The Husband’s Secret

  ‘Oh, well, thank you, Cecilia!’ Tess’s mother was delighted. She loved parties. Especially the food. ‘Let’s see now, a red and white striped top for a pirate costume. Has he already got one, Tess?’

  If Cecilia was a violinist, Tess’s mother was a folksy, well-meaning guitarist trying her best to play the same tune.

  ‘I mustn’t keep you. I guess you’re off to see Rachel now in the office?’ asked Cecilia.

  ‘We’ve got an appointment with the school secretary,’ said Tess. She had no idea of the woman’s name.

  ‘Yes, Rachel Crowley,’ said Cecilia. ‘So efficient. Runs the place like a Swiss watch. She actually shares the job with my mother-in-law, although between you and me and the gatepost, I think Rachel does all the work. Virginia just chats on her days. Not that I can talk. Well, actually, that’s my point, I can talk.’ She laughed merrily at herself.

  ‘How is Rachel these days?’ asked Tess’s mother significantly.

  Cecilia’s ferrety face got all sombre. ‘I don’t know her that well, but I do know she has a beautiful little grandson. Jacob. He just turned two.’

  ‘Ah,’ breathed Lucy, as if that solved everything. ‘That’s good to hear. Jacob.’

  ‘Well, it was so nice to meet you, Tess,’ said Cecilia, fixing her again with her unblinking stare. ‘I must skedaddle. I’ve got to get to my Zumba class, I go to the gym down the road, it’s great, you should try it sometime, just hilarious, and then I’m going straight to this party-supply place in Strathfield, it’s a bit of a drive but it’s worth it because the prices are amazing, seriously, you can get a helium balloon kit for under fifty dollars, and that gives you over a hundred balloons, and I’m doing so many parties over the next few months – Polly’s pirate party, and the Year 1 parents party – which of course you’ll be invited to as well! – and then I’m dropping off a few Tupperware orders, I do Tupperware by the way, Tess, if you need anything, anyway, all that before school pick-up! You know how it is.’

  Tess blinked. It was like being buried in an avalanche of detail. The myriad of tiny logistical manoeuvres that made up someone else’s life. It wasn’t that it was dull. Although it was a little dull. It was mainly the sheer quantity of words that flowed so effortlessly from Cecilia’s mouth.

  Oh God, she’s stopped talking. Tess registered with a start that it was her turn to speak.

  ‘Busy,’ she said finally. ‘You sure are busy.’ She forced her lips into something she hoped resembled a smile.

  ‘See you at the pirate party!’ Cecilia called out to Liam, who turned from drilling his tree to look at her with that funny, inscrutable, masculine expression he sometimes got, an expression that painfully reminded Tess of Will.

  Cecilia lifted her hand like a claw. ‘Aha, me hearties!’

  Liam grinned, as if he couldn’t help himself, and Tess knew she’d be taking him to the pirate party whatever it cost her.

  ‘Oh my,’ said Tess’s mother when Cecilia was out of earshot. ‘Her mother is exactly the same. Very nice, but exhausting. I always feel like I need a cup of tea and a lie-down after talking with her.’

  ‘What’s the story with this Rachel Crowley?’ asked Tess as they headed towards the school office, she and Liam pushing one handle each of the wheelchair.

  Her mother grimaced. ‘Do you remember the name Janie Crowley?’

  ‘Not the girl they found with the rosary beads –’

  ‘That’s the one. She was Rachel’s daughter.’

  Rachel could tell that Lucy O’Leary and her daughter were both thinking about Janie while they enrolled Tess’s little boy in St Angela’s. They were both being just a little chattier than was obviously natural for them. Tess couldn’t quite meet Rachel’s eyes, while Lucy was doing that tender-eyed, tilted head thing that so many women of a certain age did when they talked to Rachel, as if they were visiting her in a nursing home.

  When Lucy asked if the photo on Rachel’s desk was her grandson, both she and Tess went quite over the top with compliments, not that it wasn’t a beautiful photo of Jacob of course, but you didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to see that what they really meant was: We know your daughter was murdered all those years ago, but does this little boy make up for it? Please let him make up for it so we can stop feeling so strange and uncomfortable!

  ‘I look after him two days a week,’ Rachel told them, her eyes on the computer screen while she printed off some paperwork for Tess. ‘But not for much longer. I found out last night that his parents are taking him off to New York for two years.’ Her voice cracked without her permission and she cleared her throat irritably.

  She waited for the reaction she’d been getting from everyone that morning: ‘How exciting for them!’ ‘What an opportunity!’ ‘Will you go for a visit?’

  ‘Well that just takes the cake!’ exploded Lucy and she banged her elbows on the arms of her wheelchair, like a cranky toddler. Her daughter, who had been busy filling in a form, looked up and frowned. Tess was one of those plain-looking women with a short boyish haircut and strong austere features who sometimes stun you with a flash of raw beauty. Her little boy, who looked a lot like Tess, except for his strange gold-coloured eyes, also turned to stare at his grandmother.

  Lucy rubbed her elbows. ‘Of course I’m sure it’s exciting for your son and daughter-in-law. It’s just that after all you’ve been through, losing Janie like – the way you did, and then your husband, I’m so sorry, I can’t actually remember his name, but I know you lost him too – well, this just doesn’t seem fair.’

  By the time she finished talking her cheeks were crimson. Rachel could tell she was horrified at herself. People were always worrying that they’d inadvertently reminded her of her daughter’s death, as if it were something that slipped her mind.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Rachel, I shouldn’t have –’ Poor Lucy looked distraught.

  Rachel waved a hand to swat away her apologies. ‘Don’t be sorry. Thank you. It does take the cake, actually. I’ll miss him terribly.’

  ‘Well, now, who have we here?’

  Rachel’s boss, Trudy Applebee, the school principal, floated into the room, one of her trademark crocheted shawls slipping off her bony shoulders, strands of grey frizzy hair floating around her face, a smudge of red paint on her left cheekbone. She’d probably been on the floor painting with the kindergarten children. True to form, Trudy looked straight past Lucy and Tess O’Leary to the little boy, Liam. She had no interest in grown-ups, and this would one day be her downfall. Rachel had seen three school principals come and go since she’d been secretary, and in her experience it wasn’t possible to run a school while ignoring the grown-ups. It was a political role.

  Also, Trudy didn’t seem to be quite Catholic enough for the job. Not that she went around breaking the commandments, but she had an unpious, sparkly-eyed expression on her face during mass. Before she died, Sister Ursula (whose funeral Rachel had just boycotted, because she’d never forgiven her for hitting Janie with a feather duster) had probably written to the Vatican to complain about her.

  ‘This is the boy I mentioned earlier,’ said Rachel. ‘Liam Curtis. He’s enrolling in Year 1.’

  ‘Of course, of course. Welcome to St Angela’s, Liam! I was just thinking as I walked up the stairs that today I was meeting someone whose name begins with the letter L, which happens to be one of my favourite letters. Tell me, Liam, out of these three things, which do you like best?’ She folded back her fingers with each item. ‘Dinosaurs? Aliens? Superheroes?’

  Liam considered the question gravely.

  ‘He quite likes dino’’ began Lucy O’Leary. Tess put her hand on her mother’s arm.

  ‘Aliens,’ said Liam finally.

  ‘Aliens!’ Trudy nodded. ‘Well, I will be keeping that in mind, Liam Curtis, and this is your mum, and your grandmother, I’m guessing?’

  ‘Yes, indeed, I’m –’ began Lucy O’Leary.

  ‘Lovely to meet you both,’ Trudy smiled vaguely in their
general direction. She turned back to Liam. ‘When are you starting with us, Liam? Tomorrow?’

  ‘No!’ Tess looked alarmed. ‘Not until after Easter.’

  ‘Oh, live a little, I say! Jump right in while the iron is hot!’ said Trudy. ‘Do you like Easter eggs, Liam?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Liam adamantly.

  ‘Because we’re planning a gigantic Easter egg hunt tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m supergood at Easter egg hunts,’ said Liam.

  ‘Are you? Excellent! Well then, I’d better make it a superchallenging hunt.’ Trudy glanced at Rachel. ‘Everything under control here, Rachel, with all the –’

  She gestured sorrowfully at the paperwork, of which she knew nothing.

  ‘All under control,’ said Rachel. She was doing her best to help keep Trudy in a job because she didn’t see why the children of St Angela’s shouldn’t have a school principal from fairyland.

  ‘Lovely, lovely! I’ll leave you to it!’ said Trudy, and she wandered off into her office, pulling the door shut behind her, presumably so she could scatter fairy dust over her keyboard, as she certainly didn’t do too much else on her computer.

  ‘My goodness, she’s a different kettle of fish from Sister Veronica-Mary!’ said Lucy quietly.

  Rachel snorted in appreciation. She remembered Sister Veronica-Mary, who had been principal from 1965 through to 1980, very well.

  There was a knock, and Rachel looked up to see the tall imposing shadow of a man through the frosted glass panel of her office, before his head appeared enquiringly around the door.

  Him. She flinched, as if at the sight of a furry black spider, not a perfectly plain-looking man. (Actually, Rachel had heard other women call him ‘gorgeous’ which she found preposterous.)

  ‘Excuse me, ah, Mrs Crowley.’

  He could never get far enough away from his schoolboy self to call her Rachel like the rest of the staff. Their eyes met and as usual his slid away first to rest somewhere above her head.

  Lies in his eyes, thought Rachel, as she did virtually every time she saw him, as if it were an incantation or prayer. Lies in his eyes.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ said Connor Whitby. ‘I just wondered if I could pick up those tennis camp forms.’

  ‘There’s something that Whitby boy isn’t telling us,’ Sergeant Rodney Bellach had said all those years ago when he still had a head full of startlingly curly black hair. ‘That kid has got lies in his eyes.’

  Rodney Bellach was retired now. As bald as a bandicoot. He called every year on Janie’s birthday and he liked to tell Rachel about his latest ailments. Someone else who got old while Janie stayed seventeen.

  Rachel handed over the tennis camp forms and Connor’s eyes fell on Tess.

  ‘Tess O’Leary!’ His face was transformed so that he looked for a moment like the boy in Janie’s photo album.

  Tess looked up, her face wary. She didn’t seem to recognise Connor at all.

  ‘Connor!’ He tapped his broad chest. ‘Connor Whitby!’

  ‘Oh, Connor, of course. It’s so nice to . . .’ Tess half-rose and then found herself trapped by her mother’s wheelchair.

  ‘Don’t get up, don’t get up,’ said Connor. He went to kiss Tess on the cheek just as she was starting to sit down again, so that his lips met her earlobe.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ asked Tess. She didn’t seem especially pleased to see Connor.

  ‘I work here,’ he said.

  ‘As an accountant?’

  ‘No, no, I had a career change a few years back. I’m the PE teacher.’

  ‘You are?’ she said. ‘Well, that’s . . .’ Her voice drifted, and she finally said, ‘. . . nice.’

  Connor cleared his throat. ‘Well, anyway, it’s very good to see you.’ He glanced at Liam, went to speak and then changed his mind and held up the sheaf of tennis forms. ‘Thanks for this, Mrs Crowley.’

  ‘My pleasure, Connor,’ said Rachel coldly.

  Lucy turned to her daughter as soon as Connor left. ‘Who was that?’

  ‘Just someone I used to know. Years ago.’

  ‘I don’t think I remember him. Was he a boyfriend?’

  ‘Mum,’ Tess gestured at Rachel and the paperwork in front of her.

  ‘Sorry!’ Lucy smiled guiltily, while Liam looked up at the ceiling, stretched out his legs and yawned.

  Rachel saw that the grandmother, mother and grandson all had identical full upper lips. It was like a trick. Those bee-stung lips made them more beautiful than they actually were.

  She was suddenly inexplicably furious with all three of them.

  ‘Well, if you could just sign the “allergies and medications” sections here,’ she said to Tess, jabbing at the form with her fingertip. ‘No, not there. Here. Then we’ll be done and dusted.’

  Tess had her keys in the ignition to drive them home from the school when her mobile rang. She lifted it from the console to check who was calling.

  When she saw the name on the screen, she held up the phone for her mother to see.

  Her mother squinted at the phone and sat back with a shrug. ‘Well I had to tell him. I promised him I’d always keep him up to date with what was going on in your life.’

  ‘You promised him that when I was ten!’ said Tess. She held the phone up, trying to decide whether to answer it or let it go to voicemail.

  ‘Is it Dad?’ asked Liam from the back seat.

  ‘It’s my Dad,’ said Tess. She’d have to talk to him sometime. It might as well be now. She took a breath and pressed the answer button. ‘Hi Dad.’

  There was a pause. There was always a pause.

  ‘Hello love,’ said her father.

  ‘How are you?’ asked Tess in the hearty tone of voice she reserved for her father. When had they last spoken? It must have been Christmas Day.

  ‘I’m great,’ said her father dolefully.

  Another pause.

  ‘I’m actually in the car with –’ began Tess, at the same time as her father said, ‘Your mother told me –’

  They both stopped. It was always excruciating. No matter how hard she tried she could never seem to synchronise her conversations with her father. Even when they were face to face they never achieved a natural rhythm. Would their relationship have been less awkward if he and her mother had stayed together? She’d always wondered.

  Her father cleared his throat. ‘Your mother mentioned you were having a spot of . . . trouble.’

  Pause.

  ‘Thanks Dad,’ said Tess at the same time as her father said, ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  Tess could see her mother rolling her eyes and she turned away slightly towards the car window, as if to protect her poor hopeless father from her mother’s scorn.

  ‘If there’s anything I can do,’ said her father. ‘Just . . . you know, call.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Tess.

  Pause.

  ‘Well, I should go,’ said Tess at the same time as her father said, ‘I liked the fellow.’

  ‘Tell him I emailed him a link for that wine-appreciation course I was telling him about,’ said her mother.

  ‘Shhh,’ Tess waved her hand irritably at Lucy. ‘What’s that, Dad?’

  ‘Will,’ said her father. ‘I thought he was a good bloke. That’s no bloody help to you, though, is it, love?’

  ‘He’ll never do it, of course,’ murmured her mother, examining her cuticles. ‘Don’t know why I bother. The man doesn’t want to be happy.’

  ‘Thanks for calling, Dad,’ said Tess, at the same time as her father said, ‘How’s the little man doing?’

  ‘Liam is great,’ said Tess. ‘He’s right here. Do you want –’

  ‘I’ll let you go, love. You take care now.’

  He was gone. He always finished the call in a sudden, frantic rush, as if the phone was bugged by the police and he had to get off before they tracked down his location. His location was a small, flat, treeless town on the opposite side of the country in Western A
ustralia, where he had mysteriously chosen to live five years ago.

  ‘Had a whole heap of helpful advice then, did he?’ said Lucy.

  ‘He did his best, Mum,’ said Tess.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure he did,’ said her mother with satisfaction.

  chapter eight

  ‘So it was a Sunday when they put the Wall up. They called it Barbed Wire Sunday. You want to know why?’ said Esther from the back seat of the car. It was a rhetorical question. Of course they did. ‘Because everyone woke up in the morning and there was like this long barbed-wire fence right through the city.’

  ‘So what?’ said Polly. ‘I’ve seen a barbed-wire fence before.’

  ‘But you weren’t allowed to cross it!’ said Esther. ‘You were stuck! You know how we live on this side of the Pacific Highway and Grandma lives on the other side?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Polly uncertainly. She wasn’t too clear on where anyone lived.

  ‘It would be like there was a barbed-wire fence all along the Pacific Highway and we couldn’t visit Grandma any more.’

  ‘That would be such a pity,’ murmured Cecilia as she looked over her shoulder to change lanes. She’d been to visit her mother this morning after her Zumba class and had spent twenty full minutes she couldn’t spare looking through a ‘portfolio’ of her nephew’s preschool work. Bridget was sending Sam to an exclusive, obscenely priced preschool and Cecilia’s mother couldn’t decide whether to be delighted or disgusted about it. She had settled for hysterical.

  ‘I bet you didn’t get a portfolio like this at that sweet ordinary little preschool your girls went to,’ her mother had said, while Cecilia tried to flip the pages faster. She was going shopping for all the nonperishables in preparation for Sunday before she picked up the girls.

  ‘Actually I think most of the preschools do things like this these days,’ Cecilia had said, but her mother had been too busy exclaiming over Sam’s finger-painted ‘self-portrait’.