The Husband's Secret

‘That must be strange.’

‘We don’t run into each other that often. I did try to talk to her about Janie in the very beginning, but she made it clear she wasn’t interested in being chatty. So. I started telling you all this because you asked why I was single. My very expensive therapist thinks I’ve been subconsciously sabotaging relationships because I don’t think I deserve to be happy, because of my guilt over what I didn’t actually do to Janie.’ He smiled shamefacedly at Tess. ‘So there you go. I’m extremely damaged. Not your run-of-the-mill accountant turned PE teacher.’

Tess took his hand in hers and laced her fingers through his. She looked at their interlocked hands, struck by the fact that she was holding another man’s hand, even though just moments before she’d been doing things that most people would have considered far more intimate.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘Why are you sorry?’

‘I’m sorry about Janie. And your sister dying.’ She paused. ‘And I’m really sorry I broke up with you like I did.’

Connor made the sign of the cross over her head. ‘I absolve you of your sins, my child. Or whatever it is they say. It’s been a while since my last confession.’

‘Mine too,’ said Tess. ‘I think you were meant to give me penance before you absolved me.’

‘Ooh, I can think of penance, baby.’

Tess giggled. She unlaced her fingers. ‘I should go.’

‘I’ve scared you off with all my “issues”,’ said Connor.

‘No you haven’t. I just don’t want my mother getting worried. She’ll wait up for me and she won’t expect me to be this late.’ She remembered suddenly why they were meant to be getting together. ‘Hey, we never talked about your nephew. You wanted to ask me some career advice or something?’

Connor smiled. ‘Ben’s already got a job. I just wanted an excuse to see you.’

‘Really?’ Tess felt a flare of happiness. Was there anything better than to be wanted? Was that all anyone really needed?

‘Yep.’

They looked at each other.

‘Connor –’ she began.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I don’t have any expectations. I know exactly what this is.’

‘What is it?’ asked Tess with interest.

He paused. ‘I’m not sure. I’ll check with my therapist and let you know.’

Tess snorted.

‘I really should go,’ she said again.

But it was another half-hour before she finally put her clothes back on.

Chapter thirty-two

Cecilia went into the ensuite bathroom where John-Paul was brushing his teeth. She picked up her toothbrush, squeezed toothpaste on it and began to brush, her eyes not meeting his in the mirror.

She stopped brushing.

‘Your mother knows,’ she said.

John-Paul bent down to the basin and spat. ‘What do you mean?’ he straightened, patted his mouth with the handtowel and shoved it back on the handrail in such a slapdash way that you’d think he was deliberately trying to avoid keeping it straight.

‘She knows,’ said Cecilia again.

He spun around. ‘You told her?’

‘No, I –’

‘Why would you do that?’ The colour had drained from his face. He didn’t seem angry so much as utterly stunned.

‘John-Paul, I didn’t tell her. I mentioned Rachel was coming to Polly’s party and she asked how you felt about that. I could just tell.’

John-Paul’s shoulders relaxed. ‘You must have imagined it.’

He sounded so certain. Whenever they had an argument about a point of fact, he was always so utterly confident that he had it right and she had it wrong. He never even entertained the possibility that he might be mistaken. It drove her bananas. She struggled with an almost irresistible urge to slap him across the face.

This was the problem. All his flaws seemed more significant now. It was one thing for a gentle, law-abiding husband and father to have failings: a certain inflexibility that manifested itself just when it was most inconvenient, those occasional (also inconvenient) black moods, the frustrating implacability during arguments, the untidiness, the constant losing of his possessions. They all seemed innocuous enough, common even; but now that these faults belonged to a murderer, they seemed to matter so much more, to define him. His good qualities now seemed irrelevant and probably fraudulent: a cover identity. How could she ever look at him again in the same way? How could she still love him? She didn’t know him. She’d been in love with an optical illusion. The blue eyes that had looked at her with tenderness and passion and laughter were the same eyes that Janie had seen in those terrifying few moments before she died. Those lovely strong hands that had cupped the soft, fragile heads of Cecilia’s baby daughters were the same hands that he held around Janie’s neck.

‘Your mother knows,’ she told him. ‘She recognised her rosary beads in the newspaper pictures. She basically told me that a mother would do anything for her children, and that I should do the same for my children and pretend it never happened. It was creepy. Your mother is creepy.’

It felt like crossing a line to say that. John-Paul did not take criticism of his mother kindly. Cecilia normally tried to respect that, even while it annoyed her.

John-Paul sank down on the side of the bath, knocking the handtowel off the rail with his knees in the process. ‘You really think she knows?’