Chapter 66

chapter sixty-six

Now

Amy had no aptitude for languages but she did do French in high school and she could remember the satisfaction of watching a paragraph of nonsensical words magically morph into sensible sentences, and that was exactly what was happening to her now as she studied her mother’s nonsensical text message.

Going OFF-GRID for a little while! I’m dancing daffodils 21 Dog Champagne to end Czechoslovakia! Spangle Moot! Love, Mum.

The words became:

Going OFF-GRID for a little while. I’m doing Harry’s 21-Day Challenge to End Childhood Cancer. Sponsor Me! Love, Mum.

She read the message out loud. Once. Twice.

‘Do you think that’s where she could be?’ said Simon, in another one of his crisp white t-shirts, looking up at her anxiously. ‘It’s possible?’

Amy nodded. ‘It’s possible.’ It made sense. It made perfect sense.

At this moment, everything made perfect, exquisite sense.

‘It’s also possible I love you,’ she whispered, without meeting his eyes or moving her lips, as if she were operating a ventriloquist’s doll, as if it might not count if she didn’t say it properly. In a minute this beautiful clarity would be gone.

Another man would have said, ‘What did you just say?’ and she wouldn’t have said it again. Another man would have tried to hug her or kiss her and she would have stood as stiff as a board in his arms, because right now she couldn’t be touched.

But Simon Barrington wasn’t another man.

He didn’t move or smile or try to make eye contact. He looked straight ahead at his laptop screen and said, formally and clearly and quite loudly, as if he were making a legally binding declaration to a government official: ‘I love you too, Amy.’

It wasn’t the first time she’d heard those words from a man, it was just the first time she believed them.

*

Minutes later the phones of the four Delaney children dinged simultaneously in locations across Sydney, and each phone was snatched up with fumbling, frightened fingers as they read a five-word text from an unknown number.

It said:

Your mother is home.

Dad.

Stan’s first ever text from his brand new phone turned out to be his most memorable.