She just had to hope Sonny wasn’t in one of his helpful moods. Lately, it felt like every time she nosed her car into the driveway he appeared, ready to help her with the bags. She suspected he was keeping tabs on her, making sure she wasn’t spending any money they didn’t have. How she would love to tell him that he needn’t worry about that! But how could she? Sonny was the ultimate law-abiding citizen. He drove the speed limit, he refused to park in No Standing zones, he waited his turn in line and told people off for pushing in. One of the biggest fights of their marriage had been when Tully had lied on her travel insurance forms, saying she’d lost her sunglasses in Italy when she’d actually misplaced them months before, back home in Australia. Her responses of ‘everyone does it’ and ‘we can’t afford to replace them’ only seemed to infuriate him more. ‘Not everyone does it,’ he replied. ‘And we can afford to replace them.’

Except now they couldn’t, because their money was gone. Or, if not all of it, a sizable chunk. It still stunned her to think about it. Sonny had always been so good with money. Not only had he always made a stack of it, he also did wonderful-sounding things with it, like investing to offset their tax burden, self-managing their superannuation, and setting them up as ‘companies’ and ‘individual entities’ and other important things that she didn’t understand. So when he announced two weeks ago that there was a problem with one of their investments, she hadn’t understood that either.

‘Remember last year when I met with that financial adviser about reducing our tax burden?’ he said.

Tully didn’t. ‘Yes.’

‘Yeah, well, he told me about an investment – a solid, long-term investment that would deliver good returns and significantly reduce our tax liability . . .’ He trailed off.

‘And?’

‘And we lost our money.’

Tully started to get nervous. ‘What do you mean, “lost our money”? How much money are you talking about?’

He paused, which made Tully more nervous. ‘Two million.’

‘Two million dollars?’ She gaped at him. ‘Do we even have two million dollars?’

Sonny’s cheeks were pink. ‘I borrowed it. And the loan was secured against our house.’

‘You mean we’ll lose the house? We’ll be homeless?’

An image of the four of them in their car flashed into her mind. It was dark and they were in a deserted car park. She was tucking Miles and Locky into the back seat with blankets and pillows and singing them a lullaby while Sonny sat in the front, illuminated by the light of his laptop, typing furiously, trying to find a way to get them out of this mess. As horrific as the scene was, something about it felt vaguely romantic to her.

‘We won’t be homeless,’ Sonny said. ‘We’ll just have to rent for a while until we get back on our feet. And tighten our belts – no more spending.’