The Husband's Secret

Ed used to have nightmares too. Rachel would wake up to hear him yelling, over and over, ‘Run Janie! Run! For God’s sake, darling, run!’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know you had nightmares,’ said Rachel. What could she have done about it?

Rob got his face back under control.

‘They’re just dreams. They’re no big deal. But you shouldn’t have to go to the park every year on your own, Mum. I’m sorry I never offered to go with you before. I should have.’

‘Sweetheart, you did offer,’ said Rachel. ‘Don’t you remember? Many times. And I always said no. It was my thing. Your dad thought I was crazy. He never went to that park. Never even drove along the same street.’

Rob wiped the back of his hand across his nose and sniffed.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘You’d think after all these years . . .’ He stopped abruptly.

They could hear Jacob in the kitchen singing the words to the Bob the Builder soundtrack. Lauren was singing along too. Rob smiled tenderly at the sound. The smell of hot cross buns drifted into the room.

Rachel studied his face. He was a good dad. A better dad than his own father had been. That was the way these days – all the men seemed to be better fathers – but Rob had always been a soft-hearted boy.

Even as a baby he’d been a loving little thing. She used to pick him up from his cot after a nap and he’d snuggle against her chest and actually pat her back, as if to thank her for picking him up. He’d been the most chuckly, kissable baby. She remembered Ed saying, without resentment, ‘For God’s sake, woman, you’re besotted with that child.’

It was strange, remembering Rob as a baby, like picking up a much-loved book she hadn’t read in years. She so rarely bothered to think about memories of Rob. Instead, she was always trying to scrape up new memories of Janie’s childhood, as if Rob’s childhood didn’t matter because he got to live.

‘You were the most beautiful baby,’ she said to Rob. ‘People used to stop me in the street to compliment me. Have I told you that before? Probably a hundred times.’

Rob shook his head slowly. ‘You never told me that, Mum.’

‘Didn’t I?’ said Rachel. ‘Not even when Jacob was born?’

‘No.’ There was an expression of wonder on his face.

‘Well I should have,’ said Rachel. She sighed. ‘I probably should have done a lot of things.’

Rob leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. ‘So I was pretty cute, eh?’

‘You were gorgeous, darling,’ said Rachel. ‘You still are, of course.’

Rob snorted. ‘Yeah right, Mum.’ But he couldn’t hide the delight that suddenly wreathed his face, and Rachel bit down hard on her lower lip with regret for all the ways she’d let him down.

‘Hot cross buns!’ Lauren appeared carrying a beautiful platter of perfectly toasted and evenly buttered buns, which she placed in front of them.

‘Let me help,’ said Rachel.

‘Absolutely not,’ said Lauren. She said over her shoulder, as she returned to the kitchen, ‘You never let me help at your place.’

‘Ah,’ Rachel felt strangely exposed. She always assumed that Lauren didn’t really notice her actions, or even register her as a person at all. She thought of her age as a shield that protected her from the eyes of the young.

She always pretended to herself that she didn’t let Lauren help because she was trying to be the perfect mother-in-law, but really, when you didn’t let a woman help, it was a way of keeping her at a distance, of letting her know that she wasn’t family, of saying, ‘I don’t like you enough to let you into my kitchen.’

Lauren reappeared with another tray containing three coffee cups. The coffee would be perfect, made exactly the way Rachel liked it: hot with two sugars. Lauren was the perfect daughter-in-law. Rachel was the perfect mother-in-law. All that perfection hiding all that dislike.

But Lauren had won. New York was her ace. She’d played it. Good on her.

‘Where’s Jacob?’ asked Rachel.

‘He’s drawing,’ said Lauren as she sat down. She lifted her mug and shot Rob a wry look. ‘Hopefully not on the walls.’

Rob grinned at her, and Rachel got another glimpse of the private world of their marriage. It seemed like it was a good marriage, as far as marriages went.

Would Janie have liked Lauren? Would Rachel have been a nice, ordinary, overbearing mother-in-law if Janie had lived? It was impossible to imagine. The world with Lauren in it was so vastly different from the world when Janie had been alive. It seemed impossible that Lauren would still have existed if Janie had lived.

She looked at Lauren, strands of fair hair escaping from her ponytail. It was nearly the same blonde as Janie’s. Janie’s hair was blonder. Perhaps hers would have got darker as she’d got older.

Ever since that first morning after Janie died, when she woke up and the horror of what had happened crashed down upon her, Rachel had been obsessively imagining another life running alongside her own, her real life, the one that was stolen from her, the one where Janie was warm in her bed.

But as the years had gone by it had grown harder and harder to imagine it. Lauren was sitting right in front of her and she was so alive, the blood pumping through her veins, her chest rising and falling.

‘You okay, Mum?’ said Rob.

‘I’m fine,’ said Rachel. She went to reach for her cup of coffee and found that she didn’t have the energy to even lift her arm.