It was because of the sex. Because if she wasn’t having sex she wasn’t anything else except an uncool, middle-aged, frumpy mum. And, by the way, she was not frumpy. Just yesterday, a truck driver had given her a long slow wolf-whistle when she was running against the lights to buy coriander.

The whistle had definitely been for her. She’d checked to make sure there hadn’t been any other younger, more attractive women in sight. The previous week she’d had the disconcerting experience of hearing someone whistle when she was walking with the girls through the shopping centre, and she’d turned to see Isabel looking resolutely ahead, her cheeks flushed pink. Isabel had suddenly shot up, she was already as tall as Cecilia, and she was starting to curve, in at the waist, out at the hips and bust. Lately she’d been wearing her hair up in a high ponytail with a heavy straight fringe hanging too low over her eyes. She was growing up, and it wasn’t only her mother who was noticing.

It’s starting, Cecilia had thought sadly. She wished she could give Isabel a shield, like the ones riot police held, to protect her from male attention: that feeling of being scored each time you walked down a street, the demeaning comments yelled out of cars, that casual sweep of the eyes. She’d wanted to sit down and talk to Isabel about it, but then she hadn’t known what to say. She’d never quite got her head around it herself. It’s no big deal. It is a big deal. They have no right to make you feel that way. Or, just ignore it, one day you’ll turn forty and you’ll slowly realise you don’t feel the eyes any more, and the freedom is a relief, but you’ll also sort of miss it, and when a truck driver whistles at you while you’re crossing the road, you’ll think, Really? For me?

It had seemed like a really genuine, friendly whistle too.

It was a little humiliating just how much time she’d devoted to analysing that whistle.

Well, anyway, she certainly was not worried that John-Paul was having an affair. Definitely not. It wasn’t a possibility. Not even a remote possibility. He wouldn’t have time for an affair! When would he fit it in?

He did travel a bit. He could fit in an affair then.

Sister Ursula’s coffin was being carried from the church by four broad-shouldered, tousle-haired young men in suits and ties, with careful blank faces, who were supposedly her nephews. Fancy Sister Ursula sharing the same DNA as such attractive young boys. They’d probably spent the whole funeral thinking about sex too. Young boys like that with their roaring young libidos. The tallest one really was particularly good-looking with those dark, flashing eyes . . .

Dear God. Now she was imagining having sex with one of Sister Ursula’s pallbearers. A child, by the look of him. He was probably still in high school. Her thoughts were not only immoral and inappropriate, but also illegal. (Was it illegal to think? To covet your third-grade teacher’s pallbearer?)

When John-Paul got home from Chicago on Good Friday they would have sex every single night. They would rediscover their sex lives. It would be great. They’d always been so good together. She’d always assumed that they were having better quality sex than everyone else. It had been such a cheering thought at school functions.

John-Paul couldn’t get better sex anywhere else. (Cecilia had read a lot of books. She kept her skills up to date, as if it were a professional obligation.) He had no need for an affair. Not to mention that he was one of the most ethical, rule-following people she knew. He wouldn’t cross a double yellow line for a million dollars. Infidelity was not an option for him. He just would not do it.

That letter had nothing to do with an affair. She wasn’t even thinking about the letter! That’s how unconcerned she was about it. That fleeting moment last night when she’d thought he’d been lying on the phone was completely imaginary. The awkwardness over the letter was just because of the innate awkwardness of all long-distance phone calls. They were unnatural. You were on opposite sides of the world, at opposite ends of the day, so you couldn’t quite harmonise your voices: one person too upbeat, the other too mellow.

Opening the letter would not result in some shocking revelation. It was not, for example, about another secret family he was supporting. John-Paul did not have the requisite organisational abilities to handle bigamy. He would have slipped up long ago. Turned up at the wrong house. Called one of his wives by the wrong name. He’d be constantly leaving his possessions at the other place.

Unless, of course, his hopelessness was all part of his duplicitous cover.

Perhaps he was g*y. That’s why he’d gone off sex. He’d been faking his heterosexuality all these years. Well, he’d certainly done a good job of it. She thought back to the early years when they used to have sex three or four times in one day. That would really have been above and beyond the call of duty if he was only faking his interest.

He quite enjoyed musicals. He loved Cats! And he was better at doing the girls’ hair than her. Whenever Polly had a ballet concert she insisted that John-Paul be the one to put her hair in a bun. He could talk arabesques and pirouettes with Polly as well as he could talk soccer with Isabel, and the Titanic with Esther. Also, he adored his mother. Weren’t g*y men particularly close to their mothers? Or was that a myth?

He owned an apricot polo shirt, and ironed it himself.

Yes, he was probably g*y.

The hymn finished. Sister Ursula’s coffin left the church and there was a sense of a job well done as people picked up their bags and jackets and got ready to go on with their day.

Cecilia put down her hymnbook. For heaven’s sake. Her husband was not g*y. An image came to her of John-Paul marching up and down the sidelines at Isabel’s soccer match last weekend, calling out encouragement. Along with a day’s worth of silver stubble, he had two purple ballerina stickers stuck on each cheek. Polly had put them there to amuse herself. She felt a surge of love as she remembered. There was nothing effeminate about John-Paul. He was just comfortable in his own skin. He didn’t need to prove himself.

The letter had nothing to do with the sex lull. It had nothing to do with anything. It was safely locked away in the filing cabinet in the red manila folder with the copies of their wills.

She’d promised not to open it. So she couldn’t, and she wouldn’t.

Chapter seven

‘Do you know who died?’ asked Tess.

‘What’s that?’ Her mother had her eyes closed, her face lifted to the sun.