‘Hi,’ she said to him.

‘Hi,’ he said, and she caught her breath, because as their eyes met she got that feeling again, that sensation of there being something huge between them, something she couldn’t quite define, something her twenty-year-old self might have called ‘passion’ and her thirty-year-old self might have more cynically called ‘chemistry’. A tiny speck of her, a tiny speck of the woman she could have become, thought, Come on, Janie, you’re being a coward. You like him more than Connor. Choose him. This could be big. This could be huge. This could be love.

But her heart was hammering so hard it was horrible, scary and painful, she could barely breathe. There was a painful crushing sensation in the centre of her chest, as if someone was trying to flatten her. She just wanted to feel normal again.

‘I need to talk to you about something,’ she said, and she made her voice cold and hard, sealing her fate like an envelope.

thursday

chapter thirty-three

‘Cecilia! Did you get my messages? I’ve been trying to call!’

‘Cecilia, you were right about those raffle tickets.’

‘Cecilia! You weren’t at pilates yesterday!’

‘Cecilia! My sister-in-law wants to book a party with you.’

‘Cecilia, is there any chance you could take Harriette just for an hour after ballet next week?’

‘Cecilia!’

‘Cecilia!’

‘Cecilia!’

It was the Easter hat parade and the St Angela’s mothers were out in force, dressed up in honour of Easter and the first truly autumnal day of the new season. Soft pretty scarves looped necks, skinny jeans encased skinny and not so skinny thighs, spike-heeled boots tapped across the playground. It had been a humid summer and the crispness of the breeze and the anticipation of a four-day chocolate-filled weekend had put everyone in good moods. The mothers, sitting in a big double-rowed circle of blue fold-up chairs around the quadrangle, were frisky and high-spirited.

The older children, who weren’t taking part in the Easter hat parade, had been brought outside to watch and they hung over the balconies with dangling, nonchalant arms and mature, tolerant expressions to indicate that of course they were now far too old for this sort of thing, but weren’t the little ones cute.

Cecilia looked for Isabel on the Year 6 balcony and saw her standing in between her best friends Marie and Laura. The three girls had their arms slung around each other, indicating that their tumultuous three-way relationship was currently at a high point, where nobody was being ganged up on by the other two and their love for each other was pure and intense. It was lucky that there was no school for the next four days because their intense times were inevitably followed by tears and betrayal and long, exhausting stories of she said, she texted, she posted and I said, I texted, I posted.

One of the mothers discreetly passed around a basket of Belgian chocolate balls, and there were moans of drunken, sensual pleasure.

I’m a murderer’s wife, thought Cecilia while Belgian chocolate melted in her mouth. I’m an accessory to murder, she thought, as she set up play dates and pick-ups and Tupperware parties, as she scheduled and organised and set things in action. I’m Cecilia Fitzpatrick and my husband is a murderer and look at me, talking and chatting and laughing and hugging my kids. You’d never know.

This was how it could be done. This was how you lived with a secret. You just did it. You pretended everything was fine. You ignored the deep, cramp-like pain in your stomach. You somehow anesthetised yourself, so that nothing felt that bad, but nothing felt that good either. Yesterday she’d thrown up in the gutter and cried in the pantry, but this morning she’d got up at six am and made two lasagnes to go into the freezer ready for Easter Sunday, and ironed a basket of clothes and sent three emails enquiring about tennis lessons for Polly, and answered fourteen emails about various school matters, and put in her Tupperware order from the party the other night, and got a load of laundry on the line, all before the girls and John-Paul were out of bed. She was back on her skates, twirling expertly about the slippery surface of her life.

‘Give me strength. What is that woman wearing?’ said someone as the school principal appeared in the centre of the yard. Trudy was wearing long rabbit ears and a fluffy tail pinned to her bottom. She looked like a motherly playboy bunny.

Trudy hopped to the microphone in the middle of the yard, with her hands curled up in front of her like paws. The mothers rocked with fond laughter. The kids on the balconies cheered.

‘Ladies and jellybeans, girls and boys!’ One of Trudy’s rabbit ears slipped down over her face and she brushed it away. ‘Welcome to the St Angela’s Easter Hat Parade!’

‘I love her to death,’ said Mahalia, who was sitting on Cecilia’s right, ‘but it really is hard to believe she runs a school.’

‘Trudy doesn’t run the school,’ said Laura Marks, who was sitting on her other side. ‘Rachel Crowley runs the school. Together with the lovely lady on your left.’

Laura leaned in front of Mahalia and waggled her fingers at Cecilia.

‘Now, now, you know that’s not true,’ Cecilia smiled roguishly. She felt like a demented parody of herself. Surely she was overdoing it? Everything she did felt exaggerated and clown-like, but nobody seemed to notice.

The music began, pounding out through the state-of-the-art sound system that Cecilia’s highly successful art show raffle had paid for last year.

The conversation rippled around her.

‘Who chose the playlist? It’s quite good.’

‘I know. Makes me feel like dancing.’

‘Yes, but is anybody listening to the lyrics? Do you know what this song is about?’

‘Best not to.’

‘My kids know them all anyway.’

The K-P class was first to file out, led by their teacher, the rather beautiful busty brunette, Miss Parker, who had made the best use of her natural assets by dressing up in a fairy princess dress that was two sizes too small for her, and was dancing along to the music in a manner perhaps not quite befitting a kindergarten teacher. The tiny kindergarteners followed her, grinning proudly and self-consciously, carefully balancing the familiar Easter hat creations on their heads.

The mothers congratulated one another on their children’s hats.

‘Ooh, Sandra, creative!’

‘Found it on the internet. Took me ten minutes.’

‘Sure it did.’

‘Seriously, I swear!’

‘Does Miss Parker realise this is an Easter hat parade, not a nightclub?’

‘Do fairy princesses normally show that much cleavage?’

‘And by the way, does a tiara really count as an Easter hat?’

‘I think she’s trying to get Mr Whitby’s attention, poor girl. He’s not even looking.’

Cecilia adored events just like these. An Easter hat parade summed up everything she loved about her life. The sweetness and simplicity of it all. The sense of community. But today the parade seemed pointless, the children snotty-nosed, the mothers bitchy. She stifled a yawn and smelled sesame oil on her fingers. It was the scent of her life now. Another yawn overtook her. She and John-Paul had been up late making the girls’ Easter hats in strained silence.

Polly’s class made their appearance, led by the adorable Mrs Jeffers, who had gone to a tremendous lot of trouble to dress as a gigantic shiny pink foil-wrapped Easter egg.

Polly was right behind her teacher, strutting along like a supermodel, wearing her Easter hat tilted rakishly over one eye. John-Paul had made her a bird’s nest out of sticks from the garden and filled it with Easter eggs. A fluffy yellow toy chick emerged from one of the eggs as if it were hatching.