‘I’m sure that’s an urban myth. I’ll Google it.’ She reached for her phone and glasses.
‘Google it quietly,’ said Stan. ‘I need to focus. This bloke just spent three pages yabbering on about his memory of someone’s smile.’
‘Let me read it,’ said Joy. ‘I’ll summarise it. Give you the gist.’
‘That’s cheating,’ said Stan.
‘It’s not a test,’ sighed Joy, but Stan seemed to think it was a test, set by Amy, to prove his love. There had been a lot of tests set by Amy over the years to prove their love.
Joy didn’t bother to Google the poor boiling frog. She flicked through her text messages and thought about texting one or all of the children to let them know that a stray girl had turned up on their doorstep, but she had a feeling this news might be met with disapproval or even dismay. Since they’d sold the tennis school, their children had become increasingly vocal about how they thought Joy and Stan should be leading their lives. They dropped suggestions about package holidays, retirement villages, cruises, multivitamins and sudoku. Joy tolerated this intervention while never once mentioning the conspicuous lack of grandchildren in her life.
There was one new text from Caro sent earlier in the night: Have you done your homework? She meant the memoir-writing course homework. They had to do an ‘elevator pitch’ where they wrote their life story in just a few paragraphs. She would have to do it, even though she wasn’t going to complete the course. She didn’t want to hurt that peppy little teacher’s peppy little feelings.
No point answering Caro now; she’d be asleep. Savannah would never have chosen Caro’s house as a safe haven because all the lights went off reliably at nine pm each night.
Instead, Joy clicked on an article that her phone predicted would ‘interest her’: Forty Sweet Father/Son Moments between Prince William and Prince George.
She was on the seventh sweet moment between Prince William and Prince George when Stan gave up on the book with a heavy sigh and picked up his iPad, which Troy had given him as a birthday present a few months back. Everyone assumed Stan wouldn’t use it on principle because wasn’t an iPad pretty close to an iPhone? But apparently not. Stan loved the iPad as much as he loved his laminator. He read the news on his iPad every day because he could make the font nice and big, which he couldn’t do with a newspaper. Troy was inordinately pleased by the success of his present. It was important to him to always win the competition for best gift.
Joy looked over Stan’s shoulder to see what he was reading and scrolled through the same news site on her phone, so she would have read the same articles and would be prepared to set him straight if he attempted to set her straight on a particular issue.
‘Stop mansplaining, Dad,’ Amy once said at a family dinner.
‘He’s Stan-splaining,’ Joy had said, and that got a good laugh.
Her thumb stopped.
That specific combination of letters was so familiar it jumped out from the screen as if were her own name: Harry Haddad.
She waited. It took ages. She wondered if he was going to miss it. But then, finally, his body went still.
‘You see this?’ He held up the iPad. ‘About Harry?’
‘Yes,’ said Joy. She kept her tone neutral. It was important to maintain the pretence that their former star student, Harry Haddad, was not a touchy subject, not at all, and that she wasn’t trying to change the subject or, God forbid, offer comfort or sympathy. ‘Just saw it then.’
‘I knew it,’ said Stan. ‘I knew this day would come. I knew he wasn’t done.’
‘Did you?’ If this were true, which Joy doubted, he’d never once mentioned it, but she didn’t say that. ‘Huh. Well. That’s going to be very . . . interesting.’
She waited a moment and then carefully placed her phone facedown on her bedside table, next to her headphones. Her glittery metallic phone case, also a gift from Troy, shimmered like a disco ball under the bedside lamp.
She yawned. It started out fake and ended up genuine. She stretched her arms above her head. Stan turned off his iPad and took off his glasses.
‘I wonder what time Savannah will wake up,’ she said as she switched off her light and turned on her side. Thank God this poor young girl had chosen to knock on their door, tonight of all nights. She would be a distraction from Harry bloody Haddad. ‘Did she seem like a morning person to you?’
Stan said nothing. He put down his iPad, switched off his lamp and rolled onto his side, taking the covers with him as usual. She wrenched them back as usual. His back was warm and comforting against hers, but she could feel the tension that gripped him.
Finally he spoke. ‘I don’t know if she’s a morning person or not, Joy.’
*
Down the hallway their unexpected guest lay flat on her back in the neatly made-up single bed, wide awake and staring dry-eyed at the darkness, hands clasped like those of a corpse or a good little girl, her bedroom door pulled wide open as if to show she had nothing to hide from anyone.
chapter six
Now
Barb McMahon grimly dusted the framed picture of Joy and Stan Delaney on their wedding day and thought what a good-looking couple they’d been. Joy’s dress had a high neckline and billowing sleeves. Stan wore a ruffled wide-lapel shirt and purple bell-bottom trousers.
Barb had been at that wedding. It was a big raucous affair. Some guests thought the bride and groom an odd couple: Stan the giant, long-haired lout and Joy, the tiny blonde fairy princess, but Barb thought they were probably just jealous of the couple’s obvious sexual chemistry, so obvious it was almost indecent, not that anyone would have used the phrase ‘chemistry’ back then because she was pretty sure it was invented by the people who made The Bachelor.
Barb had married Darrin a year after that wedding, and she didn’t remember much chemistry, just a lot of earnest conversation about savings goals. When Darrin died of a stroke ten years ago, Barb started cleaning to bring in extra cash. She generally only cleaned for friends, people like Joy of her own circle and generation. Barb’s daughter thought that was weird. Doesn’t it make you uncomfortable, Mum? It didn’t make her at all uncomfortable. Why should it? Barb preferred to clean for friends, and friends of friends, the sort of women who had never had a cleaner before and felt embarrassed by the luxury of it, so they liked to work alongside you, chatting at the same time, and Barb liked that too because it made the time fly.
But Joy wasn’t here today, so time wasn’t flying.
‘She’s away,’ Stan had said.
He looked terrible without Joy there to look after him. He probably couldn’t boil an egg. His jaw was covered in snow-white stubble and there were two long scratch marks, like a railway track, down the side of his face.