The Husband's Secret(93)
Rachel turned back to her computer screen and let her hands splay limply on the keys. She’d been waiting twenty-eight years for something that was never going to happen.
THIRTY
It had been a mistake suggesting a drink. What was she thinking? The bar was crowded with young, beautiful drunk people. Tess kept staring at them. They all looked like high school students to her, who should have been at home studying, not out on a school night, shrieking and squawking. Connor had found them a table, which was lucky, but it was right next to a row of flashing, beeping poker machines and it was clear from the panicked concentration on Connor’s face each time she spoke that he was having difficulty hearing what she was saying. Tess sipped a glass of not especially good wine and felt her head begin to ache. Her legs were sore after that long walk up the hill from Cecilia’s place. She did that one body combat class with Felicity on Tuesday nights, but she couldn’t seem to manage to fit in any other time for exercise between work and school and all of Liam’s activities. She remembered suddenly that she’d just paid one hundred and ninety dollars for a martial arts course that Liam was meant to have started in Melbourne today. Shit, shit, shit.
What was she doing here, anyway? She’d forgotten how bad Sydney’s bars were compared to Melbourne’s. That’s why there wasn’t anyone over thirty in this place. If you lived on the North Shore you had to do your drinking at home and be tucked up in bed by ten o’clock.
She missed Melbourne. She missed Will. She missed Felicity. She missed her life.
Connor leaned forward. “Liam has pretty good hand-eye coordination,” he shouted. For God’s sake, was this a parent-teacher conference now?
When Tess had picked Liam up from school this afternoon, he’d seemed elated and hadn’t mentioned anything about Will or Felicity. Instead, he’d talked nonstop about how he was definitely the best at the Easter egg hunt, and how he’d shared some of his eggs with Polly Fitzpatrick, who was going to have this amazing pirate party and everyone in the class was invited, and how he’d done this really fun game with a parachute on the oval, and there was an Easter hat parade the next day, and their teacher was going to dress up like an Easter egg! Tess didn’t know if it was just the novelty factor or the chocolate high that was making him so happy, but for now at least Liam was definitely not missing his old life.
“Did you wish Marcus was here too?” she’d asked him.
“Not really,” answered Liam. “Marcus was pretty mean.”
He’d refused help making his Easter hat and had made his own weird and wonderful creation out of an old straw hat of Lucy’s, incorporating fake flowers and a toy rabbit. Then he ate all his dinner, sang in the bath and was sound asleep by seven thirty. Whatever happened, he wasn’t going back to that school in Melbourne.
“He gets it from his father,” Tess said with a sigh. “The good hand-eye coordination.” She took a big mouthful of the bad wine. Will would never take her anywhere like this. He knew all the best bars in Melbourne: tiny, stylish, soft-lit bars where he’d sit across the table from her and they’d talk. The conversation never faltered. They still made each other laugh. They went out every couple of months. Just the two of them. Saw a show or had dinner. Wasn’t that what you were meant to do? To invest in your marriage with nice, regular “date nights”? (She couldn’t stand that phrase.)
Felicity took care of Liam when they went out. They always had a drink with her when they got home and told her about their night. Sometimes, if it was too late, she stayed the night, and they all had breakfast together in the morning.
Yes, Felicity had been an integral part of date night.
Did she lie in the spare bedroom wishing she were in Tess’s place? Had Tess’s behavior been unwittingly, yet unspeakably, cruel to Felicity?
“What’s that?” Connor leaned forward, squinting at her.