chapter thirty

Cecilia sat on the couch next to Esther watching YouTube videos of the cold, clear November night in 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down. She was becoming obsessed with the Wall herself. After John-Paul’s mother had left, she’d stayed sitting at the kitchen table reading one of Esther’s books until it was time to pick the girls up from school. There were so many things she should have been doing – Tupperware deliveries, preparations for Easter Sunday, the pirate party – but reading about the Wall was a good way of pretending she wasn’t thinking about what she was really thinking about.

Esther was drinking warm milk. Cecilia was drinking her third – or fourth? – glass of sauvignon blanc. John-Paul was listening to Polly do her reading. Isabel sat at the computer in the family room downloading music onto her iPod. Their home was a cosy lamplit bubble of domesticity. Cecilia sniffed. The scent of sesame oil seemed to have pervaded the whole house now.

‘Look, Mum,’ Esther elbowed her.

‘I’m watching,’ said Cecilia.

Cecilia’s memories of the news footage she’d seen back in 1989 were rowdier than this. She remembered crowds of people dancing on top of the Wall, fists punching the air. Wasn’t David Hasselhoff singing at some point? But there was a strange, eerie quietness to the clips Esther had found. The people walking out from East Berlin seemed quietly stunned, exhilarated but calm, filing out in such an orderly fashion. (They were Germans after all. Cecilia’s sort of people.) Men and women with eighties hairstyles drank champagne straight from the bottle, tipping their heads back and smiling at the cameras. They hooted and hugged and wept, they tooted the horns of their cars, but they all seemed so well behaved, so very nice about it. Even the people slamming sledge-hammers against the wall seemed to do so with controlled jubilation, not vicious fury. Cecilia watched a woman of about her own age dance in circles with a bearded man in a leather jacket.

‘Why are you crying, Mum?’ asked Esther.

‘Because they’re so happy,’ said Cecilia.

Because they endured this unacceptable thing. Because that woman probably thought, like so many people had, that the Wall would eventually come down, but not in her lifetime, that she would never see this day, and yet she had, and now she was dancing.

‘It’s weird how you always cry about happy things,’ said Esther.

‘I know,’ said Cecilia.

Happy endings always made her cry. It was the relief.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ John-Paul stood up from the dining-room table, while Polly put away her book. He looked at Cecilia anxiously. All evening she’d been aware of his timid, solicitous glances. It was driving her crazy.

‘No,’ said Cecilia sharply, avoiding his eyes. She felt the perplexed gaze of her daughters. ‘I do not want a cup of tea.’

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?’