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The Husband's Secret(66)



            She would get in her mother’s car and drive. She looked down at her striped pajama pants and T-shirt. Should she get dressed? She had nothing to wear anyway. She hadn’t brought enough clothes with her. It didn’t matter. She wouldn’t get out of the car. She put on a pair of flat shoes and crept out of the room down the hallway, her eyes adjusting to the dark. The house was silent. She switched on a lamp in the dining room and left a note for her mother just in case she woke.

            Back soon, gone for a drive around the block, Tess xx.

            She grabbed her wallet, took her mother’s car keys from the hook beside the door and crept out into the soft, sweet night air, breathing in deeply.

            She drove her mother’s Honda down the Pacific Highway with the windows down and the radio turned off. Sydney’s North Shore was quiet, deserted. A man carrying a briefcase, who must have caught the train home after working late, hurried along the footpath.

            A woman probably wouldn’t walk home alone from the station at this time of night. Tess thought about how Will had once told her that he hated walking behind a woman late at night, in case she heard his footsteps and thought he was an ax murderer. “I always want to call out, ‘It’s all right! I’m not an ax murderer!’” he said. “I’d run for my life if someone called that out to me,” Tess had told him. “See, we can’t win,” said Will.

            Whenever something bad happened on the North Shore, the newspapers described it as “Sydney’s leafy North Shore” so it would sound extra heinous.

            Tess stopped at a traffic light, glanced down and saw the red warning light on the petrol gauge.

            “Damn it,” she said.

            There was a brightly lit all-night service station on the next corner. She’d stop there. She pulled into the service station and got out. It was deserted, except for a man on a motorbike on the other side of the service station forecourt, readjusting his helmet after filling up.

            She opened her mother’s petrol tank and lifted the nozzle from its slot.

            “Hello,” said a man’s voice.

            She jumped and spun around. The man had wheeled his motorbike over, so he was on the other side of her car. He lifted his helmet. The petrol station’s bright lights were shining in her eyes, blurring her vision. She couldn’t distinguish his features, just a creepy white blob of a face.

            Her eyes went to the empty counter inside the service station. Where was the damned attendant? Tess put her arm protectively across her braless chest. She thought of an episode of Oprah she’d seen with Felicity where a policeman advised women what to do if they were ever accosted. You had to be extremely aggressive and shout something like, “No! Go away! I don’t want trouble! Go! Go!” For a while she and Felicity had taken great pleasure in yelling it at Will whenever he walked into a room.

            Tess cleared her throat and clenched her fists as if she were doing one of her body combat classes. It would be so much easier to be aggressive if she were wearing her bra.

            “Tess,” said the man. “It’s just me. Connor. Connor Whitby.”





SEVENTEEN


            Rachel woke from a dream that dissolved and faded before she could catch it. All she could remember was panic. Something to do with water. Janie when she was a little girl. Or was it Jacob?

            She sat up in bed and looked at the clock. It was eleven thirty a.m. The house smelled of sickly vanilla because of the candle that she’d smashed after she got stuck in the bath.

            Her mouth felt dry from the alcohol she’d drunk at the Tupperware party. It seemed like years had passed since then, not hours. She got out of bed. No point trying to get back to sleep now. She would be up until the gray light of dawn crept through the house.