The Husband's Secret

‘I’m not taking you away from your daughter,’ interrupted Rachel. She sounded brisk and furious, as if Cecilia and John-Paul were badly behaved teenagers. ‘I’ve already . . .’ She stopped, swallowed, and looked up at the ceiling as if she was trying to suppress the urge to be sick. She shooed them away. ‘Go. Just go to your little girl. Both of you.’

Chapter fifty-one

It was late Easter Saturday night and Will and Tess were hiding eggs in her mother’s backyard. They both held bags of tiny eggs, the ones wrapped in shiny-coloured foil.

When Liam was very little they used to put the eggs in plain sight, or even just scatter them across the grass, but as he’d got older he preferred the challenge of a tricky Easter egg hunt with Tess humming the soundtrack to Mission Impossible while Will timed him on a stopwatch.

‘I suppose we couldn’t put some of them in the guttering?’ Will looked up at the roof. ‘We could leave a ladder somewhere handy.’

Tess gave the sort of polite chuckle she’d give to an acquaintance or a client.

‘Guess not,’ said Will. He sighed, and carefully placed a blue one in the corner of a windowsill that Liam would have to stand on tippy-toes to reach.

Tess unwrapped an egg and ate it. The last thing Liam needed was more chocolate. Sweetness filled her mouth. She herself had eaten so much chocolate this week, if she didn’t watch it she’d end up the size of Felicity.

The casually cruel thought came automatically into her head like an old lyric, and she realised how often she must have thought it. ‘The size of Felicity’ was still her definition of unacceptably fat, even now, when Felicity had a slim, gorgeous body that was better than hers.

‘I can’t believe you thought we could all just live together!’ she exploded. She saw Will steel himself.

This was the way it had been ever since he had finally turned up at her mother’s house the previous day, pale and discernibly thinner than the last time she’d seen him. Her mood kept swinging about precariously. One minute she was cool and sarcastic, the next she was hysterical and weepy. She couldn’t seem to get a hold of herself.

Will turned to face her, the bag of chocolate eggs in the palm of his hand. ‘I didn’t really think that,’ he said.

‘But you said it! On Monday, you said it.’

‘It was idiotic. I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘All I can do is keep saying I’m sorry.’

‘You sound robotic,’ said Tess. ‘You don’t even mean it any more. You’re just saying the words in the hope I’ll finally shut up.’ She spoke in a monotone. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’

‘I do mean it,’ said Will wearily.

‘Shhh,’ said Tess, although he hadn’t really spoken that loudly. ‘You’ll wake them.’ Liam and her mother were both in bed asleep. Their rooms were at the front of the house and they were both deep sleepers. They probably wouldn’t wake them even if they started yelling at each other.

There had been no yelling. Not yet. Just these short, useless conversations that travelled bitterly down one-way streets.

Their reunion the previous day had been both surreal and mundane; an exasperating clash of personalities and emotion. For a start there was Liam, who was almost deranged with excitement. It was like he’d sensed the danger of losing his father, and the safe little structure of his life, and now his relief at Will’s return manifested itself in six-year-old craziness. He spoke in annoying silly voices, he giggled maniacally, he wanted to wrestle constantly with his father. Will, on the other hand, was completely traumatised by witnessing Polly Fitzpatrick’s accident. ‘You should have seen the expressions on the parents’ faces,’ he kept saying quietly to Tess. ‘Imagine if that was Liam. If that was us.’

The shocking news about Polly’s accident should have put everything into perspective for Tess, and in a way it did. If something like that had happened to Liam then nothing else would have mattered. But at the same time it was as if her own feelings were now a trivial matter, and that made her feel defensive and aggressive.

She couldn’t find big enough words to describe the enormous breadth and depth of her emotions. You hurt me. You really hurt me. How could you hurt me like that? It was so simple in her head but so strangely complex each time she opened her mouth.

‘You wish you were on a plane with Felicity right now,’ said Tess. He did. She knew that he did, because she wished she was in Connor’s apartment right now. ‘Flying to Paris.’

‘You keep saying Paris,’ said Will. ‘Why Paris?’ She heard in his voice a hint of ordinary Will, of the Will she loved. The Will who found the humour in everyday stuff. ‘Do you want to go to Paris?’

‘No,’ said Tess.

‘Liam does love his croissants.’

‘No.’

‘Except we’d have to bring our own Vegemite.’

‘I don’t want to go to Paris.’

She walked across the lawn to the back fence and went to hide an egg near a post, and then changed her mind, worried about spiders.

‘I should mow that lawn for your mother tomorrow,’ said Will from the courtyard.

‘A boy down the road does it once every two weeks,’ said Tess.

‘Okay.’

‘I know that you’re only here because of Liam,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘You heard me.’