Joy stood. She crossed her arms. ‘What happened?’
‘Well, I didn’t bloody well sexually harass her if that’s what you’re asking!’
‘Oh, of course you didn’t,’ sighed Joy.
Neither of them had been perfect. There had been parties. It was the seventies. They didn’t exactly embrace the free love movement, but there was flirting. She was reasonably sure that Brooke once caught her kissing Dennis Christos at the Delaneys Christmas party in the clubhouse kitchen after too many glasses of punch. Dennis couldn’t serve to save his life but the man could kiss. Joy confessed it to Stan years later, and he certainly wasn’t thrilled but he didn’t make a big deal of it, although poor old Dennis did start to look alarmed at the speed of Stan’s serves.
Stan might have strayed. It was reasonable to think that he might have considered it in the bad year when they truly thought they were going to separate. Women found him attractive. Joy had never asked the question because she didn’t care to hear the answer. She knew it was possible to be kissed by another man and for it to mean nothing at all except that she’d put too much gin in the punch and Dennis was an outrageous flirt, although she still never doubted his love for Debbie.
There were worse betrayals.
But there was no way in the world Stan would have been inappropriate with Savannah. He had always been hyper-aware of the propriety of his position when it came to children and young girls. Joy had seen the way he interacted with Savannah. He saw her as a daughter or a student.
‘Did Savannah misinterpret something you said?’ Joy asked him. It could have happened when she wasn’t there to smooth things over and explain to Savannah what her clueless husband really meant. ‘Did you try to make a joke? Because these days you have to be so careful –’
‘For Christ’s sake, I didn’t try to make a joke,’ said Stan. ‘If you must know, while you were in hospital, she gave me certain signals –’
‘What?’ Joy guffawed. ‘Darling, she didn’t, she wouldn’t. You misunderstood.’
‘I don’t think so.’ He pressed his lips together in the way he did when Joy served tuna casserole, the smell of which supposedly made him feel sick, so she only made it when she wasn’t happy with him. ‘I don’t think I misinterpreted anything. Not now she’s done this. Not now she’s taken Troy’s money.’
Joy looked around the neat room, at the book on Amy’s desk full of her tiny inscriptions about food. She had no idea who this person was. Her heart quickened. She’d opened her home to a stranger.
‘Tell me.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Tell me what happened.’
‘It was subtle,’ said Stan. ‘So subtle that at first I thought I was imagining it. Just, you know . . . eye contact, and a hand on my arm, and there was one day she came into the kitchen straight from the shower wearing nothing but a towel and she kept talking to me and I didn’t know which way to look, and I thought, Well, the girls always used to walk around in towels . . .’
‘They’re your daughters!’
‘Well, I didn’t know,’ said Stan defensively. ‘I got out of the room as fast as I could. I felt very . . . uncomfortable.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ asked Joy.
‘I thought you’d laugh at me,’ said Stan, and Joy’s stomach lurched with love and guilt because he was right, she would have laughed. It would have been inconceivable. It still felt inconceivable. How far would Savannah have taken it if Stan had responded?
‘That’s why you wanted her to leave,’ said Joy.
‘I felt sick about it.’
‘Oh, Stan,’ said Joy. She went and put her arms around him and put her face to his chest.
He stood for a moment and then put his arms around her.
‘I can’t believe Troy,’ said Stan. ‘He handed over money before he even asked me if it was true. He thought I’d thank him. I said, “Mate, that was borderline moronic.”’
Joy stepped back and out of his arms. He never gave Troy the benefit of the doubt. Borderline moronic. What a thing to say to his own son who was only trying to help.
She said, ‘Stan. He obviously thought he was protecting you. Protecting me.’
Troy thought he was giving them a gift. She thought of Troy’s hopeful face whenever he watched a family member open one of his thoughtful gifts.
‘How much money did he give her?’ asked Joy. She sat back down on Savannah’s bed.