The Husband’s Secret, by Liane Moriarty

A crime kept secret is accidentally uncovered many years later by the wife of the perpetrator. Should she preserve the horrifying truth to protect her family, or expose it to see justice done? And how does she now relate to this stranger who is her husband. It’s all set in and around the community of a small Catholic primary school in the cosy Sydney suburbs, but religion and morality seem to play no part in anyone’s decisions. There is no Catholic guilt, no confession or penance – just one element that undermines the credibility of this deeply unpleasant story. A strong element of victim blaming taints the narrative. If the girl had made the right choice the boy wouldn’t have snapped and killed her in a moment of madness. The violent reaction to rejection was a one-off apparently and he was a model citizen, husband and father for the next twenty-odd years, so there’s that. Keeping the secret leads to serious injury to one of his children and he knows that’s his fault, so somehow justice has been served. A short epilogue explores sliding doors and what ifs with a conclusion that we just never know what will happen or why, so there’s no point stressing about it, leaving a nasty taste.