The Younger Wife(16)

Heather took the phone from him, opened WhatsApp and handed it back.

‘That simple, eh?’ he said ruefully. Then his eyes lit up. ‘Hey – we should add you to the group, since you’re going to be part of the family. Then you could read all the messages and pass along any pertinent information to me.’

‘I’m not sure how Tully and Rachel would feel about that.’

He looked up from his phone and considered her a moment. ‘Why? You all got along at lunch, right?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But we’ve only just announced the engagement; let’s give them some time to –’

‘Nonsense,’ Stephen said. ‘You just need more time to bond. You should have lunch!’

‘We just had lunch.’

‘No, I mean the three of you – you, Rachel and Tully – without me hanging around, cramping your style.’ Stephen nodded, warming to the idea. ‘You can do your girls talk, have some drinks . . . Rachel is mad about her baking. Get her going about that and she won’t shut up. And Tully, she’s mad about her little boys. Actually, she’s just plain mad. Gets it from me. The point is, you’re all going to have to get along, because none of you are going anywhere.’

Heather smiled. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘We’ll have another lunch.’

She got out a fresh glass and filled it with wine. As she did, she noticed Stephen watching her.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Would you like a glass?’

Stephen lifted his gaze, his brow ever so slightly furrowed. After a second, he shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m fine.’





THE WEDDING


‘Is there a doctor in the house?’ someone shouts, which tells me Stephen is the one who is hurt. If not, he would be assisting, surely?

Of course, this being Stephen’s wedding, there are dozens of doctors present. A woman in the row in front of me passes her husband her handbag before pushing her way through the crowd, and a gentleman a few seats down from me stands too. I dutifully move out of the way, make myself smaller than I already am.

I should leave now, I realise. I wouldn’t want Stephen to know I was here. But given the dramatic turn of events, I find myself compelled to stay. I feel what must be a jolt of adrenaline – not common for me these days. I want to know what is happening. Did Pamela hit Stephen with the candlestick? Did she hit someone else? What happened?

There is the low hum of anxious conversation in the chapel. No one is quite sure what to do. The sacristy is out of eyeshot and to venture closer would seem voyeuristic. After all, it’s not as if I could assist in any way. In the distance, I hear the sound of sirens. Someone must have called an ambulance.

A woman at the end of our row with a sensible bob and a flouncy floral dress suggests that perhaps we should head outside to give the doctors some space. It is, after all, very tight in here. People stand and start shuffling out of the chapel, spilling out the doors and into the courtyard, where the ambulance has just pulled up.

It isn’t long before the theories start. The consensus is that Heather was injured. A few speculate that one of the daughters went for her. It’s a fair assumption, as it’s no secret they weren’t happy about the wedding. But a man in a bowler hat is adamant that Pamela attacked Heather. Someone else is sure that Stephen had a heart attack. My money is on the thin daughter being involved. Very neurotic girl, apparently. Mental problems, I think.

Two paramedics unload a stretcher from the back of the van. A police car arrives. Everyone moves out of the way to make space.





7


TULLY


Heather Wisher has been added to the group.

Tully was searching her family WhatsApp for a photo of one of Rachel’s wedding cakes when she saw it. Heather had been added to the family WhatsApp chat.

So many questions went through her head. First, who had done this? Dad didn’t know how to add people to the family chat – he could barely reply to a message via the family chat. When he did manage to respond to one of Tully’s pictures of the boys, or one of Rachel’s pictures of a wedding cake, it was usually with one word, all lowercase – ‘wow’ or ‘cool’ or even just a thumbs-up emoji (oddly, Dad loved emojis; often his one-word messages were accompanied by no less than four of them). But emojis notwithstanding, Dad’s technological capabilities were pitiful. There was no way he was adding someone to the family chat on his own.

High on the list of reasons this was inappropriate was the fact that Mum was still in the group. She didn’t interact in it, obviously; they had taken her phone from her before she’d gone to live in the nursing home, and even if she did have the phone she would not have understood how to use it, but that wasn’t the point. They’d left Mum in the group as a matter of principle. The same principle that said Heather Wisher had no business in their family chat.

Tully tossed her phone back on the table and tried to ignore it. She and Sonny were sitting at the back of her garden, in the paved area that butted up against the outdoor kitchen. They were being civil to each other – even pleasant – but it was for the benefit of their lunch guests, Rob and Michelle. It was almost as if they hadn’t spent the last twenty-four hours ignoring each other entirely.

‘You paid for lunch?’ Sonny had cried when she’d explained the charge on the credit card. ‘Why on earth would you do that?’