‘What happened to you?’ Stan gestured at the girl’s eye. He looked frightened, suddenly elderly. ‘Is someone out there?’ He peered over her shoulder onto the street. It would never have occurred to Joy that there would be someone out there.
‘There’s no-one out there,’ said the girl. ‘I came in a cab.’
‘It’s okay, sweetheart, we’ll get you fixed up,’ said Joy.
This was very confusing but it would all become clear. Stan always wanted everything instantly clarified.
Joy guessed the girl to be in her late twenties, the same age as Brooke, but she didn’t look like one of Brooke’s friends, who were busy, polite young women with a lot on their minds. This girl had the grungy look that Amy favoured, so it seemed most likely she was one of Amy’s friends. This made it difficult, because Amy moved in a variety of eclectic circles. Someone from that amateur theatre group Amy had been so enthusiastic about for at least a week? A university friend? From her first abandoned degree? Second?
‘How did you hurt yourself?’ asked Joy.
‘My boyfriend and I got in an argument,’ said the girl. She swayed and pressed the heel of her hand to her bloody eye. ‘I just ran out of the apartment onto the street and jumped in a cab . . .’
‘Your boyfriend did this to you?’ said Stan. ‘You mean he hit you?’
‘Sort of,’ said the girl.
‘Sort of? What does that mean?’ said Stan. The man could be so abrasive at times. ‘Did he hit you or not?’
‘It’s complicated,’ said the girl.
‘No, it’s not. If you’ve been assaulted, we should call the police,’ said Stan.
‘No.’ The girl shifted from Joy’s grip. ‘No way. I don’t want the police involved.’
‘We don’t need to call the police, darling, not if you don’t want,’ said Joy. ‘It’s your choice. But come and sit down.’
If the girl didn’t want to call the police then that was fine with her. She didn’t want police here.
As they passed under one of the hallway downlights, Joy saw that the girl was older than she’d first thought. Maybe her early thirties? Think, think, think.
Could she be one of the boys’ ex-girlfriends? There had been a few years where it had been hard to keep track of all the young girls sashaying about their house. Both boys had long-term relationships with tanned blonde girls in white sneakers called Tracey. Stan could never tell which Tracey was which. Both Traceys ended up crying at Joy’s kitchen table on separate occasions while Joy chopped onions and murmured comfortingly. Logan’s Tracey still sent Christmas cards.
But this girl didn’t look like one of the girlfriends. Troy went for glossy princesses and Logan went for sexy librarians and this girl was neither.
‘Then I realised I didn’t have any money,’ said the girl as they walked into the kitchen, and she stopped and tipped back her head to study the high ceiling as if it were a cathedral. Joy followed her gaze as it travelled around the room to the sideboard crammed with framed family photos and ornaments, including the pair of horrible sneering china cats that had belonged to Stan’s mother, and lingered on the bowl of fresh fruit sitting on the table: shiny red apples and bright yellow bananas. Was the child hungry? She was welcome to all the bananas. Joy didn’t know why she kept buying them. It was as if they were for display purposes only. Most ended up mushy-soft and black and then she felt ashamed throwing them away.
‘I was just completely empty-handed. No wallet, no phone, no money: nothing.’
‘Sit down, darling.’ Joy pulled out a chair at the kitchen table.
Stan had stopped barking questions, thank goodness. He silently took down the first-aid kit from its place in the cupboard above the refrigerator where Joy couldn’t reach it without standing on a chair. He put it on the table and opened the lid because Joy always struggled with the stiff lock. Then he went to the sink and got the girl a glass of water.
‘Let’s take a look at this.’ Joy put on her glasses. ‘Is it very painful?’
‘Oh, it’s fine. I have a high pain threshold.’ The girl lifted the glass of water with a shaky hand and drank. Her fingernails were ragged. A nail biter. Amy used to be a terrible nail biter. The chill of the cold night air radiated off the girl’s skin as Joy cleaned the wound with antiseptic.
‘So you realised you didn’t have your purse,’ prompted Joy as Stan sat down, put his elbows on the tabletop, clasped his hands together and rubbed his nose against his knuckles, frowning heavily.
‘Yeah, so I was freaking out, thinking, how am I going to pay the fare, and the driver wasn’t one of those friendly cabbies, you know, I could just tell, he looked like he could be the type to be mean, even aggressive. So we were just driving randomly, and –’
‘Driving randomly?’ interrupted Stan. ‘But what destination did you give the driver when you got in the cab?’
Joy shot him a look. Sometimes he didn’t realise how he could come across to people.
‘I didn’t give him an address. I wasn’t thinking. I said, “Head north.” I was trying to buy myself time while I worked out where to go.’
‘Did the driver not even notice you were hurt?’ asked Joy. ‘He should have taken you straight to the nearest hospital without charging you a cent!’
‘If he did notice, he didn’t want to know about it.’
Joy shook her head sadly. People these days.
‘But anyway, then, for some reason, I don’t know why, something made me do it, I put my hand in the pocket of my jeans and I couldn’t believe it! I pulled out a twenty-dollar note! It was so random! I never find money like that!’
The girl’s face lit up with childlike pleasure as she remembered the moment she’d found the money.
‘Someone was looking out for you,’ said Joy. She cut a piece of gauze from the roll.
‘Yeah, I know, so as the fare got closer to twenty dollars, I started giving the cabbie random directions. Like, turn left. Second right. I don’t know, I was kind of delirious. I was just following my nose. Wait. Did I make that up? Following your nose. It sounds funny now I say it. How do you follow your nose?’
The girl looked up at Joy.
‘No, that’s right,’ said Joy. She tapped her own nose. ‘Following your nose.’
She looked over at Stan. He was pulling on his lower lip the way he did when he disapproved of something. He never followed his nose anywhere. You need a game plan, kid. You don’t just hit the ball and hope to win, you plan how you’re going to win.