The Husband's Secret

I can’t believe this is happening to me.

She hadn’t thought it through. She should have called to let her mother know that they were coming, but she’d been in such a state, booking the flight, packing, getting to the airport, finding the right gate, Liam trotting alongside her, talking the whole time. He was so excited, he wouldn’t shut up the whole flight, and now he was so exhausted he was virtually delirious.

He thought they were on a rescue mission to help Grandma.

‘Grandma has broken her ankle,’ Tess had told him. ‘So we’re going to stay and help her for a little while.’

‘What about school?’ he’d asked.

‘You can miss a few days of school,’ she’d told him, and his face had lit up like a Christmas tree. She hadn’t mentioned anything about attending a new school. Obviously.

Felicity had left, and while Tess and Liam packed, Will had slunk about the house, pale and sniffing.

When they were alone, and she was throwing clothes into a bag, he’d tried to talk to her, and she’d turned on him, like a cobra rising to strike, hissing through clenched, crazy teeth, ‘Leave me alone.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, taking a step backwards. ‘I’m so sorry.’

He and Felicity must have used the word ‘sorry’ about five hundred times by now.

‘I promise you,’ said Will, lowering his voice, presumably so Liam wouldn’t overhear, ‘if there’s any doubt in your mind, I want you to know that we never slept together.’

‘You keep saying that, Will,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why you think that makes it better. It makes it worse. It never occurred to me that you would sleep together! Like, thank you so much for your restraint. I mean, for God’s sake –’

Her voice trembled.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, and wiped the back of his hand across his nose.

Will had behaved perfectly normally in front of Liam. He’d helped him find his favourite baseball cap under his bed, and when the cab had arrived, he’d got down on his knees and half-cuddled, half-wrestled him in that rough, loving way of fathers with their sons. Tess had seen exactly how Will had managed to keep this thing with Felicity a secret for so long. Family life, even with just one little boy, had its own familiar rhythms and it was perfectly possible to keep right on dancing like you always had, even when your mind was somewhere else.

And now here she was, stranded in this sleepy little North Shore suburb of Sydney with a delirious six year old.

‘Well,’ she said carefully to Liam. ‘I guess we should –’

What? Wake up a neighbour? Risk the alarm?

‘Wait!’ said Liam. He put a finger to his lips; his big eyes were pools of shining blackness in the dark. ‘I think I hear something from inside.’

He pressed his ear to the front door. Tess did the same.

‘Hear it?’

She did hear something. A strange rhythmic thumping sound from overhead.

‘It must be Grandma’s crutches,’ said Tess.

Her poor mother. She’d probably been in bed. Her bedroom was right at the other end of the house. Bloody Will. Bloody Felicity. Dragging her poor crippled mum out of bed.

When exactly had this thing between Will and Felicity started? Was there an actual moment where something changed? How could she have missed it? She saw them together every single day of her life and she’d never noticed a thing. Felicity had stayed for dinner last Friday night. Maybe Will had been a little quieter than usual. Tess had thought it was because his back was playing up. He’d been tired. They’d all been working so hard. But Felicity had been in fine form. Luminous, even. Tess had caught herself staring a few times. Felicity’s beauty was still so new, and it made everything about her beautiful. Her laugh. Her voice.

Yet Tess hadn’t been wary. She’d been stupidly secure of Will’s love. Secure enough to wear her old jeans with the black T-shirt that Will said made her look like a bikie chick. Secure enough to tease him for his mild grumpiness. He’d whacked her bottom with the tea towel when they were cleaning up the kitchen afterwards.

They hadn’t seen Felicity on the weekend, which was unusual. She’d been busy, she said. It had been rainy and cold; Tess and Will and Liam had watched TV, played snap, made pancakes together. It had been a good weekend. Hadn’t it?

It occurred to her that Felicity was luminous on Friday night because she was in love.

The door swung open and light flooded the hallway. ‘What in the world?’ said Tess’s mother. She was wearing a blue quilted dressing-gown and leaning heavily on a pair of crutches, her eyes blinking myopically, her face dragged down with pain and effort.

Tess looked down at her mother’s white-bandaged ankle and imagined her waking up, hauling herself out of bed, hobbling around trying to find her dressing-gown and then the crutches.

‘Oh Mum,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Why are you sorry? What are you doing here?’

‘We’ve come –’ she began but her throat closed up.

‘To help you, Grandma!’ cried Liam. ‘Because of your ankle! We flew here in the dark!’

‘Well, that’s very lovely of you, my darling boy.’ Tess’s mother moved on her crutches to the side to let them in. ‘Come in, come in. Sorry I took so long coming to the door, I had no idea crutches were so damned tricky. I imagined myself swinging jauntily along, but they dig into your armpits like I don’t know what. Liam, go turn on the light in the kitchen and we’ll have some hot milk and cinnamon toast.’