The Husband’s Secret

be hurt, and that he might say something vengeful like, ‘I never liked you that much anyway’, but until she saw him smoothing down his hair, it hadn’t occurred to her that she might be about to hurt him. She felt sick at the thought.
    She got off the train and John-Paul lifted a hand and smiled. Janie waved back, and as she walked down the railway platform towards him, it came to her with a tiny, bitter shock of self-revelation that it wasn’t that she liked Connor more than John-Paul, it was that she liked John-Paul far too much. It was a strain being with someone so good-looking and smart and funny and nice. She was dazzled by John-Paul. Connor was dazzled by her. And it was more fun doing the dazzling. Girls were meant to do the dazzling.
    John-Paul’s interest felt like a trick. A practical joke. Because surely he knew that she wasn’t good enough for him. She kept waiting for a gaggle of teenage girls to appear, laughing and jeering and pointing, ‘You didn’t really think he’d be interested in you !’ That’s why she hadn’t even told any of her friends about his existence. They knew about Connor, of course, but not John-Paul Fitzpatrick. They wouldn’t believe that someone like John-Paul would be interested in her, and she didn’t really believe it either.
    She thought of Connor’s big goofy smile on the bus when she told him he was now officially her boyfriend. He was her friend. Losing her virginity to Connor would be sweet and funny and tender. She couldn’t possibly take her clothes off in front of John-Paul. The very thought made her heart stop. Besides, he deserved a girl with a body that matched his. He might laugh if he saw her strange skinny white body.He might notice that her arms were disproportionately long for her body. He might sneer or snort at her concave chest.
    ‘Hi,’ she said to him.
    ‘Hi,’ he said, and she caught her breath, because as their eyes met she got that feeling again, that sensation of there being something huge between them, something she couldn’t quite define, something her twenty-year-old self might have called ‘passion’ and her thirty-year-old self might have more cynically called ‘chemistry’. A tiny speck of her, a tiny speck of the woman she could have become, thought, Come on, Janie, you’re being a coward. You like him more than Connor. Choose him. This could be big. This could be huge. This could be love .
    But her heart was hammering so hard it was horrible, scary and painful, she could barely breathe. There was a painful crushing sensation in the centre of her chest, as if someone was trying to flatten her. She just wanted to feel normal again.
    ‘I need to talk to you about something,’ she said, and she made her voice cold and hard, sealing her fate like an envelope.

thursday

chapter thirty-three
    ‘Cecilia! Did you get my messages? I’ve been trying to call!’
    ‘Cecilia, you were right about those raffle tickets.’
    ‘Cecilia! You weren’t at pilates yesterday!’
    ‘Cecilia! My sister-in-law wants to book a party with you.’
    ‘Cecilia, is there any chance you could take Harriette just for an hour after ballet next week?’
    ‘Cecilia!’
    ‘ Cecilia !’
    ‘Cecilia!’
    It was the Easter hat parade and the St Angela’s mothers were out in force, dressed up in honour of Easter and the first truly autumnal day of the new season. Soft pretty scarves looped necks, skinny jeans encased skinny and not so skinny thighs, spike-heeled boots tapped across the playground. It had been a humid summer and the crispness of the breeze and the anticipation of a four-day chocolate-filled weekend had put everyone in good moods. The mothers, sitting in a big double-rowed circle of blue fold-up chairs around the quadrangle, were frisky and high-spirited.
    The older children, who weren’t taking part in the Easter hat parade, had been brought outside to watch and theyhung over the balconies with dangling, nonchalant arms and mature, tolerant expressions to indicate that of course they were now far too old for this sort of thing, but weren’t the little ones cute.
    Cecilia looked for Isabel on the Year 6 balcony and saw her standing in between her best friends Marie and Laura. The three girls had their arms slung around each other, indicating that their tumultuous three-way relationship was currently at a high point, where nobody was being ganged up on by the other two and their love for each other was pure and intense. It was