The Husband's Secret(40)

            “Aliens,” said Liam finally.

            “Aliens!” Trudy nodded. “Well, I will be keeping that in mind, Liam Curtis. And this is your mum and your grandmother, I’m guessing?”

            “Yes, indeed, I’m—” began Lucy O’Leary.

            “Lovely to meet you both.” Trudy smiled vaguely in their general direction. She turned back to Liam. “When are you starting with us, Liam? Tomorrow?”

            “No!” Tess looked alarmed. “Not until after Easter.”

            “Oh, live a little, I say! Jump right in while the iron is hot!” said Trudy. “Do you like Easter eggs, Liam?”

            “Yes,” said Liam adamantly.

            “Because we’re planning a gigantic Easter egg hunt tomorrow.”

            “I’m super good at Easter egg hunts,” said Liam.

            “Are you? Excellent! Well, then I’d better make it a super challenging hunt.” Trudy glanced at Rachel. “Everything under control here, Rachel, with all the . . . ?” She gestured sorrowfully at the paperwork, of which she knew nothing.

            “All under control,” said Rachel. Just like Cecilia, she was helping keep Trudy in a job too, because she didn’t see why the children of St. Angela’s shouldn’t have a school principal from fairyland.

            “Lovely, lovely! I’ll leave you to it!” said Trudy, and she wandered off into her office, pulling the door shut behind her, presumably so she could scatter fairy dust over her keyboard, as she certainly didn’t do too much else on her computer.

            “My goodness, she’s a different kettle of fish from Sister Veronica-Mary!” said Lucy quietly.

            Rachel snorted in appreciation. She remembered Sister Veronica-Mary, who had been principal from 1965 through to 1980, very well.

            There was a knock, and Rachel looked up to see the tall, imposing shadow of a man through the frosted glass panel of her office, before his head appeared inquiringly around the door.

            Him. She flinched and took a deep breath in through her nostrils, as if at the sight of a furry black spider, not a perfectly plain-looking man. (Actually, Rachel had heard other women call him gorgeous, which she found preposterous.)

            “Excuse me, ah, Mrs. Crowley.”

            He could never get far enough away from his schoolboy self to call her Rachel like the rest of the staff. Their eyes met, and as usual, his slid away first to rest somewhere above her head.

            Lies in his eyes, thought Rachel, as she did virtually every time she saw him, as if it was an incantation or prayer. Lies in his eyes.

            “Sorry to interrupt,” said Connor Whitby. “I just wondered if I could pick up those tennis camp forms.”

            “There’s something that Whitby boy isn’t telling us,” Sergeant Rodney Bellach had said all those years ago, when he had a head full of startlingly curly black hair. “That kid has got lies in his eyes.”

            Rodney Bellach was retired now. As bald as a bandicoot. He called every year on Janie’s birthday, when he liked to tell Rachel about his latest ailments. Someone else who got old while Janie stayed seventeen.

            Rachel handed over the tennis camp forms, and Connor’s eyes fell on Tess.

            “Tess O’Leary!” His face was transformed so that he looked for a moment like the boy in Janie’s photo album.

            Tess looked up, her face wary. She didn’t seem to recognize Connor at all.