The Younger Wife, page 2
Tully glanced at her watch: twelve thirty-five. What kind of person would be late to meet their father’s new girlfriend? Annoyingly, Dad wouldn’t be bothered in the least. Rachel would stroll in fifteen minutes late and Dad’s eyes would light up because of what Tully thought of as ‘the Rachel effect’. The superpower that rendered all men, including her own father, putty in her hands. Not only was she funny and charming, she was also sickeningly beautiful – an attribute that was wasted romantically, as Rachel hadn’t so much as looked at a man since she was sixteen. For years, Tully had been holding her breath for the announcement that Rachel was gay, but it had never come. It seemed a travesty to Tully that no one, male or female, should get to enjoy her sister’s dark eyes, tumbling chestnut hair and body that rivalled Kim Kardashian’s. Man how Tully envied that body. As an adolescent, Tully had assumed she was just a late developer – but her curves had never come, and Rachel’s just kept coming. Lately, in fact, Rachel was looking downright . . .
‘Fat,’ Rachel had said to her, when Tully had used the word ‘voluptuous’ to describe her. ‘You don’t have to whisper it or use some euphemism like “generous” or “plus-sized” or “Botticelli-like”. “Fat” doesn’t mean disgusting, slothful, or lazy ... that’s just the meaning society attaches to it.’
Tully had been mortified. She didn’t think Rachel was disgusting or lazy or slothful. She thought Rachel was beautiful. She merely couldn’t use the word ‘fat’ at full volume. It felt wrong somehow. Like being asked to say ‘fuck’ in church. That, she suspected, was Rachel’s point though, and, she had to admit, it was a good one. Why couldn’t she say the word?
‘Stephen has shown me about a million photos of Miles and Locky,’ Heather was saying. ‘I know people say all kids are cute, but I have to say, they are particularly adorable.’
‘They are, aren’t they?’ Tully said, her ears pricking up at the sound of her sons’ names. It was a smart move on Heather’s part; only a serial killer could fail to warm to someone who called their children adorable. Tully found herself reaching for her phone and pulling up a photo she’d snapped of them that morning, eating Weet-Bix at the kitchen counter, a pair of beaming, blue-eyed angels. A second later Locky dumped his bowl of cereal over Miles’s head, and Miles lost his mind because the texture made him feel like he had slugs in his hair, and slugs were on Miles’s most recent list of phobias.
Heather took the phone and gushed appreciatively. ‘They’re two and five?’
‘Nearly three and five,’ Tully said. There was supposed to be a birthday party coming up, but given that parties had also appeared on Miles’s list of phobias, it was anyone’s guess whether that would happen.
‘So, Heather, why don’t you tell me about yourself?’ Tully said, when conversation about the boys dried up. She pasted on a smile which faded when Dad gave her an odd look. Sometimes, when she wasn’t concentrating, Tully had been known to smile a bit too hard. Apparently everyone didn’t have Heather’s skill for smiling just the right amount.
‘Well,’ Heather said, ‘I’m sure Stephen told you I’m an interior designer.’
Stephen had. In fact, Heather had been the one responsible for the redesign of Mum and Dad’s house. Tully didn’t know all the details about how Heather had progressed from employee to girlfriend, but it wasn’t difficult to piece together. Clearly Heather arrived at Mum and Dad’s very nice, very expensive house, took one look at Mum and saw an opening. Yes, Dad was old, but he was wealthy and a doctor. All you needed was a daddy issue or two and Stephen was a lamb to the slaughter.
‘I’m also a keen gardener,’ Heather continued, reaching for her water glass.
Her teeth belonged in a movie-star’s mouth, Tully noticed. Almost certainly veneers. Tully glanced at Dad’s teeth. Not movie-star teeth, but surprisingly white. It prompted a recollection of a tooth-whitening kit Tully had spotted in his bathroom last time she’d visited. She’d meant to ask him about it, but she’d been distracted when she noticed his grout desperately needed a clean. She’d ended up giving him a rundown of the best grout cleaners to use and then just cleaning it herself to make sure it was done properly. As a result, she’d forgotten all about the whitening kit. Until now.
‘I also love yoga. I’m a bit of an addict, if I’m honest.’
Yoga. Gardening. Interior design. It was as if she’d just plucked her profession and hobbies out of a how-to-be-dull catalogue.
‘Wow,’ Tully said, monotone. ‘Amazing.’
‘I’ve also taken an interest in cooking recently,’ Heather added, giving Dad a playful smile.
‘Her speciality is charcoal chicken,’ Dad said, giving her an affectionate nudge.
Heather giggled. ‘I’m getting better!’
The strangeness of this flirtation sent a mild electric shock through Tully. It dawned on her almost anew that Dad was . . . dating this child. Probably having sex with her! As soon as the thought entered her head, Tully tried to quash it, but it was too late, it was spiralling. Dad. Heather. Sex. Tully closed her eyes, but that only made it worse. Her gag reflex triggered and she pushed back her chair and bent forward at the waist.
‘Natalie!’ Dad sounded alarmed. ‘Are you all right?’
Tully judged it to be a rhetorical question, since it must have been obvious to anyone that she was not all right. Her eyes were closed and her forehead rested on her knees. She inhaled deeply, trying to force oxygen in, and the images of Dad and Heather out. Unsuccessful on both counts. With her head between her knees, Tully opened her eyes. Heather’s bag was under the table, unzipped and open. Her purse sat right at the top.
‘Tully?’ Dad pleaded.
Tully’s hands acted on autopilot, from muscle memory, from instinct – like a baby dancing to music. One minute the wallet was on top of Heather’s bag; the next, it was deep inside Tully’s. By the time Tully sat up again, the air was already returning to her lungs. ‘Sorry,’ she said to Dad and Heather. ‘I’m fine.’
2
RACHEL
As soon as Rachel hurried through the doorway of the restaurant, she saw that there were bigger problems at play than the fact that she was late. For one thing, Tully’s head was between her knees (dramatic, but not altogether unusual for Tully, especially at a lunch of this magnitude). For another, there was not a morsel of food on the table yet, not even a bread roll! Rachel was entertaining the idea of skipping out of there and claiming car trouble when Tully sat up, and Dad noticed Rachel in the entrance.
‘Oh, look,’ he cried, feverishly pleased to see her. ‘It’s Rachel. Rachel! Over here!’
Rachel made her way to the table, ignoring the barista, who winked at her. She hated it when people flirted with her.
‘Sorry I’m late!’ she said brightly.
‘Rachel’s not known for her punctuality,’ Dad said to the immaculate woman beside him, presumably Heather, as he rose to greet her. ‘Luckily she has other talents.’
‘Like what?’ Rachel asked. She shot a quick glance at Tully, who appeared to have recovered from whatever spell had caused her to put her head between her knees, then held out her hand to Heather. She was, as expected, exceptionally young. Other diners would almost certainly assume Dad was taking his three daughters to lunch.
‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Heather,’ Rachel said as she shook Heather’s delicate hand.
‘Pleasure’, admittedly, was a stretch. After all, ‘pleasure’ was a good bottle of wine, a belly laugh, a perfectly iced chocolate éclair. Under different circumstances, Rachel might have felt pleasure at this meeting. For example, if her father had started dating someone after Mum died. A nice widow named Judy, perhaps – someone he’d met down at the tennis club, who had adult children and plans for a huge blended family Christmas with vicious games of Stealing Santa. After all, the idea of Dad not having to spend his golden years alone did indeed bring her pleasure. But the way things stood? Pleasure was a bit of a stretch.
Heather smiled as Rachel sat down. ‘It’s good to meet you too, Rachel. I’ve heard a lot about you. Your dad says you make cakes.’
‘The best wedding cakes in Australia,’ Dad chimed in. Rachel didn’t bother clarifying that she also made cakes and pastries for other occasions. She’d deduced a while back that her father only had the capacity to understand high-powered jobs. Banker. IT professional. Business person. She was fine with this. In her opinion, when you saved lives for a living, you didn’t have to remember jobs.
Rachel tried to catch the attention of the waiter.
‘Where have you been?’ Tully asked curtly.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I dropped in to see Mum on the way here.’
Rachel wasn’t sure how that particular piece of information would be received. Mum had been moved to a high-security nursing home with a specialist dementia wing a month ago. She had been diagnosed a couple of years back, after many more years of searching for a diagnosis before that. First, her doctor thought it was concussion (she’d had a fall before the confusion started), then depression (Pam’s own mother had died around that time), and they’d even blamed a urinary tract infection briefly. By the time they’d got the diagnosis and a second opinion, Mum was already lost to them.
Upon admitting her to the nursing home last month, the doctors had advised that it would be good to give her time to settle in before visiting. Rachel had agreed and then promptly showed up daily, with cookies for the nurses. She felt sheepish about it, but the idea of leaving Mum there alone, without anyone who cared about her, was simply too much to bear. Her guilt was eased by the knowledge that Tully was doing exactly the same thing.
‘How was she?’ Tully asked.
‘A little agitated,’ Rachel admitted.
In fact, when Rachel arrived in her room, Mum had been irate. She’d pointed at Rachel. ‘Did you take my bag thingy?’
‘No,’ Rachel had said.
Pamela narrowed her eyes. ‘It must have been your father. He was just here, you know.’
‘Dad? No, I don’t think he was here.’
Her mother shook her head, tutting. ‘He’s an awful man. I don’t know how I ever put up with him.’
Rachel walked to the cupboard where the nurses always put her bag. ‘Here it is, Mum.’
‘She wanted to go shopping,’ Rachel explained to Dad and Tully. ‘And she was upset because she couldn’t find her handbag.’
‘At least she was planning to take it with her this time,’ Dad said to Heather. ‘A few months back, she wandered away from me at Westfield and I got a call from security saying she’d tried to walk out of Kmart with a full trolley. Then, a few weeks ago, I found a bunch of stuff in the back of her closet. Random stuff. A Nintendo Switch, some candles, a screwdriver. A hot-water bottle. Most still with tags on. Which reminds me, I still haven’t returned any of it. I’ve been driving around with stolen goods in the back of my car for months.’
‘I’ll return it for you, Dad,’ Rachel said. ‘I’m at Westfield every other day. Now, have we ordered?’ She waved madly at the waiter. ‘I’m happy to do the honours!’
Happy was an understatement. Rachel got terrible anxiety whenever she wasn’t in control of the catering – particularly when she was with Dad, who always wanted to start with a drink, then maybe some bread and dip or an appetiser. But Rachel couldn’t relax until she knew her main course was in the oven. Rachel’s family laughed about it, considered it a quirk of hers, a trademark of being a foodie. Usually Rachel considered it in the same light. Only occasionally did she hear a little voice at the back of her head that told her there was a bit more to it than that. That her foodie persona was nothing more than a glorified distraction from the one thing she didn’t want to think about, dwell on, obsess about.
The waiter appeared – a handsome, charming Italian man full of compliments for Rachel, including a quite risqué one about wanting her in his bedroom (Rachel had excelled at Italian at school). She ignored the compliments, got a quick rundown of the specials, and ordered for the table in a matter of minutes. Then, in consultation with the others, she ordered a bottle of pinot gris. She was relieved to see that Tully was drinking. Tully had been known to go on some strange diets or, heaven forbid, detoxes from time to time, which was always a bummer because, surprisingly, Tully and alcohol went together very nicely. It relaxed her, slowing her brain to a more normal pace. In fact, some of Rachel’s favourite times with Tully had been when her sister was flat-out drunk.
‘So, what did I miss?’ Rachel asked.
‘Heather was telling me a bit about herself,’ Tully said. ‘She enjoys gardening and yoga.’
‘Is that right?’ Rachel said. She hoped her pleasant tone would compensate for Tully’s sarcastic one. ‘Anything else? Have you told us about your family?’
Heather shook her head, sweeping her hair behind her ear. Her hand, Rachel noticed, was shaking slightly. ‘No family, really. I’m an only child, and my parents died in a car accident ten years ago.’
‘That’s awful,’ Rachel said. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s fine,’ Heather said. Heather’s tone indicated it did indeed appear to be fine. ‘It was a long time ago.’
Tully sat forward, suddenly animated. ‘How did it happen? The car accident, I mean. Was it a head-on collision? Did they drive into a tree?’
Rachel stared at her. ‘Tully!’
‘It’s fine,’ Heather said again. ‘Their car was hit by a drunk driver. I never got the details of whether it was head-on or not.’
‘Didn’t you want to know?’ Tully said. ‘I’d be desperate to know.’
‘So no other family?’ Rachel said. ‘No cousins or aunts?’
‘None that I’m in touch with. It’s sad, really. When I was younger, I always envied people who had big families with lots of cousins and in-laws and grandparents. It felt like ... insurance. If something happened to someone, there were spares.’
‘Must make you want to have a big family of your own,’ Tully said. ‘Lots of kids.’
Rachel’s instinct was to reprimand Tully again, or deflect her, but she let this one go, out of curiosity. Rachel half expected Dad to come to Heather’s rescue, but he looked more flustered than she did.
‘I do love kids. I always thought that one day I would have as many kids as I could,’ Heather said. ‘But I’ve grown accustomed to a quiet life now. It suits me. So I wouldn’t say kids are on the cards.’
‘It is a lot of work,’ Tully said.
Rachel had to hand it to her: Heather was doing a great job, coming up with the right answers. In fact, for the first time since Rachel arrived, Tully was looking almost relaxed, sitting back in her chair rather than perched on its edge in her customary rigid stance.
Then the waiter returned suddenly. ‘I forgot to mention,’ he said, ‘we also have freshly shucked Tasmanian oysters. Their aphrodisiac quality is at its height in spring, you know.’ He raised his eyebrows suggestively at Rachel, which was unsettling enough.
Then Dad winked at Heather. ‘We’ll take a dozen,’ he said.
‘Excuse me,’ Tully said abruptly. ‘I need to use the bathroom.’
‘I’ll join you,’ Rachel said.
By the time she stood, Tully was already halfway across the room, pushing on the bathroom door. Rachel hurried after her.
Being Tully’s sister required a very specific skill set. You had to be an animated conversationalist (Tully was easily bored) but also a calming influence. You had to be fully invested in whatever she was talking about, but be prepared for the fact that Tully would lose interest five minutes later. You had to love her with your whole heart but do so from arm’s length. Getting close to her was like trying to get close to a helicopter – you always ended up windswept and breathless ... and occasionally you lost your head.
Tully had always been a bundle of neuroses that equalled no particular diagnosis. A little OCD. A little mania. Some ritualistic behaviour. As a child and teenager she’d had periods of being plagued by intrusive, obsessive thoughts. It had settled down to a generalised eccentricity as an adult, but since Mum’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis and subsequent move to the nursing home, Tully had regressed significantly, descending into odd bouts of hysteria at inopportune times. Sometimes Rachel envied Tully’s propensity for wild reactions. It seemed healthier somehow to get all those feelings out. Sometimes she pictured her own insides, full of all the things she’d pushed down over the years rather than articulated. She imagined a series of ugly deposits, masses of secrets and regret, wedged around her lungs and stomach.
‘Tul?’ Rachel called, as she pushed open the heavy bathroom door. It was one of those trendy bathrooms with large hexagonal tiles and wood and pink marble. Tully’s handbag sat on the counter. Only one stall was occupied, and Tully’s nude flats were visible at the bottom. ‘It’s me.’
The toilet flushed and then the door to the cubicle swung open to reveal Tully’s tear-stained, frazzled face. ‘I’m not coping, Rachel.’
‘I can see that.’
‘The thoughts.’ Tully’s eyes were closed tight and she was pressing her fingers to her temples as if she had a terrible migraine. ‘They’re in my head. I can’t get them out.’
This wasn’t good. ‘Thoughts?’ Rachel said. ‘You mean like when you were a kid?’
‘No! Thoughts about Dad and Heather . . . you know . . . doing it.’
‘Oh! Right.’
‘It’s horrific. Sex is weird enough without imagining your Dad doing it, right?’
Rachel was still trying to think of an appropriate response when Tully jumped in.
‘Oh. Well, take my word for it.’
‘Anyway,’ Rachel said, ‘just take a deep breath and banish those thoughts from your head. I’ll . . . do the same.’
‘Okay,’ Tully said, inhaling slowly. She looked relaxed for a quarter of a second before her expression became intense again. ‘So what do you think of her? Tell me everything, every single thought in your head.’
