The Husband's Secret

‘Cool!’ Liam headed towards the kitchen and, for some inexplicable six-year-old-boy reason, began moving his arms and legs jerkily like a robot. ‘I compute! I compute! Affirmative – to – cinnamon toast!’

Tess carried their bags inside.

‘Sorry,’ she said, again, as she put them down in the hallway and looked up at her mother. ‘I should have called. Is your ankle very painful?’

‘What happened?’ said her mother.

‘Nothing.’

‘Rubbish.’

‘Will,’ she began, and stopped.

‘My darling girl.’ Her mother lurched about alarmingly as she tried to reach for her without losing hold of the crutches.

‘Don’t break another bone,’ Tess steadied her. She could smell her mother’s toothpaste, her face cream and soap, and beneath it all that familiar musky, musty Mum smell. On the hallway wall behind her mother’s head was a framed photo of herself and Felicity at seven years old, in their white lacy communion dresses and veils, their palms piously pressed together at the centre of their chests in the traditional first communion pose. Auntie Mary had an identical photo in the same spot in her hallway. Now Felicity was an atheist, and Tess described herself as ‘lapsed’.

‘Hurry up and tell me,’ said Lucy.

‘Will,’ Tess tried again. ‘And, and . . .’ She couldn’t finish.

‘Felicity,’ supplied her mother. ‘Am I right? Yes.’ She lifted one elbow and thumped a crutch hard against the floor so that the first communion photo rattled. ‘The little bitch.’

1961. The Cold War was at its iciest. Thousands of East Germans were fleeing for the West. ‘No one has any intention of building a wall,’ announced East Germany’s Chancellor, Walter Ulbricht, described by some as ‘Stalin’s robot’. People looked at each other with raised eyebrows. What the . . .? Who said anything about a WALL? Thousands more packed their bags.

In Sydney, Australia, a young girl called Rachel Fisher sat on the high wall overlooking Manly Beach, swinging her long, tanned legs, while her boyfriend, Ed Crowley, flipped through the Sydney Morning Herald, annoyingly engrossed. There was an article in the paper about the developments in Europe but neither Ed nor Rachel had much interest in Europe.

Finally Ed spoke. ‘Hey, Rach, why don’t we get you one of those?’ he said, and pointed at the page in front of him.

Rachel peered over his shoulder without much interest. The paper was open on a full-page advertisement for Angus & Coote. Ed’s finger was on an engagement ring. He grabbed her elbow just before she toppled off the wall onto the beach.

They were gone. Rachel was in bed, with the television on, the Women’s Weekly in her lap, a cup of Earl Grey tea on the bedside table, along with the flat cardboard box of ‘macarons’ that Lauren had brought along tonight. Rachel should have offered them around at the end of the night, but she’d forgotten. It may have been deliberate; she could never be sure just how much she disliked her daughter-in-law. It was possible she hated her.

Why not go on your own to New York, my dear girl? Get two years’ worth of ‘Lauren time’!

Rachel slid the cardboard tray onto the bed in front of her and examined the six garishly coloured biscuits. They didn’t look that special to her. Supposedly they were the latest thing amongst people who cared about the latest things. These ones were from a shop in the city where people lined up for hours to buy them. Fools. Did they have nothing better to do? Although it seemed unlikely that Lauren had lined up for hours. After all, Lauren had better things to do than everyone! Rachel had a feeling there might have been a story about the procurement of the macarons, but she didn’t really listen when Lauren was speaking about anything that didn’t involve Jacob.

She selected a red one and took a tentative bite.

‘Oh God,’ she moaned a moment later, and thought, for the first time in she didn’t know how long, of sex. She took a bigger bite. ‘Mother Mary.’ She laughed out loud. No wonder people lined up for them. It was exquisite: the raspberry flavour of the creamy centre was like the barest touch of fingertips on her skin, the meringue light and tender, like eating a cloud.

Wait. Who said that?

‘It’s like eating a cloud, Mummy!’ An entranced little face.

Janie. About four years old. Her first taste of fairy floss at – Luna Park? A church fete? Rachel couldn’t zoom back her memory. It was focused only on Janie’s shining face and her words, ‘Like eating a cloud, Mummy.’

Janie would have loved these macarons.

Without warning, the biscuit slipped from Rachel’s fingers and she hunched over, as if she could duck the first punch, but it was too late, it had her. It had been a long time since it had been as bad as this. A wave of pain, as fresh and shocking as that first year when she woke up each morning and for one instant she forgot, before she was punched in the face with the realisation that Janie wasn’t in the room down the hallway, spraying herself with too much sickly Impulse deodorant, pasting orange make-up over her perfect seventeen-year-old skin, dancing to Madonna.

The almighty towering injustice of it tore and twisted her heart like contractions. My daughter would have loved these silly biscuits. My daughter would have had a career. My daughter could have gone to New York.

A steel vice wrapped around her chest and squeezed so she felt like she was suffocating and she gasped for air, but beneath her panic she could hear the weary, calm voice of experience: You’ve been here before. It won’t kill you. It feels like you can’t breathe, but you actually are breathing. It feels like you’ll never stop crying, but you actually will.