The urge to steal hadn’t gone away like she’d hoped. In fact, Tully often found herself standing in the supermarket, wondering if she could just drop a small packet of herbs or a ballpoint pen into her pocket so that she could breathe properly again. Those times, she’d learned to abandon the shopping cart and return home without the things they needed. Online shopping helped a lot with this, and Sonny went to the store in her place when she was having a particularly anxious day. But she’d noticed it was getting easier. Once again, progress, not perfection.

Sonny had been working hard, trying to make back the money they had lost. In the meantime, they enjoyed living in a smaller house. Tully no longer had a cleaner, and she found it rather satisfying to do the cleaning herself. The boys were doing fewer hours at their community pre-school than they’d done at their private one, and Miles was loving having more time with her. That, combined with the therapy he had every week, had resulted in a huge change in him. He’d slept in his big-boy bed every night since they moved house.

She still thought about Dad a lot. She missed his face, his throaty laugh, his intelligent perspective on things. She missed hearing him on the phone with the boys, listening with delight to whatever nonsense they decided to tell him. She missed the way he used to listen to her, too. Like he was interested. Like a father listened. The hardest part, though, was the special occasions. They’d made it through Father’s Day, but Christmas was coming up soon. She hadn’t told Rachel how much she missed him. It felt like a betrayal to Mum. And yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that he wasn’t all bad. Perhaps the very worst people still had some good in them. And perhaps the very best had some bad.

67

HEATHER

It was the Christmas Heather had always dreamed of. In her big, beautiful home, the light sparkling off the pool, with children playing on the grass. Rachel and Tully had provided most of the food, but Heather had bought a ham. Before lunch they’d all exchanged exquisitely wrapped gifts, then embarked on a hilarious game of Stealing Santa, where they all opened a ‘silly gift’ and then fought over one or two of them. The whole thing was magnificent.

Stephen should be here, she thought, not for the first time. Over the past few months, every time they got together as a family, she thought it. He would have loved to see them all coming together like this. It felt so wrong that she was here, with his family, when he wasn’t. Still, she didn’t take the privilege for granted, even for a second.

She refilled her glass of champagne, which helped a little. She’d been drinking a lot more lately, but she supposed that was understandable. She was a grieving widow, after all. Part of it was the loneliness, but the other part was the sleep. At night, on the nights she didn’t drink, she laid awake in their bed, plagued by fears and doubts. It turned out that Stephen was doing a good job of gaslighting her even from beyond the grave.