Read Online The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty - Free Book Online

too pretty for her own good,” Cecilia’s mother-in-law had observed the other day, and Cecilia was irritated, but at the same time she understood. What did it do to your personality to have the one thing that every woman craved? Cecilia had noticed that beautiful woman held themselves differently; they swayed like palm trees in the breeze of all that attention. Cecilia wanted her daughters to run and stride and stomp. She didn’t want Polly to bloody sway.
    “Do you want to know the secret I told Daddy?” Polly looked up at her through her eyelashes.
    Polly would sway, all right. Cecilia could see it already.
    “That’s okay,” said Cecilia. “You don’t need to tell me.”
    “The secret is that I’ve decided to invite Mr. Whitby to my pirate party,” said Polly.
    Polly’s seventh birthday was the week after Easter. Her pirate party had been a popular topic of conversation for the last month.
    “Polly,” said Cecilia. “We’ve talked about this.”
    Mr. Whitby was the PE teacher at St. Angela’s, and Polly was in love with him. Cecilia didn’t know what it said about Polly’s future relationships that her first crush was a man who appeared to be about the same age as her father. She was meant to be in love with teenage pop stars, not a middle-aged man with a shaved head. It was true that Mr. Whitby had
something
. He was very broad-chested and athletic-looking and he rode a motorbike and listened with his eyes, but it was the school mums who were meant to feel his sex appeal (which they certainly did; Cecilia herself was not immune), not his six-year-old students.
    “We’re not asking Mr. Whitby to your party,” said Cecilia. “It wouldn’t be fair. Otherwise he’d feel like he had to come to everyone’s parties.”
    “He’d want to come to mine.”
    “No.”
    “We’ll talk about it another time,” said Polly airily, pushing her chair back from the table.
    “We won’t!” Cecilia called after her, but Polly had sauntered off.
    Cecilia sighed. Well. Lots to do. She stood and pulled John-Paul’s letter from Esther’s book. First, she would file this damned thing.
    He said he’d written it just after Isabel was born, and that he didn’t remember exactly what it said. That was understandable. Isabel was twelve, and John-Paul was often so vague. He was always relying on Cecilia to be his memory.
    It was just that she was pretty sure he’d been lying.

FIVE
    M aybe we should break in.” Liam’s voice pierced the silent night air like the shriek of a whistle. “We could smash a window with a rock. Like, for example, that rock right there! See, Mum, look, see, see, can you see—”
    “Shhh,” said Tess. “Keep your voice down!” She banged the door knocker against the wood of the door over and over.
    Nothing.
    It was eleven o’clock at night, and she and Liam were standing at her mother’s front door. The house was completely dark, the blinds drawn. It looked deserted. In fact, the whole street seemed eerily silent. Was no one up watching the late news? The only light came from a streetlight on the corner. The sky was starless, moonless. The only sound was a single plaintive cicada, the last survivor of summer, and the soft sigh of far-off traffic. She could smell the soft perfume of her mother’s gardenias. Tess’s mobile phone had run out of battery. She couldn’t call anyone, not even a taxi to take them to a hotel. Maybe they
would
have to break in, but Tess’s mother had become so security-conscious over the last few years. Didn’t Mum have an alarm now? Tess imagined the sudden
woop, woop
of an alarm shattering the neighborhood.
    I can’t believe this is happening to me.
    She hadn’t thought it through. She should have called earlier in the night to let her mother know that they were coming, but she’d been in such a state, booking the flight, packing, getting to the airport, finding the right gate, Liam trotting alongside her, talking the whole time. He was so excited,