Chapter 8

chapter eight

Last September

Brooke Delaney drove to work on Monday morning with breakfast radio on low, her window shield shades tilted down. Occasionally she moaned softly, for effect. For whose effect, she didn’t know. Her own, presumably. She wore polarised sunglasses but the morning sunlight pouring through her tinted car windows still felt hurtful, in an unspecified way, like a mild insult from a stranger.

She stopped at a pedestrian crossing to let a little schoolgirl cross. The girl waved her thanks like a grown-up and walked hurriedly, gratefully. Flat feet. She broke Brooke’s heart. You are fine, Brooke told herself as her eyes filled with tears and she put her foot on the accelerator. You feel strange and teary and fragile and surreal but you are fine.

She touched her forehead. The ache is just the memory of the pain, not the pain itself.

The migraine had attacked with a brutal blow to her right eye early Saturday morning. She was braced for it. She’d known the fucker was coming, so she’d cancelled her plans in anticipation. She’d spent the weekend alone in her bedroom, the blinds down, a cold cloth on her forehead. No-one but her and her migraine.

It was her first migraine since Grant had moved out six weeks ago. No-one to bring her icepacks or glasses of chilled water, no-one to check in or care or lay a firm hand on her forehead. But she’d got through it on her own. A migraine wasn’t childbirth. Although she’d read a survey that showed women who had experienced both rated their migraine pain as the higher of the two, which was oddly cheering to hear.

She remembered her friend Ines talking about how, after her divorce, she’d constructed a desk from an IKEA flatpack on her own while playing ‘I Am Woman’,but then, after she was done, all she’d wanted to do was call her ex and tell him about it.

Brooke felt the same desire to call Grant and tell him she’d got through a migraine on her own. How pathetic. Her migraines were no longer of interest to him. Perhaps they never had been of interest to him.

‘Are you postdrome, my darling?’ her mother would say if she saw her this morning, because now, thanks to her podcasts, she recognised symptoms and spoke the lingo with jaunty ease.

Brooke wanted to snap: You don’t get to use the lingo, Mum, if you’ve never had a migraine.

But her mother would be so remorseful, and Brooke couldn’t stand it. She knew her mother wanted exoneration, and she didn’t think she was deliberately withholding it, but she certainly wasn’t giving Joy what she needed.

‘The thing is,’ Joy would say, ‘I was so busy that year, the year the headaches started, I mean the migraines, when your migraines started, that was a really bad year in our family, a terrible year, our “annus horribilis”, as the Queen would say, I might be mispronouncing it, my grumpy old Latin teacher, Mr O’Brien, would know how to pronounce it, he drowned, the poor man, on Avoca Beach, not swimming between the flags apparently, got caught in the rip, so no-one to blame but himself, but still, anyway, that year, that bad year, there was just a lot . . . and we thought we might lose the business, and both your grandmothers were so sick, and I had no idea what you were going through –’ And Brooke would cut her off, because she’d heard all this so many times before, right down to the drowning of the Latin teacher.

‘Don’t worry about it, Mum. It was a long time ago.’

Her mother had too much time on her hands. That was the problem. She was going a little dotty. She spent hours looking at old photos and then ringing her children to tell them how little and cute they’d been and how sorry she was for not noticing it at the time.

The truth was, Brooke didn’t even remember her mother dismissing her migraines. She had no memory of the ‘unforgivable’ time when Joy yelled at Brooke for coming down with a migraine when they were running late.

What she remembered was the extraordinary, astonishing pain, and her fury with her mother for not fixing it. She didn’t expect her dad or the doctors to fix it. She expected her mother to fix it.

Brooke managed her migraines now: efficiently, expertly, without resentment. Watch for the symptoms. Get on to the medication fast. This had been the first in six months. She was responsible for the incarceration of a monster, and sometimes the monster broke free of its shackles.

‘Last Tuesday, retired tennis star Harry Haddad revealed that he is planning . . .’

The radio announcer’s words slid into her consciousness. She flicked up the volume.

‘. . . a return to professional tennis next year. The three-time grand slam champion retired after a serious shoulder injury four years ago. He announced his plans on social media last Tuesday and today posted a picture of himself working out under the guidance of his newly appointed coach, former Wimbledon champion Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan. Haddad, who is reportedly soon to release his autobiography, is obviously hoping for one last exciting chapter in the story of his incredible career.’

‘Oh for God’s sake, Harry,’ said Brooke.

She changed the radio station to show her disapproval. He was making a mistake. His shoulder would never be the same and Nicole wasn’t the right fit. Former greats didn’t necessarily make great coaches. Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan was a beautiful, single-minded player but Brooke suspected she didn’t have the patience for coaching.

She tapped her fingers against the steering wheel and murmured, ‘C’mon, c’mon,’ to the traffic light. Her dad had no patience with traffic lights either, or children who took too long to put on their shoes, or romantic scenes in movies, but he had all the patience in the world when it came to coaching.

Brooke remembered how he used to watch and analyse a student, eyes narrowed against the glare – he refused to ever wear sunglasses on the court; it had been a historic moment when he let Brooke wear them in a fruitless attempt to combat the migraines – and then he would beckon the player to the net, holding up one finger while he thought it out: What do I need to say or do to make it click in this kid’s head? He never gave the same lesson twice.

Brooke’s mother had been good with the group lessons, keeping the little kids running and laughing (she wore glamorous oversized sunglasses when coaching, although never when playing), but she didn’t have the passion or patience for one-on-one coaching. She was the businesswoman, the brains behind Delaneys, the one to start the pro shop, the café, the holiday camps.

Joy made the money and Stan made the stars, except they’d lost their shiniest star: Harry Haddad.

Stan could have taken Harry all the way and much further, although some would argue that three grand slams were as far as he was ever going to get. Not her dad. He believed Harry could have flown as high as Federer, that Harry would be the Australian to finally break the Australian Open drought, but they would never know what could have happened in the parallel world where Harry Haddad stuck with his childhood coach, Stan ‘the Man’ Delaney.

The light changed and she put her foot on the accelerator, thinking of her poor parents and how they’d be feeling about this news. They must surely know. The announcement was made last Tuesday. If they hadn’t seen it on the news, someone in the tennis community would have told them. It was strange that her mother hadn’t called to talk about it, and to worry about Brooke’s dad and how he’d feel seeing Harry back on the court.

It was painful to watch her dad watch Harry Haddad play tennis on television. He quivered with barely contained tension through every point, his shoulders up, his face a heartbreaking combination of pride and hurt. The whole family had complicated feelings about their most celebrated student. Multiple Delaneys Tennis Academy players had done well on the circuit, but Harry was the only one who’d made it all the way to the Promised Land. The only one to kiss that magical piece of silverware: the Gentlemen’s Singles Championship Trophy at Wimbledon. Not once, but twice.

Brooke’s dad had discovered Harry. The kid had never held a racquet, but one day Harry’s dad won a one-hour private tennis lesson at Delaneys Tennis Academy in a charity raffle and decided to give the lesson to his eight-year-old son. The rest, as Brooke’s mother liked to say, was history.

Now Harry was not just a beloved sporting icon but a high-profile philanthropist. He’d married a beautiful woman and had three beautiful children, one of whom had been very ill with leukaemia, which was when Harry became a passionate advocate for childhood cancer research. He raised millions. He was saving lives. How could you say a bad word about a man like that? You couldn’t.

Except Brooke could, because Harry hadn’t always been a saint. When he was a kid, back when Brooke and her siblings knew him, he was a sneaky, strategic cheat. He used cheating as a tactic: not just to score points but to rattle and enrage his opponents. Her dad never believed it. He had always suffered from tunnel vision when it came to Harry, but then again, nearly all adults used to have tunnel vision when it came to Harry. All they saw was his sublime talent.

While playing a match against Brooke’s brother Troy when they were teenagers, Harry kept blatantly calling balls out that were plainly in. Troy finally snapped. He chucked his racquet, jumped the net and got in a couple of good hits. It took two adult men to drag Troy away from Harry.

Troy was banned from playing for six months, which was better than he deserved according to their father, who took a long time to forgive Troy for shaming him like that.

And then, just two years later, Harry Haddad betrayed Stan Delaney when he dumped him as a coach after he won the Australian Open Boys’ Singles. Brooke’s dad was blindsided. He had assumed, with good reason, that he was taking Harry all the way. He loved him like a son. Maybe more than his own sons, because Harry never questioned a drill, never rebelled, never sighed or rolled his eyes or dragged his feet as he walked onto the court.

It was supposedly not Harry’s but his father’s decision to leave Delaneys. Elias Haddad, Harry’s photogenic, charismatic father, was his manager, and there in the player’s box at every match with a beautiful new girlfriend by his side. Brooke and her siblings never believed that Harry wasn’t involved in the decision-making process to dump their dad, in spite of the heartfelt card he sent their father, or the earnest, disingenuous way he spoke in fawning magazine profiles about his gratitude for his first-ever coach. Her dad never let himself get that close to a player again. He was beloved by his students and he gave them his all, except he kept his heart safe. That was Brooke’s theory, anyway.

Brooke drove into the busy car park of The Piazza, as her local shopping village was now called after its recent redevelopment. Everyone enjoyed mocking the ‘Tuscan hilltop town’ theme but Brooke didn’t care much either way. The new Italian deli was great, the café had put up some nice photos of Tuscany, the hanging baskets of artificial flowers seemed almost real if you didn’t look too closely, and at least the fake cobblestones didn’t catch heels like real cobblestones.

‘Although the occasional twisted ankle would probably be good for your business, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, hey, Brooke?’ the local MP had said on opening day last month, after he’d cut the ceremonial ribbon with a pair of giant novelty scissors. The MP was one of those men who gave everything he said a vaguely sexual connotation.

If this trial separation maintained its momentum and rolled all the way towards a divorce, which it seemed to be doing, Brooke would have to date. She’d have to put on lipstick and endure vague sexual connotations over coffee.

She pulled into her favourite parking spot, turned off the ignition and looked at her bare left hand on the steering wheel. No indentations to mark her missing wedding and engagement rings. She never wore them to work anyway, and often she’d forgotten to wear them on the weekend, which was maybe relevant, but probably not. She was looking for signs she’d missed.

Brooke’s clinic, Delaney’s Physiotherapy, was a two-room office she rented in between the café and the fruit and veg shop. The previous tenant had been a tarot card reader whose customers still sometimes turned up hoping for an ‘emergency reading’. Just last week a guy in a paisley shirt and tight pants had said, ‘Oh, well, if you can’t read my cards you might as well check out this dodgy knee of mine.’ Brooke had predicted surgery in his future.

‘Brrrr! It sure doesn’t feel like spring yet!’ said the weather reporter.

Brooke fixed a stray eyelash in her rear-vision mirror. Her eyes were red and watery. She would tell today’s patients she had allergies. Nobody wanted a physio with migraines.

Nobody wanted a wife with chronic migraines. A daughter or a sister with migraines. Or even a friend with migraines. All those cancellations! Brooke let the self-pitying train of thought unravel only so far before she snipped it short.

‘Who’s looking forward to the last few weeks of the snow season?’ said the weather reporter.

‘I am,’ said Brooke. Spring skiing meant torn and strained knee ligaments, back injuries, wrist fractures.

Please God, let there be injuries. Just enough to get that cash flow flowing.

God replied in the same aggrieved way Brooke’s mother answered the phone when her children left it too long without checking in: Hello, stranger.

Forget I asked,thought Brooke. She turned off the radio, undid her seatbelt, and sat for a moment. Her stomach roiled. Mild nausea was expected the day after a migraine. Come on, she told herself, like she was a toddler. Out you get.

Even on a good day, when she wasn’t postdrome, when she had arrived somewhere she actually really wanted to be, she always experienced this resistance to getting out of the car. It was a little weird but it wasn’t a thing.Just a quirk. No-one noticed. Well, Grant noticed, if they were running late, but no-one else noticed. It dated back to her days of competitive tennis. She’d arrive at a tournament and be paralysed by her desire to stay in the warm musty cocoon of the car. But she always did move in the end. It was not a thing. She was not her sister.

No rush. She had half an hour before her first appointment.

She hugged the steering wheel and watched a big-bellied man pick up a hefty box from outside the post office without bending his knees. That’s the way, buddy, strain those back muscles.

When she’d taken on the lease for the clinic, she’d known about the planned redevelopment and been offered a substantially reduced rent as a result, but she hadn’t anticipated that months would slide by with delay after delay. Business slowed for everyone. The overpriced patisserie closed after forty years of business. The hairdressers’ marriage broke up.

It was stressful and Brooke needed to manage stress in order to manage her migraines. Migraine sufferers shouldn’t start new businesses or separate from their husbands and they certainly shouldn’t do both at the same time. They should move gingerly through their days, as if they had spinal cord injuries.

Brooke had just managed to keep her fledgling practice afloat, barely. There was a period where she didn’t have a single patient for twenty-three days in a row. The words, ‘You need more money, you need more money, you need more money’ buzzed in her ears like tinnitus.

But now the renovations were complete. The diggers, trucks and jackhammers were gone. The car park was full every day. The café that had replaced the patisserie bustled. The hairdressers were back together and booked up six weeks ahead.

‘It’s now or never,’ her accountant had told her. ‘This next quarter will be make or break.’

Her accountant reminded her of her dad. He used to grab her by the shoulders and look her in the eyes. Leave it all on the court, Brooke.

She could not have her business fail at the same time as her marriage. That was too many failures for one person.

She was leaving everything on the court. She was giving it her all. She was being the best she could be. She was writing free articles for the local paper, doing letterbox drops, studying her Google analytics, contacting possible referring doctors, contacting every contact she had, even God, for God’s sake.

‘If it doesn’t work out, the door is always open,’ her old boss had said when she handed in her notice. New clinics failed all the time. Brooke had two friends who’d had to cut their losses and close up shop: one cheerfully, and one devastatingly.

She put her hand on the car door. Out you get.

She opened the door and her phone rang. At this time of day it had to be business-related. Friends and family didn’t call before nine.

She answered at the same time as she registered the name on the screen: Amy. Too late.

‘Hi,’ she said to her sister. ‘I can’t talk.’

Brooke once had a boyfriend who could always tell which family member she was talking to on the phone just by the tone of her voice. Amy, he would mouth if he heard her now. ‘When it’s Amy you sound pompous and put upon,’ he told her. ‘Like you’re the school principal.’

‘Is everything okay?’ She tried not to sound like the school principal.

The problem was that she didn’t really feel like the school principal at all when she spoke to Amy; what she felt like was the baby of the family, the one who always did Amy’s bidding, because Amy was the revered, adored boss of the family, and they all used to do what she commanded, even the boys. That was fine when they were children, when Amy was the best at coming up with ideas for games and finding loopholes in the rules set by their parents, but now they were grown-ups, or at least Brooke was a grown-up, and she was not taking instructions from someone with no career, no driver’s licence, no fixed address and precarious mental health. Yet as soon as Brooke heard Amy’s voice she could sense an involuntary reflex, as irresistible and unmistakeable as the knee-jerk reflex, to please and impress her big sister and consequently, in her fruitless attempt to resist and conceal that reflex, she ended up sounding like the school principal.

‘Why did you answer, then? If you’re busy?’ Amy sounded breathless.

‘I accidentally answered.’ Brooke leaned back against the car door. ‘Are you running for a bus or something?’

‘I just finished a run.’

‘Good for you. Did you stretch first?’

She knew her sister’s hamstrings as well as her own. Her family’s bodies were the first ones she’d practised on when she was studying. She felt a sense of ownership of all their problems: Amy’s hamstrings, her dad’s knees, Logan’s shoulder, Troy’s calf issues, her mother’s knotted-up lower back.

‘I sure did,’ said Amy.

‘Liar.’ She started walking towards the café with the phone to her ear. She was aware of an irrational but fierce sense of competitiveness because Amy had been for a run and Brooke had done no exercise this weekend thanks to the migraine. It made no sense. Brooke was younger and fitter than Amy. Yet as soon as she knew her sister was out for a run Brooke felt a wild desire to be running too: faster, longer.

‘How are you?’ asked Amy. Brooke heard a seagull’s squawk. She’d been running on the beach. Damn her. So typical. Brooke was in a suburban car park worrying about cash flow, and Amy was running on a beach, probably about to eat eggs Benedict for breakfast.

‘I’m fine,’ said Brooke. ‘Well, not great. I had a migraine on the weekend.’

A woman walked out of the café carrying a cardboard tray of coffees. She lifted the tray in clumsy greeting, and Brooke waved back. Right hip pain. Brooke monitored her gait which was unfortunately perfect. The patients who were diligent with their exercises got better and didn’t need her anymore.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Amy. ‘Did Grant look after you?’

‘He was away. Camping. The Blue Mountains. With some old friends from – just some old friends.’ She made herself stop. Apparently the trick for a good lie was not to give too much unnecessary detail.

‘Oh no! You should have called. I could have brought you soup! My local Chinese takeaway does the best chicken and sweet corn soup you’ve ever tasted!’

‘It’s fine. I was fine. Anyway, what’s up?’ Brooke put her key in the glass door. The sight of her logo on the door gave her a complicated sensation of pleasure and pride and fear. It was two stick figures of a woman and a man holding the name ‘Delaney’s Physiotherapy’ above their heads like a banner. Logan’s girlfriend, Indira, who was a graphic designer, had created it for her, and Brooke loved it. She imagined someone scraping her logo off the door, optimistically replacing it with a brand new logo for their own dream business.

‘Sorry,’ said Amy. ‘I won’t take long. Got any patients today?’

‘Yes,’ said Brooke shortly. She would never admit her fears for the clinic to Amy. That wasn’t the way their relationship worked. She always needed her big sister to see that this was how a grown-up lived her life, and Amy was always gratifyingly impressed, although there was a certain detachment to her admiration, as if Brooke’s perfectly normal choices (get a degree, get married, buy a house) were just not possible for her.

‘Oh, well, that’s great, good for you. Listen, so I only just heard about –’

Brooke cut her off.

‘About Harry’s comeback plans? Yes, I only just heard about it too. I assume Mum and Dad know, although I’m surprised I haven’t heard from them. I don’t think he’ll have the mobility –’

‘No, I’m not talking about Harry. I’m talking about the girl.’

Brooke paused. What girl? Some other ex-student?

‘I couldn’t sleep last night thinking about it,’ said Amy. She was speaking in that irritating singsong voice that meant she might be about to cry or yell or have some kind of meltdown. ‘Have you met her yet? I don’t know, I just feel quite weird about it, don’t you? The whole situation is just so . . . random, don’t you think?’

As Brooke listened to her sister she switched on the lights. There was a reception counter and empty desk ready and waiting for the office manager she couldn’t yet afford to hire. The walls were painted an encouraging, calming Sea Breeze. She’d spent hours trying to decide between Sea Breeze and Deep Ocean Blue as if the right wall colour would affect patient outcomes. She’d mounted full-length mirrors so patients could check their form as they did their exercises, although this meant she had to keep seeing her own reflection. It didn’t matter when patients were there. It was just when she was alone that she hated seeing her own face. The new rented equipment sat there ready and waiting and costing her money: one exercise bike, three medicine balls, hand weights and stretchy bands. Framed posters of athletes celebrating hard-won triumphs: on their knees, foreheads to the ground, kissing gold medals. There was only one picture of a tennis player and that was the only picture where the athlete wasn’t celebrating. It was a black and white shot of Martina Navratilova stretching for a backhand at Wimbledon, her face contorted, mullet hair flying around her headband. It would have looked strange if Brooke didn’t have a tennis player, like she was making a point, and her parents would have noticed when they came to see the clinic.

‘Good old Martina,’ said her dad fondly when he saw the picture, as if he and Martina went way back.

‘And what if the boyfriend turns up at their house?’ said Amy. ‘And things get out of hand?’

‘I’ve lost you,’ said Brooke. Her mind had wandered. She seemed to have missed a vital part of the conversation.

‘What if he has a weapon?’

‘What if who has a weapon?’

‘The abusive boyfriend!’

She said, ‘Amy, I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

There was silence. Brooke sat down at the reception desk and powered up her computer.

‘Really?’ said Amy. ‘You don’t know? I thought for sure you’d know.’

The computer buzzed to life.

‘Know what?’ she prompted. ‘I’ve got an appointment soon.’ She looked at the notes on her computer screen. ‘Forty-eight years old. Thinks she might have tennis elbow. Remember when Logan thought he had tennis elbow and Dad . . .’ She stopped. Sometimes when she pulled out a funny memory from their shared childhood it turned out to be not so funny after all.

‘Brooke, I’m talking about Mum and Dad and their weird . . . house guest.’

Brooke took out a clipboard and a new patient questionnaire from the top drawer.

‘So they’ve got someone staying with them? In your old room? Is that the problem?’

Amy moved back into the family home at intervals, whenever the new job or new course or new boyfriend didn’t work out.

‘I think she probably is staying in my room,’ said Amy slowly. There was an aggrieved, faintly aggressive note in her voice. ‘But that’s fine. I’ve got my own place, Brooke. I’ve been living here for nearly six months.’

‘I know that,’ said Brooke. A share house?

‘And I’m employed. Last week I worked over forty hours.’

‘Wow,’ said Brooke, and she tried not to sound condescending. Amy had actually worked a full working week. Give the girl a trophy. ‘Sorry. I’ve just been distracted with the clinic.’ And my ‘trial’ separation.

Where was Amy working again? Was it a supermarket? Or wait, a cinema? No. She was a food taster, wasn’t she? That’s right. They’d heard all about the job interview. ‘It was like an exam,’ Amy said. ‘Very stressful.’ She’d had to arrange ten cups of liquid in order of saltiness, and then another ten cups in order of sweetness. She was given tiny jars containing balls of cottonwool and she had to identify their smells. She got the basil and mint right, but not the parsley. Who knew that parsley had a fragrance? Her final task was to write a paragraph describing an apple to someone who had never eaten one.

‘I don’t think I could describe an apple,’ Brooke had said idly, and her mother had said, happily, ‘Well, I guess you wouldn’t have got the job then, Brooke!’

And Brooke, who had done a four-year degree and two years of clinical practice to become a physiotherapist, suddenly found herself feeling inadequate because she couldn’t describe an apple.

Amy said, ‘Have you honestly not heard anything about this girl staying with Mum and Dad?’

‘Nope,’ said Brooke. ‘Who is she?’ She could hear the pompous school principal in her voice, because for God’s sake, the drama. Why was a house guest such a big deal? Her parents knew a wide circle of people. It would be a former student. So many of them kept in touch. As children the Delaneys had complicated feelings about the tennis students. They were their parents’ other children, with better manners, better backhands, better attitudes. But they were too old for that now. Now they laughed about it, teased their parents and each other about it. It was typical that Amy would suddenly make a fuss.

‘Her name is Savannah,’ said Amy darkly.

‘Right,’ said Brooke distractedly. ‘Is Savannah on the circuit?’

‘She’s no-one, Brooke! She’s just some stray girl who turned up on their doorstep.’

Brooke let her hands fall flat on the keyboard. ‘They don’t know her?’

‘She’s a stranger.’

Brooke swivelled her chair away from her computer. The memory of the weekend’s migraine blossomed across her forehead.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Late last Tuesday night a strange woman knocked on our parents’ door.’

‘Late? How late? Were Mum and Dad in bed?’ She thought of her parents waking, reaching for their glasses from their bedside tables. Her mother in that oversized pyjama top with the sleeves so long they hung past her wrists. Her father in his boxers and clean white t-shirt, with his big barrel chest and leathery legs. He acted like he was thirty but his arthritic reconstructed knees were in a terrible state.

‘We’re still winning tournaments, darling,’ her mother said, patting her hand whenever Brooke expressed concern.

It was true. Her parents were still winning, in spite of the fact that after his last knee operation the surgeon had said to her dad, ‘Only run if you’re running for your life.’

‘Got it,’ said Stan. ‘No running.’ He gave the surgeon a thumbs-up. Brooke saw him do it. Three months later her idiotic, incredible father was back on the court. Serving like a warrior. Running for his life.

‘I don’t know if they were in bed,’ said Amy. ‘They stay up late these days. All I know is that she knocked on their door and they let her in and then they let her stay the night.’

‘But what . . . why would they do that?’ Brooke stood up from her desk.

‘Well, I think because she had some kind of injury. Mum needed to bandage her up. Her boyfriend did it. Mum keeps referring to her as a “domestic violence victim”, in this breathless, excited way.’ Amy paused. When she spoke again her mouth was clearly full. ‘I can’t believe you don’t know about this yet.’

Brooke couldn’t believe it either. Her mother phoned often, always on the flimsiest of excuses. Early last week she’d called three times in one day: once to tell her something she’d heard on a podcast about migraines, once to correct herself (because she’d found the piece of paper where she’d written it down) and once to tell her that the cyclamen plant Brooke had given her for Mother’s Day had bloomed. (Amy had given her the cyclamen but Brooke didn’t correct her mother when she gave her credit for it.)

‘What are you eating?’ she said tetchily.

‘Breakfast. Orange and poppy seed muffin. Citrusy. Not enough poppy seeds.’

Brooke sat back down and tried to work it out. Her parents were smart people. They wouldn’t have let anyone shady or dangerous into the house. They were only on the very outer edge of old age, they were not yet dealing with dementia or confusion, just bad knees and indigestion, some insomnia, apparently. They both seemed a bit bewildered and lost now that they’d sold the tennis school. ‘The days are so long,’ her mother had sighed to Brooke. ‘They used to be so short. Anyway! Shall we meet for coffee? My shout!’ But Brooke’s days were still short, and she didn’t have time for coffee.

‘Well, I guess Mum and Dad are pretty good judges of character,’ she began.

‘Are you kidding?’ said Amy. ‘Good judges of character? Shall I name every cheating, lying little brat who hoodwinked them? Starting right at the top with Harry fucking Haddad, who broke Dad’s poor fragile heart?’

‘Okay, okay,’ said Brooke hurriedly. ‘So did they take her to the police?’

‘She doesn’t want to report it,’ said Amy. Her mouth was full again. ‘And she has nowhere else to go, so they’re letting her stay there until she “finds her feet”.’

‘But can’t she go to a . . . I don’t know, a women’s shelter or something?’ Brooke picked up a pen and chewed on it. ‘I know that sounds bad but she’s not their problem. There are places she can go for help.’

‘I think Mum and Dad just want to help.’ Amy sounded airy and philanthropic now. Brooke could sense her deftly switching positions. She’d always had the best footwork in the family. Now that Amy had handed over responsibility, Brooke could be the worried, uptight one and Amy could be the help-the-homeless bleeding heart, a role which suited her far more.

‘Did you say she turned up on Tuesday night?’ said Brooke. ‘This girl has been staying with them for nearly a week?’

‘Yep,’ said Amy.

‘I’ll call Mum now.’ Maybe Amy had misinterpreted everything.

‘She won’t answer,’ said Amy. ‘She’s taking Savannah to Narelle.’

‘Narelle?’

‘Mum’s hairdresser of thirty years, Brooke. Keep up. Narelle with the identical twins, and the allergy that turned out to be cancer, or the cancer that turned out to be an allergy, I can’t remember, but she’s fine now. Narelle has opinions about all of us. She thinks Logan and Indira should have a baby. She thinks you should advertise in the local paper. She thinks Troy should go on a date with her divorced sister. Oh, and she thinks I’m bipolar. Mum started listening to a podcast called Living with Bipolar.’

Amy was speaking too fast now, in that weird manic voice she sometimes put on that made Brooke wonder if she actually was bipolar. She did it on purpose. She liked people to think she was crazy because it made them nervous. It was an intimidation tactic.

‘Of course, Narelle. Anyway. I’ll call Dad.’

‘He’s out too. He’s looking at cars. For Savannah.’

‘Dad is buying this girl a car?’

‘I’m not one hundred per cent sure,’ said Amy. ‘But you know how he loves it when someone needs a new car.’

‘Jeez,’ said Brooke. The end of the pen slipped free and into her mouth. She spat it into the palm of her hand. ‘Do the boys know?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Amy.

‘Didn’t you call Troy?’

Amy and Troy were the closest out of the four of them. Brooke knew she would have called him first.

‘I texted him,’ said Amy. ‘But he didn’t answer. You know he’s flying back from New York today.’

Brooke couldn’t keep up with Troy’s glamorous, international life. ‘I guess I did.’

‘And Logan never answers his phone. I think he has a phobia about it. Or he does when it comes to us. He talks to his friends.’

Brooke pulled the pen from her mouth. Without realising it she’d begun sucking it again and now her mouth was filled with the bitter taste of ink.

She was the last one Amy had called.

‘Anyway, I’ve gotta go,’ said Amy abruptly, as if Brooke had been the one to interrupt her busy schedule, as if she were about to go run a corporation and not sit on a beach eating a muffin. ‘Call me later.’

This last instruction was given in her eldest sister do-as-I-say voice. It meant: Call me to confirm you’ve fixed this.

Brooke looked at herself in the mirrored wall and saw that her frown line was deeper than ever and her lips were stained a murky shade of Deep Ocean Blue.