The Younger Wife, page 17
This did the trick, sort of. Miles stopped screaming, although he continued to look wary. Stephen was the perfect grandfather, Heather decided. The perfect dad. The perfect doctor. Now she just needed to be perfect too.
There were a few glasses of champagne dotted around the coffee tables, but by and large, it was a dry party. Heather was fine with that. She hadn’t touched a drop since the night she punched Stephen and she didn’t plan to. As ashamed as she was by what had happened the night of the dinner party, it had proved to be a turning point for them. Since then, things had been good. Calm. Lots of evenings in, watching documentaries and cooking very basic meals in a very un-basic kitchen. They’d even had a lunch date with Mary and Michael – just the four of them this time – and it had been an unmitigated success. Afterwards, when Heather commented on how lovely it had been, Stephen had replied, And that is how lovely everything can be. He stopped short of saying, if you don’t drink, but Heather had heard the subtext.
‘The cake looks amazing,’ Heather told Rachel.
Rachel smiled. ‘I haven’t made Bluey before. But I like a challenge.’
‘Stephen’s birthday is coming up,’ Heather said. ‘I’ll have to get you to make his cake.’
‘Stephen likes mud cake,’ Pam said to no one in particular. She was still seated on her chair just a few paces away. They all looked down at her in surprise.
‘You’re right, Mum,’ Rachel agreed. ‘Chocolate mud cake is Dad’s favourite.’
Rachel and Tully squatted down in front of her. They moved carefully, hesitantly, as if they feared any sudden movement might break the spell.
‘What’s your favourite?’ Rachel asked her.
‘Glazed lemon cake,’ Pam said without missing a beat.
The girls laughed. ‘That’s right,’ Tully said. ‘You love lemon cake.’
As they started venturing into other foods – favourite breakfast, favourite snack – Locky wandered over and started playing too. You couldn’t have scripted a more lovely scene. Stephen was right, Heather realised. Of course this was the right place for Pam. She was exactly where she should be.
As if on cue, Stephen came over with a bright-eyed Miles still perched on his shoulders. ‘Is it time for the Bluey cake?’ he asked. ‘I’d like an ear, please.’
They all looked up, even Pam.
‘I want an ear!’ Miles cried.
‘There are two ears, baby,’ Tully said, getting to her feet.
‘And since you are the birthday boy,’ Stephen said, removing Miles from his shoulders and setting him back on his feet, ‘you can have first pick.’
Miles grinned and gave Stephen a high five.
Pam stared at Stephen, her nose scrunched, as if she’d smelled something that had gone bad.
‘Look out for that guy,’ she said, pointing at Stephen.
The warning was delivered in a quiet moment, when the music was between tracks and the lion’s share of the kids had gone inside to scavenge from the party food table.
‘What guy?’ Tully said. ‘You mean Dad?’
But Pam wasn’t listening to them; her gaze was still on Stephen. ‘He made my life hell,’ she snarled. ‘I should’ve left him years ago.’ She spat.
‘Yuck, Grandma,’ Miles said.
Stephen patted Miles’s head. ‘It’s all right, buddy. Grandma’s just a little confused.’
‘How convenient,’ Pam said.
Stephen opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Sonny appeared in his Bluey costume again and Miles let out a particularly shrill scream that had everyone wincing.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ Stephen said to Sonny. ‘Will you take off that bloody suit? You’re terrifying the poor kid.’
‘Go on, Sonny,’ Tully said, standing. ‘I’ll bring the rest of the kids in for pass-the-parcel.’
Everyone shuffled towards the house, grateful, Heather assumed, that they could move on from the awkwardness of Pam’s comments. But after everyone was inside, Heather noticed Rachel was still by her mother’s side, looking at her mother closely. After several seconds, she glanced back towards the house. She was staring straight at Stephen.
34
TULLY
‘What do you mean you took them?’ the lady behind the counter of the department store said to Tully.
Dr Shearer believed that returning as many stolen items as she could was an important step in Tully’s recovery. She wouldn’t be able to return every item, as a lot of things had been thrown out, given away or donated, but he suggested she start by choosing items that she had taken recently, ones that would still be stocked, and the ones that were most valuable. The goal was both to take responsibility for what she had done and to make reparations to the store where possible. Tully hadn’t been keen on the idea, but she’d made a commitment to do whatever she had to do to heal.
Sonny, too, had mixed feelings about the exercise. As a lawyer, he said, I’d recommend against it. If one of the shop owners calls the police, you could end up with a criminal record. But as a husband, I see that it’s important for your recovery, so I think you should do it. He added that, as a lawyer, it was a bad idea for him to go with her. And so Tully had had to swallow her pride and ask the one other person in the world she could tell without being entirely humiliated. Rachel.
‘You need to what?’ she’d said when Tully called her.
‘Return my stolen items,’ Tully explained. ‘I think it’s shame therapy. I must atone for my sins.’
‘And what’s my role?’ Rachel asked. ‘Am I your witness?’
‘Yes,’ Tully said. ‘And maybe my accomplice, if I have to evade arrest.’
Up to this point, the day had not been as bad as Tully had imagined, especially with Rachel coming along for the ride. In fact, it was almost fun, in a perverse kind of way. They’d visited six stores so far, bearing items to return. From the elderly woman who patted her hand and said, ‘I stole the most beautiful pair of earrings from a boutique in Paris once; I still have them somewhere,’ to the baffled woman at the hardware store who kept repeating, ‘A screwdriver? You took a screwdriver?’, everyone had seemed happier to gloss over it and move on rather than make Tully feel bad. But the lady at Myer – Judy, according to her nametag – didn’t seem to have got the memo.
‘Do you mean you stole them?’ she asked, mortifyingly loudly.
‘Well . . . I didn’t pay for them,’ Tully said quietly, turning to glance at the woman who’d just lined up behind her, holding a four-pack of tea towels and a cheese board in her arms.
‘You mean you forgot?’
Tully wanted to nod. Yes, yes I forgot. Here you go, I’ll pay now. Do you take Visa? But that was not part of the deal. When Dr Shearer first raised the idea, Tully had suggested leaving the goods out the front of the shops in the middle of the night, or returning them by post, but neither of those ideas equated to ‘taking responsibility’, which the psychologist insisted was the point of the exercise.
‘No, I didn’t forget,’ Tully said quietly. ‘I made a decision to take them without paying.’
‘So you stole them?’ Judy said, impatient now.
Tully looked at Rachel. So far her sister hadn’t had to speak at all, but she had come into each shop with Tully and stood beside her as she made her confession. It had been surprisingly fortifying, having her there.
‘Yes,’ Tully said. ‘I stole them.’
‘I’m going to have to speak to the manager,’ Judy said, before picking up the phone and explaining the situation loud enough for most people in the vicinity to hear. When she’d hung up she said, ‘My manager is calling the police. Can you please wait over there?’
Tully and Rachel stepped to the side, and Judy gestured to the woman with the tea towels to step forward and began scanning her items.
Tully felt a panicky feeling start in her chest. She’d known this was a possibility. ‘Some people might not be forgiving,’ Dr Shearer had said. ‘They might decide to take legal action against you, which they are within their rights to do. You have to accept that. That’s part of taking responsibility too.’
Tully tried to imagine going home and telling Sonny that she had been charged. It would be a disaster for him. For one thing, they couldn’t afford a fine or legal representation. For another, having a wife with a criminal record would look very bad for a criminal lawyer. And she couldn’t even bring herself to think about jail time. She’d done some googling and found out that, given the value of the items she’d taken, she could be imprisoned for a maximum of two years. Even though it was warranted and she deserved it, what would she say to Locky and Miles? How could she bear to be parted from them?
‘Is that really necessary?’ Rachel said, stepping forward. ‘She has the items here, they are undamaged. She has brought them back of her own accord.’
‘My manager said this is the procedure,’ Judy said.
‘Look,’ Rachel said, lowering her voice, ‘my sister isn’t well, okay? She’s a kleptomaniac. She doesn’t mean to steal. She doesn’t need these items. Even if she did, she had the money to pay for them!’
‘I’m sorry,’ Judy said, not looking sorry. ‘There’s nothing I can do.’
Another customer approached and Judy began to serve her.
Tully looked at Rachel.
‘Let’s make a run for it,’ Rachel said, deadpan.
It was one of those bizarre moments when they both started to laugh. It bubbled up from within, a little at first, and then more, until suddenly they were both roaring. At that moment, the manager appeared. She looked to be all of nineteen, with skin-tight black pants and a white shirt tied in a knot at the front. According to her nametag, she was Jazmin.
Judy nodded at them. They’re the guilty ones, her nod said.
Jazmin, who had been looking quite authoritative, appeared a little less sure of herself.
‘Uh . . . follow me, please.’
Tully and Rachel nodded solemnly and followed Jazmin down a narrow corridor to a small windowless office. It was funny how far she’d fallen. Normally, Tully felt right at home in Myer. The marketing was tailored to people like her. The clothes – for both adults and children – were aimed at people like her. The salespeople smiled at her when they saw her, confident that she belonged. Now she was in a back room. She felt like one of those people on Border Security who’d been detained for trying to enter the country without a visa.
‘Does this remind you of Border Security?’ Rachel asked.
‘That’s exactly what I was thinking,’ Tully replied.
They waited in the windowless room for what felt like an eternity. It must have been part of the process: trying to ‘sweat them out’.
‘Do you think someone’s going to come in with a spotlight and a glass of water?’ Tully asked her sister. But Rachel’s gaze was faraway, her mind somewhere else.
‘It was weird, what Mum said at Miles’s party, don’t you think?’ Rachel said. ‘About how Dad made her life hell and she should have left him years ago?’
‘It was weird,’ Tully agreed. ‘But not true, obviously. You don’t think she meant it?’
It took Rachel a long time to respond. So long that Tully turned to her and repeated, ‘You don’t think she meant it?’
‘No,’ Rachel said hesitantly. ‘I mean, I don’t think so. But . . .’
‘But what?’
‘I guess I keep thinking about it in the context of the money. If Mum wanted to leave Dad, maybe . . .’ Rachel paused.
‘Maybe what?’
Rachel looked at her as if assessing whether Tully was up to hearing this. The answer must have been yes, because she continued, ‘I was going to say, it’s almost as if she was saving to run away.’
Tully gave a little scoff, as though the very idea was unthinkable. Which, of course, it was. Mum and Dad had been married for thirty-eight years. They were a solid couple. Mum would never have wanted to leave him. He was her soul mate. ‘You can’t possibly believe that,’ Tully said, right as the door opened and the police strolled in, with Jazmin on their heels.
‘Which one of you is Mrs Harris?’
Tully shot to her feet. ‘Me.’
She looked at the police officers, trying to get a read on them. She’d ascertained from Law & Order SVU that there were two types of cops: the thirsty-for-an-arrest type, who liked to make an example of people; and the lazy kind who couldn’t be bothered with paperwork. Tully prayed for the latter, but it was hard to tell at a glance. One was a young man, probably in his twenties; the other was older, in his fifties. He had a kind, lined face. There was a fuss around who would sit where for a moment, before the older cop, who introduced himself as Sergeant Paul Harvey, offered to stand. He was the one who did the talking.
‘I understand that there has been a shoplifting incident, is that correct?’
Tully nodded.
‘And the items in question are a game of Uno, some post-its and a . . . pencil?’
‘A pen,’ Jazmin said helpfully. ‘Four-colour.’
The police officer ignored Jazmin. ‘So the total value of that is . . . what, around ten dollars?’
‘Twelve dollars fifty,’ Jazmin said.
‘And, Mrs Harris, you came here today to return the items?’
‘Yes,’ Tully said. ‘And to apologise.’
‘I see.’ He focused on Tully. ‘Mrs Harris, the punishment for larceny in Victoria for an offence like this is up to two years imprisonment. You may also be fined up to ten thousand dollars and have a criminal record. Do you understand that?’
Tully felt her cheeks heat up. ‘Yes.’
The police officer looked at Jazmin. ‘It does seem like a severe punishment for twelve-fifty.’
Jazmin didn’t look like she thought so.
The police officer waited for a few seconds, then let out a loud sigh. ‘May I make a suggestion?’
Everyone, including Jazmin, nodded.
‘I get the impression, from the fact that Mrs Harris has returned the goods, that she is sorry for what she has done. We don’t see that sort of thing in our line of work as much as I’d like to. I believe that Mrs Harris understands the serious nature of her crime, and I hope the severity of the punishment will deter her from committing theft in the future. So, given the negligible value of the goods, my recommendation would be to return the stock into the system and let that be the end of it.’
Jazmin opened her mouth. ‘Well I’d really need to check with –’
‘If your supervisor has any problem with what I’ve suggested, please let them know that I would be happy to speak with them about it.’ He handed Jazmin his business card and nodded to his partner to stand. ‘Mrs Harris, I will be making a note of this incident, which means that if you offend again, you will not be let off so lightly.’
‘We understand,’ Rachel said.
‘Good. So I won’t be seeing Mrs Harris again?’ he asked, but it appeared to be a rhetorical question, because the police officers left without waiting for a response.
Tully was glad that she hadn’t been forced to answer the sergeant. Because the truth was, she could already feel the tension building. And when the tension rose, there was only one thing she could do to ease it.
35
RACHEL
Tully was quiet as Rachel drove her home from the shopping centre. It was fine with Rachel; she’d had enough drama for one day. For a while there, she’d thought she and Tully might end up in the back of a police wagon on the way to jail. It felt like the kind of thing that should have happened to them as teenagers. It occurred to Rachel that, in a way, she was having a lot of those teen experiences now, in her thirties.
‘I have something for you,’ Tully said as they pulled into Rachel’s driveway. Tully had driven to Rachel’s place this morning and her car was parked out the front.
‘What?’
Tully reached into her giant tote – the tote that had carried her stolen goods – and pulled out the bag of cash.
‘You’ve been carrying that around all day?!’
Tully shrugged. ‘Who knows? We might have needed to bribe our way out of something.’ She grinned.
Rachel gaped at her. ‘We were with the police five minutes ago! How would you have explained it if they’d found it?’
‘You would have come up with something,’ Tully said, unperturbed. ‘Anyway, this is your half.’
‘You keep it,’ Rachel said. ‘You need it more than I do.’
‘No,’ Tully said, thrusting it into Rachel’s hands. ‘This half is yours. Mum would’ve wanted it that way.’
‘Fine. Well, thank you, I guess.’
They both went quiet.
‘Anyway,’ Tully said. ‘You never told me about your date with Darcy.’
‘Didn’t I? Actually, it went pretty well.’
‘It did?’
Rachel laughed. ‘Yes.’
Tully looked delighted, but also a little confused. ‘So . . . you simply waited until you’d found the most exquisite man alive before starting to date? Is that it?’
It was a fair question. Rachel had never elaborated on why she didn’t date – not to anyone. And her family – Mum, Dad and even Tully, mostly – had respected that. But maybe, with this new closeness between them, it was time to open up a little more to Tully.
‘Why don’t you come inside and I’ll tell you the whole story?’ Rachel said.
Tully’s eyes widened. ‘About Darcy, you mean?’
‘Yes,’ Rachel said. ‘Darcy . . . and all the things that came before him.’
Tully nearly fell over in her eagerness to get out of the car.
36
HEATHER
It had been a month since the ill-fated dinner party at Mary and Michael’s. Mostly Heather blocked that night out, pretended it never happened. She and Stephen carried on as usual, doing pleasant things like going out for lunch or visiting galleries or planning the wedding. She had to admit, the lifestyle of being coupled and childless was hard to beat. They were slaves to nothing and no one. Stephen had booked a beach house for the summer, big enough for Rachel and Tully and her family to come down and stay for as long as they wanted.
