The Husband's Secret

And John-Paul had been so strange on the phone when she’d asked him about that letter. He had been lying about something. She was sure of it.

And there was the sex thing. Perhaps he’d lost interest in Cecilia because he was lusting after Isabel’s changing young body? It was laughable. It was revolting. She felt sick.

‘MUM!’

‘Mmm?’

‘Look! You drove right past the street! We’re going to be late!’

‘Sorry. Damn it. Sorry.’

She slammed on her brakes to do a U-turn. There was a furious shriek of a horn from behind them and Cecilia’s heart leapt into her chest as she looked in her rear-vision mirror and saw a huge truck.

‘Shit.’ She raised a hand in apology. ‘Sorry. Yes, yes, I know!’

The truck driver couldn’t forgive her and kept his hand pressed on the horn.

‘Sorry, sorry!’ As she completed her U-turn she looked up to wave her apology again (she had the Tupperware name emblazoned down one side of her car – she didn’t want to damage the company’s reputation). The driver had wound down his window and was leaning almost halfway out, his face ugly with rage as he slammed his fist over and over into the palm of his hand.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ she muttered.

‘I think that man wants to kill you,’ said Polly.

‘That man is very naughty,’ said Cecilia severely. Her heart sped as she drove sedately back to the dance studio, double-checking all her mirrors and indicating her intentions well in advance.

She wound down her window and watched as Polly ran into the studio, her pink tulle tutu bobbing, her delicate shoulderblades jutting out like wings beneath the straps of her leotard.

Melissa McNulty appeared at the door and waved to indicate that as per their arrangement she was taking care of Polly. Cecilia waved back and reversed.

‘If this was Berlin and Caroline’s office was on the other side of the Wall, I wouldn’t be able to go to speech therapy,’ said Esther.

‘Good point,’ said Cecilia.

‘We could help her escape! We could put her in the boot of the car. She’s pretty little. I think she’d fit. Unless she gets claustrophobia like Daddy.’

‘I feel like Caroline is the sort of person who would probably organise her own escape,’ said Cecilia. We’ve already spent enough on her! We’re not going to help her escape from East Berlin! Esther’s speech therapist was intimidating, with her perfect vowels. Whenever Cecilia spoke to her she caught herself articulating all her syllables ve-ry care-ful-ly, as if she was doing an elocution test.

‘I don’t think Daddy looks at Isabel funny,’ said Esther.

‘Don’t you?’ said Cecilia happily. Good Lord. How melodramatic she was being. Polly made one of her peculiar little observations and Cecilia’s mind jumped straight to sexual abuse. She must be watching too much trashy television.

‘But he was crying the other day before he went to Chicago,’ said Esther.

‘What?’

‘In the shower,’ said Esther. ‘I went into your bathroom to get the nail scissors and Daddy was crying.’

‘Well, darling, did you ask him why he was crying?’ said Cecilia, trying not to show just how much she cared about the answer.

‘Nope,’ said Esther breezily. ‘When I’m crying I don’t like to be interrupted.’

Dammit. If it had been Polly, she would have pulled back the shower screen and demanded an immediate answer from her father.

‘I was going to ask you why Daddy was crying,’ said Esther, ‘but then I forgot. I had a lot on my mind.’

‘I really don’t think he was crying. He was probably just . . . sneezing, or something,’ said Cecilia. The idea of John-Paul crying in the shower was so foreign, so weird. Why would he be crying, except over something truly terrible? He was not a crier. When the girls were born his eyes had got a shiny quality to them, and when his father had died unexpectedly he’d put down the phone and made a strange fragile noise, as if he was choking on something small and fluffy. But apart from that she’d never seen him cry.

‘He wasn’t sneezing,’ said Esther.

‘Maybe he had one of his migraines,’ said Cecilia, although she knew that whenever John-Paul was afflicted by one of his debilitating migraines the last thing he would do was have a shower. He needed to be alone, in bed, in a dark, quiet room.

‘Uh, Mum, Daddy never has a shower when he has a migraine,’ said Esther, who knew her father just as well as Cecilia knew her husband.

Depression? It seemed to be going around at the moment. At a recent dinner party half the guests revealed they were on Prozac. After all, John-Paul had always gone through . . . patches. They often followed the migraines. There would be a week or so when it was as though he was just going through the motions. He’d say and do all the right things, but there’d be something vacant in his eyes, as if the real John-Paul had checked out for a while and sent this very authentic-looking replica to take his place. ‘You okay?’ Cecilia would ask, and he’d always take a few moments to focus on her, before saying, ‘Sure. I’m fine.’

But it was always temporary. Suddenly he’d be back, fully present, listening to her and the girls with all his attention, and Cecilia would convince herself that she’d imagined the whole thing. The ‘patches’ were probably just a lingering effect of the migraines.