The Husband's Secret (30 page)

Cecilia had pretended not to notice that Isabel was wearing her mascara this morning. She’d done a good job of it.
Only one tiny blue-black smudge just below her perfect eyebrow.

She looked up to the Year 6 balcony and saw Isabel and her friends dancing to the music.

If a nice young boy murdered Isabel, and got away with it, and if that boy felt very remorseful, and turned out to be a fine, upstanding member of the community, a good father and a good son-in-law, Cecilia would still want him jailed. Executed. She’d want to kill him with her own bare hands.

The world tipped.

She heard Mahalia say from a very long way away, ‘Cecilia?’

chapter thirty-four

Tess shifted in her seat and felt a pleasurable ache in her groin.
Just how superficial are you? What happened to your supposedly broken heart? So, what, it takes you THREE DAYS to get over a marriage break-up?
Here she was sitting at the St Angela’s Easter hat parade thinking about sex with one of the three parade judges, who was right now on the other side of the schoolyard wearing a giant pink baby’s bonnet tied under his chin and doing the chicken dance with a group of Year 6 boys.

‘Isn’t this lovely!’ said her mother beside her. ‘This is just lovely. I wish –’

She stopped, and Tess turned to study her.

‘You wish what?’

Lucy looked guilty. ‘I was just wishing that the circumstances were happier – that you and Will had decided to move to Sydney and that Liam was at St Angela’s and I could always come to his Easter hat parades. Sorry.’

‘You don’t need to be sorry,’ said Tess. ‘I wish that too.’

Did she wish that?

She turned her gaze back to Connor. The Year 6 boys were now laughing with such crazy abandon at something Connor had just said that Tess suspected fart jokes must be involved.

‘How was last night?’ said Lucy. ‘I forgot to ask. Actually, I didn’t even hear you come in.’

‘It was nice,’ said Tess. ‘Nice to catch up.’ She had a sudden image of Connor flipping her over and saying in her ear, ‘I seem to remember this used to work quite well for us.’

Even before, when he was a young boring accountant with a nerdy hairstyle, before he got the killer body and the motorbike, he’d been good in bed. Tess had been too young to appreciate it. She’d thought all sex was as good as that. She shifted again in her seat. She was probably about to get a bout of cystitis. That would teach her. The last time she’d had sex three times in a row, and not so coincidentally, the last time she’d got cystitis, was when she and Will had first started dating.

Thinking about Will and their early days together should hurt, but it didn’t, not right now at least. She felt light-headed with wicked, delicious sexual satisfaction and . . . what else? Vengeance, that was it. Vengeance is mine, sayeth Tess. Will and Felicity thought she was up here in Sydney nursing a broken heart, when in fact she was having excellent sex with her ex-boyfriend. Sex with an ex. It left married sex for dead. So
there
, Will.

‘Tess, my darling?’ said her mother.

‘Mmmm?’

Her mother lowered her voice. ‘Did something happen last night between you and Connor?’

‘Of course not,’ said Tess.

‘I couldn’t possibly,’ she’d said to Connor that third time, and he’d said, ‘I bet you could,’ and she’d murmured, ‘I couldn’t, I couldn’t, I couldn’t,’ over and over, until it was established that she could.

‘Tess O’
Leary
!’ said her mother, just as a Year 1 boy’s birdcage hat slipped from his head. Tess met her mother’s eyes and laughed.

‘Oh, darling.’ Lucy grabbed hold of her arm. ‘Good on you. The man is an absolute
spunk
.’

chapter thirty-five

‘Connor Whitby is in a very good mood today,’ said Samantha Green. ‘I wonder if that means he’s finally got himself a woman?’

Samantha Green, whose eldest child was in Year 6, did part-time bookkeeping work at the school. She charged by the hour, and Rachel suspected that St Angela’s would still pay for the time Samantha was spending outside the office next to Rachel watching the Easter hat parade. That was the problem with having one of the mums work for the school. Rachel couldn’t very well say, ‘Will you be billing us for this, Samantha?’ When she was only there for three hours, it really didn’t seem necessary for her to stop work to watch the parade. It wasn’t like her daughter was taking part. Of course Rachel didn’t have a child taking part either, and
she’d
stopped work to watch. Rachel sighed. She was feeling itchy and bitchy.

Rachel looked at Connor sitting at the judges’ table wearing his pink baby’s bonnet. There was something perverted about a grown man dressed up as a baby. He was making some of the older boys laugh. She thought of his malevolent face on that video. The murderous way he’d looked at Janie. Yes, it
had
been murderous. The police should arrange for
a psychologist to look at the tape. Or some expert in face-reading. There were experts in everything these days.

‘I know the kids love him,’ said Samantha, who liked to wring a topic dry before she moved on to the next one. ‘And he’s always perfectly nice to us parents, but I always sensed something
not quite right
about that Connor Whitby. You know what I mean? Ooh! Look at Cecilia Fitzpatrick’s little girl! She’s just beautiful, isn’t she? I wonder where she gets it from. Anyway, my friend Janet Tyler went out with Connor a few times after her divorce and she said Connor was like a depressed person pretending not to be depressed. He dumped Janet in the end.’

‘Hmmm,’ said Rachel.

‘My mother remembers his mother,’ said Samantha. ‘She was an alcoholic. Neglected the kids. Father ran off when Connor was a baby. Gosh, who’s that with the birdcage on his head? The poor kid is going to lose it in a moment.’

Rachel could vaguely remember Trish Whitby turning up at church sometimes. The children were grubby. Trish scolded them too loudly during the service and people turned to stare.

‘I mean, a childhood like that has to have an impact on your personality, doesn’t it? Connor’s, I mean.’

‘Yes,’ said Rachel so adamantly that Samantha looked a bit taken aback.

‘But he’s in a good mood today,’ said Samantha, getting herself back on track. ‘I saw him in the car park earlier and I asked him how he was and he said, “Top of the world!” Now that sounds to me like a man in love. Or at least a man who got lucky last night. I must tell Janet. Well, I probably shouldn’t tell poor Janet. I think she quite liked him, even if he was strange. Oops! There goes the birdcage. Saw that coming.’

Top of the world.

Tomorrow was the anniversary of Janie’s death and Connor Whitby was feeling on top of the world.

chapter thirty-six

Cecilia decided to leave the parade early. She needed to be moving. When she sat still, she thought, and thinking was dangerous. Polly and Esther had both seen that she was there, and there was only the judging to follow, and Cecilia’s daughters weren’t going to win, because she’d told the judges last week (a thousand years ago) to make sure they didn’t. People got resentful if the Fitzpatrick girls won too many accolades; they suspected favouritism, making them even less likely to volunteer their time to the school.

She wouldn’t run again for P&C president after this year. The thought struck her with absolute certainty as she bent down to pick up her bag from next to her chair. It was a relief to know one thing for sure about her future. No matter what happened next, even if nothing happened, she would not run again. It simply wasn’t possible. She was no longer Cecilia Fitzpatrick. She’d ceased to exist the moment she’d read that letter.

‘I’m going,’ she said to Mahalia.

‘Yes, go home and rest,’ said Mahalia. ‘I thought you were about to faint away for a moment there. Keep the scarf. It looks lovely on you.’

As she walked through the quadrangle Cecilia saw Rachel Crowley watching the parade with Samantha Green on the balcony outside the school office. They were looking the other way. If she was quick about it, she’d get by without them seeing her.

‘Cecilia!’ cried Samantha.

‘Hi!’ cried Cecilia and let loose a string of violent profanities in her head. She walked towards them with her keys held prominently in her hand, so that they’d know she was in a rush, and stood as far away from them as could be considered polite.

‘Just the person I wanted to see!’ called Samantha, leaning over the balcony. ‘I thought you said I’d get that Tupperware order before Easter? It’s just that we’re having a picnic on Sunday, assuming this lovely weather holds! And so I thought –’

‘Of course,’ interrupted Cecilia. She stepped closer to them. Was this where she would normally stand? She’d completely forgotten about the deliveries she’d intended to do yesterday. ‘I’m so sorry. This week has been . . . tricky. I’ll come by this afternoon after I pick up the girls.’

‘Wonderful,’ said Samantha. ‘I mean you just got me so excited about that picnic set, I can’t wait to get my hands on it! Have you ever been to one of Cecilia’s Tupperware parties, Rachel? The woman could sell ice to Eskimos!’

‘I actually went to one of Cecilia’s parties the night before last,’ said Rachel. She smiled at Cecilia. ‘I had no idea how much Tupperware was missing from my life!’

‘Actually, Rachel, I can drop your order off at the same time if you like,’ said Cecilia.

‘Really?’ said Rachel. ‘I wasn’t expecting it so soon. Don’t you have to order it in?’

‘I keep extra stock of everything,’ said Cecilia. ‘Just in case.’
Why was she doing this?

‘Special overnight service for VIPs, eh?’ said Samantha, who would no doubt be storing this information away for future reference.

‘It’s no trouble,’ said Cecilia.

She went to meet Rachel’s eyes and found it was impossible, even from a safe distance like this. She was such a nice woman. Would it be easier to justify if she wasn’t nice? She pretended to be distracted by Mahalia’s scarf slipping from her shoulders.

‘If it suits, that would be lovely,’ said Rachel. ‘I’m taking a pavlova to my daughter-in-law’s place for lunch on Easter Sunday, so one of those storage thingummies would come in handy.’

Cecilia was pretty sure that Rachel hadn’t ordered anything that would be suitable for transporting a pavlova. She’d find something and give it to her for free.
It’s okay, John-Paul, I gave your murder victim’s mother some free Tupperware, so everything is all squared up
.

‘I’ll see you both this afternoon!’ she cried, waving her keys so energetically that they flew from her hand.

‘Oops-a-daisy!’ called Samantha.

chapter thirty-seven

Liam won second prize in the Easter hat parade.

‘Look what happens when you sleep with one of the judges,’ whispered Lucy.

‘Mum, shhh!’ hissed Tess, glancing over her shoulder for scandalised eavesdroppers. Besides, she didn’t want to think about Liam in relation to Connor. That confused everything. Liam and Connor belonged in separate boxes, on separate shelves, far, far away from each other.

She watched her small son shuffle across the playground to accept his gold trophy cup filled with tiny Easter eggs. He turned to look for Tess and Lucy with a thrilled, self-conscious smile.

Tess couldn’t wait to tell Will about it when they saw him this afternoon.

Wait. They wouldn’t be seeing him.

Well. They would ring him. Tess would speak in that cheerful, cold voice women used when they spoke to their ex-husbands in front of their children. Her own mother had used it. ‘Liam has good news!’ she’d tell Will, and then she’d pass Liam the phone and say, ‘Tell your dad what happened today!’ He wouldn’t be Daddy any more. He’d
be ‘your dad’. Tess knew the drill. Oh God, did she know the drill.

It was hopeless to try and save the marriage for Liam’s sake. How ridiculous she’d been. Deluded. Thinking that it was simply a matter of strategy. From now on Tess would behave with dignity. She’d act as if this was an ordinary, run-of-the-mill, amicable separation that had been on the cards for years. Maybe it
had
been on the cards.

Because otherwise how could she have behaved the way she had last night? And how could Will have fallen in love with Felicity? There
had
to be problems in their marriage; problems that had been completely invisible to her, problems she still couldn’t name, but problems nonetheless.

What was the last thing she and Will had argued about? It would be useful right now to focus on the most negative aspects of her marriage. She forced her mind back. Their last argument was over Liam. The Marcus problem. ‘Maybe we should consider changing schools,’ Will had said after Liam had seemed particularly down about some incident in the schoolyard, and Tess had snapped, ‘That seems a bit dramatic!’ They’d had a heated disagreement while they were packing the dishwasher after dinner. Tess had slammed a few drawers. Will had made an ostentatious point of repacking the frying pan she’d just put in the dishwasher. She’d ended up saying something silly like, ‘So are you saying I don’t care about Liam as much as you do?’ and Will had yelled, ‘Don’t be an idiot!’

But they’d made up, just a few hours later. They’d both apologised and there had been no lingering bitterness. Will wasn’t a sulker. He was actually pretty good at negotiating a compromise. And he rarely lost his sense of humour or ability to laugh at himself. ‘Did you see the way I repacked your frypan?’ he said. ‘That was a masterstroke, eh? Put you in your place, didn’t it?’

For a moment Tess felt her strange inappropriate happiness teeter. It was as though she was balanced on a narrow crevice surrounded by chasms of grief. One wrong thought and down she’d tumble.

Do not think about Will. Think about Connor. Think about sex. Think wicked, earthy, primal thoughts. Think about the orgasm that ripped through your body last night, cleansing your mind.

She watched Liam walk back to his class. He stood next to the one child that Tess knew: Polly Fitzpatrick, Cecilia’s youngest daughter, who was shockingly beautiful, and seemed positively Amazonian next to spindly little Liam. Polly gave Liam a high-five, and Liam looked almost incandescent with happiness.