The Husband's Secret (41 page)

‘Shall I find you a doctor?’ he asked. ‘Should be able to track one down. We’re in the right spot!’

Rachel shook her head adamantly. She was pale and shaky. ‘Just dizzy.’

Cecilia knelt down next to Rachel and smiled politely up at the man. ‘Thank you for your help.’

‘No problems. I’ll get going. My wife just had our first baby. Three hours old. Little girl.’

‘Congratulations!’ said Cecilia, a moment too late. He was already gone, walking joyfully off, right in the middle of the happiest day of his life.

‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ said Cecilia to Rachel.

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘It’s not your fault,’ said Cecilia, and felt a hint of impatience. She’d come out for air, to stop herself from screaming, but she needed to get back now. She needed to start collecting facts. She did not need to talk to a bloody counsellor, thanks very much, she needed to see Dr Yue again, and this time she would take notes and ask questions and not worry about being nice.

‘You don’t understand,’ said Rachel. She fixed Cecilia with red, watery eyes. Her voice was high and weak. ‘It is my fault. I put my foot on the accelerator. I was trying to kill him, because he killed Janie.’

Cecilia grabbed for the side of Rachel’s seat, as if it were a precipice she’d been pushed from and stood up.

‘You were trying to kill John-Paul?’

‘Of course not. I was trying to kill Connor Whitby. He murdered Janie. I found this video, you see. It was proof.’

It was like somebody had grabbed Cecilia by the shoulders, spun her around and forced her to come face to face with the evidence of an atrocity.

There was no grappling for comprehension. She understood everything in an instant.

What John-Paul had done.

What she had done.

Their accountability to their daughter. The penalty Polly would pay for their crime.

Her entire body felt hollowed by the bright white light of a nuclear blast. She was a shell of her former self. Yet she didn’t shake. Her legs didn’t give way. She remained perfectly still.

Nothing really mattered any more. Nothing could be worse than this.

The important thing now was truth. It would not save Polly. It would not redeem them in any way. But it was absolutely necessary. It was an urgent task that Cecilia needed to cross off her list
this very moment
.

‘Connor didn’t kill Janie,’ said Cecilia. She could feel her jaw moving up and down as she talked. She was a puppet made of wood.

Rachel became very still. The texture of her soft, wet eyes changed, visibly hardening. ‘What do you mean?’

Cecilia heard the words come out of her dry, sour-tasting mouth. ‘My husband killed your daughter.’

chapter fifty

Cecilia was crouched down next to Rachel’s chair, talking softly but clearly, her eyes just inches away. Rachel could hear and comprehend every word she said but she couldn’t seem to keep up. It wouldn’t sink in. The words were slipping straight off the surface of her mind. She felt a terrifying sensation, as if she was running desperately to catch something of vital importance.

Wait
, she wanted to say.
Wait, Cecilia. What
?

‘I only found out the other night,’ said Cecilia. ‘The night of the Tupperware party.’

John-Paul Fitzpatrick. Was she trying to tell her that John-Paul Fitzpatrick murdered Janie? Rachel grabbed at Cecilia’s arm. ‘You’re saying it wasn’t Connor,’ she said. ‘You know for a fact that it wasn’t Connor. That he had nothing to do with it?’

A profound sadness crossed Cecilia’s face. ‘I know this for a fact,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t Connor. It was John-Paul.’

John-Paul Fitzpatrick. Virginia’s son. Cecilia’s husband. A tall, handsome, well-dressed, courteous man. A well-known, respected member of the school community. Rachel would greet him with a smile and a wave if she saw him
at the local shops or a school event. John-Paul always led the school working bees. He wore a tool belt and a plain black baseball cap and held up a slide rule with impressive assurance. Last month, Rachel had watched Isabel Fitzpatrick run straight into her father’s arms when he picked her up after the Year 6 camp. It had struck Rachel because of the sheer joy on Isabel’s face when she saw John-Paul, and also because of Isabel’s resemblance to Janie. John-Paul had swung Isabel around in an arc, her legs flying, like she was a much younger child, and Rachel had felt a searing regret that Janie had never been that sort of daughter and Ed had never been that sort of father. Their uptight concerns about what other people thought seemed like such a waste. Why had they been so careful and contained with their love?

‘I should have told you,’ said Cecilia. ‘I should have told you the moment I knew.’

John-Paul Fitzpatrick.

He had such nice
hair
. Respectable-looking hair. Not like Connor Whitby’s shifty-looking bald head. John-Paul drove a shiny clean family car. Connor roared about on his grimy motorbike. It couldn’t be right. Cecilia must have it wrong. Rachel couldn’t seem to shift her hatred over from Connor. She’d hated Connor Whitby for so long, even when she hadn’t know for sure, even when she’d just suspected, she’d hated him for the
possibility
of what he’d done. She’d hated him for his very existence in Janie’s life. She’d hated him for being the last one to see Janie alive.

‘I don’t understand,’ she said to Cecilia. ‘Did Janie know John-Paul?’

‘They were in a sort of a secret relationship. They were dating, I guess you’d call it,’ said Cecilia. She was still crouched on the floor next to Rachel, and her face, which had been drained of colour, was now flooded with it. ‘John-Paul was in love with Janie, but then Janie said there was
another boy, and she’d chosen the other boy, and then, he . . . Well. He lost his temper.’ Her words faded. ‘He was seventeen. It was a moment of madness. That makes it sound like I’m trying to excuse him. I promise I am absolutely not trying to excuse him, or what he did.
Obviously
. Of course there is no excuse. I’m sorry. I have to stand up. My knees. My knees are hurting.’

Rachel watched Cecilia rise to her feet with difficulty, look around for another chair, and drag it closer to Rachel’s before sitting down and leaning towards her, her brows knitted so fiercely she looked as if she were pleading for her life.

Janie had told John-Paul there was another boy. So the other boy was Connor Whitby.

Janie had had
two
boys interested in her, and Rachel had been completely unaware of it. Where had Rachel gone wrong as a mother that she’d had such little knowledge of her daughter’s life? Why hadn’t they exchanged confidences over ‘milk and cookies’ in the afternoon after school, like mother and daughter in an American sitcom? Rachel had only ever baked under duress. Janie used to eat buttered crackers for her afternoon tea. If only she’d
baked
for Janie, she thought with a sudden burst of savage self-loathing. Why
hadn’t
she baked? If she’d baked, and if Ed had swung Janie in joyful circles, then maybe everything could have been different.

‘Cecilia?’

Both women looked up. It was John-Paul.

‘Cecilia. They want us to sign some forms –’ He stopped, and saw Rachel.

‘Hello Mrs Crowley,’ he said.

‘Hello,’ said Rachel.

She couldn’t move. It was as though she was anaesthetised. Here was her daughter’s murderer standing in front of her. An exhausted, distressed, middle-aged father, with
red-rimmed eyes and grey stubble. It was impossible. He had nothing to do with Janie. He was much too old. Too grown-up.

Cecilia said, ‘I told her, John-Paul.’

John-Paul took a step back, as if someone had tried to hit him.

He briefly closed his eyes, and then he opened them and looked straight down at Rachel, with such sick regret in his eyes, there was longer any doubt in her mind.

‘But why?’ Rachel said, and she was struck by how civilised and ordinary she sounded, discussing her daughter’s murder in the middle of the day, while dozens of people walked by, ignoring them, assuming theirs was just another unremarkable conversation. ‘Could you please tell me why you would do such a thing? She was just a little girl.’

John-Paul ducked his head and ran both his hands through his nice respectable hair, and when he looked up again, it was as though his face had shattered into a thousand pieces. ‘It was an accident, Mrs Crowley. I never meant to hurt her, because, you see, I loved her. I really loved her.’ He wiped the back of his hand across his nose, in a careless, hopeless gesture, like a drunk on a street corner. ‘I was a stupid teenage boy. She told me she was seeing someone else, and then she laughed at me. I’m so sorry, but that’s the only reason I have. I know it’s no reason at all. I loved her, and then she laughed at me.’

Cecilia was dimly aware that people continued to move through the corridor where they sat. They hurried by or strolled, they gesticulated and laughed, they talked animatedly into mobile phones. Nobody stopped to observe the white-haired woman sitting straight-backed in the brown
leather chair, her gnarled hands gripping the sides, her eyes fixed on the middle-aged man who stood in front of her, his head bowed in deep contrition, his neck exposed, his shoulders slumped. Nobody seemed to notice anything extraordinary about their frozen bodies, their silence. They were in their own little bubble, separated from the rest of humanity.

Cecilia felt the cool, smooth leather of the chair beneath her hands, and suddenly the air rushed from her lungs.

‘I need to get back to Polly,’ she said, and stood up so fast that her head swum.

How much time had passed? How long had they been out here? She felt a panicky sensation, as if she’d deserted Polly. She looked at Rachel and thought:
I can’t care about you right now
.

‘I need to talk to Polly’s doctor again,’ she said to Rachel.

‘Of course you do,’ said Rachel.

John-Paul held out his palms to Rachel, his wrists upwards as if he was waiting to be handcuffed. ‘I know that I don’t have any right to ask you this, Rachel, Mrs Crowley, I have no right to ask you anything, but you see, Polly needs us both right now, so I just need time –’

‘I’m not taking you away from your daughter,’ interrupted Rachel. She sounded brisk and furious, as if Cecilia and John-Paul were badly behaved teenagers. ‘I’ve already . . .’ She stopped, swallowed, and looked up at the ceiling as if she was trying to suppress the urge to be sick. She shooed them away. ‘Go. Just go to your little girl. Both of you.’

chapter fifty-one

It was late Easter Saturday night and Will and Tess were hiding eggs in her mother’s backyard. They both held bags of tiny eggs, the ones wrapped in shiny-coloured foil.

When Liam was very little they used to put the eggs in plain sight, or even just scatter them across the grass, but as he’d got older he preferred the challenge of a tricky Easter egg hunt with Tess humming the soundtrack to
Mission Impossible
while Will timed him on a stopwatch.

‘I suppose we couldn’t put some of them in the guttering?’ Will looked up at the roof. ‘We could leave a ladder somewhere handy.’

Tess gave the sort of polite chuckle she’d give to an acquaintance or a client.

‘Guess not,’ said Will. He sighed, and carefully placed a blue one in the corner of a windowsill that Liam would have to stand on tippy-toes to reach.

Tess unwrapped an egg and ate it. The last thing Liam needed was more chocolate. Sweetness filled her mouth. She herself had eaten so much chocolate this week, if she didn’t watch it she’d end up the size of Felicity.

The casually cruel thought came automatically into her
head like an old lyric, and she realised how often she must have thought it. ‘The size of Felicity’ was still her definition of unacceptably fat, even now, when Felicity had a slim, gorgeous body that was better than hers.

‘I can’t believe you thought we could all just live together!’ she exploded. She saw Will steel himself.

This was the way it had been ever since he had finally turned up at her mother’s house the previous day, pale and discernibly thinner than the last time she’d seen him. Her mood kept swinging about precariously. One minute she was cool and sarcastic, the next she was hysterical and weepy. She couldn’t seem to get a hold of herself.

Will turned to face her, the bag of chocolate eggs in the palm of his hand. ‘I didn’t really think that,’ he said.

‘But you said it! On Monday, you said it.’

‘It was idiotic. I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘All I can do is keep saying I’m sorry.’

‘You sound robotic,’ said Tess. ‘You don’t even mean it any more. You’re just saying the words in the hope I’ll finally shut up.’ She spoke in a monotone. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’

‘I do mean it,’ said Will wearily.

‘Shhh,’ said Tess, although he hadn’t really spoken that loudly. ‘You’ll wake them.’ Liam and her mother were both in bed asleep. Their rooms were at the front of the house and they were both deep sleepers. They probably wouldn’t wake them even if they started yelling at each other.

There had been no yelling. Not yet. Just these short, useless conversations that travelled bitterly down one-way streets.