles toward me. “You little bitch. Did you just bite me?”

He pushes back his sleeve and even in the darkness I see the child-size ring of teeth marks on his arm. I see the look on Shane’s face before Persephone does. He lifts the gun and points it at her head. I start to run.

Roxanne screams, a sound that rips through the night. Nugget barks madly. Persephone covers her head with her hands.

I lunge.

The gun goes off.

Instinct. That’s what it is. It’s instinct to leap in front of the child. Instinct, but also a choice. It’s one of the easiest, best choices I’ve ever made. How lucky I am, to be able to choose.

Even before everything goes black, I feel lucky. Because when I go, it’s with my dog barking madly in the background, and the people who love me calling my name—Joan. Roxanne. Peter. And Persephone. My darling Persephone.

78

ELSIE: “Three months after I entered the mental institution, I gave birth to a son. A lot of people worked hard to keep this out of the media. Imprisoning a child looked bad enough. But as hated as I was, it was a worse look to have a child give birth while imprisoned.

“I was taken to a hospital to deliver, and my labor was spent in a room with a warm but no-nonsense nurse called Maureen, who gave me ice chips and called me ‘pet.’ No one else was allowed in the room, but the nurse told me Ness was waiting downstairs, and I drew enormous strength from that.

“A doctor came in to deliver the baby, and though it took over an hour of pushing to get the baby out, he never addressed me directly once.

“I didn’t hold my son after he was born. I think I could have if I’d wanted to, but I didn’t see the point since I knew what was coming.Perhaps I should have? Still, I felt the little stabbing pains in my heart the moment I first heard him cry.

“Afterward, I listened to the chatter of the doctor and nurse as they checked him over, then a different nurse came into the room and took him away. I let my nurse hold me while I cried, and I nodded when she asked if I would like an ice cream. I was fifteen years old.

“After five years at the institution, I was released into the community. I studied to be a librarian and got a job at the State Library.”

LIBBY: “Did you ever see Ness again?”

“I did. She moved to North Melbourne after Cess died, and started a home that assisted war widows and unwed mothers and their children. I’d never seen her more fulfilled than when she was working at that home. She was beloved by the children and mothers alike. I worked there while I was studying to become a librarian.”

ADEEM: “That must have been rewarding, working with babies?”

“It was, in its way. I was grateful for the work, of course, and grateful to earn money and have a place in the world again. But it wasn’t the babies that made me tick. I’m not maternal, not in the way some women are. I kept my distance from the babies, mostly. Except for one child.”

LIBBY: “Oh? Why was that?”

“There was a little boy I kept coming back to see, a boy who Ness adopted as a newborn. He was a sweet, quiet boy with dark hair like his Greek father’s, and already tall for his age. Even after I finished my studies, even after I’d moved in to my own tiny cottage on Kenny Lane. I found reasons to visit, to sit with him, to readto him. He’d been placed for adoption, the file said, by a teenage mother who had given birth in a psychiatric facility.”

[Off camera, a gasp can be heard.]

“A little boy called Peter.”

79

ROSEHILL, THE ESTATE OF MABEL WALLER, HAS A NEW OWNER

After sixty-seven years, Rosehill, the estate of infamous Mad Mabel Waller, has a new owner.

The fate of the property—which has been home to several notable figures, including a former prime minister of Australia, and which became infamous after the murder of Waller’s father and aunt—has been hotly debated for many years now, with some believing it would be donated to the council, and others suggesting it would be sold to developers upon the death of the current owner. Waller herself was precluded from inheriting the property due to the Forfeiture Rule, which prevents those who have unlawfully killed another person from benefiting under the deceased person’s will, but in a loophole it appears Waller retained the ability to pass along the property to her children.

Before the late Ms. Waller’s death she had identified a biological son—whom she gave birth to while serving time in a psychiatric facility and had given up for adoption—as the next in line to inherit the estate. The property is believed to be worth in excess of twenty million Australian dollars.

A second series ofMagnificent Mabelis currently in production by duo AdLib, and is described as a celebration of the life of Ms. Waller and will include testimony from several of her former Kenny Lane neighbors.

Waller, who had been interviewed in regard to the suspicious death of her neighbor, was this week exonerated after the toxicology report revealed that the neighbor’s death was a result of a lethal vitamin overdose.

80