Chapter 23

chapter twenty-three

‘Well, this has been a very special Father’s Day,’ said Joy. ‘Very special.’

She sat at the head of her beautifully set dining room table, like a woman in a magazine or a television show. Savannah had picked yellow freesias from the garden and put them in a water jug, and they looked perfect.

Joy’s head felt a little swimmy. She thought maybe she’d drunk more wine than she was used to drinking at lunchtime. Savannah kept refilling everyone’s glasses, like a waitress. In fact, Savannah had spent most of the lunch on her feet, no matter how many times people suggested she sit down, or offered to help. Eventually everyone gave up and let Savannah serve them an incredibly delicious lunch: lemon and rosemary roast chicken, roast potatoes and a green salad with walnuts and goat’s cheese. (Poor Brooke’s salad looked positively wilted in comparison.) It was quite remarkable that this level of quality had been produced in Joy’s kitchen. What must her oven think?

Savannah had served their lunch efficiently, without that whirling, feverish Oh I nearly forgot the bread rolls, up-and-down-and-up-again thing that Joy knew she did whenever she hosted, and Joy’s greedy family had gobbled everything up and accepted offers of seconds.

Now everyone had a cup of tea or coffee in front of them, along with their glasses of wine, and there were two plates of brownies on the table. Every person at the table had carefully, fairly, taken a brownie from each competing plate.

Even Steffi had been waited upon by Savannah like one of the Queen’s corgis. She sat now in the corner of the room curled up on an old cushion that Savannah had set up for her, her head resting on her paws, occasionally licking her lips and thumping her tail with the happy memory of the various morsels and scraps that Savannah had convinced her tasted better than paper.

Stan sat at a strange sideways angle at the other end of the table from Joy, trying to avoid the bobbing Happy Father’s Day balloon that Amy had tied to the back of his chair. Every now and then it brushed against his face and he batted it away like a fly, which was normally the sort of thing that would eventually make him lose his temper, but he was still in a remarkably good mood: expansive and chatty. It was either the revival of their sex life or the change in his diet since Savannah had taken over the cooking. If Savannah hadn’t turned up he would probably have spent this Father’s Day privately obsessing over Harry Haddad’s comeback.

Joy’s children, on the other hand, were not at their best. Joy wanted to say to Savannah: They’re normally much nicer than this!

She’d been looking forward to Savannah seeing her children all together, in the same way that she would feel about any new friend meeting her children. But today, nobody had much to say, although they had been polite and complimentary about the food, thank goodness; they all sat in a similar fashion, their shoulders rounded, backs hunched, especially when compared to Savannah, who sat so upright, like a small well-behaved child. Her posture was beautiful.

Joy scanned her children.

Amy was sulking about the brownies and pretending not to, and needed her hair brushed.

Logan seemed to have entered a kind of dissociative state, staring vaguely into the distance. If he behaved like that too often, Indira might get impatient and leave him. Joy wished Indira was here today. She was a breath of fresh air, and she would have been polite to Savannah.

Troy, normally the life of the party and the one to cajole Amy out of her moods, seemed preoccupied and not quite as handsome today.

Meanwhile Brooke was dead-white and wearing a shade of badly applied lipstick that did not suit her at all. Joy worried that a migraine loomed, and also, where the heck was Grant? Brooke said he had a cold too, but it seemed like too much of a coincidence that both Indira and Grant would be sick, and as far as Joy could remember that man had never even had as much as a blocked nose. He drank those awful green smoothies.

Brooke was a terrible liar. Could Grant have run off with another woman? Joy had always nursed a secret, never-expressed fear (except to her hairdresser, Narelle) that Grant might have an affair. He wasn’t especially good-looking but he was very charming and chatty, and Brooke would insist on keeping her hair so short. Narelle agreed that a longer style would soften Brooke’s sharpish features.

‘Why is today so special, Mum?’ asked Brooke.

It was special because Joy hadn’t had to do a single thing except hand over her credit card and turn up, but obviously she wasn’t going to say that to her children.

‘I don’t know,’ said Joy. She took a bite of Amy’s brownie, put it down on her plate and then took an equal-sized bite of Savannah’s brownie. Savannah’s was better, sad to say. ‘It just feels special.’

‘Maybe it’s the abundance of brownies,’ said Troy.

His father chuckled and Troy looked pleased with himself.

‘Troy.’ Joy put a warning finger to her lips and shot a look at Amy.

‘Mum, please. I am not upset that Savannah made brownies,’ said Amy. ‘For God’s sake.’ She tipped back her head and drained the last drops of her (second) glass of red wine and wiped her hand across her mouth like a small child drinking a glass of milk. She looked around the table. Her words were starting to soften and slur. ‘Is that what everyone thinks? That I’m upset about brownies?’

‘Absolutely, categorically not.’ Troy sat upright and looked mock-serious. ‘Why would we think you would be upset about brownies?’

‘But I am honestly not upset!’ cried Amy, looking very upset. ‘And by the way, Savannah, your brownies are delicious. The sweetness is just . . . perfecto!’ She kissed her fingertips. ‘If we were rating this brownie at work it would be what we in the business call a hero product.’

‘Amy tastes food for a living,’ said Joy, hoping to change the subject. She was mystified as to how Amy had managed to trick people into paying her to eat. On ‘pasta days at work’ Amy didn’t eat breakfast or lunch. ‘So she knows what she’s talking about.’

‘I think your brownies are very good,’ said Savannah to Amy. She took a tiny bite. She ate like a mouse. That first night, when she’d eaten that huge plate of leftover casserole and two bananas, had been an aberration. ‘Much chewier than mine. I left mine in the oven for too long.’

‘Thank you, Savannah. But in spite of what my family might lead you to believe, my self-worth doesn’t rest on my ability to make brownies,’ said Amy. ‘It’s like you all think I have the maturity of a four-year-old.’

‘You were actually very mature when you were four,’ said Joy. ‘When you started preschool your teacher called you “a remarkable child”.’

‘Wait, I thought that was me,’ said Brooke. ‘Wasn’t I the remarkable child?’

Joy reflected. Oh dear. ‘Well, yes, it may have been you,’ she admitted. ‘But Amy was also remarkable. You were all remarkable.’

Troy chuckled and rocked back and forth on the rear legs of his chair, which was something they had been trying to get him to stop doing since he was a child. He was a man now. If he wanted to break his neck that was fine with Joy, she wasn’t going to look after him!

‘Stop rocking on your chair, Troy, for goodness sake!’ she snapped, because she would end up looking after him, no matter how old he was, and he’d be a terrible patient.

Troy stopped. ‘Sorry, Mum.’

‘Didn’t I get expelled from preschool?’ said Amy. ‘Because I wouldn’t stop crying? And all the other kids got sick of the sound of me?’

That was also true. Separation anxiety was the very first label Joy heard applied to her oldest child, the first of many labels she’d hear over the years, but Joy had felt no sense of foreboding when she heard that first one. She’d felt foolish pride: my child can’t bear to be separated from me! That’s how much she loves me. Amy used to cling to her like a koala, her face pressed against Joy’s collarbone.

‘I was happy to have you home with me,’ said Joy. She said to Savannah, ‘When Amy was just three years old she used to trot about the court picking up balls while I coached, desperate to join in the lessons.’

‘That must have been cute,’ said Savannah encouragingly. She was always so interested in Joy’s family. It was lovely.

‘Remember when she first picked up a racquet?’ said Stan to Joy. ‘It was bigger than her.’

‘She was better than kids twice her age,’ said Joy.

‘They were all four better than kids twice their age,’ said Stan.

‘Wow,’ said Savannah. ‘A lot of talent in one family.’

No-one moved or said a word in response, but Joy felt a change in the mood of the room: like a slump or a sigh. It was as if her children were all inflated toys and they were slowly leaking air. What was wrong with them?

‘So I don’t know anything about tennis but I assume you all . . . played in, I don’t know, tournaments or whatever?’ said Savannah, as she used her fingers to remove another crumb from Amy’s brownie and put it on the tip of her tongue.

‘They were all in the top five players of the country at some point,’ said Stan.

‘That’s amazing,’ said Savannah.

‘In the juniors,’ Brooke quickly corrected her father. ‘Top five juniors.’

‘Still,’ said Savannah.

‘But none of us made it any further,’ said Amy. ‘We never quite got there.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ said Joy. ‘You all did extremely well!’ She was surprised and disappointed to find an intense wave of irritability sweep over her, washing away the wonderful sense of wellbeing she’d been experiencing since she woke up this morning. She could feel her bad mood like a physical sensation: an actual fever of aggravation heating up her face.

Amy raised a single eyebrow in a condescending manner. ‘I mean exactly that, Mum, we never quite got there, we all got close enough to make you think it was going to happen, and then one by one, we crashed and burned.’

This was technically true, in fact, it was distressingly accurate, but there was no need to say it in that hard, bitter tone. Joy and Stan had never revealed their disappointment to their children, only their pride. It was something they hadn’t even properly admitted to each other.

Joy remembered their trip to Wimbledon last year. Their first time. Their lifelong dream. They’d been giddy with anticipation. This was the point of their big trip: not seeing Buckingham Palace or the Tower of London or riding that overpriced London Eye. The point of the trip was Wimbledon. After all these years, they finally had the time and the money and they were there. Their kids and their friends had been texting: Send us photos!

She’d seen the moment it hit Stan: the realisation that they should never have come, not like this, not as ordinary fans, as ordinary people, because Stan had never really believed they were ordinary when it came to tennis. If he couldn’t play at Wimbledon then he should be there as the coach for one of his kids, and if not one of his kids, then one of his students, and if none of the above, then he should be watching from his armchair at home with his chilli crackers and cream cheese and his dog.

‘I don’t feel great,’ he had whispered, his face pasty-white. It was the men’s semifinals. The tickets had cost them six thousand dollars each. She thought: heart attack. Like poor Dennis Christos. He said, ‘You stay.’

But, of course, she didn’t send him off to have a heart attack on his own.

She’d dreamed of playing at Wimbledon too, and she’d dreamed of seeing one of her children or one of her students play at Wimbledon, and she’d dreamed, far more reasonably and feasibly, of one day being a spectator at Wimbledon, but her dreams didn’t have the same ferocious entitlement as Stan’s, because she was a woman, and women know that babies and husbands and sick parents can derail your dreams, at any moment they can drag you from your bed, they can forestall your career, they can lift you from your prized seat at Wimbledon from a match later described as ‘epic’. She thought she’d need to call an ambulance or take him to a hospital. She was thinking about travel insurance and telling the children, and how would they transport his body home?

But it wasn’t a heart attack. He said it was something they ate. She didn’t believe it.

Joy watched the match on television, and sent fraudulent texts about how Wimbledon was wonderful, ‘like a dream’, ‘they couldn’t believe they were there’, while Stan lay curled on his side in their king-sized bed, his eyes closed, forehead creased, so much like Brooke with a migraine that Joy had wondered if she should do the same as she once did with Brooke and press her hand to his forehead, firmly, the way Brooke wanted, Harder, Mummy, harder, except it was never hard enough to make it go away.

Stan got up the next day and said, ‘I’m so sorry,’ and couldn’t meet her eye.

She said, ‘You don’t have to say you’re sorry,’ because he didn’t. If they started saying sorry, where would it begin and where would it end? They went down to the hotel buffet breakfast, silent in the lift, and never spoke of it again.

‘We were always so proud of you!’ said Joy now to her children. ‘You were all incredibly talented and you all did your best . . . and that’s all we could ask for!’

Troy snorted. Joy glared at him.

Stan said to Savannah, ‘Every single one of my kids was good enough to play on centre court at Wimbledon –’

‘Except clearly we weren’t,’ interrupted Amy.

‘You were!’ Stan pounded his fist on the table, so hard that the crockery rattled. The Happy Father’s Day balloon spun frantically.

Joy looked at her children: Brooke had her elbow on the table, her forehead rested on her hand, Logan lifted his eyes to the ceiling, Troy grinned that inane grin and Amy pulled a strand of blue-dyed hair across her face and sucked it, a childish habit that made Joy want to scream.

Was it because none of them had partners with them today that it felt like she’d hurtled back through time to the dinner table of their childhoods? Or was it the sudden explosive sound of Stan’s fist on the table? He had no right. They were grown-ups. Didn’t the stupid man realise that he no longer had the power to send anyone to their room? They could stand up and leave whenever they liked. They could move interstate or overseas. They could choose to never visit, to never call, to never have children.

The children had all the power now.

And how inappropriate to behave like this in front of Savannah. Stan’s fist on the table might remind her of previous foster placements with abusive fathers. No-one knew what that child might have suffered.

Stan leaned forward on the table, his shoulders huge and muscled in the shirt that Amy had given him, a size too small.

‘This one was a beautiful player.’ Stan pointed at Amy, his eyes on Savannah. ‘Impeccable ground strokes. The ball just fizzed off her racquet. It was a pleasure to watch her play.’

Oh, it was true. It had been a pleasure to watch Amy play. Joy and Stan used to exchange smiles as their ponytailed daughter glided back and forth across the court, when she was maybe eight or nine, back when she had a ‘funny little personality’ not ‘a possible mental illness’. (Joy never forgave the GP who wrote that particular referral letter.)

‘We used to call her the Comeback Queen,’ reflected Stan. ‘Remember?’

He looked down the table at Joy.

‘I do remember,’ said Joy carefully, because that was much later, and that wasn’t such a good memory. She’d suspected that as Amy got older she began to deliberately lose points or games just so she could claw her way back to a win. Amy loved being the underdog. It was a dangerous, stupid strategy against the better players. The better players gripped that lead between their teeth and ran with it. Amy had lost matches she should have won because she’d mounted her comeback too late.

‘Once she lost nine games in a row and still went on to win the match,’ reflected Stan. ‘Incredible.’

‘But?’ said Amy airily.

‘Does anyone need another tea or coffee?’ asked Joy.

‘But then she got to fourteen or fifteen, and she started choking,’ said Stan. ‘Simple as that.’

It had been awful to witness. Amy would shout at herself. It wasn’t her opponent she was fighting but herself, the voice in her head. Amy! You stupid idiot! Sometimes Joy felt like that summed up Amy’s whole life: a constant power struggle with a cruel invisible foe.

‘Choking?’ asked Savannah.

Amy wrapped both hands around her throat, stuck her tongue out and put her head on one side.

‘It’s a sports term,’ Stan explained to Savannah. ‘It basically means that your state of mind prevents you from reaching your potential.’

‘Stan,’ said Joy. It felt like he was undressing in public. Or undressing his family. It felt deeply personal. These were conversations they’d had about their children, in the privacy of their bedroom. Amy did choke. If she was serving for the match you could almost guarantee she’d double-fault.

‘Joy,’ said Stan.

He couldn’t be stopped. It was like standing in front of a semitrailer speeding towards you.

He said, ‘Amy lost the match in her own mind before she’d even walked out on that court and her mother and I, we just couldn’t work out how to . . .’

‘Fix me,’ finished Amy.

‘No,’ said Stan. ‘Not fix you. Help you.’

‘Move it along, Dad,’ said Amy. She bundled her hair up into a messy topknot, put her elbows on the table, and locked her hands together. Joy knew it was only a defence mechanism but Amy’s mocking, glamorous smile reminded Joy of Stan’s mother. Joy hated it when Stan’s bloody mother made a guest appearance on her beloved children’s faces. ‘Let’s hear why the others failed.’

‘No-one failed.’ Joy’s stomach cramped. ‘And I’m sure Savannah isn’t interested in this.’

‘Oh, no, it’s very interesting,’ said Savannah brightly, as if she couldn’t sense the tension in the room. It was the first time Joy had ever felt even slightly annoyed with her.

Stan jerked his head at Logan. ‘This one was an athlete. Jesus, he was an athlete. Doesn’t look like it now, of course.’

‘Gee, thanks, Dad.’ Logan lifted his wineglass in a mocking toast.

‘He had one of the most powerful forehands I’ve ever seen. Extraordinary.’

‘Powerful, yes, but would we call it accurate?’ asked Troy with a sidelong look at his older brother, and Logan gave him the rude finger, as if they were both little boys.

‘Logan was so fit.’ Stan ignored Troy. He was into his stride now. It had been years since he’d had the chance to talk to someone with no previous knowledge and such apparent interest in the topic of his children’s tennis.

‘He could play for hours and look like he’d just walked onto the court. I remember one match when Logan was up against this kid who was meant to be the next big thing.’ Stan’s eyes shone with the memory of that long-ago January day. ‘Logan wore that kid out. Every game was deuce, ad, deuce, ad, deuce, ad. Every rally was a marathon. We’re talking ten, fifteen shot rallies. One hour in, that was it, this other kid, this supposed star, he was done.’ Stan sliced his palms sideways. ‘Meanwhile this one –’ He pointed his thumb at Logan. ‘Fresh as a daisy. Barely broke a sweat.’

Joy hadn’t been at that match, but she must have heard the story a hundred times, and each time Stan told it with such delight, his head unconsciously going back and forth like a tennis spectator as he chanted: ‘Deuce, ad, deuce, ad.’

‘But,’ Logan took another two brownies, one from each plate, ‘my turn for the “but”.’

‘Logan never truly committed to the sport. He just didn’t want it enough. He never had that burning desire, it was like he could take it or leave it, he was too –’

‘Passive?’ said Logan, with a strange expression on his face. ‘Is that the word you’re looking for, Dad?’

‘I was going to say you were just too nice,’ said Stan. ‘I sometimes wondered if you even liked winning. You hated seeing the other kid lose.’

‘I liked winning,’ muttered Logan. He aggressively massaged the back of his neck. ‘Bloody hell, Dad, how much of my childhood did I spend on the court if I didn’t commit to the sport? How much more committed did I need to be?’

‘Yeah, but, mate, like I said, you just didn’t have that desire.’ Stan discarded poor Logan and turned his gaze to Troy. ‘Now Troy had the desire, because all he cared about was beating you and Amy. Younger siblings always end up the better players. Look at Venus and Serena. But see, the thing with Troy –’ Stan shook his head and clicked his tongue. ‘Troy was a show pony.’

‘Still is,’ said Logan.

Troy whinnied. Brooke giggled. Savannah smiled uncertainly.

‘He was all about the show reel,’ said Stan. ‘He’d go for shots that Federer wouldn’t go for. Show-off shots, and sometimes he’d get those shots, but I’d say to him –’

‘Spectacular doesn’t win the match,’ filled in Troy. He picked up his glass. ‘Could someone pass me the wine?’

‘Exactly.’ Stan twitched as the Father’s Day balloon brushed against his face. ‘Spectacular doesn’t win the match. You have to have substance.’ He pushed the balloon gently away as if it were a small child trying to look over his shoulder.

If Joy and Stan were having this conversation alone she would have told him it was nothing to do with bloody substance. It was focus. Troy could keep his concentration for only so long and then it was gone. That was the kid’s fatal flaw. He’d be a set and a half up and Joy would see him staring dreamily at the sky or checking out some attractive young girl in the stands. He did the show-off shots to keep himself interested.

‘Behold, a man without substance.’ Troy made jazz hands.

‘And then there was the altercation with Harry,’ said Stan.

Shut up,thought Joy. Shut up, shut up, shut up, you stupid man.

‘Isn’t it my turn yet?’ asked Brooke quickly.

‘You never really came back from that,’ said Stan to Troy.

‘I did get a tennis scholarship to Stanford,’ Troy told Savannah. ‘But that meant nothing to my parents.’

‘It certainly did not mean nothing!’ said Joy. It meant you went to the other side of the world and returned an entirely different person. After America, it was like he’d been shellacked. You could tap your fingertip against that shiny hard cheerful surface.

‘Troy couldn’t control his temper,’ said Stan. ‘Inherited his hot temper from his mother.’ He chuckled, as if he could turn one of the most distressing events of their family history into a funny anecdote suitable for sharing with new friends. ‘He was a racquet thrower. We had to tie his racquet to his wrist.’

‘Not we,’ said Joy. ‘You. I thought it would ruin his grip.’

‘But it didn’t, did it?’ said Stan. ‘His grip wasn’t the problem.’

‘I know it’s your day, Dad,’ said Amy. ‘But could we change the subject?’

‘Don’t worry about it, Amy,’ said Troy as Brooke silently passed him the wine. ‘I don’t care.’

‘Anyhow, I thought we had the temper under control. He was thirteen when it happened,’ said Stan to Savannah. ‘He got banned for six months. Fair enough too.’

He was fourteen, thought Joy. He’d turned fourteen the day before.

‘Playing against a Delaneys student. Harry Haddad.’ Stan paused, allowing space for Savannah to give a little gasp of recognition, but Savannah just looked blankly back at him.

‘Famous Australian player. Former number one? Won Wimbledon twice? Won the US Open a few years back?’ It was beyond Stan’s comprehension that she wouldn’t recognise the name.

‘Oh! Yes! Of course. I’ve heard of him,’ said Savannah, clearly pretending. Joy thought how refreshing it was to have someone in the house with so little interest in tennis she hadn’t even heard of Harry Haddad.

‘He was a former student of mine,’ said Stan. He glanced at Joy, corrected himself. ‘Former student of ours. He’s been in the news because he’s in training now to make a comeback. Anyhow, so back to the story. Troy was playing against him and not doing so well –’

‘Dad,’ said Amy. ‘Please. Let’s not talk about Harry Haddad. It’s not good for my mental health. I feel like it’s not good for your mental health.’

‘Another thing to mention is that Harry Haddad was a snivelling little cheat.’ Troy studied his wineglass.

‘Never saw it happen,’ said Stan, calmly, but with that edge: the edge still sharp enough to make his children bleed.

He still didn’t get it, even after all these years. He never saw how he betrayed Troy every time he made that statement.

‘Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,’ said Troy evenly.

‘How can you cheat?’ asked Savannah. ‘Isn’t there like a . . . ref?’

‘There are no chair umpires at the lower levels,’ said Brooke. ‘The players make their own line calls. It’s hard for some kids to be . . . ethical.’

‘It’s hard for some grown-ups,’ said Joy. She’d seen plenty of players at the club make questionable line calls. ‘Sometimes umpires can be biased too.’

She thought of the first time she played in the Under 13s grass court championships at White City. Her grandfather was busy that day and so her mother took her. Her mother, bored out of her mind, flipped through Vogue while Joy played. Joy couldn’t understand why the umpire kept calling her shots out and her opponent’s shots in. She later discovered the umpire was her opponent’s mother. ‘Well, you’re much prettier than her,’ her mother said on the way home, as if that was what counted. (It did help a little bit.)

‘Look at his talent, Troy. Look at where he got. He didn’t need to cheat.’ Stan was still stuck on the topic of Harry. He would forever be stuck on the topic of Harry. He grabbed the string of the balloon and snapped it free from the chair, so that it floated up to the ceiling.

‘Oh,’ said Amy sadly, watching it go.

‘Good to see you’re still so loyal to him, Dad,’ said Troy. ‘Considering how loyal he was to you.’

Brooke sucked in air through her teeth as if she’d stubbed her toe.

Stan pulled at the fabric of his too-tight shirt with such ferocity Joy was reminded of the Incredible Hulkbursting free of his ordinary clothes when he lost his temper. Troy used to adore that show. Perhaps because of his own unstoppable temper.

‘It was Harry’s father’s decision to drop me.’ Stan spoke calmly. He wasn’t going to explode into the Hulk. ‘To drop us.’

He directed his attention to Savannah. ‘Harry’s father decided to change coaches.’ He shrugged. A big fake shrug. ‘It happens. Tennis parents are a unique breed. They get some success and they start looking for something bigger and better. That’s life in the coaching game.’

Maybe it wasn’t a fake shrug. His insouciance seemed almost believable. Did he truly feel that now? Was he over it?

‘But I guess you must still feel really proud that you discovered him?’ said Savannah.

‘We do feel proud,’ said Stan. ‘Sure.’

He looked uncertainly around the table. ‘Where was I?’ His eyes caught on Brooke and his face softened. ‘The little one.’

‘The little one who is a whole inch taller than me,’ commented Amy, her gaze still on the balloon.

‘Brooke was the smartest of our kids,’ said Stan.

‘Thanks, Dad.’ Troy tipped his finger to his forehead.

‘On the court,’ said Stan. ‘She was the smartest and most strategic one on the court. She had to be, because she was playing you lot and you were all so much bigger and faster than her. She was analysing her competitor’s weaknesses at an age when most kids were just thinking about getting the ball over the net.’

It was true that Brooke was clever on the court, but Joy had never really enjoyed watching her play as much as the others, because Brooke herself seemed to take no pleasure in the game. That permanent frown made its first appearance when Brooke was about eight. Even before the headaches.

‘But Brooke gets migraines,’ said Stan. ‘It was a terrible, terrible shame.’

He shook his head with such regret and sadness you would think he was describing Brooke’s early death, not her early retirement.

Joy remembered the day Stan and Brooke came home hours early from a tournament.

‘What are you doing here?’ Joy had asked. She was rushing out the door on her way to fill in for one of the coaches who had called in sick. She was in a permanent rush in those days.

‘She’s done,’ said Stan. ‘She’s finished.’

‘What happened?’ Joy asked as Brooke walked past her and went straight to her room without saying a word, but the look she shot at Joy seemed so accusatory, and when she looked at Stan she saw the same accusation in his eyes: You failed. Because the children’s medical care was her responsibility and she couldn’t fix Brooke’s headaches.

‘That doctor you take her to has no fucking clue,’ Stan had said, and what Joy should have done was tell Stan to take her class for her, and she should have gone and comforted Brooke, but she was so angry with Stan for swearing at her, for blaming her, that she didn’t even think of it, she just left, slamming the door behind her.

‘If we’d got the right medical advice things might have been different,’ said Stan now, and Joy felt that long-ago frustration rise within her as if it were yesterday.

Savannah lifted up Amy’s plate of brownies. ‘Would anyone –’

‘I took her to doctor after doctor after doctor!’ said Joy.

‘No-one is blaming you, Mum,’ said Brooke as the dog began to whine.

‘Well, it certainly sounds –’

‘Indira left me,’ said Logan, and the room fell instantly silent.