And yet . . .

‘Should I take this?’ he asked, gesturing towards her glass.

Rachel let him take the glass from her and put it alongside his on the coffee table. Then he looked back at her. Paused for a beat.

He was mere inches away. She could smell his aftershave, see the little pinpricks of stubble on his jaw. He lifted her chin. It was like she was outside of herself, watching it happen to someone else. He was only millimetres from her face when she pulled away.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, pulling away. ‘I can’t.’

28

HEATHER

Stephen was silent as he drove home from Mary and Michael’s. Heather tried to talk to him a couple of times but was greeted with only one-word answers. And when she tried to put her hand on his, he gently moved his away. The tension took Heather back to a night when she was about eight, and she’d been with her parents at a New Year’s Eve party. There had been two other children there: a twelve-year-old boy who’d taken cigarettes from his mum’s pocket and then taken Heather behind the shed so she could watch him smoke them; and a three-year-old girl, who Heather had played with like a baby doll until she’d finally fallen asleep on the living room floor. After that, Heather had hidden in one of the bedrooms, reading a magazine she’d found on a shelf. She’d fallen asleep there, in a corner next to a pile of coats. When her parents wanted to leave, they couldn’t find her. Apparently they looked for her for hours. When they finally found her, her dad was livid.

Heather remembered the car ride, the silence of it. She could feel her mother’s fear and her father’s mounting rage. She knew it was all her fault. Why had she gone into that bedroom? Why didn’t she fall asleep in the living room, like the little girl? A three-year-old knew better than she did. She was an idiot. And when they got home, she and her mother paid the price. As usual.

And tonight, once again, she was to blame for the evening ending badly.

‘Are you okay?’ she asked Stephen as they pulled into the garage.

His gaze flickered to her for a moment, then he nodded.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have talked about Pam. Or said that we changed the plans.’

He turned off the ignition. ‘You can talk about Pam as much as you like, Heather. And they were going to find out about the house plans eventually. Elsa was out of line there, not you.’

‘Oh,’ Heather said, confused. ‘Then why are you upset with me?’

‘I’m upset,’ he said, ‘because you said you weren’t going to drink tonight.’

‘But Mary and Michael kept filling my glass.’

He looked straight ahead. He was quiet for a long time, as if he was really contemplating what he was going to say next. Finally, he said: ‘I think you have a problem, Heather.’