The Husband’s Secret

and sat back with a shrug. ‘Well I had to tell him. I promised him I’d always keep him up to date with what was going on in your life.’
    ‘You promised him that when I was ten!’ said Tess. She held the phone up, trying to decide whether to answer it or let it go to voicemail.
    ‘Is it Dad?’ asked Liam from the back seat.
    ‘It’s my Dad,’ said Tess. She’d have to talk to him sometime. It might as well be now. She took a breath and pressed the answer button. ‘Hi Dad.’
    There was a pause. There was always a pause.
    ‘Hello love,’ said her father.
    ‘How are you?’ asked Tess in the hearty tone of voice she reserved for her father. When had they last spoken? It must have been Christmas Day.
    ‘I’m great,’ said her father dolefully.
    Another pause.
    ‘I’m actually in the car with –’ began Tess, at the same time as her father said, ‘Your mother told me –’
    They both stopped. It was always excruciating. No matter how hard she tried she could never seem to synchronise her conversations with her father. Even when they were face to face they never achieved a natural rhythm. Would their relationship have been less awkward if he and her mother had stayed together? She’d always wondered.
    Her father cleared his throat. ‘Your mother mentioned you were having a spot of . . . trouble.’
    Pause.
    ‘Thanks Dad,’ said Tess at the same time as her father said, ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
    Tess could see her mother rolling her eyes and she turned away slightly towards the car window, as if to protect her poor hopeless father from her mother’s scorn.
    ‘If there’s anything I can do,’ said her father. ‘Just . . . you know, call.’
    ‘Absolutely,’ said Tess.
    Pause.
    ‘Well, I should go,’ said Tess at the same time as her father said, ‘I liked the fellow.’
    ‘Tell him I emailed him a link for that wine-appreciation course I was telling him about,’ said her mother.
    ‘Shhh,’ Tess waved her hand irritably at Lucy. ‘What’s that, Dad?’
    ‘Will,’ said her father. ‘I thought he was a good bloke. That’s no bloody help to you, though, is it, love?’
    ‘He’ll never do it, of course,’ murmured her mother, examining her cuticles. ‘Don’t know why I bother. The man doesn’t want to be happy.’
    ‘Thanks for calling, Dad,’ said Tess, at the same time as her father said, ‘How’s the little man doing?’
    ‘Liam is great,’ said Tess. ‘He’s right here. Do you want –’
    ‘I’ll let you go, love. You take care now.’
    He was gone. He always finished the call in a sudden, frantic rush, as if the phone was bugged by the police and he had to get off before they tracked down his location. His location was a small, flat, treeless town on the opposite side of the country in Western Australia, where he had mysteriously chosen to live five years ago.
    ‘Had a whole heap of helpful advice then, did he?’ said Lucy.
    ‘He did his best, Mum,’ said Tess.
    ‘Oh, I’m sure he did,’ said her mother with satisfaction.

chapter eight
    ‘So it was a Sunday when they put the Wall up. They called it Barbed Wire Sunday. You want to know why?’ said Esther from the back seat of the car. It was a rhetorical question. Of course they did. ‘Because everyone woke up in the morning and there was like this long barbed-wire fence right through the city.’
    ‘So what?’ said Polly. ‘I’ve seen a barbed-wire fence before.’
    ‘But you weren’t allowed to cross it!’ said Esther. ‘You were stuck! You know how we live on this side of the Pacific Highway and Grandma lives on the other side?’
    ‘Yeah,’ said Polly uncertainly. She wasn’t too clear on where anyone lived.
    ‘It would be like there was a barbed-wire fence all along the Pacific Highway and we couldn’t visit Grandma any more.’
    ‘That would be such a pity,’ murmured Cecilia as she looked over her shoulder to change lanes. She’d been to visit her mother this morning after her Zumba class and had spent twenty full minutes she couldn’t spare looking through a ‘portfolio’ of her nephew’s preschool work. Bridget wassending Sam to an exclusive, obscenely priced preschool and Cecilia’s mother couldn’t decide whether to be delighted or disgusted about it. She had settled for hysterical.
    ‘I bet you didn’t get a portfolio like this at that sweet ordinary little preschool your girls went to,’ her mother had said, while Cecilia tried to flip the pages faster.