Stephen was always wonderfully respectful like that. They hadn’t reached that point in the relationship where they barged into the bathroom when the other was in there demanding to know where the car keys had been left. Heather felt an unexpected pang of yearning to reach that point with Stephen.
‘Of course,’ she replied.
The door cracked open. ‘I like coming home to find you in my shower.’
‘I like that you like it.’ She heard him drop his keys on the vanity. ‘How was your day?’
Through the glass she saw him prop himself up on the bathroom counter. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I started divorce proceedings with Pam, so good and bad. How was your day?’
Heather turned off the shower and wrapped a plush towel around herself. ‘Oh.’
‘It’s fine. Nothing for you to worry about.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Totally sure. How was your day? Did you arrange that lunch with Rachel and Tully?’
‘Oh,’ Heather said again. ‘Not yet.’
‘My guess is that you’ll be hearing from Rachel very soon.’ He said it at the very same moment that Heather’s phone began to ring. She glanced at the screen. It was Rachel.
She held it up to show Stephen, amazed. ‘Told you,’ he said. ‘I know things.’ He gestured for her to answer it.
‘Rachel,’ Heather said.
‘Heather! I hope this isn’t a bad time? I just wanted to follow up about lunch. I was thinking I could host at my place, if that works for you.’
She lifted her gaze to gape at Stephen. ‘That would be lovely,’ she said. ‘And . . . Tully will be there too?’
‘Of course,’ Rachel said, after a slight pause. ‘Tully wouldn’t miss it.’
When Heather hung up the phone, Stephen looked positively triumphant.
She shook her head. ‘How did you know?’
He tapped his temple, still smiling, but with a slightly different look in his eyes now. Then he opened the cupboard under the sink and pulled out the whisky bottle.
‘Told you,’ he said. ‘I know things.’
11
TULLY
As Tully sat on one of Rachel’s counter stools with a glass of wine in hand, she felt herself relax for the first time in weeks. Part of it was the wine. The other part of it was Rachel. As silly as it sounded, she was touched that Rachel had invited her to lunch. Generally, they caught up as a family – or they had before Mum went into the nursing home – for birthdays and Christmas, or to shop for a gift for Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. And there were the other odd things – like their cousin Caitlin’s hens’ party or the time they got tickets to see Frozen, the musical. But intimate one-on-one meet-ups at Rachel’s house weren’t something they’d ever done before, and Tully was excited.
Rachel lived in an unappealing blonde-brick unit on the hip north side of Melbourne. It should have been ugly as sin, and yet somehow she’d managed to make it charming, the kind of place people wanted to hang out. Even her tiny courtyard was lovely, decorated with fairy lights and hanging plant pots. She also had a gift for entertaining – being able to produce a good bottle of wine, spectacular lasagne and a salad with absolutely no notice, and without any apparent effort. Any time you went to Rachel’s, your glass was full, your plate was warm, and conversation flowed all night. It was a vibe Tully had been unable to re-create, even when paying caterers.
Today, as Tully sipped her wine, Rachel stood on the other side of the counter, piping intricate flowers onto a wedding cake that she’d been making for days.
‘That one isn’t straight,’ Tully said helpfully. At least she hoped it was helpful. If it was her cake, she would definitely want to know. And Rachel, to her credit, didn’t seem bothered; she merely examined the crooked flower, said, ‘You’re right,’ and straightened it.
Rachel had called the day before to invite her to lunch. Tully had been in the middle of hiding a pile of recently acquired goods in the garage and she’d been about to ignore the phone when she got a case of the What Ifs.
What if it was Dad? He was their only living functioning parent – what if he’d had a heart attack? What if he was lying on a table in an emergency room somewhere, taking his last breaths, thinking, I’d love to see my daughter Tully one more time before I go, and she didn’t answer the call?
What if it was Mum? Before she’d moved into the nursing home they’d received several worrying phone calls about her. The one from the supermarket cashier who’d found her wandering around the car park when she couldn’t remember which car was hers. The one from the cleaning lady when Mum had gone ballistic at her for ‘breaking into her home’。 They’d had fewer worrying phone calls since Mum moved into the nursing home, but Tully knew enough about Alzheimer’s to know that more worrying phone calls would be coming.