The Younger Wife, page 23
‘The hat was a fashion statement,’ Tully muttered.
‘One of the things I love about you is how kooky you are. Or at least you used to be. But I’ve seen it less and less. Since we had the boys, it’s been all routines and schedules. You seemed like you had everything under control – always talking about your “game face” and “no chinks in the armour”. But I guess I missed the fact that you didn’t have it all under control. You’ve been handling all this stuff by yourself. No wonder you needed to find ways to cope.’
‘Thank you for saying that,’ Tully said. ‘It means a lot.’
For a moment they were silent.
‘Look at us, sitting here on the floor!’ Sonny said, with a sad laugh.
‘I kind of like it,’ Tully said. ‘It reminds me of when we were starting out and we didn’t have so much to lose.’
‘I guess we’ve come full circle,’ Sonny said.
Tully shook her head. ‘Actually, now I have everything to lose. You. The boys.’
‘You’re not going to lose us,’ Sonny said.
‘I always thought I came from this ideal family. Mum and Dad and Rachel, I mean. I prided myself on it. Now I can’t think of a more dysfunctional one.’
‘There can be pride in dysfunction, Tully,’ Sonny said. ‘If anyone can find pride in dysfunction, it’s you.’
‘But what if it’s more than dysfunction? What if Rachel’s right and Dad was abusing Mum? What if he’s abusing Heather now?’
‘If that’s the case,’ Sonny said, ‘then that’s the next challenge we’ll confront. But you can drop your game face now. I don’t want to see your game face again.’
‘What about chinks in the armour?’ Tully said.
Sonny smiled. ‘The chinks are my favourite thing about you, Tully. From now on,’ he said, ‘I want to see every last one.’
54
HEATHER
Heather had seen Mary twice since she’d come to visit that day – not as a counsellor, but as a friend. It felt so good to be able to talk, really talk. It was during one of those conversations, which Mary had said she would keep completely confidential, that Heather confessed the reality of her childhood. Mary had taken it surprisingly well. She didn’t seem disgusted. Not even particularly shocked. And Heather was starting to realise how much she was projecting her expectations of a violent, destructive relationship onto a healthy one.
‘We are all products of what we experienced as children,’ Mary had said. ‘Our childhood helps form the way we view things. Certainly, if you experience trauma as a child, it can lead you to believe that trauma is life, and that you will never be, and indeed don’t deserve to be, safe from it, even in your own home. But in your case, you are safe from it, Heather. It’s those childhood demons that you aren’t safe from. You need to address them.’
And so that was exactly what Heather was doing.
Heather’s psychologist was a very beautiful, very well-dressed woman in her mid-fifties. She had the faintest trace of a Russian accent, and a matching difficult-to-pronounce name starting with an H. ‘Everyone calls me Inna,’ she said. ‘You’re welcome to do the same.’
‘Thank you,’ Heather said. ‘You can call me Heather.’
‘I’ve read the notes that you provided before you came in today. You had an extremely traumatic childhood, Heather. It’s amazing you are coping as well as you are.’
Heather smiled shyly. ‘I wouldn’t say I’m coping all that well.’
Inna crossed her legs. ‘Tell me about that.’
And so Heather did. She told Inna about her drinking, about the miscarriage, about the ‘abuse’.
‘Tell me more about the abuse,’ Inna said. ‘I’m particularly interested in why you are so certain you are imagining it.’
‘Well,’ Heather said, ‘there have been several incidents where I’ve been injured. Once I fell up the stairs. Another time I landed in broken glass after I could have sworn Stephen strangled me.’
Inna regarded her closely. ‘You say you could have sworn. But now you don’t think that was the case?’
‘No. I think I imagined the incidents.’
Inna took a moment to digest this. ‘Did you have any injuries?’
‘Yes. But I’d been drinking during nearly all of these incidents, and I don’t have a great recollection of them. I may have been responsible for my injuries. There have also been times when I should have been injured . . . and I wasn’t. Like the time I thought Stephen strangled me, but I didn’t have a single mark on my neck afterwards.’
‘Interesting.’ Inna made a note in her notebook. ‘And you said that your father strangled your mother? That’s how she died?’
Heather nodded.
‘What does Stephen have to say about this abuse?’
‘He’s horrified. He said that he would never lay a finger on me.’
‘And what do you think?’
‘I . . . I think I believe him,’ Heather said. ‘I think maybe I internalised some of the brutality I saw against my mother and imagined it was happening to me instead. Is that possible?’
Inna appeared to consider this for a moment. ‘It’s not my area of expertise, but I do know there is some overlap between the parts of the brain that perceive and the parts that imagine. I heard of a study done recently about how external stimuli can distort memories and even produce new, seemingly accurate memories. So in short, yes, it’s possible. My question to you is, is that what is happening here?’
Heather thought about that.
‘Don’t think about it,’ Inna said. ‘Answer me from your heart, because that is where the answer lies. You know the truth better than you think you do.’
Heather looked deep inside to her heart of hearts. It turned out Inna was right. The answer was right there.
THE WEDDING
After one guest’s suggestion that we adjourn to the pub to await news, some of the guests go home, but most join the foot traffic to the Half Moon. As I walk, theories surround me.
‘Apparently Pam had an episode in the chapel,’ a woman says. ‘You saw how agitated she was. Tony’s father was the same when he was alive. The dementia made him violent. Once, he pushed Tony into the wall. And he was such a sweet man before!’
I hear that Pam was both the perpetrator and the victim, that Stephen had had a heart attack and that Tully had had an anxiety attack. Someone swears they saw one of the little boys trip and hit his head. Yet another person says a fight broke out between the daughters. It’s funny how desperately the brain will seek an answer if it doesn’t have one. Not knowing is not a restful state. I know this. I have never felt less rested, more agitated, than I do right now.
At the Half Moon, we are ushered into a function room. I wonder who among us had the connections to organise this. Waiters have already set up tables and a couple of waitstaff are circling with wine. This is a wealthy group, I realise. Someone will probably quietly go and take care of the bill. Or several people will argue for the right to pay it. Strange beings, these upper-middle-class men.
I decline a drink and make my way to the bathroom. A bit of a queue has formed and I stand in line behind a woman holding another woman’s hat and talking to her friend while she’s in the stall.
‘I just hope Stephen’s okay,’ the woman holding the hat says. ‘He’s such a sweet man.’
‘I always had a crush on him,’ the woman behind the door said.
‘Like everyone else,’ the woman with the hat said.
‘He was always so in love with Pamela. I was actually surprised to hear he’d met someone else while she was still alive. I mean, Heather is beautiful, and seems to be very nice, but it just didn’t seem like something Stephen would do. Not that I knew him that well,’ she added quickly. ‘But there are things you can tell about a person.’
The toilet flushed a few seconds later, and the second woman appeared. She was probably in her mid-forties, pleasant-looking, with a round face and a swinging ponytail.
‘I knew him well,’ I hear myself say. ‘And in fact, taking up with Heather was far more in character for him than you might think.’
55
TULLY
It was the night before the wedding. Heather definitely looked happy. Tully had spent much of the evening watching her, and this fact seemed indisputable. It was a warm evening and they were on the rooftop terrace of an Italian restaurant. Heather was dressed in a white pantsuit, tanned and shiny from all her pre-wedding treatments. At intervals, she looked adoringly at Dad. It was nice, as everyone else in the room was looking at Rachel’s staggeringly good-looking boyfriend, whom she’d brought along as her date.
This was the rehearsal dinner, as it were, although they hadn’t rehearsed anything. Dad and Heather had been to the church earlier in the day, but Tully and Rachel hadn’t been invited to that part, even though they were supposedly going to be ‘bridesmaids’.
‘Have you got some peach taffeta for them to wear?’ Dad had said to Heather, when she’d asked them, a few weeks back.
Heather had just smiled. ‘They can wear whatever they want.’
Heather hadn’t been much of a bridezilla about the wedding, Tully noticed. The opposite, in fact. She seemed eerily calm. Calm enough that Tully started to believe that maybe she was telling the truth when she said Dad wasn’t hurting her. Tully envied that sort of calm.
Two weeks ago, she and Sonny had moved into a small but comfortable rental home in a less-fashionable part of town. They’d removed the boys from their fancy private pre-school and sent them to the community kinder instead. And she’d taken Miles to see a child psychologist, a highly recommended but unorthodox young man named Lionel who wore bright orange jumpers and glasses like Harry Potter. Miles instantly adored him. After the initial session, Lionel’s preliminary diagnosis was that Miles was a highly sensitive little boy who suffered from anxiety. He had a lot of tools to help, he said, and he thought Miles would benefit from their sessions. Tully thought of what Rachel had said: Your son is just like you. Sonny agreed that she was right to seek help for Miles. It made Tully feel good to be right about something.
Another upside of this was that while paying for Miles’s appointment, Tully overheard the office manager saying they were looking for a new receptionist. While Tully didn’t have any experience in reception, it turned out she was excellent at selling herself and by Miles’s next session she’d landed herself a job. She hadn’t asked if there was a staff discount for employees’ children, but she intended to.
All of these life changes hadn’t been without their adjustment periods, but so far Tully had managed to get through it without stealing anything. It was imperative, her lawyer told her, that no further charges were laid against her before her court date. She still saw Dr Shearer once a week – also important when it came to her court date. Sonny and her lawyer seemed to think that she had a good chance of getting off with a fine and perhaps some community service. But it was essential that she didn’t steal again. Which was all well and good, but it was proving to be a daily battle, one she had to fight each time she went to the supermarket or the newsagents and now, with the wedding coming up, Tully felt stretched and weary. Every day, she feared, would be the day she would snap.
‘I don’t like this sausage roll,’ Locky said, holding out a half-chewed canapé.
‘Oh,’ Tully said. ‘Well, there’s a rubbish bin over –’
‘Here,’ he said, depositing it in her hand and running away.
It had been Dad’s idea, of course, that they should bring the boys tonight. They were family. Quite frankly, Tully would have preferred to enjoy her champagne in peace while the boys were at home with a babysitter, but that didn’t appear to be an option. Across the room she watched Locky give Rachel a high five before disappearing under a tablecloth.
Rachel had been quiet this evening. Tully was worried about her. Even with her gorgeous new man on her arm, she still seemed . . . off. It was something to do with the way she looked at Dad. Since her meeting with Fiona Arthur, she’d become obsessed with the idea that Dad was an abuser. Tully herself had got caught up in it for a while, but as the weeks went by, it felt less and less feasible, especially tonight. Currently Dad was chatting to Sonny, with Miles sitting high on his shoulders, his hands covering both of Dad’s eyes. Dad was in his element here, surrounded by his family. Tully wondered now how she could ever have thought him capable of hurting anyone. She chalked it up to grief. It was amazing the things grief could do.
Miles released his hands from Dad’s eyes, and he made eye contact with Tully. He lifted Miles off his shoulders, handed him to Sonny and then made his way towards her.
‘Hello, sweetie,’ he said. He took a seat at the table beside her. ‘How are you doing?’
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘It’s a lovely night.’
‘It sure is. And it will be a great day tomorrow. For the whole family.’ Dad smiled, but his eyes were cautious. ‘Speaking of family, I’ve been thinking . . . maybe we should bring Mum to the wedding tomorrow.’
‘My mum?’
He chuckled. ‘Well, my mum probably won’t be able to make it.’
A group of people walked past and Dad shook a few hands and patted a few backs. Then he returned his attention to Tully.
‘I don’t understand,’ Tully said. ‘Why would you want Mum at your wedding?’
‘I know it sounds strange, but I’ve talked about it with Heather and she agrees. Your mother is a part of this family. That didn’t change when we divorced. And you know how much your mum loves parties.’
Tully thought of last Christmas. Mum had just moved to the nursing home and it had been a shocker of a few months with her getting confused and agitated. But Christmas Day itself, Tully had to admit, had been a strange, but nice Christmas – made better by the fact that they’d eaten lunch in the dining room with the other residents, and when the music started, Mum danced. It was lovely to see her like that.
‘Maybe it’s selfish, my way of wanting to believe she’s happy for me, but I’d love to see her enjoying a party one last time.’
Tully shook her head. ‘It’s just such a strange idea, Dad.’
‘I agree. It’s totally bonkers. But so what? I think we need to give up on any idea of what is normal or expected. That horse bolted for this family long ago.’ Dad laughed and so did Tully, a little. ‘We need to do what feels right for us, for Mum, and for the family. That includes you. And so I’m asking you . . . would you like Mum there?’
Tully thought about it. Part of her liked the idea. Mum did love a party, and maybe having her there would make Dad’s remarriage seem like less of a betrayal.
‘I guess I’d be okay with it,’ Tully said eventually. ‘I don’t know if Rachel will feel the same though.’
‘You leave Rachel to me,’ Dad said with an air of confidence.
‘All right,’ Tully said. But she wasn’t sure his confidence was warranted.
56
RACHEL
Rachel and Darcy stood on the terrace, clutching their champagne glasses. It wasn’t, on reflection, the perfect meet-the-family occasion. Rachel actually felt as if she was at a fundraiser for a local pre-school or a work function. Sure, her dad was there, and Sonny and Tully and the boys. But the rest of the guests – mostly work colleagues of Dad and Heather – were strangers.
There were waiters circling with canapés, but they were few and far between. Heather had mentioned that there would be some ‘more substantial’ food later, whatever that meant. Normally, on a night such as this, Rachel would have found the lack of information about, and control over the food unbearable, but tonight she felt okay about it. She put part of it down to the man standing by her side, but the greater part, she knew, was the fact that she’d finally started talking about what happened to her – first to Darcy and then to Tully. She had a long way to go, but last week she’d even booked an appointment with a therapist to do some more talking about it. One day, with enough talking she might even be able to manage her feelings without food. If not, she was okay with that too.
‘Sorry, sweetie,’ Dad said, coming to stand by her side. ‘I haven’t had much of a chance to chat to you. This is for you, Darcy.’ He handed the other man a beer. ‘I’m so glad Rachel brought you along tonight.’
‘It’s great to be here,’ Darcy said.
Dad clinked his drink against Darcy’s. ‘So,’ he said, after taking a sip, ‘I understand you’re doing some work for Rachel?’
‘Yes,’ Darcy said. ‘I’m one of her delivery boys. Part of her conglomerate.’
Rachel restrained herself from jumping in to say that he’d actually run his own cafe and he’d just last week launched an Everything’s Better Toasted food truck, but she decided against it – partly because she didn’t want to apologise for Darcy, and partly because she knew Dad would have no issue with Darcy being ‘just a delivery man’. Dad was old-fashioned in some ways, but he wasn’t the type to get all ‘you’re not good enough for my daughter’. If Rachel liked him, that would be good enough for Dad. It was this kind of knowledge that made it so hard to reconcile herself to the idea that her dad was an abuser.
Over the past couple of months, she’d forced herself to consider the fact that she might have gone a little bit mad and created this idea that her dad was abusive from nothing. She’d vacillated between believing that yes, of course she’d only imagined it . . . and a little glimmer of fear that she’d been right all along. She’d also been forced to accept that, even after tracking down Fiona Arthur, she would probably never know what Mum’s money was for – if it was even for anything at all. If nothing else, she’d found out that Dad had been married before. Thanks for that little nugget, Mum.
There was a loud crash from the other end of the terrace, and they all looked over to see the two little boys’ heads next to an upturned table. Sonny put down his beer and started towards them.
