The Other Wife: A sweeping historical romantic drama tinged with obsession and suspense

‘I thought Richard should join us on Friday night.’

The boy grew another few inches.

‘He needs to start learning the business and meeting the right people.’

Mrs Mason frowned. ‘Isn’t he a bit young?’

‘Let me decide what’s best for our son. He’s ready. You’d keep him in nappies if you had your way.’ He strode towards the door. ‘And you’ve got your pet now if you want something to baby.’

Mr Mason marched out of the room and a few moments later the front door swung open and closed again. Richard’s demeanour shifted as soon as his father was out of the house. He slumped onto the couch, swinging his legs up onto the cushion.

‘Richard, don’t put your feet on the cushions.’ Mrs Mason’s voice quivered as she murmured the instruction.

Richard laughed at his mother’s feeble attempt to tell him off. ‘You don’t tell my dad what to do.’

‘He’s the man of the house.’

‘And one day I will be.’ Richard laughed as he stood up again and headed towards the door. ‘Let me know when dinner’s ready.’

The lounge room fell into silence after the door slammed behind him. Mrs Mason patted Betty gently on the head.

On Friday evening, Betty was sent to her room early. Mrs Mason gave her banana sandwiches and a couple of golliwog biscuits that she’d bought ready for them to bake into a cake. They’d do that tomorrow, and the cake would be just for them, not for Mr Mason’s guests. She sat up in bed, leaning on the wall, pulling her knees up to her chest with the covers over her legs. She munched on her biscuit, dropping crumbs on the sheets. She wasn’t at all sleepy.

Her room was right above the front door. She wriggled to the end of the bed and reached to crack the window open a little bit. She could hear people arriving. The men all had big, brash voices like Mr Mason. The women were quieter. She tried to remember. She didn’t think Daddy was loud and brash. Had Mummy been quiet?

She couldn’t remember. She thought that Mummy did used to shout sometimes. She thought that sometimes Mummy used bad words that made Daddy frown. Betty could remember Daddy’s big, strong hands, and his deep, warm voice, but she couldn’t remember Mummy properly anymore at all. Betty screwed her eyes closed and tried to bring Mummy’s face into her head. It was almost there, but, when she tried to look closely, the image blurred and wafted away.

The voices outside the front door had subsided to just two now. Mr Mason and Richard. Betty opened her eyes and listened.

‘Now, these blokes own some of the biggest properties in the state. These are important people and they need to know that we’re men they can do business with. You understand.’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘Right. So tell me again. Who are you sitting next to?’

‘The old guy. Rochester.’

‘Less of the old. He’s only a few years older than me.’

Betty thought she heard Richard snigger, and the noise was followed by the sharp crack of Mr Mason’s hand across his son’s face.

‘You’ll take this seriously.’

‘Sorry, Father.’

‘The Rochesters are important people, and I’ve heard they’re not happy with Halligans. So you’re going to charm him. He’s got a son not much older than you. He’ll inherit the property one day, like you’ll inherit all this. That’s what we want Rochester to see – that we’re a nice, respectable family business that he can trust for years to come.’

‘Yes, Father.’

There was another short moment of quiet. ‘Now, get your face cleaned up and get inside.’

Chapter 11

Jane

Waking up on my first morning at Our Lady School, I found myself surrounded by girls my own age. They stood beside my bed, looking down at the person who had magically appeared in the middle of the night.

‘You’re the new girl.’

‘Yes. I’m Jane.’ I sat up in bed, pushing back the thin sheet and scratchy blanket, conscious of their eyes on me. Back when I lived with my mother, there were always lots of people around, and lots of kids to play with. It would be good to live like that again.

‘Why didn’t you come on the first day of school like we did?’ The girl asking the questions was very pretty. She had long, shiny brown hair tied in two plaits, with pink ribbons. She was wearing pink pyjamas too.

‘I don’t know. I was at school in Sydney. Then Mrs Reed said I was coming here.’

‘Who is Mrs Reed? Is she your mother?’

‘My aunt. I just lived with her.’

‘Why don’t you live with your mum and dad?’

They were all staring at me, waiting for the answer.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Maybe she’s an orphan,’ a red-haired girl suggested. ‘Are your mum and dad dead?’

‘No!’ My answer was automatic, but the question lodged somewhere deep inside me. Why hadn’t Mum come to take me home from the Reed house? As for a dad… I wasn’t sure. I’d never called any of Mum’s friends ‘dad’.

‘I bet they are. I bet they’re dead,’ a blonde girl said. ‘Or maybe they just don’t love you and they gave you away.’

Something snapped when she said that. My mum had loved me. I was sure she had. Before Mrs Reed, before this school, I’d been happy.

‘Don’t say that.’ I jumped out of bed. ‘You take that back.’

‘I bet you’re right,’ another voice chimed in.

‘Nah.’ That was the first girl again. ‘I think she’s an orphan. I think they’re dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.’

The first girl started the chant, but the others picked it up quickly.

‘Stop it!’ I screamed. The shouting was ringing in my ears. Another school. Another set of kids who seemed to hate me. For a second I was back in the sports shed with the jeering and the fear. ‘Stop it…’ I pushed the dark-haired girl. She staggered backwards and fell over right at the feet of the nun who had at that moment entered the dormitory.

‘What’s going on here?’ The nun was tall and thin, and dressed all in black.

‘She pushed me, Sister.’ The dark-haired girl immediately began sobbing.

‘We don’t allow pushing here.’ The nun looked me up and down. ‘And nor do we allow girls to sleep in their clothes.’

I tugged at my nightie. It wasn’t really a nightie, it was just a big t-shirt that was a hand-me down from Emma, but it was all I had.

‘Now apologise to Miranda.’

The girl still sitting on the floor turned towards me with a really nasty smile.

‘No. I won’t. She said a horrible thing about me.’

‘I didn’t, Sister, honestly.’ Miranda turned her doll-like face to the nun.

The nun took me by the shoulder. ‘You will apologise. Now. And then you will write out one hundred times, “I must not tell lies”. Do you understand?’ When I didn’t answer, she shook my shoulder hard. ‘Do you understand, Jane Eyre?’

All around me the other girls were smiling and giggling. The nun shook me again, gripping my shoulder so hard it hurt.

It wasn’t fair! I had thought being at a school with no boys to bully me would be better. I was wrong.

Chapter 12

Betty

Betty was pulled along by Mrs Mason’s tight grip on her hand, through the mass of bodies rushing and pushing their way through the shops. Betty had never seen anything like this.

Bankstown Square, Mrs Mason said, was the biggest shopping centre in the whole country, with all sorts of new and interesting shops that everyone wanted to see. That’s why Mrs Mason had to come here to buy Betty’s new summer clothes. Betty had thought it was summer already, but apparently that wasn’t right. Summer and winter were backwards here and even winter wasn’t really cold.

Betty’s legs were tired and Mrs Mason was laden with carrier bags from all the shops they’d been in. Mrs Mason hadn’t let her try on one of the new miniskirts that were so popular. She was apparently too little for that sort of thing, whatever that sort of thing was. Her dresses were all pretty and frilly. Betty didn’t really like them, but she didn’t tell Mrs Mason that. She thought that that would make Mrs Mason sad.

They swept out of the big sliding doors into the sunshine. Mrs Mason pulled her hand away for a second to reach into her pocket. That was it. Betty was too tired. She shuffled backwards away from Mrs Mason and sat down on a low wall outside the shops. The sun was hot on her face and she closed her eyes for a moment, away from the bustle and the noise. It was almost warm enough to imagine that she was back in her real home in front of the blazing fire.

It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds before she opened her eyes again, but when she did she couldn’t see Mrs Mason anywhere. Betty clambered up onto the wall, but even up on tippy-toes she couldn’t see Mrs Mason. There were too many people pushing their way into the shopping centre, or fighting their way to the car park.

‘Eliza!’

She heard the voice and jumped off the wall. She tried to run towards the voice, but there were too many people in the way.

‘Eliza!’ The voice was further away now. It seemed to come from outside the car park, near the street.

Betty stopped and tried to listen. Where was Mrs Mason? She had to find her. Mrs Mason was the only person she knew, the only person who cared about her.

‘Eliza!’

The voice was closer this time. Betty set out more confidently, striding in what she hoped was the right direction.

The next sound made her stop. It wasn’t a voice. It wasn’t Mrs Mason calling for her. It was a growl of an engine, then a screech of brakes, and then a cry. The crowd around her stopped milling in all their different directions and turned, like Betty, towards the cry.

Then the voices all started up at once. ‘Someone go into one of the shops and call the ambos.’

‘What happened?’

‘Is she all right?’

‘Oh my God.’

Betty pushed and shoved as hard as she could to get to the front of the crowd. Mrs Mason must be in the crowd, so if she could get to the front Mrs Mason would see her, wouldn’t she? And then everything would be all right.

But she couldn’t get through. The throng of people was too great. Eventually she called out. ‘Help me!’

A woman’s face appeared, ducking down to her level. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Mrs Mason….’ Betty gulped out the words but couldn’t finish.

‘Mrs Mason? Is that your mother?’

Betty shook her head. ‘I live with her.’

‘OK. I’m sure we can find her.’

Betty let the stranger lift her up and carry her through the crowd, shouting at people to let them through.

‘Can you see your lady now?’ The woman turned around so Betty could look at the people gathered.

Betty shook her head. The woman turned again. Then Betty saw Mrs Mason. She was lying in the street. There was a motorbike on its side right next to her, and a man dressed in black leather sitting on the pavement. A truck was stopped on the other side of the road, its cab twisted away from them at a funny angle. Betty cried out.

‘What’s wrong?’

She couldn’t make the words. She stuck out a hand, finger pointing towards the figure stretched out on the road.

‘Oh dear God,’ the woman muttered. She turned her body so Betty couldn’t see Mrs Mason lying on the road, but it was too late. The image was fixed inside her head. Eventually a siren sounded and a couple of cars with flashing lights pulled to a stop in the empty street alongside the abandoned truck. The woman who was still holding Betty stepped forward to the men who jumped out of the cars.

‘I think this is her little daughter,’ she whispered.

Chapter 13

Jane

In those first weeks at school, I tried to keep to myself, but it was hard. There were two hundred girls at Our Lady, and very few places to be alone. All the girls ate together in a large dining room and slept six to a dormitory. We kept our clothes in small cubicles, but even then three girls shared a single space.

I never minded sharing my space when I lived with Mum, but here it was different. Here, instead of letting one another be, it felt like everyone was competing to be the best and the most popular. And I hated getting changed in front of the other girls. Showing your body was wrong. Mrs Reed had said that when John had looked at me, and I’d known that she’d been right.

This meant I was sometimes late for chapel or late for class. I hated it when the nuns got angry, and sometimes I was punished for lateness, but I still was not going to get undressed in front of the other girls.

On weekends, we were allowed to wear ordinary clothes instead of uniforms. I only had three dresses. They were hand-me-downs from Emma and when I first got them, I thought they were pretty. At school I learnt differently.

‘Oh look, Jane is wearing the same dress she wore last weekend.’

‘Look! It’s been ripped and mended. She’s got no-one to buy her a new one.’ Miranda was the most popular girl in our class. Where she led, the others would follow. ‘Because she’s an orphan.’

‘I am not an orphan!’

‘Then why don’t your parents come to visit you like mine do?’

‘Because they live a long way away.’

‘No. It’s because they’re dead and you’re an orphan.’

They all started chanting. ‘Jane is an orphan. Jane is an orphan. Dead. Dead. Dead.’ I tried to ignore them and walk away, but they stood in front of me, just chanting.

‘I am not!’ I struck out at the nearest girl. Not Miranda. She’d learnt by now not to stand too close to me.

The girl screamed very loudly. I hit her again. Then one of her friends pulled my hair, so I hit her too. Then they were all screaming, and pushing and shoving me.

‘Girls. Stop it this instant!’ Sister Mary Gabriel was the deputy headmistress of the school.

‘They started it.’ My words rushed out. ‘They said I was an orphan, and I’m not. I hate them!’

‘She hit me,’ one of the other girls wailed.

‘Enough!’ We all fell silent. ‘Jane Eyre, did you hit her?’

‘Yes, but…’

‘But nothing. We do not hit people. This is wrong. Our Lord teaches us that. You will go to the chapel and pray to the Holy Mother to forgive you. Miranda, you and your friends will go to the library. I want a one-page essay from each of you about the virtues of being kind to those who are …’ She glanced back in my direction. ‘Less fortunate than ourselves. Now go, all of you.’

When I got to the chapel that day, a girl called Helen from my class was there. I had never spoken to her before, but I’d always wanted to. She wasn’t into make-up and gossiping like the other girls. She didn’t have fancy clothes either, but she did have lovely reddish hair. She didn’t smile very often, but when she did, her face seemed to glow. She kept herself a bit separate from the others. She never joined in with their chants. And she was so clever. She always knew the answers to the teachers’ questions, and she wasn’t afraid to put her hand up to answer, even though the other girls called her ‘smartie’ and teacher’s pet.

I didn’t say anything. I slipped into the next pew and knelt down. I didn’t pray for forgiveness for hitting the other girls. I prayed for forgiveness for whatever I’d done that meant I’d deserved to be sent to Mrs Reed’s house and then here.

‘You shouldn’t fight with them.’

I sat back and turned to look at Helen.

‘How did you know I was fighting?’

‘Your dress is torn. Why do you always fight them, Jane?’ She frowned as she looked at me. ‘You can’t win.’

‘I hate them all. They said I was an orphan…and I’m not.’ Perhaps I thought if I said it often enough, it would be true.

‘Why would that be a bad thing? I am an orphan.’

‘Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’ I couldn’t help but ask, hoping for an answer that would prove that my situation was different to hers. ‘What happened to your mum and dad?’

‘I don’t know. I was very small. I have been an orphan as long as I can remember.’

‘Don’t you hate not having a home or a family? I hate it.’

‘But I do have a home. It’s here. I’ve been at boarding school since I was tiny.’ She twisted in the pew to face me properly. ‘We could be family, though, if you wanted, Jane. You and me.’

I couldn’t put my reaction into words. Someone wanted to spend time with me. I managed to nod and reached my hand towards her across the pew.

She took it and smiled. ‘Good. Now we’re together, you won’t have to fight all the time.’

Chapter 14

Betty

‘I don’t know why Mother thought she was pretty.’

Richard didn’t even look at Betty as he spoke about her. He’d learnt that from his father.

‘Neither do I.’ Mr Mason fell quiet for a moment. ‘But she was like that. She always saw the good in people.’

Richard snorted.

Mr Mason rose from his chair and walked over to where Betty was sitting on a couch, reading a book.

‘You can’t just sit around here all day.’ He straightened up. ‘Maddie!’

The housekeeper walked into the room. She was the third or fourth since Mrs Mason’s death. They came. They stayed for a little while and they went away. Only Betty was stuck here.

‘I need you to sort this one out.’

The girl glanced at Betty uncertainly. ‘What do you mean? I get her off to school every day. What else am I supposed to do?’

‘She’s old enough to start pulling her weight around here now.’

‘Yes, Mr Mason.’

‘And after school she can work with you in the kitchen. She needs to learn what you do. Cooking, cleaning…’ His voice trailed away as if he was unable to imagine what else might need doing around the house. ‘She’ll be someone’s wife if we’re lucky one day. Or she can work for someone if she has to. Like you.’

Maddie’s face set in a stony look. ‘Yes, Mr Mason.’

‘Right. Off you go, then.’ He turned to Betty. ‘Both of you now.’

Betty scurried after the cleaning girl.

‘And do something about her hair.’ The final words were shouted after them as Maddie pushed Betty towards the kitchen, where she took a long, hard look at Betty’s hair.

‘How’d you get hair like that anyway?’

Betty tugged at her dark, tight curls and shrugged.

‘I don’t understand. I can’t see someone like him taking in a half-caste.’ She stared again at Betty’s hair. ‘This needs sorting out, though.’

She opened and shut cupboards for a minute. ‘Now, you don’t tell anyone I showed you how to do this. OK?’

Betty nodded. Maddie mixed milk and honey together in a pan and smoothed them onto Betty’s hair, before combing her kinks and curls away. Eventually she lifted Betty up so she could look at herself in the mirror that hung high up next to the door. ‘See. No more frizz.’

‘It looks like your hair.’

Maddie narrowed her eyes. ‘Don’t say that.’

Betty did her hair like that every day when she went to school. It didn’t make any difference. Nobody at her school talked or looked like her. Maddie was unsympathetic. ‘You’ve just got to fit in.’

But Betty didn’t fit in. Betty didn’t talk the same as her classmates. Betty had cracks in the skin at the end of her fingers from the dish soap and the oven cleaner she used when she cleaned the kitchen after school. Betty had bags under her eyes from getting up so early to smooth down her kinky hair. Betty had cheeks that erupted into freckles at the slightest hint of sun, and arms that turned a rich brown when she stayed outside at break-time. Betty wasn’t like this Eliza Mason whose name was written on the class list.

Eliza Mason, she imagined, would be a good girl who fit in and knew how to behave with all these strange children who treated her like the foreigner. Eliza Mason would belong in the living room at the big house with Richard and Mr Mason, not out in the kitchen with the cleaning lady.

One day, Maddie held out her finger to Betty. There was a thin gold band with a tiny sparkling clear stone at the centre. ‘He’s called Mick. He works for his dad in construction. But he can sing. He’s auditioning to go on the cruise ships and then we’ll both be off.’

Betty never found out whether Maddie’s Mick got his job on the cruise ships and whether Maddie went with him, but she went somewhere. And then there was another woman, and another, and another. And they never knew that Eliza used to be Betty, or that she used to sit in the nice living room with Mrs Mason. They just saw a girl who didn’t belong. As the years passed, her world got smaller. School. The kitchen. The tiny bedroom well away from Mr Mason and Richard. And the yard outside the kitchen door. The yard was her escape. She would go there and listen to the music and the voices on her cheap plastic radio. Sometimes she heard a voice that sounded like her dad, or like the way she thought she remembered her dad talking. She listened to the Beatles and the Stones, and then to Bowie and Queen, and The Who. Something about them made her think of another home and another world from a long, long time ago.

In the yard the sun would beat down on her skin and she could imagine the warmth of the fire. In the yard she didn’t have to behave a certain way. She could touch the ground with her fingers and feel the air on her face, and stare up at the sky. And she could imagine what it would be like to launch herself into the clouds and fly free like the sparks that were now almost all she remembered from the big ship that had brought her to this life. She wished she was a shining spark against the night sky, flying far away from this place and these people that held her down. Flying back to that half-forgotten place she still thought of as home.

Chapter 15

Jane

Another Christmas was approaching and once more I stared out the window at the coaches parked in the school’s circular driveway. They were very different from the old bus that had brought me to Our Lady years ago when I was just a little kid. These coaches had air-conditioning, and toilets. And music played during the journey. At least, that’s what the girls who rode them home for the holidays said. I wouldn’t know. In all the years I’d been here, I’d never been ‘home’ for the holidays. I hadn’t even heard from the Reeds in years. They had probably forgotten I ever existed, and that thought didn’t bother me at all. Our Lady was home now. The only person in the world I cared about was here.

‘They’ll all be leaving soon.’

I could hear the happiness in Helen’s voice.

Below our dormitory, the front doors of the senior-school boarding house opened and girls poured out, bubbling with excitement at the thought of going home. We watched them as they fought for the best seats on the coaches. Helen and I were anxious for them to leave too. For the next six weeks we would be the only students at the school. It was our own private heaven.

‘Come on, I want to show you something.’ Helen moved away from the window.

‘What?’

‘It’s a surprise.’

Together we started down the big wooden staircase that led to the main entrance of the boarding house. As always, Helen didn’t hurry. She never hurried. When I was smaller, that had bothered me and I’d wanted to grab her hand and drag her along at my speed. But now I was used to it. I was content to walk beside her.

‘Oh look, it’s the orphans.’

‘There’ll be no Christmas for you.’ Miranda and her friends were standing near the front door. ‘It’ll just be you and the nuns. And all those prayers.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘No Christmas dinner and no presents for you.’

‘She might get some more of last year’s hand me down clothes.’

‘Maybe this year she’ll get a training bra.’I fought down the urge to tug at my slightly too small dress. I was still wearing hand-me-downs from the Reeds, although occasionally, at the nuns’ urgings, Mrs Reed sent some money to buy me things I needed. A bra was not one of those things. At fourteen, I was still flat chested. The girls sniggered, flexing their shoulders to show off their developing busts.