The Husband's Secret(65)
But not to her mother, who had pursed her lips as if she knew better before draining the rest of her brandy. “Look, I’m not saying she’s evil as such. But she suffocated you! When you were born, I remember thanking God that you weren’t a twin, that you’d be able to live your life on your own terms, without all that comparing and competing. And then, somehow, you and Felicity end up just like Mary and me, like twins! Worse than twins! I wondered what sort of person you might have become if you didn’t have her breathing down your neck all the time, what friends you might have made—”
“Friends? I wouldn’t have made any other friends! I was too shy! I was so shy, I was practically disabled. I’m still sort of socially weird.” She stopped short of telling her mother about her self-diagnosis.
“Felicity kept you shy,” her mother had said. “It suited her. You weren’t really that shy.”
Now Tess wriggled her neck against her pillow. It was too hard; she missed her own pillow at home in Melbourne. Was what her mother said true? Had she spent most of her life in a dysfunctional relationship with her cousin?
She thought of that awful, strange, hot summer when her parents’ marriage had ended, and her father packed his clothes into the suitcase they took on holidays and went to stay in a musty-smelling furnished apartment full of spindly old-lady furniture, and her mother wore the same old shapeless dress for eight days in a row and walked about the house laughing, crying and muttering, “Good riddance, mate.” Tess was ten. It was Felicity who got Tess through that summer, who took her to the local pool and lay side by side with her on the concrete in the burning sun (and Felicity, with her beautiful white skin, hated sunbaking) for as long as Tess wanted, who spent her own money on a greatest-hits record just to make Tess feel better, who brought her bowls of ice cream with chocolate topping each time she sat on the couch and cried.
It was Felicity whom Tess called when she lost her virginity, when she lost her first job, when she was dumped for the first time, when Will said “I love you,” when he proposed, when her water broke, when Liam took his first steps, when she and Will had their first proper fight.
They’d shared everything throughout their lives. Toys. Bikes. Their first dollhouse. (It stayed at their grandmother’s house.) Their first car. Their first apartments. Their first overseas holiday. Tess’s husband.
She’d let Felicity share Will. Of course she had. She’d let Felicity be like a mother to Liam, and she’d let Felicity be like a wife to Will. She’d shared her whole life with her. Because Felicity was obviously too fat to find her own husband and her own life. Was that what Tess had been subconsciously thinking? Or because she thought Felicity was too fat to even need her own life?
And then Felicity got greedy. She wanted all of Will.
If it had been any other woman but Felicity, Tess would never had said, “Have your affair and then give my husband back.” It wouldn’t have been conceivable.
But because it was Felicity it was . . . okay? Forgivable? Is that what she meant? She’d share a toothbrush with Felicity, so she’d also let her use her husband? But at the same time, it also made the betrayal worse. A million times worse.
She rolled onto her stomach and pressed her face into the pillow. Her feelings about Felicity were irrelevant. She needed to think about Liam. (“What about me?” her ten-year-old self had kept thinking when her parents split up. “Don’t I get a say in this?” She thought she was the center of their world, and then she’d discovered she had no vote. No control.)
There was no such thing as a good divorce for children. She’d read that somewhere, just a few weeks ago, before all this. Even when the split was perfectly amicable, even when both parents made a huge effort, the children suffered.
Tess threw back the covers and got out of bed. She needed to go somewhere, to get out of this house and away from her thoughts. Will. Felicity. Liam. Will. Felicity. Liam.