The Husband's Secret(63)

            “I spent all of Sister Ursula’s funeral thinking about sex,” said Cecilia.

            “That’s the way,” said John-Paul sleepily.

            “A truck driver whistled at me the other day. I’ve still got it, just so you know.”

            “I don’t need a bloody truck driver to tell me my wife’s still got it. You were wearing your netball skirt, I bet.”

            “I was.” She paused. “Someone whistled at Isabel the other day in the shops.”

            “Little fucker,” said John-Paul, but without much heat. “She looks much younger with that haircut.”

            “I know. Don’t tell her.”

            “Not stupid.” He sounded like he was nearly asleep.

            Everything was fine. Cecilia felt her breathing start to slow. She closed her eyes.

            “Berlin Wall, eh?” said John-Paul.

            “Yup.”

            “I was sick to death of the Titanic.”

            “Me too.”

            Cecilia let herself start to slide into sleep. Everything back on track. Everything as it should be. So much to do tomorrow.

            “What did you do with that letter?”

            Her eyes opened. She looked straight ahead in the darkness.

            “I put it back up in the attic. In one of the shoe boxes.”

            It was a lie. A proper black lie sliding as easily from her lips as a white lie about satisfaction with a gift or sex. The letter was in the filing cabinet in the office just down the hallway.

            “Did you open it?”

            There was something about the quality of his voice. He was wide awake, but he was making his voice sound sleepy and disinterested. She could feel tension emanating from the length of his body like an electrical current.

            “No,” she said. She made her voice sound sleepy too. “You asked me not to . . . so I didn’t.”

            His arms around her seemed to soften.

            “Thank you. Feel embarrassed.”

            “Don’t be stupid.”

            His breathing slowed. She let hers slow to match his.

            She’d lied because she didn’t want to lose the opportunity to read the letter, if and when she chose to read it. It was a real lie that lay between them now. Damn it. She just wanted to forget about the bloody letter.

            She was so tired. She would think about it tomorrow.

            It was impossible to know how long she’d been asleep when she woke up again, in an empty bed. Cecilia squinted at the digital clock on the nightstand. She couldn’t see it without her glasses.

            “John-Paul?” she said, sitting up on her elbows. There was no sound from the en suite bathroom. Normally he slept like the dead after a long-haul flight.

            There was a sound above her head.

            She sat up, completely alert, her heart hammering with instant understanding. He was in the attic. He never went in the attic. She’d seen the tiny beads of sweat gathering above his lip when he suffered an attack of claustrophobia. He must want that letter very badly if he was prepared to go up there.

            Hadn’t he once said, “It would have to be a matter of life or death to get me up there”?