The Younger Wife(84)

It was a funny thing, attending the funeral of a man everyone thought was a hero. Several people volunteered to speak when Rachel, Heather and Tully said they were too traumatised. All were good, competent speakers. They put on a good show. Which was appropriate since, as it turned out, putting on a good show was all Dad really cared about.

Heather was clearly uncomfortable in her role of grieving widow. Several times when people approached to offer their condolences she said, ‘Well, we really weren’t married all that long.’ Once she even said: ‘Offer them to Pam, she was his real wife.’ Her odd comments were attributed to grief and shock or, later, at the wake, alcohol.

There was plenty of that; they’d made sure of it. It was the one thing they’d all agreed on when they’d met to organise the wake. It was at Dad and Heather’s house, and there were plenty of capable people, like Mary and Elsa and a swarm of Mum’s friends who’d offered to order the canapés, the flowers, even clean the house for the occasion. They’d taken the ladies up on all their offers, but Tully, Heather and Rachel insisted on purchasing the alcohol themselves. It had been a surreal experience, the three of them wandering around the bottle shop, each with a shopping cart, tossing bottles of booze in without thought or hesitation. Every now and again one of them looked at their cart, and then the other two, and decided they didn’t have enough and went back for more.

Eventually, when the wake was over and the guests had departed, Tully sat in the living room with Rachel and Heather and the gigantean pile of booze and they had to concede that they might have gone a little over the top.

‘We can return it,’ Tully suggested.

‘We’ll get through it,’ Heather replied.

She opened a bottle of red and filled up their glasses. Tully’s was still half full of white, but she just shrugged and drank it anyway.

‘A toast,’ Heather said, raising her glass. She sounded different, her accent a little broader, her words less carefully enunciated than usual. Probably the alcohol. ‘To shitty fathers.’

Tully looked at her. ‘Your dad was shitty too?’

She swallowed a large mouthful of wine. ‘Still is.’

‘But I thought he died?’ Tully tried to recall the circumstances of his supposed death. ‘In a . . . a car accident?’

‘I just said he died because it sounded less shameful than saying he was in jail,’ Heather said. ‘But there’s no point in lying now, is there?’ She smiled, one of those heartbreakingly sad smiles. ‘He killed my mum. That’s why he’s in there.’

Tully sat up. For the first time all day, she put her drink down. ‘Wow. Heather, I’m so sorry.’

Heather waved this away. ‘He was always abusive. For as long as I could remember, I was afraid of him. He could be nice, sure, but I never knew when he would turn violent.’

‘That’s awful,’ Rachel said, also sitting forward.

‘Were you afraid of Stephen when you were growing up?’ Heather asked.

‘Not at all,’ Tully said. ‘That’s the strangest part. How could we not have known?’

‘I suppose some people are masters at keeping it hidden,’ Rachel said.

‘It’s a trait of Dad’s that we inherited, Tul.’

‘But not anymore,’ Tully said.

Rachel and Heather nodded. ‘Not anymore.’





65


RACHEL


One month later . . .


‘Hi,’ Rachel said from the doorway of Mum’s room.

Mum looked over at her blankly, which was a little frustrating, as it was the third time Rachel had visited in as many days. Since Dad’s death, she found she couldn’t stay away.

The day after the wedding, they’d all had to go to the police station to give statements, except Mum, who had been declared unfit by the forensic medical officer. They’d all consistently said that Mum had been the one to swing the candlestick – apart from the celebrant who said she’d been too busy signing the register to notice anything – and a hearing had determined that to be the case. It was possible that the prosecution could still charge Mum with something, but Sonny explained that even if they did, it was unlikely Mum would live long enough to face it. The event had made the papers – GROOM DIES AT THE ALTAR – but it had been written up as an accident; the story was that he’d slipped and hit his head. It was preferable to groom murdered by daughter who then blamed killing on ex-wife with advanced dementia.

The wedding had entered Rachel’s nightmares several times now. Each time, a different person held the candlestick – sometimes it was her, sometimes Tully, sometimes Heather, sometimes Fiona Arthur. Sometimes Dad wasn’t hit immediately, and he fell to his knees first to beg for mercy. ‘You’d know if I was an abuser,’ he said, looking directly at Rachel. That little seed of doubt had wormed its way into her thoughts lately, but when it did, she quickly quashed it. If he wasn’t, why had he grabbed Mum like that in the chapel? And why had Mum stashed all that money away?

She stepped further into Mum’s room. ‘Okay if we come in for a visit? This is my friend Darcy.’

It was the third time Rachel had brought Darcy along to visit Mum. Rachel hadn’t encouraged it – she hadn’t even suggested it – but Darcy had insisted.