“Is everything okay?” She tried not to sound like the school principal.
The problem was that she didn’t really feel like the school principal at all when she spoke to Amy; what she felt like was the baby of the family, the one who always did Amy’s bidding, because Amy was the revered, adored boss of the family, and they all used to do what she commanded, even the boys. That was fine when they were children, when Amy was the best at coming up with ideas for games and finding loopholes in the rules set by their parents, but now they were grown-ups, or at least Brooke was a grown-up, and she was not taking instructions from someone with no career, no driver’s license, no fixed address, and precarious mental health. Yet as soon as Brooke heard Amy’s voice she could sense an involuntary reflex, as irresistible and unmistakable as the knee-jerk reflex, to please and impress her big sister, and consequently, in her fruitless attempt to resist and conceal that reflex, she ended up sounding like the school principal.
“Why did you answer, then? If you’re busy?” Amy sounded breathless.
“I accidentally answered.” Brooke leaned back against the car door. “Are you running for a bus or something?”
“I just finished a run.”
“Good for you. Did you stretch first?”
She knew her sister’s hamstrings as well as her own. Her family’s bodies were the first ones she’d practiced on when she was studying. She felt a sense of ownership of all their problems: Amy’s hamstrings, her dad’s knees, Logan’s shoulder, Troy’s calf issues, her mother’s knotted-up lower back.
“I sure did,” said Amy.
“Liar.” She started walking toward the café with the phone to her ear. She was aware of an irrational but fierce sense of competitiveness because Amy had been for a run and Brooke had done no exercise this weekend thanks to the migraine. It made no sense. Brooke was younger and fitter than Amy. Yet as soon as she knew her sister was out for a run Brooke felt a wild desire to be running too: faster, longer.
“How are you?” asked Amy. Brooke heard a seagull’s squawk. She’d been running on the beach. Damn her. So typical. Brooke was in a suburban car park worrying about cash flow, and Amy was running on a beach, probably about to eat eggs Benedict for breakfast.
“I’m fine,” said Brooke. “Well, not great. I had a migraine on the weekend.”
A woman walked out of the café carrying a cardboard tray of coffees. She lifted the tray in clumsy greeting, and Brooke waved back. Right hip pain. Brooke monitored her gait, which was unfortunately perfect. The patients who were diligent with their exercises got better and didn’t need her anymore.
“I’m sorry,” said Amy. “Did Grant look after you?”
“He was away. Camping. The Blue Mountains. With some old friends from—just some old friends.” She made herself stop. Apparently the trick for a good lie was not to give too much unnecessary detail.
“Oh no! You should have called. I could have brought you soup! My local Chinese takeaway does the best chicken-and-sweet-corn soup you’ve ever tasted!”
“It’s fine. I was fine. Anyway, what’s up?” Brooke put her key in the glass door. The sight of her logo on the door gave her a complicated sensation of pleasure and pride and fear. It was two stick figures of a woman and a man holding the name Delaney’s Physiotherapy above their heads like a banner. Logan’s girlfriend, Indira, who was a graphic designer, had created it for her, and Brooke loved it. She imagined someone scraping her logo off the door, optimistically replacing it with a brand-new logo for their own dream business.
“Sorry,” said Amy. “I won’t take long. Got any patients today?”
“Yes,” said Brooke shortly. She would never admit her fears for the clinic to Amy. That wasn’t the way their relationship worked. She always needed her big sister to see that this was how a grown-up lived her life, and Amy was always gratifyingly impressed, although there was a certain detachment to her admiration, as if Brooke’s perfectly normal choices (get a degree, get married, buy a house) were just not possible for her.
“Oh, well, that’s great, good for you. Listen, so I only just heard about—”
Brooke cut her off.
“About Harry’s comeback plans? Yes, I only just heard about it too. I assume Mum and Dad know, although I’m surprised I haven’t heard from them. I don’t think he’ll have the mobility—”
“No, I’m not talking about Harry. I’m talking about the girl.”
Brooke paused. What girl? Some other ex-student?
“I couldn’t sleep last night thinking about it,” said Amy. She was speaking in that irritating singsong voice that meant she might be about to cry or yell or have some kind of meltdown. “Have you met her yet? I don’t know, I just feel quite weird about it, don’t you? The whole situation is just so … random, don’t you think?”
As Brooke listened to her sister she switched on the lights. There was a reception counter and empty desk ready and waiting for the office manager she couldn’t yet afford to hire. The walls were painted an encouraging, calming Sea Breeze. She’d spent hours trying to decide between Sea Breeze and Deep Ocean Blue as if the right wall color would affect patient outcomes. She’d mounted full-length mirrors so patients could check their form as they did their exercises, although this meant she had to keep seeing her own reflection. It didn’t matter when patients were there. It was just when she was alone that she hated seeing her own face. The new rented equipment sat there ready and waiting and costing her money: one exercise bike, three medicine balls, hand weights, and stretchy bands. Framed posters of athletes celebrating hard-won triumphs: on their knees, foreheads to the ground, kissing gold medals. There was only one picture of a tennis player and that was the only picture where the athlete wasn’t celebrating. It was a black-and-white shot of Martina Navratilova stretching for a backhand at Wimbledon, her face contorted, mullet hair flying around her headband. It would have looked strange if Brooke didn’t have a tennis player, like she was making a point, and her parents would have noticed when they came to see the clinic.
“Good old Martina,” said her dad fondly when he saw the picture, as if he and Martina went way back.
“And what if the boyfriend turns up at their house?” said Amy. “And things get out of hand?”
“I’ve lost you,” said Brooke. Her mind had wandered. She seemed to have missed a vital part of the conversation.
“What if he has a weapon?”
“What if who has a weapon?”
“The abusive boyfriend!”
She said, “Amy, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
There was silence. Brooke sat down at the reception desk and powered up her computer.
“Really?” said Amy. “You don’t know? I thought for sure you’d know.”
The computer buzzed to life.
“Know what?” she prompted. “I’ve got an appointment soon.” She looked at the notes on her computer screen. “Forty-eight years old. Thinks she might have tennis elbow. Remember when Logan thought he had tennis elbow and Dad…” She stopped. Sometimes when she pulled out a funny memory from their shared childhood it turned out to be not so funny after all.
“Brooke, I’m talking about Mum and Dad and their weird … houseguest.”
Brooke took out a clipboard and a new patient questionnaire from the top drawer.
“So they’ve got someone staying with them? In your old room? Is that the problem?”
Amy moved back into the family home at intervals, whenever the new job or new course or new boyfriend didn’t work out.
“I think she probably is staying in my room,” said Amy slowly. There was an aggrieved, faintly aggressive note in her voice. “But that’s fine. I’ve got my own place, Brooke. I’ve been living here for nearly six months.”
“I know that,” said Brooke. A share house?
“And I’m employed. Last week I worked over forty hours.”
“Wow,” said Brooke, and she tried not to sound condescending. Amy had actual
ly worked a full working week. Give the girl a trophy. “Sorry. I’ve just been distracted with the clinic.” And my “trial” separation.
Where was Amy working again? Was it a supermarket? Or wait, a cinema? No. She was a food taster, wasn’t she? That’s right. They’d heard all about the job interview. “It was like an exam,” Amy said. “Very stressful.” She’d had to arrange ten cups of liquid in order of saltiness, and then another ten cups in order of sweetness. She was given tiny jars containing balls of cotton wool and she had to identify their smells. She got the basil and mint right, but not the parsley. Who knew that parsley had a fragrance? Her final task was to write a paragraph describing an apple to someone who had never eaten one.
“I don’t think I could describe an apple,” Brooke had said idly, and her mother had said, happily, “Well, I guess you wouldn’t have got the job then, Brooke!”
And Brooke, who had done a four-year degree and two years of clinical practice to become a physiotherapist, suddenly found herself feeling inadequate because she couldn’t describe an apple.
Amy said, “Have you honestly not heard anything about this girl staying with Mum and Dad?”
“Nope,” said Brooke. “Who is she?” She could hear the pompous school principal in her voice, because for God’s sake, the drama. Why was a houseguest such a big deal? Her parents knew a wide circle of people. It would be a former student. So many of them kept in touch. As children the Delaneys had complicated feelings about the tennis students. They were their parents’ other children, with better manners, better backhands, better attitudes. But they were too old for that now. Now they laughed about it, teased their parents and each other about it. It was typical that Amy would suddenly make a fuss.
“Her name is Savannah,” said Amy darkly.
“Right,” said Brooke distractedly. “Is Savannah on the circuit?”
“She’s no one, Brooke! She’s just some stray girl who turned up on their doorstep.”
Brooke let her hands fall flat on the keyboard. “They don’t know her?”
“She’s a stranger.”
Brooke swiveled her chair away from her computer. The memory of the weekend’s migraine blossomed across her forehead.
“I don’t understand.”
“Late last Tuesday night a strange woman knocked on our parents’ door.”
“Late? How late? Were Mum and Dad in bed?” She thought of her parents waking, reaching for their glasses from their bedside tables. Her mother in that oversized pajama top with the sleeves so long they hung past her wrists. Her father in his boxers and clean white T-shirt, with his big barrel chest and leathery legs. He acted like he was thirty, but his arthritic, reconstructed knees were in a terrible state.
“We’re still winning tournaments, darling,” her mother said, patting her hand whenever Brooke expressed concern.
It was true. Her parents were still winning, in spite of the fact that after his last knee operation the surgeon had said to her dad, “Only run if you’re running for your life.”
“Got it,” said Stan. “No running.” He gave the surgeon a thumbs-up. Brooke saw him do it. Three months later her idiotic, incredible father was back on the court. Serving like a warrior. Running for his life.
“I don’t know if they were in bed,” said Amy. “They stay up late these days. All I know is that she knocked on their door and they let her in and then they let her stay the night.”
“But what … why would they do that?” Brooke stood up from her desk.
“Well, I think because she had some kind of injury. Mum needed to bandage her up. Her boyfriend did it. Mum keeps referring to her as a ‘domestic violence victim,’ in this breathless, excited way.” Amy paused. When she spoke again her mouth was clearly full. “I can’t believe you don’t know about this yet.”
Brooke couldn’t believe it either. Her mother phoned often, always on the flimsiest of excuses. Early last week she’d called three times in one day: once to tell her something she’d heard on a podcast about migraines, once to correct herself (because she’d found the piece of paper where she’d written it down), and once to tell her that the cyclamen plant Brooke had given her for Mother’s Day had bloomed. (Amy had given her the cyclamen but Brooke didn’t correct her mother when she gave her credit for it.)
“What are you eating?” she said tetchily.
“Breakfast. Orange-and-poppy-seed muffin. Citrusy. Not enough poppy seeds.”
Brooke sat back down and tried to work it out. Her parents were smart people. They wouldn’t have let anyone shady or dangerous into the house. They were only on the very outer edge of old age, they were not yet dealing with dementia or confusion, just bad knees and indigestion, some insomnia, apparently. They both seemed a bit bewildered and lost now that they’d sold the tennis school. “The days are so long,” her mother had sighed to Brooke. “They used to be so short. Anyway! Shall we meet for coffee? My treat!” But Brooke’s days were still short, and she didn’t have time for coffee.
“Well, I guess Mum and Dad are pretty good judges of character,” she began.
“Are you kidding?” said Amy. “Good judges of character? Shall I name every cheating, lying little brat who hoodwinked them? Starting right at the top with Harry fucking Haddad, who broke Dad’s poor fragile heart?”
“Okay, okay,” said Brooke hurriedly. “So did they take her to the police?”
“She doesn’t want to report it,” said Amy. Her mouth was full again. “And she has nowhere else to go, so they’re letting her stay there until she ‘finds her feet.’”
“But can’t she go to a … I don’t know, a women’s shelter or something?” Brooke picked up a pen and chewed on it. “I know that sounds bad but she’s not their problem. There are places she can go for help.”
“I think Mum and Dad just want to help.” Amy sounded airy and philanthropic now. Brooke could sense her deftly switching positions. She’d always had the best footwork in the family. Now that Amy had handed over responsibility, Brooke could be the worried, uptight one and Amy could be the help-the-homeless bleeding heart, a role that suited her far more.
“Did you say she turned up on Tuesday night?” said Brooke. “This girl has been staying with them for nearly a week?”
“Yep,” said Amy.
“I’ll call Mum now.” Maybe Amy had misinterpreted everything.
“She won’t answer,” said Amy. “She’s taking Savannah to Narelle.”
“Narelle?”
“Mum’s hairdresser of thirty years, Brooke. Keep up. Narelle with the identical twins, and the allergy that turned out to be cancer, or the cancer that turned out to be an allergy, I can’t remember, but she’s fine now. Narelle has opinions about all of us. She thinks Logan and Indira should have a baby. She thinks you should advertise in the local paper. She thinks Troy should go on a date with her divorced sister. Oh, and she thinks I’m bipolar. Mum started listening to a podcast called Living with Bipolar.”
Amy was speaking too fast now, in that weird manic voice she sometimes put on that made Brooke wonder if she actually was bipolar. She did it on purpose. She liked people to think she was crazy, because it made them nervous. It was an intimidation tactic.
“Of course, Narelle. Anyway. I’ll call Dad.”
“He’s out too. He’s looking at cars. For Savannah.”
“Dad is buying this girl a car?”
“I’m not one hundred percent sure,” said Amy. “But you know how he loves it when someone needs a new car.”
“Jeez,” said Brooke. The end of the pen slipped free and into her mouth. She spat it into the palm of her hand. “Do the boys know?”
“I don’t think so,” said Amy.
“Didn’t you call Troy?”
Amy and Troy were the closest out of the four of them. Brooke knew she would have called him first.
“I texted him,” said Amy. “But he didn’t answer. You know he’s flying back from New York today.”
Brooke couldn�
��t keep up with Troy’s glamorous, international life. “I guess I did.”
“And Logan never answers his phone. I think he has a phobia about it. Or he does when it comes to us. He talks to his friends.”
Brooke pulled the pen from her mouth. Without realizing it she’d begun sucking it again, and now her mouth was filled with the bitter taste of ink.
She was the last one Amy had called.
“Anyway, I’ve gotta go,” said Amy abruptly, as if Brooke had been the one to interrupt her busy schedule, as if she were about to go run a corporation and not sit on a beach eating a muffin. “Call me later.”
This last instruction was given in her eldest sister do-as-I-say voice. It meant: Call me to confirm you’ve fixed this.
Brooke looked at herself in the mirrored wall and saw that her frown line was deeper than ever and her lips were stained a murky shade of Deep Ocean Blue.
Chapter 9
NOW
“So have you seen these scratches?”
The Uber driver, who was an electrical engineering student, looked in his rearview mirror, assuming his passenger (her name was Amy; he’d taken against the name ever since he’d briefly dated an evil bitch of an Amy) was talking to him and there were marks on his seats (like, whatever, Amy), but he saw she was on the phone and not talking to him at all. She’d obviously launched into conversation without bothering to say hello.
“The scratches on Dad’s face,” she said. “He says he got them climbing through the lillypilly hedge to rescue a tennis ball.”
Pause.
The Uber driver listened idly, his mind on tomorrow’s exam and tonight’s Tinder date.
“It’s just that Troy says the police will assume they’re defensive wounds.”
So this was possibly interesting. Her destination was the local police station.
“Meanwhile Brooke is suddenly adamant that we should hold off making a missing persons report at all.”
Apples Never Fall Page 6