‘But what if it’s more than dysfunction? What if Rachel’s right and Dad was abusing Mum? What if he’s abusing Heather now?’

‘If that’s the case,’ Sonny said, ‘then that’s the next challenge we’ll confront. But you can drop your game face now. I don’t want to see your game face again.’

‘What about chinks in the armour?’ Tully said.

Sonny smiled. ‘The chinks are my favourite thing about you, Tully. From now on,’ he said, ‘I want to see every last one.’

54

HEATHER

Heather had seen Mary twice since she’d come to visit that day – not as a counsellor, but as a friend. It felt so good to be able to talk, really talk. It was during one of those conversations, which Mary had said she would keep completely confidential, that Heather confessed the reality of her childhood. Mary had taken it surprisingly well. She didn’t seem disgusted. Not even particularly shocked. And Heather was starting to realise how much she was projecting her expectations of a violent, destructive relationship onto a healthy one.

‘We are all products of what we experienced as children,’ Mary had said. ‘Our childhood helps form the way we view things. Certainly, if you experience trauma as a child, it can lead you to believe that trauma is life, and that you will never be, and indeed don’t deserve to be, safe from it, even in your own home. But in your case, you are safe from it, Heather. It’s those childhood demons that you aren’t safe from. You need to address them.’

And so that was exactly what Heather was doing.

Heather’s psychologist was a very beautiful, very well-dressed woman in her mid-fifties. She had the faintest trace of a Russian accent, and a matching difficult-to-pronounce name starting with an H. ‘Everyone calls me Inna,’ she said. ‘You’re welcome to do the same.’

‘Thank you,’ Heather said. ‘You can call me Heather.’

‘I’ve read the notes that you provided before you came in today. You had an extremely traumatic childhood, Heather. It’s amazing you are coping as well as you are.’

Heather smiled shyly. ‘I wouldn’t say I’m coping all that well.’

Inna crossed her legs. ‘Tell me about that.’

And so Heather did. She told Inna about her drinking, about the miscarriage, about the ‘abuse’.

‘Tell me more about the abuse,’ Inna said. ‘I’m particularly interested in why you are so certain you are imagining it.’

‘Well,’ Heather said, ‘there have been several incidents where I’ve been injured. Once I fell up the stairs. Another time I landed in broken glass after I could have sworn Stephen strangled me.’

Inna regarded her closely. ‘You say you could have sworn. But now you don’t think that was the case?’

‘No. I think I imagined the incidents.’

Inna took a moment to digest this. ‘Did you have any injuries?’

‘Yes. But I’d been drinking during nearly all of these incidents, and I don’t have a great recollection of them. I may have been responsible for my injuries. There have also been times when I should have been injured . . . and I wasn’t. Like the time I thought Stephen strangled me, but I didn’t have a single mark on my neck afterwards.’