She and Sonny had met at a university trivia night. Tully had arrived with two friends, but because they didn’t have enough people to make up a table, they’d been put on a table with a bunch of know-it-all law students. Tully hadn’t bothered to argue when they insisted they knew the correct answer to several questions (they hadn’t), but when it came to the final question (How many children did Madonna and Guy Ritchie have together?) she had to speak up.

‘It’s two,’ she said.

‘No,’ one loudmouth, drunken law student had exclaimed. ‘It’s one. The little boy. Rocco.’

‘They also adopted a little boy from Malawi,’ Tully said. ‘David. That’s two children.’

Tully remembered the way she’d levelled her gaze at Sonny, the scribe, and gestured for him to write it down. She’d acted more confident than she felt. She didn’t have numbers on her side, after all. The law students all knew each other. If they sided with the drunken loudmouth, she wouldn’t stand a chance.

‘I think she’s right,’ Sonny said. ‘I’m going with two.’ And he wrote it down, without waiting for any input from the table. When it turned out that Tully had been right, Sonny had nodded at her, a faint look of approval in his eyes. That was the moment, he told her later, that he fell in love with her.

The relationship was full steam ahead from that night, which was fine with Tully. She always preferred travelling at high speed. For a while, she even thought Sonny had cured her of her unspeakable addiction. Or at least got her hooked on a different drug. When he looked at her, and when she looked at him, she got so high she didn’t need to think about stealing. Sonny was her drug, and she could have as much of him as she wanted.

But like all drugs, Sonny eventually lost his potency. And when he didn’t provide the hit that he once had, Tully needed to go looking for that rush of adrenaline in the place she’d always found it.

‘Boys!’ Michelle called. ‘Not so rough!’

Tully looked over, thrilled that Miles was playing on the grass with Rob and Michelle’s boys. He was often timid when other children came over, and usually spent the whole time sitting on Tully’s lap. Perhaps he was sick of Tully, given that they now spent every night together? Three weeks in, he still hadn’t slept in his big-boy bed and Tully was starting to think he never would. One day, his wife would kiss him goodnight, tuck him into his crib, and then head into her own bedroom. If this was his reaction to a new bed, Tully wondered, what would be his reaction to a new house?

‘Is that a new top, Tully?’ Michelle asked her. ‘It’s gorgeous.’

This caught Sonny’s attention. The word ‘new’ had a way of sending an electric current through him lately. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen it before either,’ he said.