chapter thirty-one
‘I remember Felicity,’ said Connor. ‘She was funny. Quick-witted. A bit scary.’
They’d moved to Connor’s bed. It was an ordinary queen-sized mattress with plain white Egyptian cotton sheets. (She’d forgotten that: how he loved good sheets, like in a hotel.) Connor had heated up some leftover pasta he’d made the night before and they were eating it in bed.
‘We could be civilised and sit at the table,’ Connor had offered. ‘I could make a salad. Put out placemats.’
‘Let’s just stay here,’ Tess had said. ‘I might remember to feel awkward about this.’
‘Good point,’ Connor had said.
The pasta was delicious. Tess ate hungrily. She felt that ravenous sensation she used to feel when Liam was a baby and she’d been up all night breastfeeding.
Except instead of a night innocently suckling her son, she’d just had two very boisterous, highly satisfying sexual encounters with a man who was not her husband. She should have lost her appetite, not got it back.
‘So she and your husband are having an affair,’ said Connor.
‘No,’ said Tess. ‘They just fell in love. It’s all very pure and romantic.’
‘That’s horrible.’
‘I know,’ said Tess. ‘I only found out on Monday, and here I am –’ She waved her fork around the room, and at herself and her own state of undress (she was wearing nothing but a T-shirt of Connor’s which he’d taken from a drawer and handed her, without comment, before he went off to make the pasta; it smelled very clean.).
‘Eating pasta,’ finished Connor.
‘Eating excellent pasta,’ agreed Tess.
‘Wasn’t Felicity quite a . . .’ Connor searched for the right word. ‘How can I put this without sounding . . . Wasn’t she quite a sturdy girl?’
‘She was morbidly obese,’ said Tess. ‘It is relevant because this year she lost forty kilos and became extremely beautiful.’
‘Ah,’ said Connor. He paused. ‘So what do you think is going to happen?’
‘I have no idea,’ said Tess. ‘Last week I thought my marriage was good. As good as a marriage can be. And then they made this announcement. I was in shock. I’m still in shock. But then again, look at me, within three days. Actually two days, I’m with an ex-boyfriend . . . eating pasta.’
‘Things just happen sometimes,’ said Connor. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
Tess finished the pasta and ran her finger around the bowl. ‘Why are you single? You can cook, you can do other things,’ she gestured vaguely at the bed, ‘very well.’
‘I’ve been pining for you all these years.’ He was straight-faced.
‘No you haven’t,’ said Tess. She frowned. ‘That is, you haven’t, have you?’
Connor took her empty bowl and placed it inside his own bowl. He put them both on the bedside table. Then he lay back against his pillow.
‘I did actually pine for you for a while,’ he admitted.
Tess’s cheerful feeling began to slip. ‘I’m sorry, I had no idea –’
‘Tess,’ interrupted Connor. ‘Relax. It was a long time ago, and we didn’t even go out for that long. It was the age difference. I was a boring accountant and you were young and ready for adventures. But I did sometimes wonder what could have been.’
Tess had never wondered. Not even once. She’d barely thought of Connor.
‘So you never married?’ she asked.
‘I lived with a woman for a number of years. A lawyer. We were both on track for partnership, and marriage I guess. But then my sister died and everything changed. I was looking after Ben. I lost interest in accounting around the same time that Angela lost interest in me. And then I decided to do my degree in physical education.’
‘But I still don’t get it. There’s a single dad at Liam’s school in Melbourne and the women swarm all over him. It’s embarrassing to watch.’
‘Well,’ said Connor, ‘I never said they didn’t swarm.’
‘So you’ve just been playing the field all these years?’ said Tess.
‘Sort of,’ said Connor. He went to speak and then stopped.
‘What?’
‘No. Nothing.’
‘Go on.’
‘I was just going to admit something.’
‘Something juicy?’ guessed Tess. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve become very open-minded ever since my husband suggested I live in the same house as him and his lover.’
Connor gave her a sympathetic smile. ‘Not that juicy. I was going to say that I’ve been seeing a therapist for the last year. I’ve been – how do people put it – “working through” some stuff.’
‘Oh,’ said Tess, carefully.
‘You’ve got that careful look on your face,’ said Connor. ‘I’m not crazy. I just had a few issues I needed to . . . cover off.’
‘Serious issues?’ asked Tess, not sure if she really wanted to know. This was meant to be an interlude from all the serious stuff, a crazy little escapade. She was letting off steam. (She was aware of herself already trying to define it, to package it in a way that made it acceptable. Perhaps the self-loathing was about to hit.)
‘When we were going out,’ said Connor, ‘did I ever tell you that I was the last person to see Janie Crowley alive? Rachel Crowley’s daughter?’
‘I know who she is,’ said Tess. ‘I’m pretty sure you never told me that.’
‘Actually, I know I wouldn’t have told you,’ said Connor. ‘Because I never talked about it. Hardly anyone knew. Except for the police. And Janie’s mother. I sometimes think that Rachel Crowley thinks I did it. She looks at me in this intense way.’
Tess felt a chill. He murdered Janie Crowley, and now he was about to murder Tess, and then everyone would know that she’d used her husband’s romantic predicament as an excuse to jump into bed with an ex-boyfriend.
‘And did you?’ she asked.
Connor’s head jerked back as if she’d slapped him. ‘Tess! No! Of course not!’
‘Sorry.’ Tess relaxed back against her pillow. Of course he didn’t.
‘Jeez, I can’t believe you would think –’
‘Sorry, sorry. So was Janie a friend? Girlfriend?’
‘I wanted her to be my girlfriend,’ said Connor. ‘I was pretty hung up on her. She’d come over to my place after school and we’d make out on my bed, and then I’d get all serious and angry and say, “Okay, this means you’re my girlfriend right?” I was desperate for commitment. I wanted everything signed and sealed. My first girlfriend. Only she’d hum and ha, and, was all, “Well, I don’t know, I’m still deciding.” I was losing my mind over it all, but then, on the morning of the day she died, she told me that she’d decided. I’d got the job, so to speak. I was stoked. Thought I’d won the lottery.’
‘Connor,’ said Tess. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘She came over that afternoon, and we ate fish and chips in my room, and kissed for about thirty hours or so, and then I saw her off at the railway station, and next morning I heard on the radio that a girl had been found strangled at Wattle Valley Park.’
‘My God,’ said Tess uselessly. She felt out of her depth, similar to the way she’d felt when she and her mother were sitting across the desk from Rachel Crowley the other day, filling in Liam’s enrolment forms, and she kept thinking to herself, Her daughter was murdered. She couldn’t link Connor’s experience to anything even remotely similar in her own life, and so she didn’t seem able to converse with him in any normal way.
Finally she said, ‘I can’t believe you never told me any of this when we were together.’
Although, really, why should he have? They’d only gone out together for six months. Even married couples didn’t share everything. She had never told Will about her self-diagnosis of social anxiety. The very thought of telling him made her toes curl with embarrassment.
‘I lived with Antonia for years before I finally told her,’ said Connor. ‘She was offended. We seemed to talk more about how offended she was than what actually happened. I think that’s probably why we broke up in the end. My failure to share.’
‘I guess girls like to know stuff,’ said Tess.
‘There was one part of the story I never told Antonia,’ said Connor. ‘I never told anyone until I told – this therapist woman. My shrink.’
He stopped.
‘You don’t have to tell me,’ said Tess nobly.
‘Okay, let’s talk about something else,’ said Connor.
Tess swatted at him.
‘My mother lied for me,’ said Connor.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You never had the pleasure of meeting my mother, did you? She died before we met.’
Another memory of her time with Connor floated to the surface. She’d asked him about his parents and he said, ‘My father left when I was a baby. My mother died when I was twenty-one. My mother was a drunk. That’s all I have to say about her.’ ‘Mother issues,’ said Felicity when Tess repeated this conversation. ‘Run a mile.’
‘My mother and her boyfriend told the police that I was home with them from five o’clock that night. I wasn’t. I was home alone. They were out getting drunk somewhere. I never asked them to lie for me. My mother just did it. Automatically. And she loved it. Lying to the police. When the police left, she winked at me as she held the front door for them. Winked! As if she and I were in cahoots. It made me feel as if I had done it. But what could I do? I couldn’t tell them that Mum had just lied for me, because that would make it look as if she thought I had something to hide.’
‘But you’re not saying she actually thought you did it,’ said Tess.
‘After the police left she held up a finger like this and said, “Connor, baby, I don’t want to know,” as if she was in a movie, and I said, “Mum, I didn’t do it,” and she just said, “Pour me a wine, darl.” After that, whenever she got nasty drunk, she’d say, “You owe me, you ungrateful little bastard.” It gave me a permanent sense of guilt. Almost as if I had done it.’ He shuddered. ‘Anyway. I grew up. Mum died. I never talked about Janie. I never even let myself think about her. And then my sister died, and I got Ben, and straight after my teaching degree I got offered the job at St Angela’s. I didn’t even know that Janie’s mother was working there until my second day of work.’
‘That must be strange.’
‘We don’t run into each other that often. I did try to talk to her about Janie in the very beginning, but she made it clear she wasn’t interested in being chatty. So. I started telling you all this because you asked why I was single. My very expensive therapist thinks I’ve been subconsciously sabotaging relationships because I don’t think I deserve to be happy, because of my guilt over what I didn’t actually do to Janie.’ He smiled shamefacedly at Tess. ‘So there you go. I’m extremely damaged. Not your run-of-the-mill accountant turned PE teacher.’
Tess took his hand in hers and laced her fingers through his. She looked at their interlocked hands, struck by the fact that she was holding another man’s hand, even though just moments before she’d been doing things that most people would have considered far more intimate.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘Why are you sorry?’
‘I’m sorry about Janie. And your sister dying.’ She paused. ‘And I’m really sorry I broke up with you like I did.’
Connor made the sign of the cross over her head. ‘I absolve you of your sins, my child. Or whatever it is they say. It’s been a while since my last confession.’
‘Mine too,’ said Tess. ‘I think you were meant to give me penance before you absolved me.’
‘Ooh, I can think of penance, baby.’
Tess giggled. She unlaced her fingers. ‘I should go.’
‘I’ve scared you off with all my “issues”,’ said Connor.
‘No you haven’t. I just don’t want my mother getting worried. She’ll wait up for me and she won’t expect me to be this late.’ She remembered suddenly why they were meant to be getting together. ‘Hey, we never talked about your nephew. You wanted to ask me some career advice or something?’
Connor smiled. ‘Ben’s already got a job. I just wanted an excuse to see you.’
‘Really?’ Tess felt a flare of happiness. Was there anything better than to be wanted? Was that all anyone really needed?
‘Yep.’
They looked at each other.
‘Connor –’ she began.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I don’t have any expectations. I know exactly what this is.’
‘What is it?’ asked Tess with interest.
He paused. ‘I’m not sure. I’ll check with my therapist and let you know.’
Tess snorted.
‘I really should go,’ she said again.
But it was another half-hour before she finally put her clothes back on.