The Younger Wife(52)

‘I punched you?’

Stephen smiled thinly. ‘Knocked the glasses clean off my face. I think that was what caused the scratch.’ He pointed to the mark under his eye. ‘Then you took off. I was going to let you go; you were very upset. Then you slipped. You went down hard and hit your head. I sat with you for a couple of hours down here, in case you were concussed. Eventually I took you upstairs and put you to bed.’

Heather tried to line up this version with her own memory.

‘What did you think happened?’ Stephen asked.

Heather had no idea anymore. ‘I don’t know! I know that we argued, and then I was on the ground. I assumed . . .’ She trailed off.

‘That I did it to you?’

‘Yes,’ she admitted.

He looked, among other things, very sad.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said quickly. ‘I . . . I don’t know what I was thinking. I just . . .’ Heather suddenly felt at a loss. ‘I don’t know.’

‘I might be way off,’ he said, after a long pause, ‘but I wonder if this might have something to do with your dad.’

Just like that, an image of her father popped into her head. He was holding her mum by the throat, pressing her against the wall.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think it might.’

Stephen exhaled. He looked like he wanted to reach for her, but then appeared to think better of it. ‘Heather,’ he said, ‘you need to understand that I will never lay a hand on you in violence. I don’t hurt women. I don’t hurt men. I’m a doctor. I have taken an oath to do no harm.’

Heather nodded. How stupid she had been. Of course Stephen would never hurt her. He was a good man. A family man. A doctor! The idea that he would be physically violent was preposterous. She let her bag slide off her shoulder and onto the floor. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Stephen. I feel like I’m going mad.’

‘You’re not going mad,’ he said.

But she must have been. Because if she wasn’t going mad, it meant that Stephen was a monster. A monster who, in the next few months, was going to become her husband.





31


TULLY


Her psychologist was a man. Tully had spent the first fifteen minutes of her appointment marvelling at that, which equated to about fifty dollars. Probably not the best use of their money, especially at the moment. Sonny had made the appointment for her. For the past week he’d been either reading a book, listening to a podcast or watching a documentary about kleptomania. As it turned out, he’d crossed paths with a lot of psychologists when they’d given evidence in court, and apparently Dr Shearer was one of the best.

When Sonny suggested Dr Shearer, Tully had pictured a woman. A forthright woman in her mid-forties with short hair and a well-cut blazer. A lesbian, perhaps. Call me Amanda, she would say, and then she and Tully would exchange small talk about where she’d bought the well-cut blazer. Instead, Tully sat face to face with an older man. He was probably in his late sixties, with a shock of white hair, an open-necked shirt and corduroy trousers. A man who hadn’t, thus far, asked her to call him Alan.

‘Anyway, I think I’ve talked enough for now,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you tell me a little about you?’

‘Well,’ Tully said, ‘as my husband told you, I’ve been shoplifting since I was a little girl . . .’

‘He did tell me that, and I understand that’s what brought you here today, but before we get into the specifics I’d like to know a little backstory. I understand you have two living parents, one sister, is that correct?’

‘Yes,’ Tully said. ‘Although Mum has dementia.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘And Dad is getting remarried soon, to a woman my age.’

‘That must be hard,’ Dr Shearer said sympathetically.

There was something about the sympathy that made Tully want to share more.

She decided Dr Shearer might be all right, even if he was a man.

‘On top of that, my two-year-old son won’t sleep in his big-boy bed and refuses to eat anything he’s touched with his hands!’

It was addictive, Tully realised, getting this stuff off her chest. She was starting to feel positively giddy with it.

‘And my husband lost nearly all of our money in a bad investment!’

Dr Shearer scribbled something on the notepad in front of him. Make them pay upfront, probably. Then he looked up. ‘You certainly have a lot going on. What about support? Who do you turn to for support during all of this?’

‘Sonny, usually. But he’s not speaking to me much these days.’

‘What about your sister? Are you close?’

Tully hesitated. ‘If you’d asked me a few months ago, I’d have said no. But things have been better between us lately. As children, we were super competitive with each other. I wanted to beat her at everything.’

‘Why do you think that was?’ Dr Shearer said.

Tully didn’t know. Suffice to say, she didn’t care about beating Rachel at anything now.

‘Go back to your childhood,’ Dr Shearer said. ‘This stuff is actually very important. What happens in our childhood shapes us – our ability to relate to people, to manage our emotions, to control our impulses. There’ll be a reason you felt competitive with your sister as a child, just as there’ll be a reason that competitiveness has subsided.’