The Rachel Incident(90)

“No,” I laugh, glad that he’s cutting the tension. “He’s very long, remember?”

His hands start to ball into fists, and I realise he wants to eat.

Can I really get my tit out in front of Deenie Byrne?

“Sorry,” I say, wrestling with my top, my annoying maternity bra. “Do you mind if I…?”

“No, please, Rachel. Go ahead.”

I always said that I would not be one of those mothers that puts a tea towel over her child’s head while he feeds. I found it prudish and weird. We all know what’s happening under there! Now, I hated myself for not being a tea-towel mother. Deenie Harrington could see my enormous purple nipple.

His lips smack against me. It’s embarrassingly noisy, and I can feel my face going crimson. “You’re so natural,” she says. “Such an earth mother.”

No one ever says “earth mother” to petite women.

“You must be wondering why I wanted to speak to you.”

“A little.”

She allows herself full eye contact with Shay, and with my boob. “I’ve wondered a lot, about you.”

“I’ve thought a lot about you, too.”

“It never happened, did it, Rachel?”

My arms freeze. Shay can feel me stiffening, and moves his arms and legs around in protest.

“What do you mean?”

“You never slept with him, did you?”

“Why would you say that?”

I am, yet again, in another impossible situation with Deenie Byrne. How can I admit it now, without telling her everything? Did she know about James Devlin already?

“I cheated,” she says. “Years later, I cheated. With a man I worked with. You actually met him, I think. Sandy hair?”

“Yes, I remember. That dinner party.”

She gives a hollow laugh. “Yes, that terrible dinner party.” She continues. “But Fred knew right away because the way I spoke about Dominic changed. It was right there, in the texture or something, like every sentence had new bumps and grooves on it. He said to me, a month in—Deenie, you’re sleeping with him, aren’t you? And I broke completely, and said yes.”

“Wow. All right. So you were kind of even.”

“Kind of,” she says. “Fred wasn’t a psychopath. Isn’t. The way he spoke about you, Rachel, when we were at home alone together. All those months when you were hanging around. He was obviously very fond of you, but it wasn’t how someone talks about their lover, even their secret lover.”

“How?” I ask.

“It was because he was so fond of you, that was the giveaway. He was always saying, Rachel is a great girl, Rachel is going places. Rachel should be given a chance. Rachel picks the wrong men. It was too wholesome. If he was sleeping with you, he would never talk to me like that, would he?”

“No,” I say. “I suppose not.”

I feel like someone who has been on death row for years, and am experiencing a strange release at finally having my number called.

“We went to therapy. We worked on our marriage. We were better for it, in the end. He was so good with my mother, Rachel. You wouldn’t believe.” Her voice cracked slightly, overwhelmed by her husband in his former role as carer, and not as patient. “But all those years after, being open, and talking about our fears, not once did I get any clarity on The Rachel Incident.”

“The Rachel Incident?” I ask. “That’s what you called it?”

“That’s what I called it.” She shrugs. “It’s been like my Bermuda Triangle, Rachel. I know that he disappeared inside there for a while, but I don’t know how, or why, or what it meant to him.”

I nod again.

“And now I can’t ask him. So many of those memories are just gone. So much language. I might never know. I hate that I’m asking you, but I’m asking you.”

“Asking me what?”

Deenie runs her finger around the circumference of her coffee saucer. “Did you sleep with my husband, and were you his mistress?”

I have no intention of lying to Deenie, but I don’t have the strength to deconstruct this alternate reality that I accepted to protect Dr. Byrne’s queerness and my friend’s anonymity.

“No, I never slept with him.”

“But you were pregnant.”

“Yes. I was.”

“With…who was that boy? The one I accused you of making up?”

“Carey,” I say. Then I remember the rules, about not calling him that any more. “James Carey. He’s my husband, now.”

She looks to Shay. “And him…?”

“Yes. He’s Shay’s dad.”

“You stayed together? All that time? After…?”

“No, we reconnected, a few years ago. It’s a long story. But I was never pregnant with Fred’s kid. I was just…I was backed into a corner, and he wanted you to believe that we were sleeping together, so I decided to make the best out of it.”

Her body sways forward, like she is trying to nod but can only bow. A whole world, shattered in one breath. Thank God, her phone rings. The letters DOM appear on her screen. She frowns at it, mutes the call.

“Dom,” I say. “Is that…?”