‘Yes,’ Tully said. ‘Although Mum has dementia.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘And Dad is getting remarried soon, to a woman my age.’

‘That must be hard,’ Dr Shearer said sympathetically.

There was something about the sympathy that made Tully want to share more.

She decided Dr Shearer might be all right, even if he was a man.

‘On top of that, my two-year-old son won’t sleep in his big-boy bed and refuses to eat anything he’s touched with his hands!’

It was addictive, Tully realised, getting this stuff off her chest. She was starting to feel positively giddy with it.

‘And my husband lost nearly all of our money in a bad investment!’

Dr Shearer scribbled something on the notepad in front of him. Make them pay upfront, probably. Then he looked up. ‘You certainly have a lot going on. What about support? Who do you turn to for support during all of this?’

‘Sonny, usually. But he’s not speaking to me much these days.’

‘What about your sister? Are you close?’

Tully hesitated. ‘If you’d asked me a few months ago, I’d have said no. But things have been better between us lately. As children, we were super competitive with each other. I wanted to beat her at everything.’

‘Why do you think that was?’ Dr Shearer said.

Tully didn’t know. Suffice to say, she didn’t care about beating Rachel at anything now.

‘Go back to your childhood,’ Dr Shearer said. ‘This stuff is actually very important. What happens in our childhood shapes us – our ability to relate to people, to manage our emotions, to control our impulses. There’ll be a reason you felt competitive with your sister as a child, just as there’ll be a reason that competitiveness has subsided.’

Tully thought harder, trying to unearth some significant childhood memories. Funnily enough, all the ones that presented themselves featured her dad’s voice.

Come on, Tully! You can beat her. She has the strength but you’re faster.

You can ride your bike faster than that. Rachel can do it and she’s younger than you.

Rachel climbed that tree all the way to the top. How high did you climb?

Sure, he’d been a competitive dad, but Tully had been fine with it, because he was usually on her side. Often, during a race, he’d even manoeuvre himself in front of Rachel to slow her down. Once, he even tripped Rachel when it looked like she was going to beat Tully. Later, when Dad was putting her to bed, they’d laughed about it. Tully felt like it was a little secret between them. A few weeks later, though, Tully found she didn’t find it so funny. Because, that time, she could have sworn that her dad tripped her.

32

RACHEL

Rachel was delivering a cake to a client. She liked to do that from time to time – it made her nostalgic for the early days of her business, when she used to personally deliver every item to the client. And there was no doubt she felt a certain spring in her step today. She and Darcy had spent most of the previous few days kissing like teenagers. That was as far as she was ready to take it – which felt embarrassing and strange for a thirty-five-year-old woman. Darcy seemed perfectly happy with the arrangement, so for now Rachel wasn’t going to question herself. She also wasn’t going to question the fact that, after he left this morning, she opened and finished a small block of chocolate.