The Husband’s Secret Read online

  He owned an apricot polo shirt, and ironed it himself.

  Yes, he was probably gay.

  The hymn finished. Sister Ursula’s coffin left the church and there was a sense of a job well done as people picked up their bags and jackets and got ready to go on with their day.

  Cecilia put down her hymnbook. For heaven’s sake. Her husband was not gay. An image came to her of John-Paul marching up and down the sidelines at Isabel’s soccer match last weekend, calling out encouragement. Along with a day’s worth of silver stubble, he had two purple ballerina stickers stuck on each cheek. Polly had put them there to amuse herself. She felt a surge of love as she remembered. There was nothing effeminate about John-Paul. He was just comfortable in his own skin. He didn’t need to prove himself.

  The letter had nothing to do with the sex lull. It had nothing to do with anything. It was safely locked away in the filing cabinet in the red manila folder with the copies of their wills.

  She’d promised not to open it. So she couldn’t, and she wouldn’t.

  chapter seven

  ‘Do you know who died?’ asked Tess.

  ‘What’s that?’ Her mother had her eyes closed, her face lifted to the sun.

  They were in the St Angela’s primary school playground. Tess’s mother was in a wheelchair they’d hired from the local chemist, with her ankle propped up on the footrest. She had thought that her mother would hate being in a wheelchair but she seemed to quite enjoy it, sitting with perfect straight-backed posture, as if she were at a dinner party.

  They’d stopped for a moment in the morning sunshine while Liam explored the schoolyard. There were a few minutes to spare before they saw the school secretary to arrange Liam’s enrolment.

  Tess’s mother had arranged everything this morning. There would be no problem enrolling Liam in St Angela’s, Lucy had told Tess proudly. In fact they could do it that very day if they liked! ‘There’s no rush,’ Tess had said. ‘We don’t need to do anything until after Easter.’ She hadn’t asked her mother to ring the school. Wasn’t she entitled to do nothing but feel flabbergasted for at least twenty-four hours? Her mother was making everything seem far too real, and irrevocable, as if this nightmarish practical joke was actually happening.

  ‘I can cancel the appointment if you like,’ Lucy had said with a martyred air.

  ‘You made an appointment?’ asked Tess. ‘Without asking me?’

  ‘Well, I just thought we might as well bite the bullet.’

  ‘Fine,’ sighed Tess. ‘Let’s just do it.’

  Naturally, Lucy had insisted on coming along too. She would probably answer questions on Tess’s behalf, like she used to do when Tess was little and overcome with shyness when a stranger approached. Her mother had never really lost the habit of speaking on her behalf. It was a little embarrassing, but also quite nice and relaxing, like five-star service at a hotel. Why not sit back and let someone else do all the hard work for you?

  ‘Do you know who died?’ said Tess again.

  ‘Died?’

  ‘The funeral,’ said Tess.

  The school playground adjoined the grounds of St Angela’s Church, and Tess could see a coffin being carried out to a hearse by four young pallbearers.

  Someone’s life was over. Someone would never feel the sunshine on their face again. Tess tried to let that thought put her own pain into perspective, but it didn’t help. She wondered if Will and Felicity were having sex right at this minute, in her bed. It was midmorning. They didn’t have anywhere else to go. The thought of it felt like incest to her. Dirty and wrong. She shuddered. There was a bitter taste at the back of her throat, as if she’d had a night out drinking cheap wine. Her eyes felt gritty.

  The weather wasn’t helping. It was far too lovely, mocking her pain. Sydney was bathed in a haze of gold. The Japanese maples at the front of the school were aflame with colour; the camellia blossoms were a rich, lush crimson. There were pots of bright red, yellow, apricot and cream begonias outside the classrooms. The long sandstone lines of St Angela’s Church were sharply defined against the cobalt blue of the sky. The world is so beautiful, said Sydney to Tess. What’s your problem?

  She tried to smooth away the jagged edge of her voice. ‘You don’t know whose funeral it is?’

  She didn’t really care whose funeral it was. She just wanted to hear words; words about anything, to make those images of Will’s hands on Felicity’s newly slender white body go away. Porcelain skin. Tess’s skin was darker, a legacy from her father’s side of the family. There was a Lebanese great-grandmother who had died before Tess was born.

  Will had called her mobile that morning. She should have ignored it, but when she’d seen his name she’d felt an involuntary spark of hope and snatched up the phone. He was calling to tell her that this was all a mistake. Of course he was.

  But as soon as he spoke in that awful new, heavy, solemn voice, without a hint of laughter, the hope vanished. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked. ‘Is Liam all right?’ He was speaking as if there had been a recent tragedy in their lives that had nothing to do with him.

  She was desperate to tell the real Will what this new Will, this humourless intruder, had done; how he’d crushed her heart. The real Will would want to fix things for her. The real Will would be straight on the phone, making a complaint about the way his wife had been treated, demanding recompense. The real Will would make her a cup of tea, run her a bath and, finally, make her see the funny side of what had just happened to her.

  Except, this time, there was no funny side.

  Her mother opened her eyes and turned her head to squint up at Tess. ‘I think it must be for that dreadful little nun.’

  Tess raised her eyebrows to indicate mild shock, and her mother grinned, pleased with herself. She was so determined to make Tess happy she was like a club entertainer, frantically trying out edgy new material to keep the crowd in their seats. This morning, when she was struggling with the lid on the Vegemite jar, she’d actually used the word ‘motherfucker’, carefully sounding out the syllables, so that the word didn’t sound any more profane than ‘leprechaun’.

  Her mother had pulled out the most shocking swear word in her vocabulary because she was ablaze with anger on her behalf. Lucy saying ‘motherfucker’ was like a meek and mild law-abiding citizen suddenly transformed into a gun-wielding vigilante. That’s why she’d got on the phone to the school so fast. Tess understood. She wanted to take action, to do something, anything, on Tess’s behalf.

  ‘Which particular dreadful little nun?’

  ‘Where’s Liam?’ Her mother twisted around awkwardly in her wheelchair.

  ‘Right there,’ said Tess. Liam was wandering about, checking out the playground equipment with the jaded eye of a six-year-old expert. He hunkered down on his knees at the bottom of a big yellow funnel-shaped slide and poked his head up inside as if he was doing a safety audit.

  ‘I lost sight of him for a moment.’

  ‘You don’t have to keep him in sight all the time,’ said Tess mildly. ‘That’s sort of my job.’

  ‘Of course it is.’

  At breakfast this morning they’d both wanted to take care of each other. Tess had had the advantage because she had two working ankles and had therefore been able to get the kettle boiled and the tea made in the time it had taken her mother to reach for her crutches.

  Tess watched Liam wander over to the corner of the playground under the fig tree where she and Felicity used to sit and eat their lunch with Eloise Bungonia. Eloise had introduced them to cannelloni. (A mistake for someone with Felicity’s metabolism.) Mrs Bungonia used to send enough for the three of them. It was before childhood obesity was an issue. Tess could still taste it. Divine.

  She watched Liam become still, staring off into space as if he could see his mother eating cannelloni for the first time.

  It was disconcerting, being here at her old school, as if time was a blanket that had been folded up, so that different times were overlapping, p
ressed against each other.

  She would have to remind Felicity about Mrs Bungonia’s cannelloni.

  No. No she wouldn’t.

  Liam suddenly pivoted and karate-kicked the rubbish bin so that it clanged.

  ‘Liam,’ remonstrated Tess, but not really loud enough for him to hear.

  ‘Liam! Shhh!’ called her mother, louder, putting a finger to her lips and pointing towards the church. A small group of mourners had come out and were standing about talking to each other in that restrained, relieved way of funeral attendees.

  Liam didn’t kick the bin again. He was an obedient child. Instead he picked up a stick and held it in two hands like a machine-gun, aiming it silently around the schoolyard, while the sound of sweet little voices singing ‘Incy Wincy Spider’ floated out of one of the kindergarten classrooms. Oh, God, thought Tess, where he had learned to do that? She had to be more vigilant about those computer games, although she couldn’t help admiring the authentic way he narrowed his eyes like a soldier. She would tell Will about it later. He’d laugh.

  No, she wouldn’t tell Will about it later.

  Her brain couldn’t seem to catch up with the news. It was like the way she’d kept rolling towards Will last night in her sleep, only to find empty space where he should have been, and then waking up with a jolt. She and Will slept well together. No twitching or snoring or battling for blankets. ‘I can’t sleep properly without you now,’ Will had complained after they’d only been dating a few months. ‘You’re like a favourite pillow. I have to pack you wherever I go.’

  ‘Which particular dreadful nun died?’ Tess asked her mother again, her eyes on the mourners. Now was not the time to be pulling out old memories like that.

  ‘They weren’t all dreadful,’ reflected her mother. ‘Most of them were lovely. What about Sister Margaret Ann who came to your tenth birthday party? She was beautiful. I think your father quite fancied her.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Well, probably not.’ Her mother shrugged as if not being attracted to beautiful nuns was yet another example of her ex-husband’s failings. ‘Anyway, this must be the funeral for Sister Ursula. I read in the parish newsletter last week that she’d died. I don’t think she ever taught you, did she? Apparently she was a great one for smacking with the handle of the feather duster. Nobody uses feather dusters much these days, do they? Is the world a dustier place for it, I wonder?’

  ‘I think I remember Sister Ursula,’ said Tess. ‘Red face and caterpillar eyebrows. We used to hide from her when she was on playground duty.’

  ‘I’m not sure if there are any nuns teaching at the school any more,’ said her mother. ‘They’re a dying breed.’

  ‘Literally,’ said Tess.

  Her mother chortled. ‘Oh dear, I didn’t mean –’ She stopped, distracted by something at the church entrance. ‘Okay, darling, steel yourself. We’ve just been spotted by one of the parish ladies.’

  ‘What?’ Tess was immediately filled with a sense of dread, as if her mother had said they’d just been spotted by a passing sniper.

  A petite blonde woman had detached herself from the mourners and was briskly walking towards the schoolyard.

  ‘Cecilia Fitzpatrick,’ said her mother. ‘The eldest Bell girl. Married John-Paul, the eldest Fitzpatrick boy. The best looking one if you want my opinion, although they’re all much of a muchness. Cecilia had a younger sister, I think, who might have been in your year. Let’s see now. Bridget Bell?’

  Tess was about to say she’d never heard of them, but a memory of the Bell girls was gradually emerging in her mind like a reflection on water. She couldn’t visualise their faces, just their long blonde stringy plaits flying behind them as they ran through the school, doing whatever those kids did who were at the centre of things.

  ‘Cecilia sells Tupperware,’ said Tess’s mother. ‘Makes an absolute fortune from it.’

  ‘But she doesn’t know us, does she?’ Tess looked hopefully over her shoulder to see if there might be someone else waving back at Cecilia. There was no one. Was she on her way over to spruik Tupperware?

  ‘Cecilia knows everyone,’ said her mother.

  ‘Can’t we make a run for it?’

  ‘Too late now.’ Her mother spoke through the side of her mouth as she smiled her toothy social smile.

  ‘Lucy!’ said Cecilia as she arrived in front of them, faster than Tess had thought possible. It was like she’d teleported herself. She bent to kiss Tess’s mother. ‘What have you done to yourself?’

  Don’t you call my mother Lucy, thought Tess, taking an instant, childish dislike. Mrs O’Leary, thank you! Now that she was right in front of them, Tess remembered Cecilia’s face perfectly well. She had a small, neat head – the plaits had been replaced with one of those crisp, artful bobs – an eager, open face, a noticeable overbite, and two ridiculously huge dimples. She was like a pretty little ferret.

  (And yet she’d landed a Fitzpatrick boy.)

  ‘I saw you when I came out of the church – Sister Ursula’s funeral, did you hear she’d passed? Anyway, I caught sight of you, and I thought, That’s Lucy O’Leary in a wheelchair! What’s going on? So being the nosey parker that I am, I came over to say hello! Looks like a good-quality wheelchair, did you hire it from the chemist? But what happened, Lucy? Your ankle, is it?’

  Oh Lord. Tess could feel her entire personality being drained from her body. Those talkative, energetic people always left her feeling that way.

  ‘It’s nothing too serious, thanks Cecilia,’ said Tess’s mother. ‘Just a broken ankle.’

  ‘Oh no, but that is serious, you poor thing! How are you coping? How are you getting about? I’ll bring over a lasagne for you. No, I will. I insist. You’re not vegetarian, are you? But that’s why you’re here, I guess, is it?’ Without warning, Cecilia turned to look at Tess, who took an involuntary step backwards. What did she mean? Something to do with vegetarianism. ‘To look after your mum? I’m Cecilia by the way, if you don’t remember me!’

  ‘Cecilia, this is my daughter –’ began Tess’s mother, only to be cut off by Cecilia.

  ‘Of course. Tess, isn’t it?’ Cecilia turned and to Tess’s surprise held out her hand to shake in a businesslike way. Tess had been thinking of Cecilia as someone from her mother’s era, an old-fashioned Catholic lady who used Catholic words like ‘passed’ and would therefore stand back smiling sweetly while the men did the manly business of shaking hands. Her hand was small and dry, her grip strong.

  ‘And this must be your son?’ Cecilia smiled brightly in Liam’s direction. ‘Liam?’

  Jesus. She even knew Liam’s name. How was that possible? Tess didn’t even know if Cecilia had children. She’d forgotten her very existence until thirty seconds ago.

  Liam looked over, aimed his stick straight at Cecilia and pulled the imaginary trigger.

  ‘Liam!’ said Tess, at the same time as Cecilia groaned, clutched her chest and buckled at the knees. She did it so well, for an awful moment Tess worried that she really was collapsing.

  Liam held the stick up to his mouth, blew on it and grinned, delighted.

  ‘How long do you think you’ll be in Sydney for?’ Cecilia locked eyes with Tess. She was one of those people who held eye contact for too long. The polar opposite of Tess. ‘Just until you’ve got Lucy back on her feet? You run a business in Melbourne, don’t you? I guess you can’t be away for too long! And Liam must be in school?’

  Tess found herself unable to speak.

  ‘Tess is actually enrolling Liam in St Angela’s for a . . . short time,’ spoke up Lucy.

  ‘Oh, that’s wonderful!’ said Cecilia. Her eyes were still fixed on Tess. Good Lord, did the woman ever blink? ‘So let’s see now, how old is Liam?’

  ‘Six,’ said Tess. She dropped her eyes, unable to bear it any longer.

  ‘Well then, he’ll be in Polly’s class. We had a little girl leave earlier in the year, so you’ll be in with us. 1J. Mrs Jeffers. Mary Jeffers. She�
��s wonderful by the way. Very social too, which is nice!’

  ‘Great,’ said Tess weakly. Fabulous.

  ‘Liam! Now you’ve shot me, come and say hello! I hear you’re coming to St Angela’s!’ Cecilia beckoned to Liam and he wandered over, dragging his stick behind him.

  Cecilia bent at the knees so she was at Liam’s eye level. ‘I have a little girl who will be in your class. Her name is Polly. She’s having her seventh birthday party the weekend after Easter. Would you like to come?’ Liam’s face instantly got the blank look that always made Tess worry people would think he had some kind of disability.

  ‘It’s going to be a pirate party.’ Cecilia straightened and turned to Tess. ‘I hope you can come. It will be a good way for you to meet all the mums. We’ll have a private little oasis for the grown-ups. Guzzle champagne while the little pirates rampage about.’

  Tess felt her own face fold up. Liam had probably inherited his catatonic look from her. She could not meet another brand-new group of mothers. She’d found socialising with the school mums difficult enough when her life was in perfect order. The chat, chat, chat, the swirls of laughter, the warmth, the friendliness (most mums were so very nice) and the gentle hint of bitchiness than ran beneath it all. She’d done it in Melbourne. She’d made a few friends on the outskirts of the inner social circle, but she couldn’t do it again. Not now. She didn’t have the strength. It was like someone had cheerfully suggested she run a marathon when she’d just dragged herself out of bed after suffering from the flu.

  ‘Great,’ she said. She would make up an excuse later.

  ‘I’ll make Liam a pirate costume,’ said Tess’s mother. ‘An eye patch, a red and white striped top, ooh and a sword! You’d love a sword, wouldn’t you, Liam?’

  She looked around for Liam, but he’d run off and was using his gun like a drill against the back fence.

  ‘Of course, we’d love to have you at the party too, Lucy,’ said Cecilia. She was highly irritating, but her social skills were impeccable. For Tess, it was like watching someone play the violin beautifully. You couldn’t conceive how they did it.