The Younger Wife(14)

Darcy took the box and opened it. ‘Wow. This is amazing!’

Rachel looked at it. She’d been limited in her decoration options due to it being a gender reveal, and as a result it looked plainer than she would have liked. ‘I feel like it needs something,’ she said. Then, noticing the wattle growing in her front garden, she grabbed her secateurs from the hall table, snipped a couple of yellow flowers and quickly arranged them on top. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Now it’s perfect.’

‘It really is,’ Darcy said. ‘So what is it? Boy or a girl?’

‘I can’t tell you that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s a secret. Even the parents don’t know!’

‘Come on!’ Darcy pleaded. ‘Who am I going to tell?’

‘I will not break my baking code of ethics for you or anyone.’

Darcy grinned. ‘Principled. I like it.’

He really was extraordinarily cute. It was disconcerting. Rachel started wishing he’d just take the cake and go.

Instead, he looked down at the cake, closed his eyes and whispered, ‘I love you,’ into the box.

Rachel stared at him, aghast.

‘Sorry,’ he explained. ‘It’s just that the last time I forgot to tell a cake I loved it, it burst into tiers.’

Darcy didn’t give her time to respond, just turned on his heel. Rachel stared after him. It had been a mistake, hiring Darcy, she could see that already. Not because of his tardiness, not even because of his terrible jokes. The problem was, had she not sworn off men . . . Darcy would have been exactly her type.

*

When Rachel returned to the kitchen, she debated if she even needed her hot-water bottle. She felt hot under the collar, unsettled by Darcy’s easy, jokey – late! – demeanour. Still, for sentiment’s sake, she unscrewed the lid and was about to pour the hot water into the bottle when something caught her eye. A note, sticking out of the top. She put down the kettle and plucked it out. A hundred bucks. Cheers, Mum, Rachel thought. Then she decided to take a quick look inside. After all, she didn’t want to leave any more money in there.

She lifted the bottle to her eye then, seeing what was inside, nearly dropped it again.

‘Jesus, Mum,’ she whispered. ‘What the hell did you do?’





6


HEATHER


Heather had only intended to step out of the kitchen for two minutes. She’d left Stephen in the steam shower a few minutes earlier, promising that dinner would be ready soon. It had sounded funny, even to her own ears. As if she were the kind of person who could make dinner.

She’d given it a shot, at least. She’d got as far as putting the steaks in a pan before she’d had to consult Google for the next step. (Google had informed her that the steak should have been room temperature. Who knew? Heather’s mother had always taken meat straight from the fridge – though, admittedly, it was usually burgers and sausages rather than Wagyu beef.)

With the chilled steaks cooking, Heather refilled her wine and went in search of a mirror to reapply her lipstick. There was no mirror in the kitchen/dining room – a failing for which she could only blame herself – and so she’d headed into the front hallway, which boasted a specially ordered mirror, one that had required four men to hang it, one that bounced the light all around the entryway.

As she touched up her lips, she thought about Tully and Rachel. Any idiot (apart from Stephen, apparently) could see that the lunch hadn’t been a resounding success. They’d both looked horrified when Stephen announced the engagement. Heather understood. For one thing, their mother was still married to Stephen. For another, there was the age difference. There was also the fact that, though Heather didn’t want to admit it, she was just a little bit different. She might have tried to act the part, and she’d even managed to convince Stephen of it, but women could feel differences. Which meant Heather just had to work harder to hide them.

Heather had spent her life working hard to look better than she was. Admittedly, you had to when you worked in interior design. No one wanted an ordinary person to fit out their home. When she’d graduated and got her first job in interior design, she’d used her first pay cheque to buy a pair of second-hand Christian Louboutins on eBay. She wore them with cheap black dresses (all she could afford back then) because black, she’d read, was the most forgiving if you were going to go cheap. A couple of pay cheques later, she bought a second pair of Laboutins, and alternated them. In the years that followed she’d bought Jimmy Choos, Manolo Blahniks, and most recently Golden Goose trainers, always on sale or second-hand. She followed all the Buy, Borrow, Swap pages to find used designer clothes, and she had an A-grade fake Louis Vuitton bag that was so good she doubted even Louis himself could tell the difference. It had taken some time, but now she had enough high-quality pieces that she could wear them on rotation and look like the kind of person who lived in the kind of homes she designed. In fact, in two weeks time, she would.

Growing up, Heather had lived in a single-storey orange-brick home on a housing estate that had cows and sheep on one side and an electrical substation on the other. Her clothes came from op shops or Best & Less or from the daughter of Mum’s friend who was a couple of years older and favoured dark, ripped clothing or skin-tight miniskirts. Her friends lived in similar homes and had similar clothes. While other kids were learning to ride a bike, Heather was learning to bring her father a beer. While other kids were learning phone manners, Heather was learning to answer the phone and the door with the words: ‘Daddy is at work.’ While other kids were having their first alcoholic drink, Heather was already switching from wine and beer to something stronger.