The Husband's Secret (14 page)

There was the gay thing again.

But his brother had been joking.

An unexplained suicide attempt in his teenage years, and now, all these years later, he was crying in the shower.

‘Sometimes grown-ups have big things on their mind,’ said Cecilia carefully to Esther. Obviously her first responsibility was to make sure that Esther wasn’t concerned. ‘So I’m sure Daddy was just –’

‘Hey, Mum, can I please get this book on Amazon about the Berlin Wall for Christmas?’ asked Esther. ‘Do you want me to order it now? All the reviews are five stars!’

‘No,’ said Cecilia. ‘You can borrow it from the library.’

God willing, they’d have escaped from Berlin by Christmas.

She turned into the parking lot underneath the speech therapist’s office, wound down the window and pressed the button on the intercom.

‘Can I help you?’

‘We’re here to see Caroline Otto,’ she said. Even when she talked to the receptionist she rounded her vowels.

As she parked the car, she considered each new fact.

John-Paul giving Isabel strange, ‘sad, angry’ looks.

John-Paul crying in the shower.

John-Paul losing interest in sex.

John-Paul lying about something.

It was all so strange and worrying, but there was something beneath it all that was not actually unpleasant, that was in fact giving her a mild sense of anticipation.

She turned off the ignition, pulled on the handbrake and undid her seatbelt.

‘Let’s go,’ she said to Esther, and opened the car door. She knew what was giving her that little blip of pleasure. It was because she’d made a decision. Something was clearly not right. She had a moral obligation to do something immoral. It was the lesser of two evils. She was justified.

As soon as the girls were in bed tonight, she would do what she’d wanted to do from the very beginning. She was going to open that goddamned letter.

chapter nine

There was a knock at the door.

‘Ignore it.’ Tess’s mother didn’t look up from her book.

Tess, Liam and her mother were sitting in separate armchairs in her mother’s front room, reading their books with small bowls full of chocolate raisins resting on their laps. It had been one of Tess’s daily routines as a child: eating chocolate raisins and reading with her mother. They always did star jumps afterward to counteract the chocolate.

‘It might be Dad.’ Liam put his book down. Tess was surprised at how readily he’d agreed to sit and read. It must have been the chocolate raisins. She could never get him to do his reading for school.

And now, bizarrely, he was starting at a new school. Just like that.
Tomorrow
. It was disconcerting the way that peculiar woman had convinced him to start the very next day, with the promise of an Easter egg hunt.

‘You spoke to your dad in Melbourne just a few hours ago,’ she reminded Liam, keeping her voice neutral. He and Will had talked for twenty minutes. ‘I’ll talk to Daddy later,’ Tess had said when Liam had held out the phone. She’d already spoken to Will once that morning. Nothing had changed.
She didn’t want to hear his awful serious new voice again. And what could she say? Mention that she’d run into an ex-boyfriend at St Angela’s? Ask if he was jealous?

Connor Whitby. It must have been over fifteen years since she’d seen him. They’d gone out for less than a year. She hadn’t even recognised him when he’d walked into the office. He’d lost all his hair and seemed a much bigger, broader version of the man she remembered. The whole thing had been so awkward. Bad enough that she was sitting across the desk from a woman whose daughter had been murdered.

‘Maybe Daddy got on a plane to surprise us,’ said Liam.

There was a rap on the window right near Tess’s head. ‘I know you’re all in there!’ said a voice.

‘For God’s sake.’ Tess’s mother closed her book with a snap.

Tess turned and saw her aunt’s face pressed flat against the window, her hands cupped around her eyes so she could peer inside.

‘Mary, I
told
you not to come over!’ Lucy’s voice rocketed up several octaves. She always sounded forty years younger when she spoke to her twin sister.

‘Open the door!’ Auntie Mary rapped again on the glass. ‘I need to talk to Tess!’

‘Tess doesn’t want to talk to you!’ Lucy lifted her crutch and jabbed it in the air in Mary’s direction.

‘Mum,’ said Tess.

‘She’s my niece! I have rights!’ Auntie Mary tried to wrench the wooden window frame up.

‘She has
rights
,’ snorted Tess’s mother. ‘What a load of –’

‘But why can’t she come in?’ Liam’s brow knitted.

Tess and her mother looked at each other. They’d been so careful about what they said in front of Liam.

‘Of course she can come in.’ Tess put her book to one side. ‘Grandma was just teasing.’

‘Yes, Liam, just a silly game!’ cooed Lucy.

‘Lucy, let me in! I genuinely feel faint!’ shouted Auntie Mary. ‘I’m going to faint on your precious gardenias!’

‘Such a funny game!’ Lucy chuckled insanely. It reminded Tess of the ineffectual job she used to do of perpetuating the Santa Claus myth. She was the worst liar on the planet.

‘Go let them in,’ Tess said to Liam. She turned to Auntie Mary at the window and pointed towards the front door. ‘We’re coming.’

Auntie Mary crashed off through the garden. ‘Oops-a-
daisy.’

‘I’ll give you oops-a-bloody-daisy,’ muttered Lucy.

Tess felt a sharp sense of loss at the thought that she wouldn’t be able to share this story about their mothers with Felicity. It was like the real Felicity had vanished along with her old fat body. Did she exist anymore? Had she ever existed?

‘
Darling
,’ said Mary when Tess got to the door. ‘And Liam! You’ve grown again! How does that keep happening?’

‘Hi Uncle Phil.’ Tess went to brush cheeks with her uncle, but to her surprise he suddenly pulled her to him in an awkward hug. He said quietly into her ear, ‘I am deeply ashamed of my daughter.’

Then he straightened and said, ‘I’ll keep Liam company while you girls talk.’

With Liam and Uncle Phil safely stashed in front of the television, Mary, Lucy and Tess sat at the kitchen table drinking tea.

‘I made it very clear that you weren’t to show up here,’ said Tess’s mother, who wasn’t so cranky with her sister that she would forgo her extremely good chocolate brownies.

Mary rolled her eyes, settled her elbows on the table and pressed Tess’s hand between her warm, plump little palms. ‘Sweetheart, I’m so sorry this has happened to you.’

‘This isn’t something that just
happened
to her,’ exploded Lucy.

‘The point is that I don’t think Felicity really did have a choice,’ said Mary.

‘Oh! I didn’t realise! Poor Felicity! Someone put a gun to her head, did they?’ Lucy put a pretend gun to her own head. Tess wondered when her mother had last had her blood pressure checked.

Mary resolutely ignored her sister and directed her conversation at Tess. ‘Sweetheart, you
know
Felicity would never have chosen for this to happen. This is torture for her.
Torture
.’

‘Is this a joke?’ Lucy took a savage bite of brownie. ‘Do you seriously expect Tess to feel sorry for Felicity?’

‘I just hope you can find it in your heart to forgive her.’ Mary was doing a wonderful job of pretending that Lucy wasn’t there.

‘Okay, that’s enough,’ said Lucy. ‘I don’t want to hear another word come out of your mouth.’

‘Lucy, sometimes love just strikes!’ Mary finally acknowledged her sister. ‘It just happens! Out of the blue!’

Tess stared into her teacup and swirled it around. Was this actually out of the blue? Or had it always been there, right in front of her eyes? Felicity and Will had got on famously from the moment they’d met. ‘Your cousin is a riot,’ Will had said to Tess after the three of them had been out to dinner for the first time. Tess had taken it as a compliment, because Felicity was part of her. Her sparkling company was something Tess had to offer. And the fact that Will properly appreciated Felicity (not all her previous boyfriends had, some had actively disliked her) had been a huge mark in his favour.

Felicity had taken an instant liking to Will too. ‘You can marry this one,’ she’d said to Tess the next day. ‘He’s the one. I have spoken.’

Did Felicity already have a crush on Will back then? Was this inevitable? Foreseeable?

Tess remembered the euphoria she’d felt that day after she’d introduced Will and Felicity. It had felt like she’d reached a glorious destination, a mountaintop. ‘He’s perfect, isn’t he?’ she’d said to Felicity. ‘He gets us. He’s the first one who really gets us.’

Gets
us
. Not gets
me.

Her mother and aunt were still talking, oblivious to the fact that Tess wasn’t contributing a word.

Lucy had slapped her hand over her eyes. ‘This isn’t some wonderful love story, Mary!’ She removed her hand and shook her head in disgust at her sister as if she was the worst kind of criminal. ‘What’s wrong with you? Truly, what’s wrong with you? Tess and Will are married. And have you forgotten there is an actual real child involved? My grandson?’

‘But you see they’re just so desperate to somehow make it right,’ said Mary to Tess. ‘They both love you so much.’

‘That’s nice,’ said Tess.

Over the last ten years Will had never once complained about the fact that Felicity spent so much time with them. Perhaps that had been a sign. A sign that Tess wasn’t enough for him. What ordinary husband would be prepared to have his wife’s fat cousin come along on their annual summer holiday? Unless he was in love with her. Tess was a fool not to have seen it. She’d enjoyed watching Will and Felicity banter and argue and tease each other. She’d never felt excluded. Everything was better, sharper, funnier, edgier when Felicity was around. Tess felt like she was more herself when Felicity was around, because Felicity knew her better than anyone. Felicity let Tess shine. Felicity laughed the loudest at Tess’s jokes. She helped define and shape Tess’s personality, so that Will could see Tess as she truly was.

And Tess felt prettier when Felicity was around.

She pressed cold fingertips to her burning cheeks. It was shameful but true. She had never felt repelled by Felicity’s obesity, but she had felt particularly slim and lithe when she stood next to her.

And yet nothing had changed in Tess’s mind when Felicity had lost weight. It had not occurred to her that Will would ever look at Felicity in a sexual way. She had been so sure of her position in their strange little threesome. Tess was at the apex of the triangle. Will loved her best. Felicity loved her best. How very self-centred of her.

‘Tess?’ said Mary.

Tess put her hand on her aunt’s arm. ‘Let’s talk about something else.’

Two fat tears slid snail paths down Mary’s pink, powdery cheeks. Mary dabbed at her face with a crumpled tissue. ‘Phil didn’t want me to come. He said I’d do more harm than good, but I just thought I could find a way to make it all right. I spent all morning looking at photos of you and Felicity when you were growing up. The fun you two had together! That’s the worst of this. I can’t bear it if you become estranged from each other.’

Tess patted her aunt’s arm. Her own eyes felt dry and clear. Her heart was clenched like a fist.

‘I think you might have to bear it,’ she said.

chapter ten

‘You’re not seriously expecting me to come to a Tupperware party,’ Rachel had said to Marla when she’d asked her a few weeks back while they were having coffee.

‘You’re my best friend.’ Marla stirred sugar into her soy decaf cappuccino.

‘My daughter was murdered,’ said Rachel. ‘That gives me a permanent “get out of party” card for the rest of my life.’

Marla raised her eyebrows. She’d always had particularly eloquent eyebrows.

Marla had the right to raise her eyebrows. Ed had been in Adelaide for work (Ed was always away for work) when the two policemen turned up at Rachel’s door. Marla came with Rachel to the morgue and was standing right next to her when they lifted that ordinary white bedsheet to reveal Janie’s face. Marla was ready the moment Rachel’s legs gave way, and she caught her instantly, expertly, one hand cupping her elbow, the other grabbing her upper arm. She was a midwife. She’d had a lot of practice catching burly husbands just before they hit the floor.

‘Sorry,’ said Rachel.

‘Janie would have come to my party,’ said Marla. Her eyes filled. ‘Janie loved me.’

It was true. Janie had adored Marla. She was always telling Rachel to dress more like Marla. And then, of course, on the one occasion Rachel had worn a dress that Marla had helped her buy, look what had happened.

‘I wonder if Janie would have liked Tupperware parties,’ said Rachel as she watched a middle-aged woman arguing with her primary schooler at the table next to them. She tried, and failed, as she always did, to imagine Janie as a forty-five-year-old woman. She sometimes ran into Janie’s old friends in the shops and it was always such a shock to see their seventeen-year-old selves emerge from those puffy, generic middle-aged faces. Rachel had to stop herself from exclaiming, ‘Good Lord, darling, look how
old
you’ve got!’ in the same way that you said, ‘Look how tall you’ve grown!’ to children.

‘I remember Janie was very tidy,’ said Marla. ‘She liked to be organised. I bet she would have been right into Tupperware.’

The wonderful thing about Marla was that she understood Rachel’s desire to talk endlessly about the sort of adult that Janie might have become, to wonder how many children she would have had, and the sort of man she would have married. It kept her alive, for just those few moments. Ed had hated these hypothetical conversations so much, he’d leave the room. He couldn’t understand Rachel’s need to wonder what could have been, rather than just accepting that it never would be. ‘Excuse me, I was
talking
!’ Rachel would yell after him.

‘Please come to my Tupperware party,’ said Marla.

‘All right,’ said Rachel. ‘But just so you know, I’m not buying anything.’