The Husband's Secret (7 page)

Rob was making Jacob giggle now. Wrestling with him, probably, hanging him upside down by his ankles, the same way Ed used to wrestle with him.

‘Here comes the . . . TICKLE MONSTER!’ cried Rob.

Peal after peal of Jacob’s laughter floated into the room like streams of bubbles and Rachel and Lauren both laughed together. It was irresistible, like they were being tickled themselves. Their eyes met across the table, and at that instant Rachel’s laughter turned into a sob.

‘Oh,
Rachel
.’ Lauren half-rose from her seat and reached out a perfectly manicured hand (she had a manicure, a pedicure and a massage every third Saturday. She called it
‘Lauren time’. Rob brought Jacob over to Rachel’s place, whenever it was ‘Lauren time’, and they walked to the park on the corner and ate egg sandwiches). ‘I’m so sorry, I know how much you’ll miss Jacob, but –’

Rachel took a deep shaky breath and pulled herself together with all the strength that she had, as if she was heaving herself back up from a cliff edge.

‘Don’t be silly,’ she said so sharply that Lauren flinched and dropped back into her seat. ‘I’ll be fine. This is a wonderful opportunity for you all.’

She began stacking their dessert plates, roughly scraping leftover Sara Lee into a messy, unappealing pile of food.

‘By the way,’ she said, just before she left the room, ‘that child needs a haircut.’

chapter four

‘John-Paul? Are you there?’

Cecilia pressed the phone so hard to her ear that it hurt.

Finally he spoke. ‘Have you opened it?’ His voice was thin and reedy, like a querulous old man in a nursing home.

‘No,’ said Cecilia. ‘You’re not dead, so I thought I’d better not.’ She’d been trying for a flippant tone, but she sounded shrill, as if she was nagging him.

There was silence again. She heard someone with an American accent call out, ‘Sir! This way, sir!’

‘Hello?’ said Cecilia.

‘Could you please not open it? Would you mind? I wrote it a long time ago, when Isabel was a baby, I think. It’s sort of embarrassing. I thought I’d lost it actually. Where did you find it?’

He sounded self-conscious, as if he was talking to her in front of people he didn’t know that well.

‘Are you with someone?’ asked Cecilia.

‘No. I’m just having breakfast here in the hotel restaurant.’

‘I found it when I was in the attic, looking for my piece of the Berlin – anyway, I knocked over one of your shoeboxes and there it was.’

‘I must have been doing my taxes around the same time as I wrote it,’ said John-Paul. ‘What an idiot. I remember I looked and looked for it. I thought I was losing my mind. I couldn’t
believe
I would lose . . .’ His voice faded. ‘Well.’

He sounded so contrite, so full of what seemed like excessive remorse.

‘Well, that doesn’t matter.’ Now she sounded motherly, like she was talking to one of the girls. ‘But what made you write it in the first place?’

‘Just an impulse. I guess I was all emotional. Our first baby. It got me thinking about my dad and the things he didn’t get to say after he died. Things left unsaid. All the clichés. It just says sappy stuff, about how much I love you. Nothing earth-shattering. I can’t really remember to be honest.’

‘So why can’t I open it then?’ She put on a wheedling voice that slightly sickened her. ‘What’s the big deal?’

Silence again.

‘It’s not a big deal, but Cecilia, please, I’m asking you not to open it.’ He sounded quite desperate. For heaven’s sake! What a fuss. Men were so ridiculous about emotional stuff.

‘Fine. I won’t open it. Let’s hope I don’t get to read it for another fifty years.’

‘Unless I outlast you.’

‘No chance. You eat too much red meat. I bet you’re eating bacon right now.’

‘And I bet you fed those poor girls fish tonight, didn’t you?’ He was making a joke, but he still sounded tense.

‘Is that Daddy?’ Polly skidded into the room. ‘I need to talk to him urgently!’

‘Here’s Polly,’ said Cecilia, as Polly attempted to pull the phone from her grasp. ‘
Polly
, stop it. Just a
moment
. Talk to you tomorrow. Love you.’

‘Love you too,’ she heard him say as Polly grabbed the phone. She ran from the room with it pressed to her ear.
‘Daddy, listen, I need to tell you something, and it’s quite a big
secret
.’

Polly loved secrets. She hadn’t stopped talking about them, or sharing them, ever since she’d learned of their existence at the age of two.

‘Let your sisters talk to him too!’ called out Cecilia.

She picked up her cup of tea and placed the letter next to her, squaring it up with the edge of the table. So that was that. Nothing to worry about. She would file it away and forget about it.

He’d been embarrassed. That was all. It was sweet.

Of course, now she’d promised not to open it, she couldn’t. It would have been better not to have mentioned it. She’d finish her tea and make a start on that slice.

She pulled Esther’s book about the Berlin Wall over, flipped the pages and stopped at a photo of a young boy with an angelic, serious face that reminded her a little of John-Paul, the way he’d looked as a young man, when she’d first fallen in love with him. John-Paul had always taken great care with his hair, using a lot of gel to sculpt it into place, and he’d been quite adorably serious, even when he was drunk (they were often drunk in those early days). His gravity used to make Cecilia feel girly and giggly. They’d been together for ages before he’d revealed a lighter side.

The boy, she read, was Peter Fechter, an eighteen-year-old bricklayer who was one of the first people to die trying to escape the Berlin Wall. He was shot in the pelvis and fell back into the ‘death strip’ on the Eastern side, where he took an hour to bleed to death. Hundreds of witnesses on both sides watched, but nobody offered him medical assistance, although some people threw him bandages.

‘For heaven’s sake,’ said Cecilia crossly, and pushed the book away. What a thing for Esther to read, to know, that such things were possible.

Cecilia would have helped that boy. She would have marched straight out there. She would have called for an ambulance. She would have shouted, ‘What’s wrong with you people?’

Who knew what she would have done really? Probably nothing, if it meant the risk of being shot herself. She was a mother. She needed to be alive. Death strips were not part of her life. Nature strips. Shopping strips. She’d never been tested. She probably never would be tested.

‘Polly! You’ve been talking to him for hours! Dad is probably bored!’ yelled Isabel.

Why must they always be yelling? The girls missed their father desperately when he was away. He was more patient with them than Cecilia, and right from when they were little he’d always been prepared to be involved in their lives in ways Cecilia quite honestly couldn’t be bothered. He played endless tea parties with Polly, holding tiny teacups with his little finger held out. He listened thoughtfully to Isabel talk on and on about the latest drama with her friends. It was always a relief for them all when John-Paul came home. ‘Take the little darlings!’ Cecilia would cry, and he would, driving them off on some adventure, bringing them back hours later, sandy and sticky.

‘Daddy does not think I’m boring!’ screamed Polly.

‘Give the phone to your sister right
now
!’ yelled Cecilia.

There was a scuffle in the hallway and Polly reappeared in the kitchen. She came and sat down at the table with Cecilia and put her head in her hands.

Cecilia slid John-Paul’s letter in between the pages of Esther’s book and looked at her six-year-old daughter’s beautiful little heart-shaped face. Polly was a genetic anomaly. John-Paul was good-looking (a ‘spunk’ they used to call him) and Cecilia was attractive enough in low lighting, but somehow they’d managed to produce one daughter
who was in a different league altogether. Polly looked just like Snow White: black hair, brilliant blue eyes and ruby lips:
genuinely
ruby lips; people thought she was wearing lipstick. Her two elder sisters with their ash-blonde hair and freckled noses were beautiful to their parents, but it was only Polly who consistently turned heads in shopping centres. ‘Far too pretty for her own good,’ Cecilia’s mother-in-law had observed the other day and Cecilia had been irritated but at the same time she’d understood. What did it do to your personality to have the one thing that every woman craved? Cecilia had noticed that beautiful woman held themselves differently; they swayed like palm trees in the breeze of all that attention. Cecilia wanted her daughters to run and stride and stomp. She didn’t want Polly to bloody sway.

‘Do you want to know the secret I told Daddy?’ Polly looked up at her through her eyelashes.

Polly would sway all right. Cecilia could see it already.

‘That’s okay,’ said Cecilia. ‘You don’t need to tell me.’

‘The secret is that I’ve decided to invite Mr Whitby to my pirate party,’ said Polly.

Polly’s seventh birthday was the week after Easter. Her pirate party had been a popular topic of conversation for the last month.

‘Polly,’ said Cecilia. ‘We’ve talked about this.’

Mr Whitby was the PE teacher at St Angela’s and Polly was in love with him. Cecilia didn’t know what it said about Polly’s future relationships that her first crush was a man who appeared to be about the same age as her father. She was meant to be in love with teenage popstars, not a middle-aged man with a shaved head. It was true that Mr Whitby had
something
. He was very broad chested and athletic looking and he rode a motorbike and listened with his eyes, but it was the school mums who were meant to feel his sex appeal
(which they certainly did; Cecilia herself was not immune), not his six-year-old students.

‘We’re not asking Mr Whitby to your party,’ said Cecilia. ‘It wouldn’t be fair. Otherwise he’d feel like he had to come to everyone’s parties.’

‘He’d want to come to mine.’

‘No.’

‘We’ll talk about it another time,’ said Polly airily, pushing her chair back from the table.

‘We won’t!’ Cecilia called after her, but Polly had sauntered off.

Cecilia sighed. Well. Lots to do. She stood and pulled John-Paul’s letter from Esther’s book. First, she would file this damned thing.

He said he’d written it just after Isabel was born, and that he didn’t remember exactly what it said. That was understandable. Isabel was twelve, and John-Paul was often so vague. He was always relying on Cecilia to be his memory.

It was just that she was pretty sure he’d been lying.

chapter five

‘Maybe we should break in.’ Liam’s voice pierced the silent night air like the shriek of a whistle. ‘We could smash a window with a rock. Like, for example, that rock right there! See, Mum, look, see, see, can you see –’

‘Shhh,’ said Tess. ‘Keep your voice down!’ She banged the door knocker over and over.

Nothing.

It was eleven o’clock at night and she and Liam were standing at her mother’s front door. The house was completely dark, the blinds drawn. It looked deserted. In fact, the whole street seemed eerily silent. Was no one up watching the late news? The only light came from a streetlight on the corner. The sky was starless, moonless. The only sound was a single plaintive cicada, the last survivor of summer, and the soft sigh of far-off traffic. She could smell the sweet perfume of her mother’s gardenias. Tess’s mobile phone had run out of battery. She couldn’t call anyone, not even a taxi to take them to a hotel. Maybe they
would
have to break in, but Tess’s mother had become so security conscious over the last few years. Didn’t she have an alarm now? Tess imagined the sudden
woop
,
woop
of an alarm shattering the neighbourhood.

I can’t believe this is happening to me.

She hadn’t thought it through. She should have called to let her mother know that they were coming, but she’d been in such a state, booking the flight, packing, getting to the airport, finding the right gate, Liam trotting alongside her, talking the whole time. He was so excited, he wouldn’t shut up the whole flight, and now he was so exhausted he was virtually delirious.

He thought they were on a rescue mission to help Grandma.

‘Grandma has broken her ankle,’ Tess had told him. ‘So we’re going to stay and help her for a little while.’

‘What about school?’ he’d asked.

‘You can miss a few days of school,’ she’d told him, and his face had lit up like a Christmas tree. She hadn’t mentioned anything about attending a new school. Obviously.

Felicity had left, and while Tess and Liam packed, Will had slunk about the house, pale and sniffing.

When they were alone, and she was throwing clothes into a bag, he’d tried to talk to her, and she’d turned on him, like a cobra rising to strike, hissing through clenched, crazy teeth, ‘Leave me alone.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, taking a step backwards. ‘I’m so sorry.’

He and Felicity must have used the word ‘sorry’ about five hundred times by now.

‘I promise you,’ said Will, lowering his voice, presumably so Liam wouldn’t overhear, ‘if there’s any doubt in your mind, I want you to know that we never slept together.’

‘You keep saying that, Will,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why you think that makes it better. It makes it worse. It never occurred to me that you
would
sleep together! Like, thank you so much for your restraint. I mean, for God’s sake –’

Her voice trembled.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, and wiped the back of his hand across his nose.

Will had behaved perfectly normally in front of Liam. He’d helped him find his favourite baseball cap under his bed, and when the cab had arrived, he’d got down on his knees and half-cuddled, half-wrestled him in that rough, loving way of fathers with their sons. Tess had seen exactly how Will had managed to keep this thing with Felicity a secret for so long. Family life, even with just one little boy, had its own familiar rhythms and it was perfectly possible to keep right on dancing like you always had, even when your mind was somewhere else.