The Husband’s Secret

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.
    And now here she was, stranded in this sleepy little North Shore suburb of Sydney with a delirious six year old.
    ‘Well,’ she said carefully to Liam. ‘I guess we should –’
    What? Wake up a neighbour? Risk the alarm?
    ‘Wait!’ said Liam. He put a finger to his lips; his big eyes were pools of shining blackness in the dark. ‘I think I hear something from inside.’
    He pressed his ear to the front door. Tess did the same.
    ‘Hear it?’
    She did hear something. A strange rhythmic thumping sound from overhead.
    ‘It must be Grandma’s