The Younger Wife(68)
‘What do you mean what? Do you really need me to explain it?’
He looked back at the road. ‘I’m afraid I do.’
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘I’m leaving because I won’t allow myself to be abused a moment longer.’
‘Abused? Heather, what are you talking about?’
She shook her head. She wasn’t going to fall for this again. ‘I was sober this time, Stephen, so you can’t say I was drunk and confused.’
‘I can assure you I wasn’t going to say that,’ he said. ‘Heather, can you tell me what you . . .’ He paused, shook his head. ‘Can you tell me what you think happened back there?’
‘You were there!’
‘Humour me,’ he said.
‘Fine.’ She glanced at him warily. ‘I told you I was having a drink and you pushed me up against the fridge and strangled me. When I told you I was pregnant you let me go, and I fell into a pile of broken glass.’
Stephen was quiet for several seconds. ‘That’s what you think happened?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘That’s what happened.’
He didn’t respond.
‘What’s your story then?’ she asked, as they pulled into the hospital car park.
‘My story?’ He laughed, but there was no humour in it. ‘I was trying to talk to you. I tried to take the wine bottle from you and you screamed at me. You dropped the bottle and it broke. Then you slipped in the wine on the floor. I grabbed your arm to try to stop you but you landed in the glass.’
She shook her head. ‘That’s not right. You strangled me.’ She lifted her hands to her throat where his hands had been. ‘You had your hands around my neck and I . . . I . . .’
Stephen pulled up the handbrake. ‘If I had my hands around your neck, Heather, where are the marks?’
Heather pulled the rear-view mirror towards herself and peered at her reflection.
She couldn’t see any marks, but it was dark in the car. She twisted her head back and forth.
‘I’m worried about you, Heather,’ he said. ‘I think you might need to speak to someone.’
Heather continued to stare at her neck in the mirror, suddenly less sure of herself. That, she realised, was why she didn’t want to tell him she was pregnant. Stephen was so clever at getting her all turned around. At least with her father she knew for sure she was dealing with a monster.
‘Let’s just get these stitches,’ she said, and she got out of the car and slammed the door.
47
TULLY
‘Why wasn’t he wearing a nappy?!’ Sonny cried, when he found Tully on her hands and knees, scrubbing the rug. ‘It’s going to need to be professionally cleaned now. This is going to cost a fortune.’
‘Maybe not,’ Tully said, sitting back to survey the damage. ‘I think I’ve got most of –’
‘God, Tully. It’s just one bloody thing after another with you!’
‘It’s not like I took a dump on the rug!’
‘You were in charge of him!’
‘How was I supposed to know he was going to crap on the rug?’
After she’d recovered from the initial trauma, Tully had tried to find out the answer to that question herself. She hadn’t yelled or even voiced frustration; she’d merely squatted down to Miles’s level and said, ‘What happened, buddy?’
‘I not know,’ he said.
‘An accident?’
He’d looked at her with the sweetest, most earnest expression. ‘Not an accident.’
Tully nodded. ‘Sometimes people do things on purpose and they don’t know why. Sometimes even I do that.’
‘You do?’
She nodded. Then, in the most classic example of child randomness, he threw his chubby little arms around her neck.
Tully wasn’t sure what she’d done right, but for some reason, she felt proud of that parenting moment. She hadn’t felt anything resembling pride for months. And now Sonny had come along and ruined it.
‘You know what?’ she said. ‘Forget it. You’re here now – you deal with it!’
She threw down the sponge, stood up and walked out the door, even as Sonny shouted after her that he was sorry. She needed to get away. There was too much on her mind. Dad had another wife before Mum. Dad might be an abuser. Mum might have been saving money to get away from him. It felt like everything that she’d trusted to be real and true had turned out to be a mirage and now she didn’t know what or who to believe.
So she drove to Bunnings.
As she entered the hardware store, it was as if she’d slipped into a parallel universe. She was above herself, watching as she perused each aisle. At her last session, Dr Shearer had asked her to describe the feeling she got before she stole something. To her surprise, she’d managed to articulate it fairly well.
‘It’s like that moment when, after being on keto for three weeks, someone walks past you in a food court carrying a baked potato with sour cream and bacon. You can try to think of other things, but thoughts of that potato haunt you day and night. You can try to satisfy yourself with a bit of chicken or an egg, but you know you’re kidding yourself. The fact is, the moment you saw that potato, a clock started ticking until the moment you’d eat it. In most cases, it’s better to just eat it and be done with it.’