‘Not my trike!’ Locky had cried, as the removalists carried away the tricycle he hadn’t used in years. ‘Wait, that’s my favourite toy!’ he’d said about the bath toy he’d never opened and which had sat in the gift cupboard ever since.

Tully had stuck to her guns and removed all items and then bought the boys ice cream to console them. Healthy food, she realised, really was a privilege of the wealthy. When you had less help, more to do and less money to spend, junk food was really all you had to appease tired, angry children.

They’d also brought in a garden stylist – a bohemian-looking man named Bodhi who placed ornamental rocks, garden benches and bonsai plants around the property. Tully had been appalled at the price of it (and, frankly, at the idea of a garden stylist), but she had to admit, the garden looked bloody gorgeous.

Now, Tully looked out the bedroom window, watching the boys bouncing on the trampoline that had been allowed to stay only if it was tucked in the far corner of the garden, out of sight. Tully could hear them shouting, ‘I’m going higher than you . . . No, you’re not . . . I am . . . Daddy, he said he’s going higher!’ It reminded her of herself and Rachel when they were younger, always fighting to be higher, or faster, or better.

‘You’re both going equally high,’ Sonny said.

Sonny had always been an exceptionally good dad. Determined not to be like his own unreliable, largely-absent father, he made sure to spend time with the boys every day, and hung his parenting hat on the fact that if he said he was going to do something, he did it. (Tully, on the other hand, regularly promised the kids all sorts of things she had no intention of delivering. Her children, she’d figured out, were incredibly focused and intense, but also very forgetful, so this technique worked well for her.) Unfortunately, while he was spending a lot of time with the boys, he hadn’t been spending time with Tully, not since she’d told him her secret. The other night, when she got home from Rachel’s, he hadn’t even turned around when she came to his office door to say hello. Eventually she’d taken herself to bed, stuffing the cash-filled plastic bag in her bedside table, where her stolen goods had once been kept.

Rachel, by contrast, had taken the news that her sister was a kleptomaniac surprisingly well. She’d been shocked, naturally, and had stared at Tully for several seconds. ‘You’re a . . .’

‘Kleptomaniac,’ Tully repeated. ‘It means I steal stuff. I’ve been doing it my whole life. Well, since I was eleven.’

Rachel had lots of questions, naturally, and Tully had been happy to answer them. It had been cathartic, in a way, and Tully found herself wishing that Sonny had asked those sorts of questions instead of just cutting her off emotionally. There was something about the way Rachel spoke to her, as though she was curious rather than judgemental, that was incredibly reassuring. As a result, Tully felt closer to her sister now than she’d felt in months. Years. She may never have felt this close to Rachel.