The Husband's Secret

‘I don’t suppose I could say goodnight to Liam, could I?’ said Felicity in a small, meek voice that didn’t suit her.

‘No,’ said Tess. ‘Anyway, he’s asleep.’ He wasn’t asleep. She’d walked by his bedroom (her father’s old study) just a moment ago and seen him lying in bed playing on his Nintendo DS.

‘Please tell him I said hello,’ said Felicity tremulously, as if she was doing her courageous best in difficult circumstances beyond her control.

Liam adored Felicity. He had a certain dry little chuckle reserved especially for her.

The rage erupted.

‘Sure, I’ll tell him you said hello,’ Tess spat into the phone. ‘And at the same time why don’t I tell him that you’re trying to break up his family? Why don’t I mention that?’

‘Oh God, Tess, I’m so –’ said Felicity.

‘Don’t say you’re sorry. Don’t you dare say you’re sorry one more time. You chose this. You let this happen. You did this. You did this to me. You did this to Liam.’ She was weeping uncontrollably now, like a child, rocking back and forth.

‘Where are you, Tess?’ It was her mother calling from the other end of the house.

Tess sat up immediately and wiped frantically at her wet face with the back of her hand. She didn’t want Lucy to see her crying like this. It was unbearable seeing her own pain reflected in her mother’s face.

She stood. ‘I have to go.’

‘I –’

‘I don’t care if you sleep with Will or not,’ interrupted Tess. ‘Actually, I think you should sleep with him. Get it out of your system. But I will not have Liam growing up with divorced parents. You were there when Mum and Dad split up. You know what it was like for me. That’s why I can’t believe –’

There was a searing pain at the centre of her chest. She pressed her palm to it. Felicity was silent.

‘You’re not going to live happily ever after with him,’ she said. ‘You know that, don’t you? Because I’m prepared to wait this out. I will wait for you to finish with him.’ She took a deep, shaky breath. ‘Have your revolting little affair and then give my husband back.’

7 October 1977: Three teenagers were killed when East German police clashed with protesters demanding ‘Down with the Wall!’ Lucy O’Leary, pregnant with her first child, saw the story on the news and cried and cried. Her twin sister, Mary, who was also pregnant with her first child, rang her the next day and asked if the news was making her cry too. They talked for a while about tragedies happening around the world and then moved on to the far more interesting topic of their babies.

‘I think we’re having boys,’ said Mary. ‘And they’ll be best friends.’

‘More likely they’ll want to kill each other,’ said Lucy.

Chapter thirteen

Rachel sat in a steaming hot bath, clinging to the sides while her head spun. It was a stupid idea to have a bath when she was tipsy from the Tupperware party. She’d probably slip when she got out and break her hip.

Perhaps that was a good strategy. Rob and Lauren would cancel New York and stay in Sydney to take care of her. Look at Lucy O’Leary. Her daughter had come from Melbourne to look after her the moment she’d heard about her breaking her ankle. She’d even pulled her son out of his school in Melbourne, which seemed a bit over the top now that she thought about it.

Recalling the O’Learys made Rachel think of Connor Whitby and the expression on his face when he saw Tess. Rachel wondered if she should warn Lucy. ‘Just a heads-up. Connor Whitby might be a murderer.’

Or he might not be. He might just be a perfectly nice PE teacher.

Some days, when Rachel saw him with the children on the oval, in the sunshine, his whistle around his neck, eating a red apple, she would think: There is no way on heaven and earth that nice man could have hurt Janie. And then on other bitter, grey days, when she caught sight of him walking alone, his face impassive, his shoulders broad enough to kill, she thought: You know what happened to my daughter.

She rested her head against the back of the bath, closed her eyes and remembered the first time she’d heard of his existence. Sergeant Bellach had told her that the last person to see Janie alive was a boy called Connor Whitby from the local public school, and Rachel had thought: But that can’t be, I’ve never heard of him. She knew all of Janie’s friends and their mothers.

Ed had told Janie she wasn’t allowed a serious boyfriend until after she’d finished her very last HSC exam. He’d made such a big deal of it. But Janie hadn’t argued, and Rachel had blithely assumed she wasn’t even that interested in boys yet.

She and Ed met Connor for the first time at Janie’s funeral. He shook Ed’s hand and pressed his cold cheek against Rachel’s. Connor was part of the nightmare, as unreal and wrong as the coffin. Months afterwards Rachel found that one photo of them together at someone’s party. He was laughing at something Janie had said.

And then all those years later, he got the job at St Angela’s. She hadn’t even recognised him until she saw his name on the employment application.

‘I don’t know if you remember me, Mrs Crowley,’ he said to her, a short time after he started, when they were alone together in the office.

‘I remember you,’ she said icily.

‘I still think about Janie,’ he said. ‘All the time.’