The Husband's Secret (15 page)

And so here she was sitting in Marla’s living room, which was crowded and noisy with women drinking cocktails.
Rachel was sandwiched on a couch in between Marla’s two daughters-in-law, Eve and Arianna, who had no plans to move to New York and were
both
pregnant with Marla’s first grandchildren.

‘I’m just not into pain,’ Eve was telling Arianna. ‘I told my obstetrician, I said, “Look, I have zero tolerance for pain. Zero. Don’t even talk to me about it.”’

‘Well, I guess nobody really likes pain?’ said Arianna, who seemed to doubt every word that came out of her mouth. ‘Except masochists?’

‘It’s unacceptable,’ said Eve. ‘In this day and age. I refuse it. I say no thank you to pain.’

Ah, so that was my mistake
, thought Rachel.
I should have said no thank you to pain.

‘Look who’s here, ladies!’ Marla appeared with a tray of sausage rolls in her hand and Cecilia Fitzpatrick by her side. Cecilia looked polished and shiny and was wheeling a neat black suitcase behind her.

Apparently it was something of a coup to get Cecilia to do a party for you, because she was so booked out. She had six Tupperware consultants working ‘beneath her’, according to her mother-in-law, and was sent on all sorts of overseas ‘jaunts’ and the like.

‘So, now, Cecilia,’ Marla was flustered with responsibility and the sausage rolls slid about on the tray in her hand, ‘would you like a drink?’

Cecilia wheeled her bag to a neat stop and rescued the sausage rolls just in the nick of time.

‘Just a glass of water would be lovely, Marla,’ she said. ‘Why don’t I hand these out for you while I introduce myself, although I think I know a lot of faces of course. Hello, I’m Cecilia, it’s Arianna, isn’t it? Sausage roll?’ Arianna looked blankly at Cecilia as she took a sausage roll. ‘Your younger sister teaches my daughter Polly ballet. I’m going to show
you the perfect little containers for freezing purees for your baby! And Rachel, it’s so nice to see you. How’s little Jacob?’

‘Moving to New York for two years.’ Rachel took a sausage roll and gave Cecilia a wry smile.

Cecilia stopped. ‘Oh, Rachel, what a bugger,’ she said sympathetically, but then, in typical Cecilia style, she instantly shifted into solution mode. ‘But listen, you’ll visit, right? Someone was telling me recently about this website with amazing deals on New York apartments. I’ll email you the link, promise.’ She moved on. ‘Hi there, I’m Cecilia. Sausage roll?’

And on she went about the room, serving food and compliments, fixing every guest with that strange piercing gaze of hers, so that by the time she’d finished and was ready to do her demonstration, everyone obediently swung their knees in her direction, their faces attentive, ready to be sold Tupperware, as if a firm but fair teacher had taken control of a rowdy classroom.

Rachel was surprised by how much she ended up enjoying the night. It was partly the very good cocktails that Marla was serving, but it was also thanks to Cecilia, who interspersed her lively and somewhat evangelical product demonstration (‘I’m a Tupperware freak,’ she told them. ‘I just
love
this stuff.’ Rachel found her genuine passion touching. And compelling! It would be
great
if her carrots stayed crunchier for longer!) with a trivia competition. Each guest who got a trivia question right was awarded a chocolate coin. At the end of the night the person with the most gold-wrapped coins would win a prize.

Some of the questions were about Tupperware. Rachel did not know, or particularly feel the need to know, that a Tupperware party began somewhere in the world every 2.7 seconds (‘One second, two seconds – that’s another Tupperware party starting!’ chirruped Cecilia.), or that a man
named Earl Tupper created the famous ‘burping seal’. But she did have good general knowledge and she began to feel competitive about the growing pile of gold coins in front of her.

In the end it was a fierce battle between Rachel and Marla’s friend from her midwifery days, Jenny Cruise, and Rachel actually punched her fist in the air when she won by a single gold coin on the question, ‘Who played “Pat the Rat” on the soapie
Sons and Daughters
?’

Rachel knew the answer (Rowena Wallace) because Janie had been obsessed with that silly show when she was a teenager. She sent up a word of thanks to Janie.

She’d forgotten how much she enjoyed winning.

In fact, she was on such a high that she ended up ordering over three hundred dollars’ worth of Tupperware that Cecilia assured her would transform her pantry and her life.

By the end of the night Rachel was a little drunk.

Actually, everyone was a little drunk, except for Marla’s pregnant daughters-in-law who’d left early, and Cecilia, who was presumably drunk on the joy of Tupperware.

There was much shrieking. Husbands were telephoned. Lifts home were negotiated. Rachel sat on the couch happily eating her way through her pile of chocolate coins.

‘What about you, Rachel? Have you arranged a lift home?’ said Cecilia when Marla was at the front door shouting goodbyes to her tennis friends. Cecilia had all her Tupperware packed away into her black bag and was still as immaculate as at the start of the night, except for two spots of colour high on her cheeks.

‘Me?’ Rachel looked around and realised she was the last guest. ‘I’m fine. I’ll drive home.’

For some reason it hadn’t really occurred to her that she needed to find a way to get home too. It was something to do with her sense of always feeling separate from everybody
else, as if things that worried them couldn’t possibly worry her, as if she was immune from the ordinariness of life.

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Marla swooped back into the room. The night had been a triumph. ‘You can’t drive, you crazy girl! You’d be way over the limit. Mac can drive you home. He hasn’t got anything better to do.’

‘That’s okay. I’ll catch a cab.’ Rachel roused herself. Her head did feel fuzzy. She didn’t want Mac to drive her home. Mac, who had stayed in his study throughout the Tupperware party, was a man’s man and had got on great with Ed, but he was always so painfully shy in one-on-one conversations with women. It would be excruciating being alone in the car with him.

‘You live down near the Wycombe Road tennis courts, don’t you, Rachel?’ said Cecilia. ‘I’ll drive you home. You’re right on my way.’

Moments later, they’d waved Marla off and Rachel was in the passenger seat of Cecilia’s white Ford Territory with the giant Tupperware logo along the side. The car was very comfortable, quiet and clean and nice smelling. Cecilia drove just as she did everything: capably and briskly, and Rachel put her head back against the headrest and waited for Cecilia’s reliable, soothing stream of conversation about raffles, carnivals, newsletters and everything else pertaining to St Angela’s.

Instead, there was silence. Rachel glanced over at Cecilia’s profile. She was chewing on her bottom lip, and squinting, as if at some thought that was giving her pain.

Marriage problems? Something to do with the kids? Rachel remembered all the time she used to devote to problems about sex, misbehaving children and misunderstood comments, broken appliances and money.

It wasn’t that she now knew those problems didn’t matter. Not at all. She longed for them to matter. She longed for the
tricky tussle of life as a mother and a wife. How wonderful to be Cecilia Fitzpatrick driving home to her daughters after hosting a successful Tupperware party, worrying over whatever was quite rightfully worrying her.

In the end it was Rachel who broke the silence. ‘I had fun tonight,’ she said. ‘You did a great job. No wonder you’re so successful at it.’

Cecilia gave a small shrug. ‘Thank you. I love it.’ She smiled. ‘My sister makes fun of me over it.’

‘Jealous,’ said Rachel.

Cecilia shrugged and yawned. She seemed like a different person from the performer at Marla’s house and the woman who zoomed around St Angela’s.

‘I’d love to see your pantry,’ mused Rachel. ‘I bet everything is all labelled and in the perfect container. Mine looks like a disaster zone.’

‘I am proud of my pantry,’ Cecilia smiled. ‘John-Paul says it’s like a filing cabinet of food. I make a big song and dance if the poor girls put something back in the wrong spot.’

‘How are your girls?’ asked Rachel.

‘Wonderful,’ said Cecilia, although Rachel saw a shadow of a frown. ‘Growing up fast. Giving me cheek.’

‘Your eldest daughter,’ said Rachel. ‘Isabel. I saw her the other day in assembly. She reminds me a little of my daughter. Of Janie.’

Cecilia didn’t respond.

Why did I tell her that
? thought Rachel.
I must be drunker than I realise.
No woman wanted to hear that her daughter looked like a girl who’d been strangled.

But then Cecilia said, with her eyes on the road ahead, ‘I have just one memory of your daughter.’

chapter eleven

‘I have just one memory of your daughter.’

Was it the right thing to do? What if she made Rachel cry? She’d just won the Heat ’n’ Eat Everyday Set and she seemed so happy about it.

Cecilia never been comfortable around Rachel. She felt trivial, because surely the whole world was trivial to a woman who had lost a child in such circumstances. She always wanted to somehow convey to Rachel that she
knew
she was trivial. Years ago she’d seen something on a TV talk show about how grieving parents appreciated hearing people tell them memories of their children. There would be no more new memories, so it was a gift to share one with them. Ever since then, whenever Cecilia saw Rachel, she thought of her memory of Janie, paltry though it was, and wondered how she could share it with her. But there was never an opportunity. You couldn’t bring it up in the school office in between conversations about the uniform shop and the netball timetable.

Now was the perfect time. The only time. And Rachel was the one who had brought up Janie.

‘Of course, I didn’t actually know her at all,’ said Cecilia.
‘She was four years ahead of me. But I do have this memory.’ She faltered.

‘Go on.’ Rachel straightened in her seat. ‘I love to hear memories of Janie.’

‘Well it’s just something really small,’ said Cecilia. Now she was terrified she wouldn’t deliver enough. She wondered if she should embellish. ‘I was in Year 2. Janie was in Year 6. I knew her name because she was house captain of Red.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Rachel smiled. ‘We dyed everything red. One of Ed’s work shirts accidentally got dyed red. Funny how you forget all that stuff.’

‘So it was the school carnival, and do you remember how we used to do marching? Each house had to march around the oval. I’m always telling Connor Whitby that we should bring back the marching. He just laughs at me.’

Cecilia glanced over and saw that Rachel’s smile had withered a little. She ploughed on. Was it too upsetting? Not that interesting?

‘I was the sort of child who took the marching
very
seriously. And I desperately wanted Red to win, but I tripped over, and because I fell, all these other children crashed into the back of me. Sister Ursula was screaming like a banshee, and that was the end of it for Red. I was sobbing my heart out, I thought it was the absolute end of the world, and Janie Crowley, your Janie, came over and helped me up, and brushed off the back of my uniform, and she said very quietly in my ear, “It doesn’t matter. It’s only stupid marching.”’

Rachel didn’t say anything.

‘That’s it,’ said Cecilia humbly. ‘It wasn’t much, but I just always –’

‘Thank you, darling,’ said Rachel, and Cecilia was reminded of an adult thanking a child for a homemade bookmark made out of cardboard and glitter. Rachel lifted a hand, as if she was about to wave at someone, and then she
let it brush gently against Cecilia’s shoulder, before dropping it in her lap. ‘That’s just so Janie. “Only stupid marching.” You know what? I think I remember it. All the children tumbling to the ground. Marla and I giggling our heads off.’

She paused. Cecilia’s stomach tensed. Was she about to burst into tears?

‘Gosh, you know, I am a tiny bit drunk,’ said Rachel. ‘I actually thought about driving myself home. Imagine if I’d killed someone.’

‘I’m sure you wouldn’t have,’ said Cecilia.

‘I really did have fun tonight,’ said Rachel. Her head was turned, so that she was addressing the car window. She gently knocked her forehead against the window. It seemed like something a much younger woman would do after they’d had too much to drink. ‘I should make the effort to go out more often.’

‘Oh, well!’ said Cecilia. This was her thing. She could fix that! ‘You must come to Polly’s birthday party the weekend after Easter! Saturday afternoon at two. It’s a pirate party.’

‘That’s very nice of you, but I’m sure Polly doesn’t need me crashing her party,’ said Rachel.

‘You must come! You’ll know lots of people. John-Paul’s mother. My mum. Lucy O’Leary is coming with Tess and her little boy, Liam.’ Cecilia was suddenly desperate for her to come. ‘You could bring your grandson! Bring Jacob! The girls would
love
to have a toddler there.’

Rachel’s face lit up. ‘I did say I’d look after Jacob while Rob and Lauren are seeing real estate agents about renting out their house while they’re in New York. Oh, this is me, just ahead.’

Cecilia stopped the car in front of a red-brick bungalow. It seemed like every light in the house had been left on.

‘Thanks so much for the lift.’ Rachel climbed out of the car with the same careful sideways slide of the hips as Cecilia’s
mother. There was a certain age, Cecilia had noticed, before people stooped or trembled where they didn’t seem to trust their bodies as they once had. ‘I’ll send an invitation to you at the school!’ Cecilia leaned across the seat to call out the window, wondering if she should be offering to walk Rachel to the door. Her own mother would be insulted if she did. John-Paul’s mother would be insulted if she didn’t.

‘Lovely,’ said Rachel, and she walked off briskly, as if she’d read Cecilia’s thoughts and wanted to prove she wasn’t elderly just yet, thanks very much.