The Younger Wife(27)

‘Rachel doesn’t date men,’ Tully explained to Heather, as if they were suddenly best friends. ‘Or women. When we were younger, she did. She was the rebel child, always wanting to go out at night, always hanging out with boys in places she shouldn’t. Every boy at school was in love with Rachel. It was her hair. She had this long, shiny hair . . . A boyfriend of mine once told me he had a dream about Rachel’s hair and I had to break up with him. Do you remember that, Rach?’

‘Aaron Henderson,’ Rachel said without looking up. ‘He was a giant tosser.’

‘Colossal tosser,’ Tully agreed, before turning back to Heather. ‘Anyway, one day when she was sixteen or seventeen, she shaved it all off. I’ll never forget coming home from school, and there was Rachel, sitting up at the kitchen counter, bald.’

‘I wasn’t bald,’ Rachel corrected. ‘It was a pixie cut.’

‘Mum made her grow it back, but she never wears her hair out anymore. You really should, Rach. You have the best hair. It’s your crowning glory.’

‘Shall I put the dressing on, or would you prefer it on the side?’ Rachel asked.

‘Pour it on,’ Heather said at the same time as Tully said, ‘On the side.’

Rachel poured it into a jug. She wished she’d made canapés so she could shove one into Tully’s mouth. It was always feast or famine with Tully. She either didn’t mention the fact that Rachel didn’t date – tiptoeing around the subject as if it were a shameful secret one didn’t discuss – or she just went all out, airing Rachel’s dirty linen for all to see. Or, in this case, for Heather to see.

‘You need to date this man, Rachel,’ Tully said. ‘Seriously. Doesn’t she, Heather?’

‘Well,’ Heather said uncertainly. ‘I don’t know. If she doesn’t date . . . maybe not?’

It wasn’t as if Rachel had never dated. She’d kissed eight boys in her life, though admittedly only two of them were boyfriends – Cameron Fidler and Jason Swift. She’d lost her virginity to Cameron when she was fifteen, and then had sex with him two more times because she’d been told it got better, but it hadn’t, so she’d ended things.

She was sixteen when she started dating Jason, and she’d been hopeful it would be different with him. Certainly, the chemistry between them was different. When they lay around after school, doing homework and reading magazines, the urge to kiss and touch him had been almost overwhelming. And when they stood on his doorstep, or hers, to say goodbye, the pain of having to separate felt almost physical. So when he’d told her his parents were going away for the weekend, she’d acted cool, but inside she was bursting. She started preparations immediately. She had a bikini wax. She bought a new matching bra and underwear set from Bras and Things – black and lacy. She applied fake tan, nail polish and eyelash tint to the appropriate parts of her body. But then, instead of having sex with Jason when his parents went away, she broke up with him.

‘Rachel used to be an amazing cross-country runner,’ Tully was saying now. ‘We used to have guys calling the house all the time, asking if she wanted to’ – Tully drew inverted commas in the air with her fingers – ‘go for a run.’ She laughed. ‘Is that why you quit running, Rach?’ Tully didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Anyway, what was my point? Ah! Darcy. The flirting!’

‘Please, no more about the flirting!’ Rachel opened the drawer and pulled out her good salad servers. To Rachel, love Mum, was engraved into each handle. Mum had given them to her for her twenty-first birthday. Georg Jensen, her mother had said proudly. Acorn pattern. Antique. Rachel had no idea what that meant at the time, but she couldn’t help but catch on to her mum’s enthusiasm and they had remained her favourite salad servers ever since. ‘I’ll talk about anything else. Heather, help me out! What’s news with you?’

‘Actually,’ Heather said, ‘I visited Pam this morning.’

There was a beat of silence. That was not what Rachel expected. Tully went oddly, unnaturally still.

Heather seemed to realise her error and responded by stammering. ‘It’s just . . . the nursing home was on my way here so I . . .’

‘You and Dad went?’ Tully asked after a moment. Her voice sounded funny.

‘Er, no – just me.’

Heather looked very unsure of herself now. Rachel wanted to jump in and say something to ease the tension but she found herself, once again, at a loss. Heather had gone to see Mum? Why would she do that?

‘It probably sounds odd to you,’ Heather said. ‘But I’ve spent quite a bit of time with Pam over the past year and we became – not friends, exactly, but . . . I don’t know.’ Heather’s hands trembled as she continued. ‘Obviously her condition deteriorated a lot over that time, and our conversations became more limited, but when she wasn’t agitated, I found her to be good company. We had some . . . some great chats.’

‘Wow,’ Rachel said. ‘I hadn’t thought about the fact that you actually met Mum. It makes sense that you developed some sort of . . . relationship with her.’

Rachel glanced at Tully, who remained deathly still.

‘What did you and Mum chat about?’ Rachel asked.

‘Cooking, mostly,’ Heather said. ‘I’m a terrible cook. Pam was always asking me what I was having for dinner, and when I said I didn’t know, she’d give me a recipe. Then she’d give it to me again. And again. I can recite her recipe for chicken, lemon and feta pie verbatim.’