The Younger Wife(87)

Pam had passed away a month ago of pneumonia. It was a common way for people with dementia to die, but it had still come as a shock. They’d got the news that she was ill on a Wednesday, and by Saturday she was gone. The funeral had been small but lovely. Heather had attended, but remained at the back of the room.

‘It feels quieter without Mum and Dad, doesn’t it?’ Tully said.

Heather didn’t say anything. It was the busiest, loudest Christmas she had ever known.

The boys ran outside, leaving Heather, Tully and Rachel to clean up.

‘You know what I wish?’ Tully said, as they loaded up the dishwasher. ‘I wish we’d been able to confront Dad. I still have so many questions I want to ask him.’

‘Me too,’ Rachel said. She was holding a tea towel and drying a large salad bowl. ‘About Fiona Arthur. About Mum. And . . . I just wish we’d been able to hear him admit it. It’s the doubt that’s the worst. I wish we had proof.’

‘Just because we can’t prove it doesn’t mean it isn’t true,’ Heather said.

‘But what if it isn’t true?’ Rachel said, putting down the bowl. ‘What if we got confused somehow?’

Heather could tell by the way Tully nodded that she was plagued by similar doubts. It caused a physical reaction in Heather. It felt vaguely matriarchal, which was comical, given she was the youngest of the women, and certainly not their mother.

‘We didn’t get confused,’ she said firmly. Stephen had spent so long gaslighting her, but she trusted herself now. She needed Tully and Rachel to trust themselves too. ‘Remember what we felt the moment Stephen grabbed Pam? We all felt it. Our instincts are there for a reason.’

Tully opened her mouth, but Heather held up a hand, stopping her.

‘Listen. I know how it feels to doubt myself. But I’m done with that now. And, honestly? I think the money in the hot-water bottle meant Pam was done doubting herself, too.’

She was getting through to them now, Heather could feel it. She walked over and stood in front of them, so they were in a small triangle. ‘The last thing she would’ve wanted was to pass on her doubt to you two.’

‘She’s right,’ Rachel said. ‘Mum would hate us doubting ourselves.’

‘It’s time to start trusting our instincts,’ Tully agreed.

Heather nodded. They had to start trusting their instincts.

What choice did they have? It wasn’t as if they could ask Pam.





EPILOGUE


PAMELA


Three years earlier . . .


Pamela counted out the money. Ninety-seven thousand, three hundred and seventy-two dollars.

‘Thanks, Mum,’ she said out loud.

Obviously her mother couldn’t hear her. Two days ago, Pam had got the phone call from her in the hospital. A suspected heart attack, Mum had said gravely, explaining that she’d been taken by ambulance to the hospital. Pam was fumbling for her keys, ready to drive to the hospital, when her mother added, ‘Oh, Pammy? Can you swing by my place and grab my hot-water bottle on the way?’

Pam hesitated. ‘I can probably find a hot-water bottle here somewhere . . .’

‘No,’ her mother said firmly. ‘I need my hot-water bottle. It’s important, Pammy.’

Her mother provided instructions for where she would find it. At the back of the wardrobe, behind the shoes. When Pam brought it to her mother’s bedside, her mother showed her its contents.

‘A hundred thousand dollars?’ Pam cried. ‘Mum, where did you get a hundred thousand dollars?’

Mum explained that for years she’d been withdrawing her pension money each week and hiding the cash in the hot-water bottle.

When Pam asked why, she explained that if the government saw she wasn’t spending it all, they’d reduce the amount she received.

Turned out her mother was quite the pension fraudster.

‘What if you’d died and never told me?’ Pam asked.

‘Then the people cleaning out the house would have got a nice surprise.’

Pam had brought the hot-water bottle home and put it in her bedside drawer for safekeeping until her mum got out of hospital. But her mother had died that morning of another heart attack. So now, she supposed, the money was hers.

Pam wondered what she would do with all this money. What would Mum have wanted her to do?

Mum was always telling Pam that she needed to get away, unwind, take a break from her life. Perhaps she and Stephen could go to one of those health retreats? One with facials and massages. She could use a massage. Lately her body hurt all the time. One too many falls, she suspected. She was always tripping here, or stumbling there.

A few weeks ago at book club, she’d commented on her aches and pains, and all the ladies had agreed. Old age, they said. Menopause, someone else chimed in. But afterward, as she helped herself to Mary’s Black Forest cake, Diana Rothschild had made a comment that rankled Pam.

‘Do you find that you are more likely to injure yourself while Stephen is around?’

Pam had been mortified. What was she insinuating? Stephen would never lay a hand on her. He was a doctor. Do no harm! She’d shrugged the question off and avoided Diana ever since. But she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Because as upsetting as Diana’s comment was, Pam did find that she was more likely to injure herself while Stephen was around. One hundred per cent more likely.