The doorbell rang and Miles jumped, naked, from the couch and started running for the door. ‘Wait!’ Tully called. ‘Don’t answer the door. Wait for –’
But Miles didn’t wait. Apparently answering the door naked didn’t feature on his lengthy list of phobias. Luckily it was only Rachel. By the time Tully got there, Rachel was already holding Miles on her hip.
‘I did poop on the potty,’ Miles told her, beaming.
‘Clever boy,’ Rachel said. ‘Now, let’s play hide-and-seek. You hide, I’ll count. Go!’
Rachel put him down and he ran off happily towards the living room. It was like he was a different child. Why is he such an angel for everyone else? Tully wondered.
‘I think Miles hates me,’ Tully started, but before she could finish, Rachel took her by the arm and led her past mountains of boxes into the reception room off the foyer.
‘I found Fiona Arthur,’ Rachel said.
Tully frowned. ‘Wait. Who’s Fiona Arthur again?’
Rachel lowered her voice. ‘The woman whose name Mum wrote down.’
Miles appeared in the corner of the room, made a shushing gesture to Tully, and tucked himself behind the curtains.
‘Oh,’ Tully said. ‘Yes! Of course. Fiona Arthur!’
‘Well . . . it turns out she was Dad’s first wife.’
Tully blinked. ‘But Dad doesn’t have a first wife. Except Mum, I guess.’
‘That’s what I thought too.’
‘So who told you he did? Fiona Arthur?’
‘Yes.’
Miles started to move impatiently behind the curtain.
‘Hmmm,’ Rachel said loudly. ‘I wonder where Miles could be. Could he be under the table?’
Miles giggled loudly.
Tully said, ‘Well, she must be lying.’
‘But why? What would she have to gain by lying? Besides, I met her today, Tul. And she was credible. Apparently Mum and Dad met while he was married to Fiona, and Dad left her for Mum.’
‘She said that?’
‘She did.’
Tully’s mind was boggling. Even without everything else going on in her life right now, she wasn’t sure she could wrap her head around this. ‘But if that’s true, why didn’t Dad tell us?’
‘I have some theories. The leading one is that Mum was saving money to leave Dad.’
‘What?’ Tully said. ‘Why would she want to leave Dad?’
‘This is going to sound crazy,’ Rachel said, ‘but I’m starting to suspect that Dad is abusive.’
Tully opened her mouth to refute this claim, but before she could speak, Rachel held up a hand. ‘Why don’t I tell you my reasons?’
Tully didn’t respond, which Rachel must have taken as a sign to continue.
‘First, Mum has suggested it more than once when I’ve been to see her. She’s called him a sadistic bastard, and at Miles’s party she warned us to look out for him and said he’d made her life hell. And I know Mum says all sorts of things – that’s why I’ve never taken it seriously. But there’s more.’
‘Like what?’
‘Mum’s dementia. Remember how perplexed the doctors were when she was diagnosed so young with no family history of the disease? Well, I’ve been doing some research and apparently there is a strong correlation between multiple head injuries and dementia.’
Tully felt the beginnings of a headache coming on. She pressed her fingers to her temples. ‘So you’re saying what? Mum got dementia because Dad beat her up and gave her head trauma?’
‘She did get injured a lot while we were growing up. Remember all those times she had a sprained ankle or a dislocated finger?’
‘Mum was very clumsy.’
‘So she used to say. But I don’t have a single memory of her falling over or injuring herself while she was with me. Do you?’
Tully thought about that. A memory came at her – a summer holiday when she was a kid. They were at the theme park in Arthurs Seat, doing a big tree-climbing tour. Mum had been a natural at it. She’d danced along the branches, clambered up and down ropes and ridden the flying fox to the end. She’d beaten them all, including Dad.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Now you mention it, I don’t remember any incidents.’
‘All of that could be explained away, though, if it wasn’t for what Fiona said,’ Rachel added. ‘She told me he hurt her.’
‘So you’re saying—’
‘If Mum wanted to leave Dad, she would have needed to save a lot of money. She didn’t have any of her own. She didn’t even have a bank account. She might have been saving it for years.’