The Younger Wife, page 6
‘You paid for lunch?’ Sonny had cried when she’d explained the charge on the credit card. ‘Why on earth would you do that?’
The truth was, she had no idea why she’d insisted on paying. It was a spontaneous gesture, a burst of desire for her father’s approval, maybe. A mistake – she could acknowledge that now – but a well-meaning one. ‘I . . . don’t know.’
‘You don’t know? Tully, we don’t have any spare money at the moment, do you understand that? None. We have to sell our house, our cars – I’m not sure how I’m going to make the mortgage payment. As it stands, we’re well short.’
Tully was flooded with shame, both at what she’d done and at the idea of the bank noticing something was up. She’d always felt so proud, so secure in the fact that they paid off their credit card debt in full each month and that all their payments were made ahead of time. The mortification of people having to follow up, wondering where their money was . . . it was simply unthinkable.
Sonny had also seen the items on the back seat of the car, which only served to make the argument worse. Tully assured him that she would return each and every one – and indeed she had dropped them all off at the nearest charity shop – but he’d still given her the silent treatment. In fact, the only time they’d spoken in the last twenty-four hours was when Tully asked him not to tell Rob and Michelle that they’d lost all their money.
Sonny had looked baffled. ‘They’re going to find out sometime.’
‘I know that,’ Tully said tersely. ‘I just don’t want them to find out today.’
Sonny had agreed and now here they were, sitting in the sun. It was the classic set-up. Sonny and Rob commandeered the barbecue, while she and Michelle sipped white wine spritzers and yelled at the children not to be too rough on the trampoline.
‘So, we’ve been dying to know,’ Michelle said. ‘What was the new girlfriend like?’ She laughed a little. It wasn’t a mean sort of laugh; it was the polite, slightly scandalised sort. A testing laugh – a laugh that was aware of the sensitivity of the issue but hopeful for a bit of salacious gossip. Tully didn’t blame her. How many times had she enjoyed a scandalised laugh of this nature over a friend’s child who’d been caught sexting or a politician who’d been caught with his pants down? How superficial she’d been. This was not content for titillation – this was someone’s life! She vowed to change from now on. Everything would be different.
‘She was . . . as expected,’ Tully said. ‘Young, pretty. Did I mention young?’
Rob and Michelle nodded expectantly. They were waiting for more, of course. And Tully had more. She could tell them that they were getting married. That Dad was planning to divorce Mum. She could have given them what they wanted. But for some reason, her throat started to close up and she couldn’t seem to project the words.
‘Are you having chicken, Michelle?’ Sonny said, in a clear attempt to change the subject. ‘Or I have a nice steak here?’
He met Tully’s eye and, for the first time in ages, she smiled at him.
Sonny had always been a skilled host. She loved the ease with which he chatted to people, the way he kept everyone’s glass full, the effort he always made to talk to even the most boring person and make them feel special. He was equally competent with the kids – their own and other people’s – doling out icy poles or putting on a movie when the other parents were too drunk or tired to deal with them. After everyone left, he always helped her clean up, and while his standard of cleaning was well below hers, she appreciated that he didn’t slope off to bed like other husbands. Often, because of this dedication, he got lucky at the end of the night. It was unlikely this would happen today. Today, they were playing a part. The part of a happy couple.
She and Sonny had met at a university trivia night. Tully had arrived with two friends, but because they didn’t have enough people to make up a table, they’d been put on a table with a bunch of know-it-all law students. Tully hadn’t bothered to argue when they insisted they knew the correct answer to several questions (they hadn’t), but when it came to the final question (How many children did Madonna and Guy Ritchie have together?) she had to speak up.
‘It’s two,’ she said.
‘No,’ one loudmouth, drunken law student had exclaimed. ‘It’s one. The little boy. Rocco.’
‘They also adopted a little boy from Malawi,’ Tully said. ‘David. That’s two children.’
Tully remembered the way she’d levelled her gaze at Sonny, the scribe, and gestured for him to write it down. She’d acted more confident than she felt. She didn’t have numbers on her side, after all. The law students all knew each other. If they sided with the drunken loudmouth, she wouldn’t stand a chance.
‘I think she’s right,’ Sonny said. ‘I’m going with two.’ And he wrote it down, without waiting for any input from the table. When it turned out that Tully had been right, Sonny had nodded at her, a faint look of approval in his eyes. That was the moment, he told her later, that he fell in love with her.
The relationship was full steam ahead from that night, which was fine with Tully. She always preferred travelling at high speed. For a while, she even thought Sonny had cured her of her unspeakable addiction. Or at least got her hooked on a different drug. When he looked at her, and when she looked at him, she got so high she didn’t need to think about stealing. Sonny was her drug, and she could have as much of him as she wanted.
But like all drugs, Sonny eventually lost his potency. And when he didn’t provide the hit that he once had, Tully needed to go looking for that rush of adrenaline in the place she’d always found it.
‘Boys!’ Michelle called. ‘Not so rough!’
Tully looked over, thrilled that Miles was playing on the grass with Rob and Michelle’s boys. He was often timid when other children came over, and usually spent the whole time sitting on Tully’s lap. Perhaps he was sick of Tully, given that they now spent every night together? Three weeks in, he still hadn’t slept in his big-boy bed and Tully was starting to think he never would. One day, his wife would kiss him goodnight, tuck him into his crib, and then head into her own bedroom. If this was his reaction to a new bed, Tully wondered, what would be his reaction to a new house?
‘Is that a new top, Tully?’ Michelle asked her. ‘It’s gorgeous.’
This caught Sonny’s attention. The word ‘new’ had a way of sending an electric current through him lately. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen it before either,’ he said.
Tully avoided his gaze. ‘This one? Sure you have.’
‘Michelle has a lot of clothes that aren’t new but which I haven’t seen before,’ Rob said, sipping the froth off the premium beer that Sonny must have bought without receiving the third degree from her about its cost. ‘The next thing I know, there’s an eye-watering charge on the credit card from Zimmerman or Scanlan Theodore.’
‘And Rob has so many golf clubs that aren’t new but which I haven’t seen before,’ Michelle replied. ‘If I looked at the credit card statement, I’m sure I’d find some eye-watering charges from House of Golf.’
They both laughed with the airiness of people without money problems. This was how it happened, Tully realised, opening a new bottle of sauvignon blanc. You married a kind, generous progressive man, and within a decade he became George Banks from Mary Poppins. (The boys had been watching Mary Poppins lately and Tully had been shocked by what poor Winifred had had to put up with. No wonder she joined the suffragette movement.)
‘You won’t find any eye-watering amounts on the credit card from me,’ Tully said, holding up her hand to imply scout’s honour. ‘You have my word.’
She wasn’t sure if it was the scout’s honour or giving her word that did it, but Sonny seemed to relax. It had the effect of relaxing Tully too. Until her phone started ringing and she saw Heather’s name on the screen.
‘It’s Heather,’ she said, her eyes widening.
‘Answer it,’ Michelle demanded.
‘Should I?’ Tully said. The group nodded unanimously so she raised the phone to her ear. ‘Heather?’
There was a longer than normal pause.
‘Tully, hi . . . I hope I’m not catching you at a bad time.’
‘It’s not a great time,’ Tully said. ‘I have some friends here at the moment.’
She looked up. Rob, Michelle, and Sonny were all watching her eagerly.
‘In that case, I won’t keep you. But I was just talking to your dad, and he suggested it might be fun for us to get together again. Another lunch, just the girls this time. I wondered if you would be interested?’
Tully had a vision of herself sitting at a table with Rachel and Heather, no Dad. It made her stomach lurch. It was one thing meeting up with Heather and Dad at his request, but . . . socialising with her? It felt like the ultimate betrayal of Mum.
‘It might sound a little too much,’ Heather continued, ‘but I just thought it would be nice if we got to know each other better as women . . . without your dad around.’
Rob and Michelle were sitting forward in their chairs, absolutely thrilled, mouthing things to each other and beaming. The new girlfriend. Calling!
‘I’m sorry, Heather – like I said, this isn’t a great time. I have guests here.’
‘Oh.’ A pause. ‘Of course. So sorry.’
Tully knew she should say, I’ll be in touch about lunch, or, I’ll call you later and we can make a plan. But her brain seemed to have temporarily cut off access to such social graces, so instead she said, ‘Bye,’ and hung up the phone.
As she returned her phone to the table she noted Rob and Michelle’s delighted, scandalised faces and knew she was expected to provide juicy details. She herself would have appreciated the juicy details in a similar situation. And why not? Not only would it please her audience, there was a good chance it would be therapeutic to share all the sordid, peculiar details. The problem was, she wanted to save those details for the one person who would understand exactly how she felt. The one who’d reached out to her just a few days ago. The one who, no matter how hard she tried, she just couldn’t seem to connect with.
Rachel.
8
RACHEL
Ninety-seven thousand, three hundred and seventy-two dollars.
Rachel sat on her bedroom floor, surrounded by crumpled bills. She had pulled the money out of the hot-water bottle note by note, first with her fingers, then with tweezers, and finally, when the cash kept coming, she’d taken a pair of scissors and cut through the bottle. The hot-water bottle cover was also full of bills.
Ninety-seven thousand, three hundred and seventy-two dollars. Where did Mum get that kind of money?
Was it even hers?
Logically, it couldn’t have been. Even before Mum started showing signs of dementia, she and Dad had been old-school when it came to money. Back in the day, Dad gave Mum ‘housekeeping’ money; more recently, if Mum needed something, Dad just bought it for her, or Rachel or Tully did. Mum simply didn’t have access to this sort of money. Which meant it had to be stolen – but from where? And how?
It was true that Mum had done some strange things these past few years. On top of the shoplifting, she’d signed up with virtually every energy company that rang up to offer special rates. She’d taken the dog for a walk using an old scarf because she couldn’t find the leash (only to realise later that she didn’t have a dog; it belonged to the neighbour). She’d repeatedly tried to enter the house via the window rather than the door. But unlike the shoplifting or the dog-stealing or window-entering, stashing away this amount of money required some premeditation and planning. After all, even if she was to swipe an entire grocery store till (which Rachel couldn’t imagine), it still wouldn’t contain $97,000.
It made no sense.
‘Where, Mum?’ Rachel said out loud. ‘Where did you get all this money?’
She looked at it, laid out on the floor. The only thing she’d found inside the hot-water bottle besides the cash was a folded piece of paper, torn from a spiral notebook. On it were two names: Tully and Fiona Arthur.
Rachel had never heard the name Fiona Arthur, so she focused instead on Tully. Why had Mum written Tully’s name? Was the money meant for Tully? Admittedly, Mum was always worried about her oldest daughter. A mother is only as happy as her unhappiest child, she used to say. And while Tully wasn’t unhappy, exactly, she was never exactly happy either. True, she’d settled a bit since meeting Sonny and having the boys, but she was still . . . Tully. Maybe this money was supposed to help with that somehow.
Rachel jumped as her phone began to ring. It was Heather. She was intrigued, but not enough to answer. She had enough to deal with right now without adding her father’s fiancée to the equation. She stabbed at the screen to silence it, but unfortunately, in her haste, she accidentally accepted the call. Worse still, it was a WhatsApp call – with video. After a second, Heather’s face appeared on the screen.
‘Rachel?’
‘Heather!’ Rachel scrambled to grab the phone and then turned away to ensure the money wasn’t visible. ‘Hello. Sorry, I . . . um . . . dropped the phone.’
‘No, I’m sorry . . . I didn’t mean to do a video call. Your dad added me to the family WhatsApp and it’s not my strong suit.’
‘It’s fine,’ Rachel said. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I won’t keep you. I just wanted to see if you and Tully might be free to have lunch. You know, just us girls?’
Rachel heard a knock at the door.
‘I thought it might be nice to get to know each other better.’
‘It would,’ Rachel said, getting to her feet. ‘But there’s actually someone at the door right now. Do you mind if I call you back?’
There was a short pause followed by a quick: ‘Sure. Of course.’ Then Heather hung up the phone, leaving Rachel to wrestle with her guilt.
There was another knock at the door. All right, all right. Rachel shoved the cash under the bed, and headed for the door. Before she could get there, there was a third knock. Seriously? Did people not know that she had just uncovered tens of thousands of dollars that her mother had potentially stolen and stashed in a hot-water bottle and she was trying to figure out what to do, while also trying to get off the phone from her soon-to-be stepmother, who was one year her junior? Rachel threw open the door, ready to tell whoever it was to take a hike. But it was Dad.
Of course it was.
When Mum got sick, he’d started coming around all the time. Three times a week he’d stop in, on his way to or from work, ostensibly to give her an update on Mum but more likely to have a conversation with someone who didn’t merely repeat the same question over and over again. Rachel enjoyed the visits, but she could never seem to instil in him the importance of calling ahead.
‘I run a business, Dad,’ she’d tell him, and he’d apologise then come in anyway. She knew that her cake business confused him, even if he made an effort to seem proud. Whenever he saw her he’d say, ‘So . . . er . . . how are things in the kitchen?’
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked him now.
‘Do I need a reason to visit my equal favourite daughter?’ He kissed her forehead on the way inside, as sure as a child that his company would be a welcome delight.
‘No,’ she said. ‘But you might want to try calling first.’
‘Why, I’m not interrupting anything, am I?’ He paused, glancing around, as if expecting to find a lover hiding somewhere. Rachel wondered what he would do if he had interrupted something. Keel over and have a coronary, possibly.
Dad had never commented on her lack of a partner – not when she was younger and not now – but she knew he must wonder. Who wouldn’t? At fourteen she was dating a new guy every week, to the point that Dad refused to answer the landline because he couldn’t bear to listen to another stammering adolescent boy asking for Rachel. Then, at sixteen, she hung up her dating boots. It must have surprised him. She was certain he’d made some kind of pact with himself never to ask. Back when Mum was lucid, she used to ask often. ‘Why don’t you have anyone? Surely you could have your pick of the men!’ But Dad never said a word. She’d always been grateful for it, but suddenly she wondered why.
‘You interrupted me watching TV, actually,’ she said, closing the front door. ‘Cup of tea?’
‘What a good idea!’ he said, as if that hadn’t been his intention all along.
Rachel led the way to the kitchen, where Dad immediately settled himself at the round table and waited for her to produce a cup of tea. She should have found it insulting, the way he expected to be waited on, but he always seemed so happy when she handed over the tea that it was almost a delight to make it for him.
This was why men ruled the world.
‘Lemon cake?’
Dad grinned. ‘With cream, if you have it.’
Naturally, she did. She even had lemon-infused cream, made specially. She flicked on the kettle and cut them each a generous slice of cake, which she doused with cream. She placed a plate in front of Dad.
‘It was nice meeting Heather the other day,’ she said carefully. ‘She seemed . . . great.’
‘She can’t cook,’ he replied, spearing a piece of lemon cake. He was trying be brave, but Rachel could see he found this a little distressing.
‘Well,’ Rachel said, ‘lucky you already have a cook in the family.’
‘Indeed.’ His cheeks were bulging with cake. ‘I don’t suppose you offer cookery classes?’
‘For you, or for Heather?’
‘Both,’ he said diplomatically.
Dad wasn’t always diplomatic. The old Dad would have said, ‘Cooking? Me? I don’t think so,’ and Mum would have rolled her eyes and said, ‘Your father would struggle to make toast without me.’ Now he was considering cookery classes?
‘Speaking of Heather,’ Rachel said, ‘she called a few minutes ago.’
Dad looked up from his cake. He had a bit of cream on his chin. ‘Oh?’
