The Younger Wife(40)

‘Stephen?’

‘Yes. He found a bunch of things in your wardrobe.’

Rachel trailed off, watching her mother’s face and preparing for disappointment. More than half the time, Mum didn’t even know who Rachel was, so the chances of her remembering shoving a stack of cash into a hot-water bottle were slim to none. Still, there was a tiny part of her that hoped.

‘One of them was a pink hot-water bottle,’ Rachel continued. ‘Pale pink in a knitted cosy.’

Mum looked her in the eye now. ‘Stephen is a sadistic bastard.’

Rachel sighed. Mum had been saying this sort of thing a lot lately. The nurse who supposedly stole her stuff was a ‘witch’. The person in the room beside her was ‘loud as fuck’. Last time Tully visited, Mum apparently called her ‘an irritating little troll’. Rachel had coughed to hide her giggle. Before Mum got sick, Rachel had never heard her use a single swearword.

‘I found money inside the hot-water bottle,’ Rachel continued. ‘A lot of money. Almost a hundred thousand dollars.’

Mum glanced away, not interested in the slightest. It was just so frustrating. Mum had to have had a plan for this money. Otherwise how did she get it? Why did she hide it? Rachel had so many questions. Maybe she should have brought the hot-water bottle to jog her mother’s memory?

‘Actually, I’m looking for someone called Fiona Arthur,’ Rachel said, changing tack. ‘You don’t happen to know her, by any chance?’

Mum’s reaction to this question, unlike the last, was palpable. It was as if the name sent an electric current through her.

Then, just as quickly, Mum’s eyes filled with tears. She dropped her face into her hands. ‘That poor, poor woman,’ she said.

‘Why do you say that?’ Rachel asked. ‘Why is she a poor woman?’

Mum raised her head and looked Rachel right in the eye.

‘Stephen hurt her,’ she said. ‘Stephen hurt that poor woman terribly.’





21


TULLY


‘We’re getting McDonald’s for dinner!’ Tully announced.

The boys, who were strapped into their car seats in the back of her Range Rover, blinked at her in confusion.

‘What’s McDougal’s?’ Locky asked.

Tully understood their bemusement. She had never fed the boys McDonald’s before. They were, after all, upper middle-class preschoolers. They ate bliss balls and drank organic green smoothies and sugar-free cocoa. The one time Locky had been invited to a birthday party at McDonald’s, Tully had fed him before he left and told the birthday boy’s mother that Locky was a coeliac so he couldn’t eat the food. She’d told Locky that the food was really yucky and if he didn’t eat any he could have an extra bliss ball when he got home. What was wrong with her? she wondered now. Too much time? Too much money? Too much choice? Now that all three of those things had been taken away from her, McDonald’s sounded rather good. She could have just about murdered a Big Mac right now, just quietly. She hadn’t eaten one since university!

She and the boys had headed out to give the real estate agent and photographer space at the house. They wanted to get photos in the early evening light, so they could turn on the interior lights and let the ‘buttery yellow spill out into the garden’ (the photographer’s words). Admittedly, the house did look magic. It took her back to the day when she was seven months pregnant with Locky and they’d inspected the house for the first time.

‘This will be the baby’s room,’ Sonny said. ‘And this could be another baby’s room. This could be the playroom . . .’

They’d had so much hope for the future, and the house had represented the start of it. Selling it felt symbolic and, if she was honest, appropriate. Since she’d confessed her secret to Sonny five days ago, he’d been so upset with her. They’d barely said a word to each other. He’d even slept in the spare room, which was a waste of time, since Tully was still sleeping on Miles’s floor (the novelty of the one night in his big-boy bed appeared to have worn off and now he was back to being a stage-five clinger). When she’d told Sonny to come back and sleep in their room, he’d said he just needed some time. He hadn’t been angry – and in a way that made it worse. He was level-headed and calm. It was the kind of mindset with which people made important, binding decisions about their lives.

‘Mummy, I’m hungry,’ Locky said.

‘I know,’ Tully said. ‘That’s why we’re going to McDonald’s. They have yummy food.’

‘Smoked salmon?’ Locky said hopefully. ‘Or pesto gnocchi?’

‘No, but they have chicken nuggets,’ Tully said. ‘And burgers. And chips!’

She looked in the rear-view mirror. Miles sat silently in his seat. He’d been mute since they’d left the house. Speech, it seemed, was his latest issue. These last few days, due to the broken sleep and everything else going on, she’d become increasingly snappy with him about his strange behaviours. Then, at night, when he finally fell asleep, she watched his little chest rising and falling and asked herself what kind of mother snapped at a child who was so little and so troubled.

What kind of mother was she?

Tully was just turning into the McDonald’s drive-through when her phone began to ring. The screen said it was Rachel calling, and it reminded her that she hadn’t rung her sister to ask how her date had gone. It turned out she was not only failing at motherhood but sisterhood too.