‘It’s lovely to meet you too, Natalie.’

‘Tully,’ she corrected. ‘Only my parents call me Natalie.’

It sounded like a barb, Tully thought. Maybe it was.

‘My apologies,’ Heather said sincerely. ‘Tully.’

Tully had to hand it to her. The woman was bloody faultless! The question was – what was she doing with Dad?

Tully tried to see her father through Heather’s eyes. He had sandy-grey hair – a full head of it, not bad for his age. He was tall and quite athletic. Actually, now she thought of it, he had stepped up the exercise recently. You heard about this kind of thing all the time: middle-aged men taking up marathon running to try to catch the eye of a younger woman. Often they ended up with a sixpack or some biceps before invariably having a heart attack and leaving their formerly penniless younger wives with a sizeable inheritance and the freedom to marry a man their own age. Maybe that explained Heather’s interest in Dad?

As for Dad’s intentions with Heather, it was still unclear. She knew some men liked to have young girlfriends – age-defying, mid-life-crisis sort of men with something to prove, but Dad didn’t have anything to prove. He was a heart surgeon at the top of his field. A scratch golfer. Chairman of the board of Australia Gives Life, a charity that flew patients to Australia from developing countries to have lifesaving surgery. More importantly, he was a self-confessed dork. A man who was perfectly comfortable running outside in his dressing-gown with one last bag of rubbish as the garbage truck approached. The kind who prided himself on being able to estimate the exact amount of milk to froth for Mum’s cappuccino in the morning. A man who resisted mounting pressure to buy an iPad because he didn’t understand what was wrong with a good old-fashioned desktop computer. He was . . . Dad.

‘What a view!’ Dad said, holding his arms out wide to take in Half Moon Bay. It was a beautiful day and the bifold windows were open, letting in a light breeze and offering sweeping views of the sea. There were only four window tables available, and as they were not able to be booked, Tully had arrived an hour and fifteen minutes early to secure one . . . all to impress a woman she already hated. Tully recognised the absurdity of this, but she also understood this was how it had to be. The Astons weren’t the type of family to make a scene. They never spoke ill of each other outside the family circle. They never spoke ill of each other inside the family circle. The Astons did things nicely. Civilly. And a little bit absurdly.

‘You did good, sweetie,’ Dad said, winking at Tully.

Tully knew she’d done good. She may not be running a successful business like Rachel, but she knew how to find a nice restaurant. Lunch would cost a small fortune, but one of the upsides of going out with her father was that he always paid. If Sonny was present, he and Dad would have a polite scuffle over the bill, but Dad always won. Tully wondered if, given what Sonny was calling their ‘new financial situation’, those polite scuffles would soon be a thing of the past.