S
Sean Camara
Guest
Mum shares internal conflict on whether she should tell her dying friend about her husband’s affair that she witnessed firsthand
When Jane was diagnosed with cancer, the mothers in her child's class were all devastated. The cancer diagnosis threw a wrench into the close-knit, predictable world of primary school for everyone. The women who knew Jane best murmured to each other while the rest of the class cast sympathetic smiles.
Jane was only in her 30s, but she was extraordinarily brave. When she reappeared at the school gate in between bouts of chemo, looking slightly older and thinner, one mother tried to find things to say that sounded neither trite nor too solemn.
Little did she know she would soon find out something so devastating that it would make Jane's heartbreaking situation even worse.
The mother had only met Jane's husband John a few times, but she recognised him immediately in the garden centre cafe. He was fixated on the mother of a child in another class at their school. This woman was a recent divorcee with shiny blonde hair who they’d all believed had run off with her yoga teacher.
At first, the mother tried to convince herself she'd been mistaken. Surely John needed support. But then she saw them again - in a clinch among the climbing roses. There was no mistaking what was going on now.
The mother was frozen in shock and dismay. She didn't know what to do. Should she call out? Should she confront them? But she was scared. She dumped her basket and rushed back to her car.
A mum claimed that she witnessed how her dying friend’s husband cheated on her. Credit: Getty Images.
She did her best to avoid Jane at school for the next few weeks. She was waiting for the news to break, as surely she couldn’t be the only one who knew what was going on?
Meanwhile, she lay awake at night worrying about whether she should say anything - to Jane, her husband, or the other woman.
Bumping into one of Jane's friends at the school’s spring fair, the mother asked, quaveringly, how Jane was. The friend told her Jane was back in the hospital. The mother shook her head in response to her mother's questioning look - she couldn't bring herself to tell her what she'd seen.
The friend was eager to tell the mother how marvellous John had been and how Jane couldn’t have picked a better husband. The mother tried to stop her feelings from showing on her face.
She tried to persuade herself she’d been mistaken after that - or it had been a one-off thing, a mad moment. But her hopes were proved wrong when she saw the pair of them again a week or two later.
This time, she was out with her parents and son at a National Trust garden. John and the Other Woman were there too, holding hands and kissing.
The mother was horrified. She was torn about what to do. On the one hand, she wanted to protect Jane. On the other hand, she felt like John deserved to be punished.
Sadly, her dilemma didn’t last long. Jane’s cancer advanced more rapidly than anyone expected and, a few months later, she has passed away.
Jane died without knowing about her husband’s affair with another mum from the school where her kids go to. Credit: Getty Images.
At the school gate, everyone was frozen with shock. People touched John’s arm, and told him they knew what a fantastic support he’d been to his wife. The mother kept silent but was plagued by the idea that Jane had found out about the affair - and it had made her last weeks even more intolerable.
When John began appearing in public with the Other Woman a couple of months after Jane died, a few people made comments. But most were happy for him. They felt he deserved some happiness, and even said it was what Jane would have wanted.
The mother felt strangely embarrassed - as though it was somehow her fault that things were more complicated than anyone realised.
She was glad she wasn't often at the school gate. But she played things through in her head over and over again.
What if Jane had recovered and John had left her - could the mother have stopped that by intervening? What if Jane had recovered and John hadn't left her - would it have been better that she never knew?
The mother will never know the answer to those questions, but she still thinks about them even after several years have passed.
But she still thinks about the couple, confessing that she had flashbacks of the things she has seen.
What are your thoughts on this? Should the mother had told Jane about the affair? Or did she do the right thing keeping what she had seen, quiet?