The Husband's Secret

‘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.’

And so here she was sitting in Marla’s living room, which was crowded and noisy with women drinking cocktails. Rachel was sandwiched on a couch in between Marla’s two daughters-in-law, Eve and Arianna, who had no plans to move to New York and were both pregnant with Marla’s first grandchildren.

‘I’m just not into pain,’ Eve was telling Arianna. ‘I told my obstetrician, I said, “Look, I have zero tolerance for pain. Zero. Don’t even talk to me about it.”’