Sometimes they worked and sometimes they didn’t.
“It’s just that your feelings are too big,” her dad’s mother told her when she was a kid and cried for so long her parents lost their tempers. “You’ll grow into them. My feelings used to be too big too. Have a lemonade, sweetie.”
Apparently her grandmother didn’t so much grow into her feelings as flatten them with alcohol, but alcohol and lemonade only amplified Amy’s oversized feelings.
“Oh, Amy is just nervy,” she once overheard her other grandmother, her mother’s mother, say. “Like Auntie Edna. No need to get your knickers in a knot, Joy, she’s fine. Gee, those nervy types do get on your nerves, though. Should we ask her to cry somewhere else?”
Auntie Edna spent the last days of her sad nervy life tied to a chair, but no need to get your knickers in a knot.
“We won’t let you be tied to a chair, darling,” Amy’s mother used to say. “Anyway, I actually think you’re more like Auntie Mary, and she didn’t end up tied to a chair.”
Auntie Mary was killed after she stepped in front of a tram in the city, but she absolutely didn’t step out in front of that tram on purpose, no matter what some people implied. The truth, according to Amy’s mother, was that Auntie Mary got distracted trying to save a little girl’s panama hat when a southerly buster blew it straight from her head one summer afternoon a week before Christmas, which, according to Amy’s mother, was exactly the sort of reckless thing Amy would do, and if she did, Joy would never forgive her. Look both ways. Especially when Christmas is coming up. Make that one of your funny little rituals. Looking both ways.
Amy didn’t have any funny little rituals at the moment. Or none that people would notice. Anyway, they all had their rituals and superstitions, their strange little habits. Troy had to tap his nose three times before he served. Logan had to wear his lucky red socks whenever he competed, even when his feet grew too big for them. Brooke still had trouble getting out of the car whenever she arrived somewhere. Brooke thought no one knew that. Amy knew.
“There’s nothing wrong with you, sweetheart,” her father said. “It’s all in your head.”
All in your head. Her dad was so cute and clueless.
She lay still and breathed while she chatted with the spirits of Auntie Edna and Auntie Mary. She had never met either of her mad great-aunts, but she felt like they would have got along.
I’ve kind of got a bad feeling about this girl staying with my parents.
Me too, said Auntie Edna.
Me too, said Auntie Mary.
Get rid of her, said Auntie Edna, who was bossy.
The bad feeling intensified, took hold of her stomach, twisted. A car alarm started up down the street. Someone knocked on her bedroom door.
Amy grabbed at the sheets and pulled them up, covering her nakedness.
“Who is it?” she called out.
“Sorry!” said a deep, hoarse, male voice. “It’s just me.” He paused. “Simon.” He cleared his throat. “Simon Barrington.” As if there were several Simons living in the house.
She looked at the ceiling. She’d kind of known this might happen, and she’d told herself that under no circumstances should she let it happen.
“Are you awake?” he said through the door.
“No,” she called back. “I’m not awake, Simon Barrington.” Just lying here chatting to the spirits of my crazy dead aunts, Simon Barrington.
She wouldn’t say anything else. It was a mistake to sleep with your flatmates. Especially when they were still in their twenties, and you were on the cusp of leaving your thirties. Simon’s long-term girlfriend had recently dumped him while they were out at yum cha. He’d been going out with her since high school, and they were meant to be getting married next year, and he didn’t see it coming, and he loved yum cha, which his girlfriend knew, so that added an extra layer of tragedy.
Now he was brokenhearted and drunk, and he’d come home and remembered his single flatmate on the top floor, like remembering some leftover takeaway in the fridge, and he’d thought, Huh. He was a nice enough guy, sweet and polite and scrupulous about housework, but he read those boring biographies all the way through to the end, and he was an ex–rugby player, with a rugby player’s top-heavy body (she liked tall, lean, inscrutable men; there was nothing inscrutable about Simon Barrington), and he had a boring job she could never remember, something to do with telecommunications or property or possibly he was an accountant, and he was younger than her, and shorter than her, and men always said they didn’t care about the height thing, but they did, they surely did, and that repressed fury always came to the surface eventually.
So it would be once, and it wouldn’t be good sex, and then there would be awkwardness between them for the next seven months of her rental agreement, and then she’d have to find somewhere else to live, and she liked it here, she liked the neon light from the miniature golf course, she liked the possum with a panic disorder.
“Sorry!” Simon called through the door. “So sorry! I’ll go.”
She waited.
There was silence. Had he gone? She should let him go.
She got out of bed, put on a T-shirt, and opened the door. He was walking toward the top of the stairs.
“Simon?” she said. “Simon Barrington?”
He turned. His shirt was pulled loose from the waistband of his jeans, his glasses were askew, his eyes were bloodshot, and he was in need of a shave.
She lifted her finger. Beckoned.
Impulse-control disorder. That was another one.
Chapter 19
NOW
A phone rang. A printer whirred. A keyboard clacked. A man laughed and said, “You’re kidding me?” A woman sneezed and said, “Bless me!” It could have been any open-plan corporate office on a weekday morning, with its gray nylon carpet tiles and beige walls, except that the people working here routinely dealt with the worst of humanity. It was no wonder the most senior of them spoke in similar brittle, impatient tones that made their partners sigh, “Why are you always so cynical?”
Christina sat at her desk, drinking a full-cream double-shot piccolo from the café next to the station, thinking about Nico, this morning, sighing, “Why are you always so cynical, Christina?” when she questioned why his friend-of-a-friend wedding photographer was demanding payment up front.
Joy Delaney had been out of contact for thirteen days following an argument with her husband. This was a woman whose children couldn’t recall her going away for one night without her husband.
Why are you always so cynical, Christina?
Because nice, ordinary people lie and steal and cheat and murder, Nico.
They’d paid the photographer up front.
She drank the last of her piccolo, opened the file in front of her, and read a printout from Joy’s Word documents on her desktop computer:
So You Want to Write a Memoir
Writing a memoir is an enriching experience. Think of this exercise as a warm-up to get those creative juices flowing. Let’s start with your “elevator pitch”—tell us your life story in just a few paragraphs below!
My given name is Joy Margaret Becker. No relation to the famous tennis player Boris Becker, in case you’re wondering! (But I am a tennis player.) My mother’s name was Pearl, and she was a “beauty,” which is why she never quite recovered from the shock of my father walking out on us when I was four years old. He said he was going to meet a friend, but he didn’t mention the friend lived over two thousand kilometers away in the Northern Territory!
My father died in a “fistfight” three years after he left us. He had a quick temper. I have a quick temper myself, or so I’ve been told, but I’ve never been in a fistfight! I was always told that my father adored me, but that sure was a funny way to show it.
My mother moved back in with her parents, my grandparents, who were more like parents to me and brought me up. I was especially close to my grandfather, who was the chattiest man I have ever know
n. He could talk the hind legs off a donkey. I still think of things I’d like to tell my grandpa. My mother was quite a critical, unhappy person. It wasn’t her fault. She was born in the wrong time. I think if she was born now she might have been the CEO of a big corporation. Or she might have been a weather girl. She was certainly pretty enough and always very interested in the weather.
My grandfather loved tennis, and one day when I was a toddler, I picked up his big wooden square-headed tennis racquet. It would have been so heavy for a three-year-old. My grandfather, just for fun, threw me a ball, and I hit it straight back. He said he nearly fell off his chair. I hit ten balls in a row before I missed one. My grandmother said it was only five. My mother said she didn’t believe a word of it. Who knows! All I do know is that tennis was all I wanted to do when I was a little girl. I just loved hitting that ball. Hard flat shots from the baseline. That’s my favorite. (Too much spin these days. It’s the fancy new racquets.) I loved the sound. Clop. Clop. Clop. Like horse’s hooves. The smell of new tennis balls is one of my favorite smells. I have never taken drugs (apart from ibuprofen, I do quite enjoy ibuprofen), but I sometimes feel like tennis is my drug. When the match is over it’s like waking up from a beautiful dream.
I started entering tournaments when I was ten. When I was eleven, I played against a thirteen-year-old girl and she cried when I beat her. I didn’t feel sorry for her at all. I remember that very clearly. My prize for winning that tournament was an umbrella. (See-through with a red trim.) That was the same day I overheard a man tell my grandfather that I had the potential to be a world champion. That stuck in my mind. My grandfather and I had a plan. First I would win the local junior championships, then the state titles, then the Australian women’s singles, then I’d go overseas (I’d never been on a plane!) and win the French and US titles, and finally Wimbledon.
By the time I was twelve my grandfather had to build a new shelf for all my trophies.
I was quite young when I married a tall (very tall!), dark, and handsome young tennis player called Stan Delaney. We planned tennis careers. We drove all over the country playing in tournaments while still trying to support ourselves. It was hard but fun. I did a secretarial course after school. My mother wanted me to have a “backup” in case “tennis didn’t work out.” Her hope was that I would marry a “businessman.” She thought tennis was a fairy tale, and perhaps she was right, because my husband had a very bad injury when he was only twenty-two. He tore his Achilles playing the third set of the Manly Seaside Tournament quarterfinals. He would have won the match if not for that injury. So that was his Achilles’ heel! (But it was his Achilles tendon.) So we left the circuit, and a few years later we started Delaneys Tennis Academy, which went on to become one of the most successful tennis schools in the state, if not the country, if I do say so myself! (I told my mother that I ended up becoming a “businesswoman” myself, but she thought I was trying to be funny.)
We had four children, two boys and two girls. Even Stevens! All four were very talented players. We have no grandchildren as yet.
We recently sold the tennis school, and now we have the time to tick things off our bucket list! If only we had a bucket list! Oh well.
* * *
“Christina?”
She looked up to see Ethan, in a turquoise shirt today, at her cubicle entrance, gleaming with health and optimism. “These young guys are like fucking Energizer Bunnies,” one of the other detectives had sighed to Christina, and he was fifteen years older than her, but she knew what he meant.
“Joy Delaney’s internet search history for the day she disappeared,” said Ethan, handing her a sheet of paper. He’d highlighted relevant lines in yellow.
Joy had googled the following questions:
How do you know when it’s time to divorce?
Divorcing after sixty
How does a divorce affect adult children?
Does marriage counseling work?
Does whiskey go off?
“So much for that wonderful marriage of theirs,” said Christina.
“I know,” said Ethan sadly, and he momentarily bowed his head as if to honor a loss, but then he immediately lifted it again, and said brightly, “I’ve also got her phone records. One hour before she sent that text—”
“If she sent that text,” said Christina.
“One hour before that text was sent,” Ethan corrected himself, “there was a forty-minute telephone conversation with a Dr. Henry Edgeworth. He’s a forty-nine-year-old plastic surgeon, married with two children. He’s currently overseas and not returning our calls.”
“A plastic surgeon?” Christina frowned. “How does that fit?”
It didn’t fit.
“Booking in for plastic surgery so she could change her identity?” suggested Ethan.
“Yeah. Because she got mixed up with the Mafia,” said Christina.
“Should I look at potential connections with organized crime?” asked Ethan enthusiastically.
She looked up to see if he was joking. She couldn’t tell.
She said evenly, “We need to look at all potential connections.”
Ethan nodded. He looked down at his notes. “There was that huge hailstorm two days after Valentine’s Day.”
“So you’re thinking she got hit by a hailstone and now she’s got amnesia?”
He looked up at her. Now he couldn’t tell if she was joking.
She said, “How are we going with that houseguest of theirs?”
“I’m closing in on her.”
“Good,” said Christina. “Because I reckon all roads lead to her.”
Chapter 20
FATHER’S DAY
On Father’s Day morning, Joy woke late and well rested. She was sprawled facedown right in the middle of the bed like a child. There was a little circle of saliva where she’d dribbled onto the sheet. Stan wasn’t there. Spring sunshine poured through the window, warm on the skin of her legs, which were bare beneath her T-shirt. She could smell jasmine from the garden and bacon from the kitchen. Savannah must be cooking breakfast.
She was getting far too used to having someone cook and clean for her. This was what it must be like to be a celebrity. No wonder they were so charismatic and cheerful on talk shows. Joy could feel herself becoming more charismatic and cheerful by the day.
In fact, Savannah seemed to treat her and Stan as if they were talk-show guests and she the host, fascinated by the intricacies of their celebrity lives. She wanted to hear everything about them: their tennis, the tennis school, the club, the children. She asked questions Joy was sure her own children had never bothered to ask: When did you know you were right for each other?
“The first time I saw her,” said Stan. He was sitting when he said this, and Joy was standing, and he grabbed her by the waist and pulled her to him so that she landed on his lap.
Joy saw their marriage through Savannah’s young, interested eyes: solid and valuable, like an antique, burnished with age and wisdom. Savannah probably coveted a relationship like theirs. A relationship that produced children and a beautiful house and a successful business and shelves full of framed photos of birthday parties, Easter lunches, and Christmas mornings.
Joy stood under the shower, tilting her face up to the spray, and thought about the shameful moments that were never photographed:
her own face ugly with rage, spit flying from her contorted mouth,
the back of Stan’s head as he walked away,
sitting in a car on the side of the road, four children silent with shock in the back, while her heart thudded in rapid time with the click-click of the turn signal.
She shuddered and got shampoo in her eye. Of course, they wouldn’t share the nasty secrets with Savannah. There were limits to their honesty, no matter what was going on with their elderly frontal lobes.
The shampoo stung like hell. She blinked furiously and massaged in the expensive volumizing conditioner her hairdresser, Narelle, had told her to use every third da
y. Narelle’s recommended haircare regime was complex, but Joy got a lot of compliments for her hair and she loved Narelle like a sister, or the way that sisters should love each other. Her own daughters absolutely loved each other, but one was generally offended or incensed or bewildered by the other one at any given time.
The price tag for the shampoo was still stuck on the back of the bottle. Stan would say, “What’s it made of? Gold dust?” Joy peeled it off with her fingernail, rolled it between her fingers, let it fall, and nudged it with her toe down the drain.
Yes, Savannah certainly did not need to know how many times Joy and Stan had fallen in and out of love over the last fifty years, how there were times when Joy hated Stan so passionately it made her sick to the stomach, how when the older three were very little they’d talked seriously and matter-of-factly, almost pleasantly, about separating, how Joy had believed it was definitely going to happen, how Brooke was a surprise baby conceived during their surprise reconciliation, how it had truly felt like a brand-new relationship, how getting so close to losing each other had made them settle into something deeper and richer, but then, yet again, they’d lost their way, and all that love and happiness drained slowly, imperceptibly away, as if there was an invisible tiny leak.
Amy once told Joy that she had no idea how lonely it felt to be single. Joy had wanted to tell her that you could still be lonely when you were married, that there had been times when she had woken up day after day crushed with loneliness, and still made breakfast for four children.
She didn’t say that to Amy. She said, “Yes, darling, you’re right. It must be so hard.”
You couldn’t share the truth of your marriage with your adult children. They didn’t really want to know, even if they thought they did.
There was one year, the really bad year, when both her mother and Stan’s mother were sick, and then both of them died within three months of each other. As only children, Joy and Stan had to grieve alone. That was when Joy made a secret plan to leave. Her idea had been to wait until Brooke finished high school, at which point her mothering duties would be discharged. It had given her pleasure to plan it all out, even to imagine the pain of it, like a sadomasochistic fantasy.
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