The client, a woman who had very short hair but was a noticeably long person – she seemed double the length of an average woman, like someone about to stride out onto a field and win the gold medal for high jump – was here for a first appointment with the senior partner, Chris Marshall. She was speaking quietly into her phone, but the receptionist had excellent hearing, which was not her fault.
‘If they work it out themselves, that’s fine, I mean, we worked it out ourselves. I’m sure they’re more efficient investigators than us. I just don’t see why we need to hand it to them on a platter. It’s not relevant. It just makes Dad look bad.’
There was a long pause, and then she suddenly said, ‘Well, that’s up to you, Troy. I can’t stop you. But you may as well know that I’m finding Dad a lawyer. Just in case.’
Another pause.
‘Yes, I’m standing by him.’
Another pause.
‘No, I didn’t say I’m standing by him no matter what.’ Her voice was full of suppressed emotion. ‘I’m just trying to do the right thing. Oh, go to hell!’
She dropped the phone into her lap and looked straight ahead. The receptionist lowered her eyes to her keyboard. It was awkward to witness another person lose control.
‘Brooke Delaney?’ Chris Marshall stood at the door of his office, smiling expensively.
‘That’s me.’ The woman leaped to her feet, breathed through her nostrils and lifted her chin as if she were about to set that high jump record, and went striding into his office.
chapter thirty-six
Last October
Do a reverse image search, suggested the internet when Brooke asked how one would go about doing a background search on a suspicious person staying with one’s parents. It’s easy!
Not if I don’t have a photo of her, Brooke told the internet. She locked her hands together and raised them high above her head.
She was sitting at her desktop computer in her study at home, except it felt like she was sitting in Grant’s study at Grant’s computer in Grant’s home. It had technically been a shared study, but Brooke had been the one who always worked on her laptop at the dining room table, as if Grant’s career was the one that mattered. It had felt more important, although she didn’t know why Grant’s work as a geologist in a government ‘geoscience’ department should be more important than hers as a physiotherapist.
Why was she thinking this? Grant had never once implied that his work was more important than hers. He also had bad posture so he needed the chair with better lumbar support. That was absolutely her choice. She’d insisted on it, in fact.
Her marriage had been an equal modern partnership: nothing like her parents’ lopsided, old-fashioned marriage. It had been a shock to hear her mother say she hated cooking. No wonder Joy thought Grant was so wonderful. Grant was a great cook. They had never had a single argument over who did what around the house. It just wasn’t an issue for them. Everything was split so fairly.
Brooke was nothing like her mother. Nothing.
She readjusted the chair to suit herself. It was a good chair. Grant’s lower back probably missed it.
She turned up the volume on Taylor Swift to inspire her. She loved Taylor Swift. Grant said she couldn’t possibly love Taylor because she wasn’t thirteen, but she did so love her. It was kind of a relief not to have to sit and listen to the latest album from an alternative rock band Grant had discovered. You had to listen to the full album in the correct order because that was what the artist intended. Brooke just liked to listen to her favourite song on repeat.
Brooke had Googled Savannah weeks ago, as soon as she got her full name. Initially her mother said she didn’t know it. ‘I didn’t ask! Why would I ask?’ Yes, indeed. Why would you ask for the full name of the person who has moved into your home? And then her mother said her name was Savannah Polanski, ‘just like that dreadful film director’， and nothing had come up for Savannah Polanski except an obituary, and then, days later, ‘Oh, actually I got that wrong, it’s not Polanski, it’s Pagonis.’ Brooke had Googled again, and still nothing turned up except for a three-star review of a sushi restaurant in Byron Bay.
Now she stared with blank frustration at the computer screen. She was used to the internet providing all the answers she needed.
Wait, Brooke did have a photo of Savannah.
Her mother had texted her a photo of them on their shopping trip: a selfie of the two of them looking radiantly happy wearing new dresses, tags dangling, in a change room. The photo was in focus so Savannah must have been the one to take it and hold the phone steady. Apparently they’d spent six hours at the shopping centre! They stayed so long they would have had to have paid extra for parking if Savannah hadn’t discovered some extraordinary loophole regarding parking validation, which saved them seven dollars! They had apple crumble! It wasn’t bad!