Logan waited for Brooke to get out of the car, which she did with uncharacteristic haste. “Savannah didn’t just come here randomly,” she said, slamming her door behind her.
“I know,” said Logan. “I was just at her ex-boyfriend’s apartment. She’s got some tennis connection.”
“You were? You talked to the boyfriend? What did you find out?” She didn’t wait for an answer. She was speaking in a rapid, ragged fashion. She sounded like Amy. “This is all so strange. When Dad called I’d literally just had this memory, I was looking at these bananas that Ines—but anyway, what about Troy? He believed Dad would make a move on Savannah! That’s so disgusting. She’s younger than me.”
They walked toward their parents’ front door. Logan could hear Caro from across the street pulling her bins out.
“She probably made it sound believable,” said Logan. He wasn’t going to bother giving Troy a hard time about falling for Savannah’s story.
Brooke knocked on the door while Logan turned back to look over his shoulder. “Do you think I should go offer to help Caro with her—”
“Stop this, stop this, stop this!”
They both startled. It was their father’s voice, raised in a kind of terrified fury that Logan wasn’t sure he’d heard before.
Brooke had her key out of her bag first. She opened the front door with swift efficiency, shouting to their parents, “Mum! Dad!”
“In here!” called Joy from Amy’s old bedroom.
By the time Logan and Brooke crowded into the bedroom the yelling had stopped and no one was saying a word.
Logan’s father and Savannah stood opposite each other, his mother in the middle of them: her classic position of stopping an argument between two siblings. She had one hand on Stan’s chest, the other on Savannah’s shoulder. Logan’s dad was breathing rapidly and furiously as if he’d just lost a long rally, while their mother had that look of controlled impatience she used to get when her children fought and she didn’t have time to properly lose her temper because she had things to do.
Only Savannah looked serene. A mildly amused smile twitched her lips. She stepped away from Joy and ran her hands down her arms, pulling her sleeves smooth.
“Look who’s here,” she said. “Are you all expecting dinner? I think we can stretch it.”
“What’s going on?” said Brooke.
“Yes, what is going on?” It was Troy, who had sauntered in through the front door they’d left open. He looked like a cocktail party guest, not a scam victim. Maybe Logan would give him a hard time after all.
“She’s Harry Haddad’s sister,” said Stan.
There was a pause as they all took that in.
“I didn’t know there was a sister,” said Logan blankly.
“Wait, was there a sister?” asked Brooke.
“It’s a lie,” scoffed Troy. “It’s just another lie.”
“We’re pretty sure it’s true, but you’re right, it’s hard to see for the lies.” Logan’s dad plonked himself down on Amy’s old bed.
“Maybe we should all go into the living room and sit down,” said Joy. “Talk this out.”
Savannah said, “I could heat up some—”
“Enough!” shouted Joy. Logan’s mother was a stick of dynamite with a very long fuse, but then all of a sudden, kaboom. “You can’t make these terrible accusations and then suddenly cook for us. What’s wrong with you? You’re lying! You know you’re lying! And if you hate us so much, why do you keep feeding us? I don’t understand why you’re doing it!” Her arms windmilled. She stamped her foot. Her children all took automatic steps backward. “Why? We don’t even remember you!”
“I remember all of you,” said Savannah. She dropped her chin and fiddled with the heavy green pendant at her neck. “I only came to this house once. My mother and I were picking up Harry from his lesson. Normally my dad did that. Tennis was his domain.” Logan got the feeling she was unconsciously parroting someone from her past: Tennis was his domain.
“But my dad couldn’t get his car to start. So Mum and I picked Harry up. Mum stayed in the car. She wanted nothing to do with Harry’s tennis. She thought tennis was boring.”
Logan saw both his parents flinch at the casual denigration of the greatest sport in the world.
“I remember everything about that day,” said Savannah. She lifted her head. “You shouted at me that day too, Joy. Just like you did then.”
Logan’s mother recoiled. “What? Why would I have shouted at you?”
“You were wearing a denim skirt and a paisley shirt with short puffed sleeves and you had earrings like feathers that matched the red in the shirt. You looked very pretty.”
Logan saw his mother’s face change. “Do you mean you were the child who tried to come into the house? Through the laundry?”
“You’re the kid who went through my schoolbag,” interrupted Brooke.
“Yes.” Savannah turned to Brooke. “You shouted at me too. That same day.”
“Well, you were stealing my banana,” said Brooke defensively.
“I was starving,” said Savannah.
“Still, that didn’t give you the right to—”
“You don’t get it,” said Savannah. “I was literally starving.”
Her tightly clenched tone stilled them all. A space seemed to open up around her.
“What do you mean?” faltered Joy.
“Just that.”
“But I don’t understand,” said Joy. “You couldn’t have been starving. I know for a fact your brother ate well. He had to, to play at that level.”
“My brother lived with my father,” said Savannah. “I lived with my mother. Harry ate rib eye steak and potatoes every day. If he was going to play at Wimbledon, then I was going to perform with the Royal Ballet. That’s what my mother said. My brother needed to be strong, I needed to be ethereal.”
Her lip lifted on the word ethereal.
“But … what about your father?” asked Joy. “Didn’t you tell him you were … hungry?”
“I tried,” said Savannah. “I tried to tell my brother too. But my mother told them I was making it up. Being dramatic. I only went to my father’s place one night a week. It had to be a weeknight because on the weekend Harry had his tennis commitments.”
She said “tennis commitments” the way someone gives the name of their ex’s new partner.
“I used to stuff myself on that one night a week at my father’s house. That’s where I perfected my binge-eating skills.” She gave a ghoulish kind of grin. “Anyhoo.”
“Oh, Savannah.” Joy dragged her fingertips down her cheeks. All that red-hot anger seemed to have left her as suddenly as it arrived. She looked sad and exhausted and old, and Logan remembered the feeling of disbelief, as though he were witnessing a natural disaster, when his mother’s legs gave way on Father’s Day. He moved closer. This time he’d be ready.
Joy said, “All I remember is that you and your mother lived in South Australia.”
“We moved there a year after Harry’s first lesson with you,” said Savannah. A chatty dinner-party guest quickly summing up her life story. “I didn’t see my dad and brother anymore. It was like they forgot I existed. Dad sent money. I was just an annoying bill he had to pay. Like the electricity.”
“I’m so sorry.” Joy’s hands fluttered helplessly.
“Oh, no, it’s fine,” said Savannah, as if Joy had apologized for cutting in front of her in a queue. “I mean, there were some really bad years in Adelaide…” She stopped. No longer the chatty guest.
She breathed deeply, widened her shoulders, pushed them down and back, as if waiting for the music to begin.
She said, “But then I gave up ballet. Best in the neighborhood, one of the best in the state, but I was never an extraordinary dancer, the way Harry was an extraordinary tennis player. When my mother finally realized I’d never be as good at ballet as Harry was at tennis, she lost interest. So no more food deprivation—hooray!”
Logan and Brooke exchanged glances. He could see his own doubt reflected on her face. Was any of this bizarre story even true?
Logan knew that Savannah had taken the story she’d told him from that documentary. He knew that she’d lied to Troy about his father. So wasn’t it possible she’d also taken this story of a starving child in their midst from somewhere else? Did it even matter now? The facts kept slithering from his grasp. Trying to see Savannah was like trying to catch a true reflection in a funhouse maze of mirrors. The cadences of her voice, her gestures, her stance: he saw now how constantly she merged and morphed into different kinds of people. One moment she was a genteel middle-aged lady and the next she was a rough, tough-talking teen.
Logan tried to take control with the facts he’d gathered, the facts he knew to be true. “Savannah, I went to see your boyfriend. Dave. That story you told about him hitting you. It never happened.”
Savannah lifted her chin. “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?”
“You lied to us,” insisted Logan. He needed her to confirm the truth of this so he could find his footing and they could move forward. “I know it’s a lie.”
“No, you don’t,” said Savannah pleasantly.
“Nah, mate, it was out,” Savannah’s brother used to say, so innocently and convincingly, so calmly, when questioned on one of his calls. Harry Haddad was a natural on the court, and also a natural cheat. His flagrant cheating had enraged Troy to the point of lunacy whereas it baffled and unbalanced Logan. He saw the ball go in, yet Harry said it was out. That called everything into question: right and wrong, the laws of physics.
Lying clearly ran in the family.
Stan met Logan’s eyes and lifted his hands hopelessly. Logan didn’t think he’d ever seen his father so defenseless, even when he’d been in the hospital for his knee.
“You were there that day too, Logan.” Savannah looked at him coolly, and his heart lurched.
“I never met you,” said Logan. He was one hundred percent confident of this.
“You threw your racquet at me,” said Savannah. “Like I was a stray dog.”
“I did not,” said Logan. “Why would I do that?”
Troy was the racquet-thrower. Yet another lie.
“I would never—”
He stopped. He saw himself walking off the court the day he first lost against Troy, the same day his father told him to watch Harry’s kick serve, the day he understood that if he could lose against his younger brother, and if there were players in the world like Harry, there was probably not much point in continuing, although he did, for another five years.
“Wait a minute, I wasn’t throwing it at you,” he told her weakly. He’d lost the advantage. He’d always felt bad about that little girl jumping clear of his racquet.
“So you do remember me,” said Savannah sweetly.
She had her brother’s ability to play offensively, pushing his opponent further and further back.
She turned her attention to Troy. “What about you, Troy? Do you remember me?”
“I don’t care if I did meet you,” said Troy flatly.
“Someone left the back sliding door open,” said Savannah dreamily.
It would have been Logan. He was forever in trouble for not closing that sliding door properly because it jammed.
“I walked in through your back door and went into the kitchen,” said Savannah. “I thought maybe just … if I could just get a glass of milk. Anything. I was so hungry. I hadn’t eaten anything for twenty-four hours. I was only nine. I felt so sick and dizzy. All I could think about was food. I was obsessed with food, and there was food everywhere, there were people eating, everywhere, all around me, walking down the street eating ice creams, sitting at a bus stop eating pies, stuffing food into their mouths, but I had no money. I couldn’t get any food.”
Logan’s mother put a hand over her mouth. “Oh my goodness, Savannah.”
Please let this be someone else’s story, thought Logan, because his family were not bad people. They would have fed a hungry child. They sponsored hungry children on the other side of the world. “Think of the poor starving children in Africa,” their mother used to say if they didn’t like their vegetables, and then Amy would become completely inconsolable, sobbing for the poor starving children in Africa, unable to eat, and Logan’s dad would sigh and reach over to stab at her broccoli with his fork.
Savannah said to Troy, “You chased me out of the kitchen like I was a beggar. You’d just got out of the shower. You were all wet, you had a blue bath towel around your waist. You called me a vulture.” Her lip lifted again on the word vulture.
“If I said that, I was right, because that’s exactly what you are, a vulture,” said Troy. He’d never been a defensive player. When attacked he attacked back, twice as hard. “You just stole a lot of money from me.”
“I didn’t steal anything,” said Savannah. “You gave me that money of your own free will.”
“Under false pretenses!”
“What’d I do, Savannah?” said Logan’s father. “What’s my role?”
“Nothing,” said Savannah. “You looked right through me. All you saw was Harry. I didn’t even exist to you because I didn’t play tennis.”
“So this is about revenge, then?” said Troy. “Because our father made your brother a tennis star? Because none of us would give you food? But why didn’t you just, I don’t know, ask?”
“She did ask,” said Amy from the doorway. “She came into the dining room and asked me to make her a sandwich.”
Then she did the strangest thing, the thing that only Amy would do, would even think to do.
She walked directly to Savannah and threw her arms around her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry we were all so awful to you that day. I’m sorry we didn’t help that hungry little girl. We should have helped you.”
Savannah stood stiffly for a moment, her arms by her side, and then she rested her forehead against Amy’s chest, like a child being comforted by her mother.
“It was a pretty bad day,” she said, her voice muffled.
“Oh my goodness, that is awful, that is really awful.” Joy pressed her fingertips together in a steeple over her nose. Brooke turned away, her hand to her forehead. Troy looked at the ceiling, and their father looked at the floor. A strange young man in a very white T-shirt cleared his throat by the door. He met Logan’s eye and held out his hand.
He said quietly, “Simon Barrington. Amy’s new boyfriend.”
“He is not,” said Amy over Savannah’s head, but Logan saw the ghost of a smile.
Their father stood, his arms hanging heavily by his sides. “I want her out of my home.” He gestured with his chin at Savannah. “Now.”
“Dad,” said Amy. “We were awful to her.”
Savannah took a step away from Amy. “It’s fine.”
“I really don’t care if we didn’t make you a frigging sandwich one very bad day in your very bad childhood,” said Stan. He jabbed his finger in her face. “Lots of people have bad childhoods. They get on with it.”
“Dad,” said Amy. “Don’t talk like that! Stop it!”
Stan ignored her. “If you’re so jealous of your brother’s success, go scam him, go tell lies about him, go throw rocks through his window. We didn’t make any money out of him! Your family did nothing for us. Your father dumped us the moment Harry—”
“But it wasn’t my father’s decision for Harry to leave Delaneys,” interrupted Savannah. Logan caught sight of his mother’s face, haggard with fear.
His stomach lurched.
Savannah stood, as if beneath a spotlight, her heels together, her toes splayed.
All this time she’d had a grenade in her pocket. Finally she threw it.
“That was your wife’s decision.”
Chapter 45
NOW
“Guess what I finally got us,” said Christina. She slapped her phone triumphantly back down on her thigh.<
br />
She and Ethan were driving toward the bushland trail where the body had been found. A ten-minute drive at most from where Joy and Stan Delaney lived. All the pieces were falling and slotting into place.
“What?” asked Ethan.
“The motive.”
Chapter 46
LAST OCTOBER
Stan didn’t gasp or swear at Savannah’s revelation. He didn’t ask for clarification or proof, or call her a liar. He seemed to know instantly that this time Savannah was telling the truth. Perhaps he’d always suspected, although he had never once asked or accused Joy.
He said, “Excuse me,” to Amy’s besotted young man, who had been hovering in the doorway of her old bedroom, watching these dramas unfold, and who obediently stepped aside to allow Stan to make his silent, stately departure.
They heard the front door shut.
It was strange how very familiar it felt to Joy after all these decades; the wheel of time spun smoothly back, and her children were still her children, still looking to her to explain their father’s actions, to make them normal and acceptable. She could feel all those old phrases springing automatically to her lips. Don’t worry. He’ll be back. You know how he is. When your dad gets angry and upset he needs to get away and clear his head. It’s nothing to get upset about. Let’s go have ice cream!
“Is it true, Mum?” Logan spoke first. “Did you tell them to leave?”
“Oh,” said Joy distractedly. She was thinking about Stan. It was all very well when he was thirty and forty and even fifty, but he was too old to walk dramatically off into the night now he was seventy. He had medication to take. “Yes, well, that part actually is true. Don’t worry, he’ll get over it, but did any of you park in the driveway? Your father won’t be able to get his car out.” It was a cool night. He wasn’t dressed warmly enough. He was wearing jeans and slippers.
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