The Younger Wife(55)

Everyone shuffled towards the house, grateful, Heather assumed, that they could move on from the awkwardness of Pam’s comments. But after everyone was inside, Heather noticed Rachel was still by her mother’s side, looking at her mother closely. After several seconds, she glanced back towards the house. She was staring straight at Stephen.





34


TULLY


‘What do you mean you took them?’ the lady behind the counter of the department store said to Tully.

Dr Shearer believed that returning as many stolen items as she could was an important step in Tully’s recovery. She wouldn’t be able to return every item, as a lot of things had been thrown out, given away or donated, but he suggested she start by choosing items that she had taken recently, ones that would still be stocked, and the ones that were most valuable. The goal was both to take responsibility for what she had done and to make reparations to the store where possible. Tully hadn’t been keen on the idea, but she’d made a commitment to do whatever she had to do to heal.

Sonny, too, had mixed feelings about the exercise. As a lawyer, he said, I’d recommend against it. If one of the shop owners calls the police, you could end up with a criminal record. But as a husband, I see that it’s important for your recovery, so I think you should do it. He added that, as a lawyer, it was a bad idea for him to go with her. And so Tully had had to swallow her pride and ask the one other person in the world she could tell without being entirely humiliated. Rachel.

‘You need to what?’ she’d said when Tully called her.

‘Return my stolen items,’ Tully explained. ‘I think it’s shame therapy. I must atone for my sins.’

‘And what’s my role?’ Rachel asked. ‘Am I your witness?’

‘Yes,’ Tully said. ‘And maybe my accomplice, if I have to evade arrest.’

Up to this point, the day had not been as bad as Tully had imagined, especially with Rachel coming along for the ride. In fact, it was almost fun, in a perverse kind of way. They’d visited six stores so far, bearing items to return. From the elderly woman who patted her hand and said, ‘I stole the most beautiful pair of earrings from a boutique in Paris once; I still have them somewhere,’ to the baffled woman at the hardware store who kept repeating, ‘A screwdriver? You took a screwdriver?’, everyone had seemed happier to gloss over it and move on rather than make Tully feel bad. But the lady at Myer – Judy, according to her nametag – didn’t seem to have got the memo.

‘Do you mean you stole them?’ she asked, mortifyingly loudly.

‘Well . . . I didn’t pay for them,’ Tully said quietly, turning to glance at the woman who’d just lined up behind her, holding a four-pack of tea towels and a cheese board in her arms.

‘You mean you forgot?’

Tully wanted to nod. Yes, yes I forgot. Here you go, I’ll pay now. Do you take Visa? But that was not part of the deal. When Dr Shearer first raised the idea, Tully had suggested leaving the goods out the front of the shops in the middle of the night, or returning them by post, but neither of those ideas equated to ‘taking responsibility’, which the psychologist insisted was the point of the exercise.

‘No, I didn’t forget,’ Tully said quietly. ‘I made a decision to take them without paying.’

‘So you stole them?’ Judy said, impatient now.

Tully looked at Rachel. So far her sister hadn’t had to speak at all, but she had come into each shop with Tully and stood beside her as she made her confession. It had been surprisingly fortifying, having her there.

‘Yes,’ Tully said. ‘I stole them.’

‘I’m going to have to speak to the manager,’ Judy said, before picking up the phone and explaining the situation loud enough for most people in the vicinity to hear. When she’d hung up she said, ‘My manager is calling the police. Can you please wait over there?’

Tully and Rachel stepped to the side, and Judy gestured to the woman with the tea towels to step forward and began scanning her items.

Tully felt a panicky feeling start in her chest. She’d known this was a possibility. ‘Some people might not be forgiving,’ Dr Shearer had said. ‘They might decide to take legal action against you, which they are within their rights to do. You have to accept that. That’s part of taking responsibility too.’

Tully tried to imagine going home and telling Sonny that she had been charged. It would be a disaster for him. For one thing, they couldn’t afford a fine or legal representation. For another, having a wife with a criminal record would look very bad for a criminal lawyer. And she couldn’t even bring herself to think about jail time. She’d done some googling and found out that, given the value of the items she’d taken, she could be imprisoned for a maximum of two years. Even though it was warranted and she deserved it, what would she say to Locky and Miles? How could she bear to be parted from them?

‘Is that really necessary?’ Rachel said, stepping forward. ‘She has the items here, they are undamaged. She has brought them back of her own accord.’

‘My manager said this is the procedure,’ Judy said.

‘Look,’ Rachel said, lowering her voice, ‘my sister isn’t well, okay? She’s a kleptomaniac. She doesn’t mean to steal. She doesn’t need these items. Even if she did, she had the money to pay for them!’