‘You’ve been good to her,’ said Troy, carefully, because she seemed to be making a point. ‘Can I get you a drink? Tea or coffee?’
‘No, I think I’ll just get straight to it,’ said Savannah.
‘Right then,’ said Troy. It was like this was a pre-arranged business meeting. He indicated his custom-made white leather couch. Amy had managed to get chocolate on it last time she visited. ‘Have a seat.’
She sat at the very edge of the couch, feet together, back straight. She adjusted the pendant between her breasts.
‘Extraordinary view.’ She swept her arm in a quick graceful arc, as if getting a required formal acknowledgement out of the way. She didn’t even look at the view.
‘What can I do for you, Savannah?’ He sat in the Eames chair opposite her and smiled. She didn’t smile back, which was disconcerting. People generally smiled back when Troy smiled.
If he’d had to guess, he would have said she was here to ask him to invest in a crummy small business venture with little hope of turning a profit, like a nail salon or a vegan café. Although she was a good cook, so maybe she could turn a profit on a vegan café?
She said, ‘While your mother was in hospital, and it was just your father and I alone, he . . .’
She stopped, lowered her eyes and fiddled with the green pendant, turning it this way and that as if she were considering buying it.
‘He what?’
She dropped the pendant and looked back at him steadily.
Troy’s heart stopped. ‘No.’
Her eyes held his, patiently, insistently, gently, like a doctor insisting you must understand that the cancer is incurable. ‘I’m sorry, but he did.’
‘He didn’t actually –’
‘He made a very specific request, which I refused.’
‘You must have misunderstood,’ said Troy.
‘There was no doubt,’ said Savannah. ‘I can give you his exact words if you like.’
Troy recoiled, held up his palm, tried to control his nausea.
‘I was really upset,’ said Savannah. ‘Because your parents seem so . . . happily married, and I really love your mother. I think she’s great. Truly. I thought your dad was great too.’ She sighed, grimaced. ‘I’ve been at sixes and sevens trying to decide what to do.’ She looked at the ceiling. ‘On the one hand I think she deserves to know the truth –’
‘No,’ said Troy. ‘I don’t think so.’
It was unbearable. He could not bear to imagine his mother’s pain, her shock, her shame. She would be so embarrassed.
How dare his father do this: his father who had spent Troy’s whole life sitting up there on his umpire’s chair, judging Troy’s every action.
‘I don’t understand how you could lose control of yourself like that,’ Stan had said after Troy jumped the net and attacked Harry for his flagrant cheating, propelled by white-hot rage. It was as though Troy had lost control of his bowels in public. ‘I just don’t understand it.’ Troy had seen that same disgust each time he transgressed throughout his life, except there was never again disbelief, just resignation, as if it were to be expected now, as if once again Troy had proven himself to be exactly as disgusting as his father knew him to be.
‘You’re a fool,’ his father had said when Troy cheated on Claire. ‘She was too good for you.’
‘I know,’ Troy had said. That’s why I did it, Dad. Before she noticed.
His father’s betrayal felt like his own betrayal, as if he had been the one to make a move on Savannah. Hadn’t Troy just moments ago felt a faint flicker of desire for this girl? He might have acted on the very same desire his father had acted upon, as his young house guest, young enough to be his daughter or even his granddaughter, walked past him in Troy’s family home. Did his father think Savannah would feel obliged? That he had some power over her because she had nowhere else to go? Because she’d already been knocked around by one guy? Did he forget that he was Stan Delaney, retired tennis coach in old-man slippers, not Harvey Weinstein in a bathrobe? Jesus Christ. Mum is too good for you, Dad.
Or did he think, No harm trying? Worth a shot? Because he didn’t get much these days? Oh, for fuck’s sake, now he was thinking about his parents having sex, and his father having sex with Savannah, and it was quite possible that Troy’s own sex life would be irretrievably damaged by this single moment.
Or was this just part of an ongoing pattern of behaviour? Had his father cheated before? It had always been a possibility in the back of Troy’s mind that the reason for their father’s disappearances all those years ago was another woman or even another family.