‘Jesus, Troy.’ The cheaper-version brother exhaled. ‘That’s not funny.’
The other man shrugged. ‘The police will ask if they argued. Dad said they did argue.’
‘But surely –’
‘Maybe Dad did have something to do with it,’ said the youngest of the four, a woman wearing a short orange dress dotted with white daisies over a swimsuit tied at the neck. Her hair was dyed blue (the waitress coveted that exact shade), and it was tied back in a sticky wet tangled knot at her neck. There was a fine sheen of sandy sunscreen on her arms as if she’d just that moment walked off the beach, even though they were at least a forty-minute drive from the coast. ‘Maybe he snapped. Maybe he finally snapped.’
‘Stop it, both of you,’ said the other woman, who the waitress realised now was a regular: extra-large, extra-hot soy flat white. Her name was Brooke. Brooke with an ‘e’. They wrote customers’ names on their coffee lids, and this woman had once pointed out, in a diffident but firm way, as if she couldn’t help herself, that there should be an ‘e’ at the end of her name.
She was polite but not chatty and generally just a little stressed, like she already knew the day wasn’t going to go her way. She paid with a five-dollar note and always left the fifty-cent piece in the tip jar. She wore the same thing every day: a navy polo shirt, shorts and runners with socks.
Today she was dressed for the weekend, in a skirt and top, but she still had the look of an off-duty member of the armed forces, or a PE teacher who wouldn’t fall for any of your excuses about cramps.
‘Dad would never hurt Mum,’ she said to her sister. ‘Never.’
‘Oh my God, of course he wouldn’t. I’m not serious!’ The blue-haired girl held up her hands and the waitress saw the rumpled skin around her eyes and mouth and realised she wasn’t young at all, she was just dressed young. She was a middle-aged person in disguise. From a distance you’d guess twenty; from close up, you’d think maybe forty. It felt like a trick.
‘Mum and Dad have a really strong marriage,’ said Brooke with an ‘e’, and something about the resentfully deferential pitch of her voice made the waitress think that in spite of her sensible clothes, she might be the youngest of the four.
The better-looking brother gave her a quizzical look. ‘Did we grow up in the same house?’
‘I don’t know. Did we? Because I never saw any signs of violence . . . I mean, God!’
‘Anyway, I’m not the one suggesting it. I’m saying other people might suggest it.’
The blue-haired woman looked up and caught sight of the waitress. ‘Sorry! We still haven’t looked!’ She picked up the laminated menu.
‘That’s okay,’ said the waitress. She wanted to hear more.
‘Also, we’re all a bit distracted. Our mother is missing.’
‘Oh no. That’s . . . worrying?’ The waitress couldn’t quite work out how to react. They didn’t seem that worried. These people were, like, all a lot older than her – wouldn’t their mother therefore be properly old? Like a little old lady? How did a little old lady go missing? Dementia?
Brooke with an ‘e’ winced. She said to her sister, ‘Don’t tell people that.’
‘I apologise. Our mother is possibly missing,’ amended the blue-haired woman. ‘We have temporarily mislaid our mother.’
‘You need to retrace your steps.’ The waitress went along with the joke. ‘Where did you see her last?’
There was an awkward pause. They all looked at her with identical liquid brown eyes and sober expressions. They all had the sort of eyelashes that were so dark they looked like they were wearing eyeliner.
‘You know, you’re right. That’s exactly what we need to do.’ The blue-haired woman nodded slowly as if she were taking the flippant remark seriously. ‘Retrace our steps.’
‘We’ll all try the apple crumble with cream,’ interrupted the expensive-version brother. ‘And then we’ll let you know what we think.’
‘Good one.’ The cheaper-version brother tapped the edge of his menu on the side of the table.
‘For breakfast?’ said Brooke with an ‘e’, but she smiled wryly as if at some private joke related to apple crumble and they all handed over their menus in the relieved, ‘that’s sorted, then’ way that people handed back menus, glad to be rid of them.
The waitress wrote 4 x App Crum on her notepad, and straightened the pile of menus.
‘Listen,’ said the cheaper-version brother. ‘Has anyone called her?’
‘Coffees?’ asked the waitress.
‘We’ll all have long blacks,’ said the expensive-version brother, and the waitress made eye contact with Brooke with an ‘e’ to give her the chance to say, No, actually, that’s not my coffee, I always have an extra-large, extra-hot soy flat white, but she was busy turning on her brother. ‘Of course we’ve called her. A million times. I’ve texted. I’ve emailed. Haven’t you?’
‘So four long blacks?’ said the waitress.
No-one responded.
‘Okay, so four long blacks.’
‘Not Mum. Her.’ The cheaper-version brother put his elbows on the table and pressed his fingertips to his temples. ‘Savannah. Has anyone tried to get in contact with her?’
The waitress had no more excuses to linger and eavesdrop.
Was Savannah another sibling? Why wasn’t she here today? Was she the family outcast? The prodigal daughter? Is that why her name seemed to land between them with such portentousness? And had anyone called her?
The waitress walked to the counter, hit the bell with the flat of her hand and slapped down their order.
chapter two
Last September
It was close to eleven on a chilly, breezy Tuesday night. Pale pink cherry blossoms skittered and whirled as the taxi drove slowly past renovated period homes, each with a mid-range luxury sedan in the driveway and an orderly trio of different-coloured wheelie bins at the kerb. A ring-tailed possum scuttled across a sandstone fence, caught in the taxi’s headlights. A small dog yelped once and went quiet. The air smelled of wood smoke, cut grass and slow-cooked lamb. Most of the houses were dark except for the vigilant winking of security cameras.
Joy Delaney, at number nine, packed her dishwasher while she listened to the latest episode of The Migraine Guy Podcast on the fancy new wireless headphones her son had given her for her birthday.
Joy was a tiny, trim, energetic woman with shiny shoulder-length white hair. She could never remember if she was sixty-eight or sixty-nine, and sometimes she even allowed the possibility that she was sixty-seven. (She was sixty-nine.) Right now she wore jeans and a black cardigan over a striped t-shirt, with woolly socks. She supposedly looked ‘great for her age’. Young people in shops often told her this. She always wanted to say, ‘You don’t know my age, you darling idiot, so how do you know I look great for it?’