‘Nice to meet you, Heather,’ Tully said, offering her a small, strange wave. There was always something a bit awkward about the lack of a handshake. Australia had fared exceptionally well during the COVID-19 pandemic – and since the strict lockdown had been lifted, life had continued more or less as normal, apart from a little more handwashing and a few less people at the footy. Still, some people were nervous about the handshake, and Heather, with her perfectly white shirt, seemed like the classic germophobe who would wave away a handshake and then spray Glen 20 disinfectant on her palm ‘just to be sure’。 Like Tully did.
‘It’s lovely to meet you too, Natalie.’
‘Tully,’ she corrected. ‘Only my parents call me Natalie.’
It sounded like a barb, Tully thought. Maybe it was.
‘My apologies,’ Heather said sincerely. ‘Tully.’
Tully had to hand it to her. The woman was bloody faultless! The question was – what was she doing with Dad?
Tully tried to see her father through Heather’s eyes. He had sandy-grey hair – a full head of it, not bad for his age. He was tall and quite athletic. Actually, now she thought of it, he had stepped up the exercise recently. You heard about this kind of thing all the time: middle-aged men taking up marathon running to try to catch the eye of a younger woman. Often they ended up with a sixpack or some biceps before invariably having a heart attack and leaving their formerly penniless younger wives with a sizeable inheritance and the freedom to marry a man their own age. Maybe that explained Heather’s interest in Dad?
As for Dad’s intentions with Heather, it was still unclear. She knew some men liked to have young girlfriends – age-defying, mid-life-crisis sort of men with something to prove, but Dad didn’t have anything to prove. He was a heart surgeon at the top of his field. A scratch golfer. Chairman of the board of Australia Gives Life, a charity that flew patients to Australia from developing countries to have lifesaving surgery. More importantly, he was a self-confessed dork. A man who was perfectly comfortable running outside in his dressing-gown with one last bag of rubbish as the garbage truck approached. The kind who prided himself on being able to estimate the exact amount of milk to froth for Mum’s cappuccino in the morning. A man who resisted mounting pressure to buy an iPad because he didn’t understand what was wrong with a good old-fashioned desktop computer. He was . . . Dad.
‘What a view!’ Dad said, holding his arms out wide to take in Half Moon Bay. It was a beautiful day and the bifold windows were open, letting in a light breeze and offering sweeping views of the sea. There were only four window tables available, and as they were not able to be booked, Tully had arrived an hour and fifteen minutes early to secure one . . . all to impress a woman she already hated. Tully recognised the absurdity of this, but she also understood this was how it had to be. The Astons weren’t the type of family to make a scene. They never spoke ill of each other outside the family circle. They never spoke ill of each other inside the family circle. The Astons did things nicely. Civilly. And a little bit absurdly.
‘You did good, sweetie,’ Dad said, winking at Tully.
Tully knew she’d done good. She may not be running a successful business like Rachel, but she knew how to find a nice restaurant. Lunch would cost a small fortune, but one of the upsides of going out with her father was that he always paid. If Sonny was present, he and Dad would have a polite scuffle over the bill, but Dad always won. Tully wondered if, given what Sonny was calling their ‘new financial situation’， those polite scuffles would soon be a thing of the past.
‘Shall we sit?’ Heather suggested.
Heather’s voice, Tully noticed, was imbued with a solid upper-middle-class accent, prompting Tully to reassess her hypothesis that Heather’s interest in Dad was an attempt to improve her status in life. She could be a gold-digger, but judging by Heather’s Burberry trench, the woman wasn’t hard up. Which left Tully a bit stumped. If not for money or social standing, why would an attractive woman of thirty-four be interested in Dad?
They all sat. Already Tully was exhausted. She’d spent the evening before on two-year-old Miles’s bedroom floor, holding his hand as he got used to his new big-boy bed. She managed to sneak into her own bed around 2 am, before waking again at daybreak for Pilates followed by packing lunchboxes, cleaning for the cleaner and heading to preschool drop-off, where she was bailed up by Miles’s teacher for half an hour to discuss his ‘issues’。 This, plus the extra half-hour she spent crying in the car afterwards, made her late for her blow-out appointment – an unnecessary expense that, in light of their new financial situation, would almost certainly cause problems when Sonny saw it on the credit card statement. But it was going to be a tough day for Tully. A day that required her game face and blow-out.