He would be a bachelor. His refrigerator would never see another tub of yogurt. He would have no pictures on his walls, no hat rack, no throw cushions on his bed.
He would be fine. He would be better than fine.
His phone rang again.
He picked it up and saw that the screen had a spider web of cracks across it as though it had been shot with a miniature bullet. If it was Indira calling back, he would ignore her, but he saw it was the head of his department, so he answered in his professional voice.
“Logan, mate,” said Don Travis. He had a deep, slow voice like Logan’s dad, but he was a relaxed Queenslander, and the one word that could never be applied to either of Logan’s parents was relaxed.
“Mate, just wondering if you’ve got any problems with … ah, ex-girlfriends at the moment?”
“Ex-girlfriends?” Logan’s head snapped back so fast he hurt his neck. “What do you mean? Why?”
He looked wildly around his apartment. Was he being bugged? How could Don possibly know about Indira? Logan kept his personal life completely separate from his work. There were no office parties or drinks. There was an annual Christmas party that Logan had never attended.
“We got an anonymous telephone complaint about you.”
“What kind of complaint?” Logan was well liked by his students. He never got complaints. He got thank-you letters.
“Well, she was kind of implying sexual harassment, although it wasn’t really clear exactly what she was implying.”
“What the—?” Logan got to his feet.
“I know, Logan, I know. Your record is impeccable. That’s why I wondered if you might have been through a relationship breakup recently.”
“I have just broken up with someone,” said Logan. “But she would never. Never in a million years.”
“You sure, mate? Because sometimes people lose their minds after a breakup.”
“I’m one hundred percent sure.” He would bet his life on it.
“Well, we explained the process and what she needs to do if she wants to make an official complaint, but she hung up,” said Don. “It was a week ago now, and seeing as she didn’t give a name, or even say which class she’d taken, we’re not going to take it any further. I just wanted to give you a heads-up that there might be someone out there with some kind of vendetta.” He cleared his throat. “No need to be embarrassed. I had an ex who gave me a whole world of trouble once, so I sympathize. Or maybe it was just a random crazy. It happens.”
Logan thanked him, and hung up.
He thought about the ex-girlfriends before Indira.
No. No. No.
All the way back to Tracey, when Troy was also dating a Tracey. Troy’s Tracey might have done something like that, but not Logan’s Tracey.
Logan picked good girlfriends. He always got invited to their weddings. (Would he one day get a cheerful invitation to Indira’s wedding? The thought of watching Indira marry someone else was like imagining the death of a loved one.)
It must have been a “random crazy” as Don had suggested. But still, it was unsettling. This whole day was feeling very unsettling.
He picked up his beer and the remote, unmuted the television, and flicked through channels: an episode of Friends, an episode of Seinfeld, an episode of Antiques Roadshow. Everything at this time of day was a rerun.
He stopped on a pretty woman with brown curly hair talking to an interviewer.
The camera was close on her face as she said, pleadingly, “I don’t know why they put those shows on television, they don’t help. It makes it worse!”
He must have seen it before. He didn’t recognize her, but there was something so familiar about the way her voice skidded up on the word worse.
She continued on. “Those stories always put him in a filthy mood! I think they made him feel guilty. He’d be like, ‘It’s always the man’s fault, never the chick’s fault.’”
Logan was standing in his parents’ backyard and Savannah was telling the story of her boyfriend hitting her. He was almost positive that some of the words were identical to the words Savannah had used: It’s always the man’s fault, never the chick’s fault.
He put down his beer, turned up the volume.
The girl said, “So I changed the channel super-fast, I was like, ‘Oh, I want to watch The Bachelor!’”
Not exactly the same story. Didn’t Savannah say she changed the channel to some other show? Was it Survivor?
It must be a weird coincidence.
“I started to relax,” said the curly haired girl. The camera zoomed in on eyes swimming with tears. “And then I thought, Oh it’s fine, and then, like a stupid idiot, I asked if he’d paid the car registration.”
She’d asked if he’d paid the car registration. That’s what Savannah had said too. He was absolutely certain that’s what she’d said. It had to be more than a coincidence. Surely? That two domestic violence incidents could be precipitated by a question about car registration?
“I wasn’t trying to make a point. Apparently I was being passive aggressive. And then it all just spiraled from there. He broke my jaw. Three ribs. I was in hospital for longer than he was in jail.”
An old photo of the woman filled the screen. It made Logan wince and look away. The girl’s face was unrecognizable: like swollen black-bruised fruit.
Had Savannah helped herself to someone else’s painful story?
Something had happened to Savannah. Her injury was real, even if it was minor, and hardly compared to the atrocious injuries this poor woman had suffered.
He looked back at the television. Another woman in a white coat with a stethoscope around her neck sat behind a desk, talking with despairing expertise about the scourge of domestic violence she had personally witnessed.
Logan remembered Savannah’s ex-boyfriend sitting up in bed, grabbing for his glasses. Something had felt off. The guy had just seemed so confused. But Logan had sternly chastised himself. His instincts were wrong and evil. How dare he question a woman’s story of being abused, just because the man didn’t look like “the type”?
Logan picked up his phone, scrolled through his contacts, and considered who to call. He didn’t want to disturb Brooke at work, and she had enough to worry about at the moment with her separation. He could call Troy, but Troy’s first instinct would be to throw money at the problem. Would he offer money to Savannah to make her go away? Maybe it wasn’t a bad idea. Except that she seemingly made their parents so happy.
He would call Amy. He realized he’d always been going to call Amy, because in spite of everything, she was still in charge. She was their mad queen, to whom they still all swore their lifelong allegiance.
“What’s on your mind?” answered Amy, in her big-sister voice.
“Savannah,” said Logan.
“Oh, me too,” said Amy happily. “I don’t like her at all.”
Chapter 27
NOW
“Apparently the husband had a habit of walking out the door and disappearing when family life got too much for him,” said Christina to her boss.
She was in his office giving him an update on the Joy Delaney investigation.
“Smart man,” said her boss, Detective Sergeant Vince Oates. He had four children under the age of five. He drank Red Bull like it was water.
“Some of the family think this is payback,” said Christina. “It’s the wife’s turn to walk out.”
“What do you reckon?”
“She’s been gone sixteen days now. The longest the husband ever left was five nights, and that was over twenty years ago.”
“The last thing we need this year is another no-body homicide case,” said Vince morosely. He rattled his empty can of Red Bull.
“I know,” said Christina. They’d just had a high-profile case fall apart. Too much media. No result. Dispiriting for all involved. “I really want a body.” She paused. “I mean, obviously I don’t want a body.”
“If she’s dead you do.”
/>
“If she’s dead I do,” agreed Christina.
If she were a betting woman, she would have put a hundred to one on Joy Delaney being dead.
Chapter 28
LAST OCTOBER
As soon as Amy got off the phone with Logan she went downstairs wearing nothing but a T-shirt and bumped straight into Simon Barrington, who should have been at work at this time. The house was meant to be hers during business hours. Her young flatmates all had sensible young person corporate jobs, which was the way she liked it.
“Sorry!” Simon flattened himself dramatically against the wall and averted his eyes, as if they hadn’t had sex last weekend. This was the problem with sleeping with your flatmates. It put everything out of rhythm, and with everything going on with her family right now, she wanted things to remain in rhythm.
“We had sex last weekend,” she reminded him, to put him at ease. The sex had been vigorous and wholesome, as sweet and delicious as apple crumble. She didn’t think she’d ever slept with such a clean man. Even when disheveled and drunk he’d smelled of soap and clean laundry.
This didn’t seem to put him at ease at all. He blushed. He actually blushed. He was a darling.
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that,” he said. He paused. “I mean I’m not actually sorry about it.” He cleared his throat. “Should I be sorry about it?”
Amy sighed. “Why aren’t you at work right now, Simon Barrington?”
“I resigned,” he said. “I’m making some big life changes.”
“So you’re not going to be an accountant anymore?”
He looked taken aback at the thought. “Oh, no, I’ll still be an accountant. Just not for that particular practice. I’m going to take a few months off. Clear my head. Maybe travel.”
A shadow of a frown crossed his face.
“Do you like to travel?” she asked.
“Not much,” he said. “Anyway.” He took a deep breath and clapped his hands together in an adorably geeky way. “What are you up to?”
“I’m getting my jeans out of the dryer and then I’m going to visit my parents. There’s a strange woman living with them right now. My brother thinks she’s up to something.”
“What, you think she’s a scammer?” said Simon.
“Well, so far all she’s done is cook really excellent food for them,” admitted Amy.
“But you’re trying to work out her end game,” said Simon.
“Exactly,” said Amy. “My parents are extremely innocent.”
“All parents are innocent,” said Simon. “My parents nearly fell for that latest Tax Office scam, if you can believe it.”
“Oh no,” said Amy, who had nearly fallen for it herself. Thankfully she’d called Troy when she was on the way to the bank to withdraw money to pay her apparently unpaid taxes. It’s a scam, you idiot, he’d shouted from America.
“I can give you a lift over to your parents’ place if you like,” offered Simon. “You don’t drive, do you?”
He said this with interest rather than implied criticism. Some people couldn’t get over her lack of a driver’s license. It was like her dad’s refusal to own a mobile phone. People took it personally.
“I’ve never been behind the wheel of a car,” said Amy. “I’m pretty sure I died in a car accident in a previous life. Possibly involving a bridge.”
She really did think this. She had fragmented memories of a crash. Water. Glass. Screaming. It may well have been from a movie.
“Were you driving?”
“What?”
“In your previous life,” said Simon. “Were you behind the wheel?”
“Oh,” said Amy. “I think so.”
“So you have been behind the wheel of a car,” said Simon. “Just not in this life.”
“That’s right,” said Amy. “You’re very … accurate, aren’t you?”
He had actually been very accurate, even when drunk.
“I have good attention to detail,” said Simon. “I’m thorough.”
“You are,” said Amy, straight-faced. “Your attention to detail is scrupulous.”
He held her eyes for just long enough to show he got it, and then he said, “I could give you my accurate opinion on this potential scammer.”
“Your accurate accountant’s opinion?” said Amy.
“That’s right,” said Simon. “I don’t have anything else to do right now, and one of my goals for the next few weeks is to improve my spontaneity.”
“Why?” asked Amy, interested. She had always been advised to pull back on her spontaneity.
“You know I was meant to be getting married this April? When my fiancée was explaining why she’d decided to end the relationship she had a list of … you know, things about me that didn’t work for her. And one of them was my lack of spontaneity.”
“She wrote a list of things that didn’t work for her?” asked Amy.
“She liked lists,” said Simon. “It was something we had in common.”
“She sounds just lovely,” said Amy.
“You sound like my sister,” said Simon.
Amy looked at him. He radiated good health, as if he’d just stepped out of a bracing cold shower after a run. His T-shirt was crisp and clean.
“Do you iron your jeans?” she asked. He was so exotic.
“Of course,” he said.
“Okay,” she said.
“It’s okay that I iron my jeans?”
“No, that is definitely not okay. I mean, okay, you can come with me to meet the scammer. The possible scammer. She may also be a nice girl who is down on her luck. It’s up to us to make that call.”
“I’ll keep an open mind.” He looked pleased.
“I’ll just go put my unironed jeans on,” she said.
“No problem.” He courteously waved his hand to let her pass him on the stairs.
She was a head taller than him, so now that she was on the step below him they were eye to eye. He had bushy old-man eyebrows and good, honest, taxpaying eyes.
“Before I do that,” said Amy. She moved a fraction closer.
“Before you do that,” repeated Simon, and there was a catch in his voice.
It was like the satisfaction of striking a match first go. She saw the understanding spark and shine in his eyes.
“We could work on your spontaneity,” she said.
“We could,” said Simon.
“Just very quickly,” said Amy.
So they did that.
* * *
An hour later, Amy stood at her parents’ front door and rang the doorbell that didn’t work, just in case it had been fixed, and then, without waiting, because she knew it would never be fixed, knocked hard with her knuckles.
She looked at her clean, delicious flatmate, standing next to her in his white T-shirt matching his white teeth, with his buzz cut and broad shoulders and glasses, like a door-to-door missionary or the nerdy best friend from a teen vampire movie. Her mother would ask Simon lots of probing questions, and Simon would be the type to answer them in polite comprehensive detail, and her mother would remember that comprehensive detail for years after Amy had forgotten Simon Barrington’s very existence.
He was a distraction from the visit’s main purpose, which was to subtly collect as much biographical data about Savannah as possible, particularly as it related to the alleged assault.
You brought your flatmate? Why? She could just hear her sister and brothers, that careful patient tone they sometimes used, as if she were an explosive device that could detonate at any moment.
“Is this where you grew up?” Simon asked, looking about him.
“Yes,” she said.
“Happy childhood?” asked Simon. He looked at the big pots of flowers, the shiny clean terracotta tiles, and the stone figurines in the carefully tended garden beds. “It looks like the setting for a happy childhood.” He touched the tip of his sneaker to the base of the statue by the front door. It was a blank-eyed little girl in a bonnet holding an empt
y basket.
“What happened to her eyes?”
“The crows took them,” said Amy.
“She looks like a demon child,” commented Simon.
“I know,” said Amy. “I always think that!” Maybe she and the accountant were actually soulmates.
The door opened the tiniest crack.
A low, husky voice said, “Can I help you?”
For a second Amy wondered if she’d somehow come to the wrong house, anything was possible, but then the door swung open just to the length of the security chain, and Savannah stood there, wearing not Amy’s old clothes but a long-sleeved paisley shirt tucked into three-quarter-length black pants that Amy was pretty sure belonged to her mother. It was worse seeing Savannah in her mother’s castoffs than in her own.
“Oh, hi, Amy,” she said. “How are you? Your mum is asleep at the moment.”
When Joy collapsed on Father’s Day, it had been Savannah who caught her and carefully laid her on the floor. Joy’s head had ended up resting on Savannah’s lap, and one could hardly say, Get out of the way, strange girl, that’s my mother, her head should be resting on my lap.
“That’s okay.” Amy had talked to her mother a few times on the phone since she’d got out of hospital and she knew she’d been napping. “I won’t wake her. What’s Dad doing?” She waited for Savannah to hurry up and release the security chain.
“He fell asleep in front of the television,” said Savannah, and she stuck out her lower lip to convey Aww, isn’t that adorable? “I think he got a real fright when your mother was in hospital last week, so they both have some catching up to do.”
“Oh,” said Amy. Her father was a veteran snoozer. He always dozed in front of the television. He’d be awake any minute. “Well. I’ll still come in and—”
“Now is not such a good time,” said Savannah.
Now is not such a good time? Did she really just say that?
Amy felt many emotions on a given day: desire for inappropriate men, nostalgia for long-ago days that never actually happened, great rolling waves of happiness and sadness, bouts of high-level panic and low-level anxiety, but rage was an emotion with which she was not familiar, so it took her a moment to identify the feeling whooshing through her veins.
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