The Husband's Secret (31 page)

Dammit. Will had been right. Liam
did
need to change schools.

Tess’s eyes filled with tears, and she felt suddenly ashamed.

Why the shame, she wondered as she pulled a tissue from her bag and blew her nose.

Because her husband had fallen in love with someone else? Because she wasn’t lovable enough, or sexy enough, or something enough, to keep her child’s father satisfied?

Or was she actually ashamed about last night? Because she’d found a selfish way to make the pain disappear. Because right now she was longing to see Connor again, or more specifically, to sleep with him again, to have his tongue, his body, his hands obliterate the memory of Will and Felicity sitting on either side of her, telling her their horrible secret. She remembered the feel of the length of her spine being flattened against the floorboards in Connor’s hallway. He was fucking her, but really he was fucking them.

There was a burst of sweet feminine laughter from the row of pretty, chatty mothers sitting alongside Tess. Mothers who had proper married sex with their husbands in the
marital bed. Mothers who were not thinking the word ‘fuck’ while they were watching their children’s Easter hat parade. Tess was ashamed because she wasn’t behaving as a selfless mother should.

Or perhaps she was ashamed because deep down she wasn’t that ashamed at all.

‘Thank you so much for joining us today, Mums and Dads, Grandmas and Grandpas! That concludes our Easter hat parade!’ said the school principal into the microphone. She put her head on one side and waggled her fingers around an imaginary carrot stick like Bugs Bunny. ‘That’s all folks!’

‘What do you want to do this afternoon?’ asked Lucy, as everyone applauded and laughed.

‘There are a few things I need at the shops.’ Tess stood and stretched and looked down at her mother in her wheelchair. She could feel Connor’s eyes on her from the opposite side of the yard.

She’d always felt somehow
wronged
by her parents’ divorce. As a child, she’d wasted hours imagining how much better her life would have been if her parents had stayed together. She would have had a closer relationship with her father. Holidays would have been so much more fun! She wouldn’t have been so shy (how she managed to rationalise this, she didn’t know).
Everything
would have been just generally better. But the truth was her parents had a perfectly amicable divorce, and eventually became relatively friendly. Sure, it was awkward and strange visiting her father every second weekend. But really, what was the big deal? Marriages failed. Children survived. Tess had survived. The so-called ‘damage’ was all in her mind.

She waved at Connor.

New lingerie was what she needed. Extremely expensive lingerie that her husband would never see.

chapter thirty-eight

Cecilia left the Easter hat parade and drove straight to the gym. She got on the treadmill, put the incline and speed up as high as they could go and ran as if she was running for her life. She ran until her heart pounded, her chest heaved and her vision blurred from the sweat dripping into her mouth. She ran until there wasn’t room for a single thought in her head. It was a wonderful relief to not be thinking, and she felt like she could have run on for another hour, if it wasn’t for one of the gym instructors stopping abruptly and quite unnecessarily in front of Cecilia’s treadmill and saying, ‘You okay there? You don’t look too good to me.’

‘I’m fine,’ Cecilia went to say, furious with him for bringing the real world crashing back into her consciousness, except that she couldn’t talk, or breathe actually, and at that instant both her legs turned to jelly. The instructor grabbed her around the waist and slammed the palm of his hand on the treadmill to stop it.

‘You’ve got to pace yourself, Mrs Fitzpatrick,’ he said, helping her off the treadmill. His name was Dane. He taught a weights class that was popular with the St Angela’s crowd. Cecilia often did it on a Friday morning before her
weekly grocery shop. Dane’s skin was young and dewy. He looked about the same age as John-Paul had been when he killed Janie Crowley. ‘I reckon your blood pressure is sky-high right now,’ he said, his eyes bright and earnest. ‘If you want, I could help you work out a training programme that would –’

‘No thank you,’ panted Cecilia. ‘But thank you, I’m just, well, I’m just leaving actually.’ She walked away quickly on wobbly legs, still fighting for breath, sweat pooling in her bra, ignoring Dane’s entreaties to do a few stretches, to cool-down, to at least
drink some water, Mrs Fitzpatrick, you’ve gotta rehydrate!

On the way home she decided that she couldn’t live another moment with this, it was impossible. John-Paul would have to confess. He’d turned her into a criminal. It was preposterous. While she was in the shower, she decided that confessing wouldn’t bring Janie back and Cecilia’s daughters would lose their father and what was the point of that? But their marriage was dead. She couldn’t live with him. So that was that.

While she was getting dressed she made her final decision. John-Paul would turn himself into the police after the Easter break, give Rachel Crowley the answers she deserved and the girls would just have to live with an incarcerated father.

As she blow-dried her hair, it was suddenly blindingly obvious to her that her beautiful daughters were all that mattered, were her only priority and that she still loved John-Paul, and she’d promised to be true to him in good times and bad, and life would go on as it always had. He had made a tragic mistake when he was seventeen. There was no need to do or say or change anything.

The phone was ringing when she turned off the hairdryer. It was John-Paul.

‘I just wanted to see how you are,’ he said gently. It was like he thought she was ill. Or, no, it was like she was suffering from a uniquely female psychological condition, something that was making her fragile and crazy.

‘Marvellous,’ she said. ‘I feel just marvellous. Thanks for asking.’

chapter thirty-nine

‘Happy Easter!’ said Trudy to Rachel as they packed up the office that afternoon. ‘Here, I got you a little something.’

‘Oh!’ said Rachel, touched and annoyed, because it hadn’t occurred to her to get a present for Trudy. There had never been any exchanging of gifts with the old school principal. They’d rarely exchanged pleasantries.

Trudy handed over a charming little basket filled with a variety of delicious-looking eggs. It looked like the sort of thing Rachel’s daughter-in-law would buy her: expensive, elegant and just right.

‘Thank you so much, Trudy, I didn’t –’ She waved her hand to indicate her absence of a gift.

‘No, no.’ Trudy waved back to indicate it wasn’t necessary. She’d stayed in her bunny suit for the entire day, and looked, Rachel thought, perfectly ridiculous. ‘I just want you to know how much I appreciate the work you do, Rachel. You carry this whole office, and you let me be . . . me.’ She lifted one of her rabbit ears out of her eyes and gave Rachel a level look. ‘I’ve had some secretaries who found my working approach somewhat unusual.’

I bet they did
, thought Rachel.

‘You make it all about the children,’ said Rachel. ‘That’s who we’re here for.’

‘Well, you have a lovely Easter break,’ said Trudy. ‘Enjoy some time with that scrumptious grandson of yours.’

‘I will,’ said Rachel. ‘Are you . . . going away?’

Trudy didn’t have a husband or children or any interests that Rachel knew of outside the school. There were never any phone calls of a personal nature. It was hard to imagine how she’d be spending the Easter break.

‘Just faffing about,’ said Trudy. ‘I read a lot. Love a good whodunnit! I pride myself on guessing who the murderer is – oh!’

Her face turned bright pink with distress.

‘I quite like historical fiction myself,’ said Rachel quickly, avoiding her eye and pretending to be busily distracted with picking up her bag and coat and Easter basket.

‘Ah.’ Trudy couldn’t recover her equilibrium. Her eyes filled with tears.

The poor girl was only fifty, not that much older than what Janie would have been. Her kooky grey wispy hair made her look like an elderly toddler.

‘It’s fine, Trudy,’ said Rachel softly. ‘You didn’t upset me. It’s perfectly fine.’

chapter forty

‘Hi,’ Tess answered her phone. It was Connor. Her body responded instantly to his voice, like Pavlov’s salivating dog.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

‘I’m buying hot cross buns,’ said Tess. She’d picked up Liam from school and taken him to the shops for a treat. Unlike yesterday, he seemed quiet and moody after school and not interested in talking about his Easter hat win. She was also buying a whole list of things for her mother, who had suddenly realised the shops would be closed the next day, for
one whole day
, and had gone into a panic about the state of her pantry.

‘I love hot cross buns,’ said Connor.

‘Me too.’

‘Really? We’ve got so much in common.’

Tess laughed. She noticed Liam looking up at her curiously, and she turned slightly away from him, so that he couldn’t see her flushed face.

‘Anyway,’ said Connor. ‘I wasn’t calling for any particular reason. I just wanted to say that I thought last night was really . . . nice.’ He coughed. ‘That’s an understatement actually.’

Oh God
, thought Tess. She pressed the palm of her hand to her burning cheek.

‘I know things are really complicated for you right now,’ continued Connor. ‘I don’t have any, ah, expectations, I promise you. I’m not going to make your life more complicated. But I just wanted you to know that I’d love to see you again. Any time.’

‘Mum?’ Liam pulled on the edge of her cardigan. ‘Is that Dad?’

Tess shook her head.

‘Who is it?’ demanded Liam. His eyes were big and worried.

Tess pulled the phone away from her ear and put a finger to her lip. ‘It’s a client.’ Liam lost interest immediately. He was used to conversations with clients.

Tess took a few steps away from the crowd of customers waiting to be served at the bakery.

‘It’s okay,’ said Connor. ‘Like I said, I really don’t have any –’

‘Are you free tonight?’ interrupted Tess.

‘God, yes.’

‘I’ll come over once Liam is asleep.’ She put her lips close to the phone as if she was a secret agent. ‘I’ll bring hot cross buns.’

Rachel was walking towards her car when she saw her daughter’s murderer.

He was talking on his mobile phone, swinging his motorbike helmet held loosely in his fingertips. As she got closer, he suddenly tipped back his head to the sun as if he’d just received unexpectedly wonderful news. The afternoon light glinted off his sunglasses. He snapped the phone shut and slid it in his jacket pocket, smiling to himself.

Rachel thought again of the video and remembered the expression on his face when he turned on Janie. She could see it so clearly. The face of a monster: leering, malicious, cruel.

And now look at him. Connor Whitby was very alive and very happy and why wouldn’t he be, because
he’d got away with it
. If the police did nothing, as seemed likely, he would never pay for what he’d done.

As she got closer, Connor caught sight of Rachel and his smiled vanished instantly, as if a light had been snapped off.

Guilty
, thought Rachel.
Guilty
.
Guilty
.
Guilty
.

‘This came by overnight courier for you,’ said Lucy when Tess was home unpacking the groceries. ‘Looks like it’s from your father. Fancy him managing to send something by
courier
.’

Intrigued, Tess sat down at the kitchen table with her mother and unwrapped the small bubble-wrapped package. Inside was a flat square box.

‘He hasn’t sent you jewellery, has he?’ asked her mother. She peered over to look.

‘It’s a compass,’ said Tess. It was a beautiful old-fashioned wooden compass. ‘It’s like something Captain Cook would have used.’

‘How peculiar,’ sniffed her mother.

As Tess lifted up the compass she saw a small handwritten yellow post-it note stuck to the bottom of the box.