The Husband's Secret (43 page)

Tess felt the tears rise again. ‘I don’t want to dismiss your flat feeling either.’

Will reached across the table and held out his hand, palm up. She looked at it for a moment, considering, and then she laid her hand in his. The sudden warmth of his hand, its simultaneous familiarity and strangeness, the way it enfolded hers, reminded her of the first time they met, when they were introduced in the reception area of the company where Tess worked, and her usual anxiety about meeting new people was overwhelmed by a powerful attraction to this shortish grinning man with the laughing gold eyes looking straight into hers.

They sat silently holding hands, not looking at each other, and Tess thought of the way Felicity’s eyes flickered when she asked her if she and Will had held hands on the plane from Melbourne and she nearly pulled her hand away, but then she remembered standing outside the bar with Connor, his thumb caressing her palm, and for some reason she thought also of Cecilia Fitzpatrick sitting in a hospital room with poor little beautiful Polly right now, and of Liam, safe upstairs, in his blue flannel pyjamas, dreaming of chocolate eggs. She looked up at the clear starry night sky and imagined Felicity on a plane, somewhere high above them, flying off into a different day, a different season, a different life, wondering how in the world it had come to this.

There were so many decisions to be made. How would they manage the next part of their lives? Would they stay in Sydney? Keep Liam at St Angela’s? Impossible. She’d see Connor every day. What about the business? Would they replace Felicity? That seemed impossible too. In fact, it all seemed impossible. Insurmountable.

What if Will and Felicity really were meant to be together? What if she and Connor were meant to be together? Perhaps there were no answers to questions like that. Perhaps nothing was ever ‘meant to be’. There was just life, and right now, and doing your best. Being a bit ‘bendy’.

The sensor light on her mother’s back porch flickered and suddenly they were plunged into darkness. Neither of them moved.

‘We’ll give it till Christmas,’ said Tess after a moment. ‘If you still miss her by Christmas, if you still want her by then, you should go to her.’

‘Don’t say that. I’ve told you. I don’t –’

‘Shhh.’ She held his hand tighter and they sat in the moonlight, clinging to the wreckage of their marriage.

chapter fifty-two

It was done.

Cecilia and John-Paul sat side by side watching Polly’s closed eyelids flutter and smooth, flutter and smooth, as if they were tracking the progress of her dreams.

Cecilia held on to Polly’s left hand; she could feel the tears sliding down her face and dripping off her chin, but she ignored them. She remembered sitting with John-Paul at another hospital, at the dawn of another autumn day, after two hours of intense labour (Cecilia gave birth efficiently; a little too efficiently with their third daughter). She and John-Paul were counting Polly’s fingers and toes, as they’d done with Isabel and Esther, a ritual like opening and inspecting a marvellous, magical gift.

Now their eyes kept returning to the space where Polly’s right arm should have been. It was an anomaly, an oddness, an optical discrepancy. From now on it wouldn’t be her beauty that would cause people to stare at her in shopping centres.

Cecilia let the tears slide on and on. She needed to get all her crying out of the way, because she was determined that Polly would never see her shed a tear. Cecilia was about to step into a new life, her life as an amputee’s mother. Even
as she cried, she could feel her muscles tensing in readiness, as if she was an athlete about to begin a marathon. Soon she would be fluent in a new language of stumps and prostheses and God knows what else. She’d move heaven and earth and bake muffins and pay fraudulent compliments to get the best results for her daughter. No one was better qualified than Cecilia for this role.

But was Polly qualified? That was the question. Was any six year old qualified? Did she have the strength of character to live with this sort of injury in a world that put such value on a woman’s looks?
She’s still beautiful
, thought Cecilia furiously, as if someone had denied it.

‘She’s tough,’ she said to John-Paul. ‘Remember that day at the pool when she wanted to prove she could swim as far as Esther?’

She thought of Polly’s arms slicing through sunlit chlorinated blue water.

‘Jesus.
Swimming
.’ John-Paul’s whole body heaved and he pressed his palm to the centre of his chest as if he was in the throes of a heart attack.

‘Don’t drop dead on me,’ said Cecilia sharply.

She pushed the heels of her hands deep into her eye sockets and turned them in a circular motion. She could taste so much salt from all her tears, it was like she’d been swimming in the sea.

‘Why did you tell Rachel?’ said John-Paul. ‘Why now?’

She dropped her hands from her face and looked at him. She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Because she thought Connor Whitby killed Janie. She was trying to
hit
Connor.’

She watched John-Paul’s face as his mind travelled from A to B and finally to the horrendous responsibility of C.

He pressed his fist to his mouth. ‘Fuck,’ he said quietly into his knuckles and he began to rock back and forth like an autistic child.

‘This was my fault,’ he mumbled into his hand. ‘I made this happen. Oh God, Cecilia. I should have confessed. I should have told Rachel Crowley.’

‘Stop it,’ hissed Cecilia. ‘Polly might hear.’

He stood up and walked towards the door of the hospital room. He turned back and looked at Polly, his face ravaged with despair. He looked away, plucked helplessly at the fabric of his shirt. Then he suddenly crouched down, his head bent, his hands interlocked at the back of his neck.

Cecilia watched him dispassionately. She remembered how he’d sobbed on Good Friday morning. The pain and regret he felt for what he’d done to another man’s daughter was nothing compared to what he felt for his own daughter.

She looked away from him and back at Polly. You could try as hard as possible to imagine someone else’s tragedy – drowning in icy waters, living in a city split by a wall – but nothing truly hurt until it happened to you. Most of all, to your child.

‘Get up, John-Paul,’ she said without looking at him. Her eyes stayed on Polly.

She thought of Isabel and Esther, who were at home with her parents and John-Paul’s mother right now, along with various other relatives. John-Paul and Cecilia had made it clear that they didn’t want any visitors at the hospital yet, so everyone was gathered at the house. Isabel and Esther were being kept distracted for now, but the siblings always got neglected when something like this happened to a family. She would have to make sure she found a way to be a mother to all three of her daughters through this. The P&C would go. The Tupperware would go.

She turned to look again at John-Paul, who was still hunkered down on the floor, as if protecting himself from a bomb blast.

‘Get up,’ she said again. ‘You can’t fall apart. Polly needs you. We all need you.’

John-Paul removed his hands from his neck and looked up at her with bloodshot eyes. ‘But I’m not going to be here for you,’ he said. ‘Rachel will tell the police.’

‘Maybe,’ said Cecilia. ‘Maybe she will. But I don’t think so. I don’t think Rachel is going to take you away from your family.’ There was no real evidence for this, except somehow she felt that it was true. ‘Not right now anyway.’

‘But –’

‘I think we’ve paid,’ said Cecilia, her voice low and vicious. She gestured at Polly. ‘Look how we’ve paid.’

chapter fifty-three

Rachel sat in front of the television watching the colourful, hypnotic flicker of images and faces. If someone had turned the TV off and asked her what she’d been watching she couldn’t have answered.

She could pick up the phone this minute and have John-Paul Fitzpatrick arrested for murder. She could do it immediately, or in an hour’s time, or in the morning. She could wait until Polly was home from hospital, or she could wait a few months. Six months. A year. Give her a year with her father and then take him away. She could wait until the accident was far enough in the past for it to be a memory. She could wait for the Fitzpatrick girls to grow a little older, to get their driving licences, to not need a daddy.

It was as though she’d been handed a loaded gun, along with permission to shoot Janie’s murderer at any time. If Ed was still alive, the trigger would have been pulled already. The police would have been called hours ago.

She thought of John-Paul’s hands around Janie’s neck and felt that old familiar rage blossom across her chest. My little girl.

She thought of his little girl. The glittery pink helmet.
Brake. Brake. Brake
.

If she told the police about John-Paul’s confession, would the Fitzpatricks tell them about her own confession? Would she be arrested for attempted murder? It was only luck that she hadn’t killed Connor. Was her foot on the accelerator an equal sin to his hands around Janie’s neck? But what happened to Polly was an accident. Everyone knew that. She rode her bike straight in front of Rachel’s car. It should have been Connor. What if Connor had been dead tonight?
His
family receiving that phone call, the call that meant for the rest of your life you never heard a phone ring or a knock on the door without a chill of fear.

Connor was alive. Polly was alive. Janie was the only one who was dead.

What if he hurt someone else? She remembered his face at the hospital ravaged with worry over his daughter’s mangled body. ‘She
laughed at
me, Mrs Crowley.’ She laughed at you? You stupid, egotistical little bastard. That was enough to make you kill her? To take away her life. To take away all the days she could have lived, the degree she never earned, the countries she never visited, the husband she never married, the children she never had. Rachel shook so hard she felt her teeth chatter.

She stood. She went to the phone and picked it up from the receiver. Her thumb hovered over the keys. A memory came to her of teaching Janie how to call the police if there was an emergency. They’d still had that old green rotary dial phone then. She’d let Janie practise by dialling the numbers, and then she’d hung up before it actually rang. Janie had wanted to act out a whole little performance. She’d made Rob lie on the kitchen floor while she yelled into the phone, ‘I need an ambulance! My brother isn’t breathing!’ ‘Stop breathing,’ she’d ordered Rob. ‘Rob. I can see you breathing.’ Rob had nearly passed out trying to please her.

Little Polly Fitzpatrick wouldn’t have a right hand any more. Was she right-handed? Probably. Most people were right-handed. Janie had been left-handed. One of the nuns had tried to make her write with her right hand and Ed had gone up to the school and said, ‘Sister, with all due respect, who do you think made her left-handed? God did! So let’s leave her that way.’

Rachel pressed a key.

‘Hello?’ The phone was answered much quicker than she expected.

‘Lauren,’ said Rachel.

‘Rachel. Rob’s just coming out of the shower,’ said Lauren. ‘Is everything all right?’

‘I know it’s late,’ said Rachel. She hadn’t even looked at the time. ‘And I know I shouldn’t impose like this, after all the time you spent with me yesterday, but I wondered if I could come over and stay the night there? Just this once. For some reason, I don’t know why, but I just find myself unable to –’

‘Of
course
you can,’ said Lauren, and suddenly she shrieked, ‘Rob!’ Rachel heard the deep rumble of Rob’s voice in the background. She heard Lauren say, ‘Go and pick up your mother.’

Poor dear Rob. Under the thumb, Ed would have said.

‘No, no,’ said Rachel. ‘He’s only just got out of the shower. I’ll drive myself.’

‘Absolutely not,’ said Lauren. ‘He’s on his way. He wasn’t doing anything! I’ll make up the sofa bed. It’s surprisingly comfy! Jacob will be so happy to see you tomorrow morning. I can’t wait to see his face.’

‘Thank you,’ said Rachel. She felt all at once warm and sleepy, as if someone had placed a blanket over her.

‘Lauren?’ she said, before she hung up. ‘You don’t have any more of those macarons, do you? Like the ones you
bought for me on Monday night? They were divine. Absolutely divine.’

There was the briefest of pauses. ‘Actually I do.’ There was a quiver in Lauren’s voice. ‘We can have some with a cup of tea.’

easter sunday

chapter fifty-four

Tess woke to the sound of heavy rain. It was still dark, about five am she guessed. Will lay on his side next to her, facing the wall and snoring gently. The shape and smell and feel of him were so ordinary and familiar; the events of the past week seemed inconceivable.

She could have made Will sleep on her mother’s couch, but then she would have had to deal with Liam’s questions. He was already far too aware that things were not quite normal; at the dinner table last night she’d noticed his eyes darting constantly back and forth between herself and Will, monitoring their conversation. His wary little face broke her heart, and made her so furious with Will she could barely look at him.

She shifted slightly away from Will’s body, so that they weren’t touching. It was handy that she had her own
Guilty
secret. It helped bring her breathing back to normal during those sudden bursts of rage. He’d wronged her. She’d wronged him right back.

Had they both been suffering a form of temporary insanity? It was a defence for murder, after all; why not for married couples? Marriage was a form of insanity; love hovering permanently on the edge of aggravation.

Connor would be asleep now, in his neat flat smelling of garlic and laundry powder, already beginning the process of moving on and forgetting her for the second time. Was he kicking himself for falling for that no-good, cold-hearted woman yet again? Why was she making herself sound like a woman in a country and western song? To soften it, presumably; to make her behaviour seem tender and melancholy, not slutty. She had a feeling that Connor liked country music, but she might have been making it up, confusing him with another ex-boyfriend. She didn’t really know him.