What had been the point of it all?
And yet, how could she have done any of it differently?
When it came to tennis at the level her children played, you were either in or you were out, and they wanted in. It would have been easier if they’d all been a little less talented, a little less driven, if they’d reached number one in the local district but gone no further.
‘Anyway, might I remind you that you all hated Harry Haddad,’ said Joy. ‘With a passion.’ She glanced at Savannah, who had closed the lid of the wooden chest that contained all her secrets and was now sitting on top of it, as if she were waiting for a bus. ‘Sorry, Savannah, but they did hate your brother.’
‘Oh, that’s okay, I hated him too,’ said Savannah. ‘For years, whenever his face came on the television, I screamed.’
‘You literally screamed?’ said Amy with interest.
‘I literally screamed,’ said Savannah.
‘I didn’t hate Harry,’ said Logan. ‘I envied him, but I never hated him. I would have liked to have seen Dad keep coaching him.’
‘That’s what you think now, Logan,’ said Joy impatiently. ‘But when you were a teenager you thought very differently.’
‘I hated him,’ said Troy. He leaned against the wall, his head perilously close to the sharp corner of the framed print of a crying mermaid that had always hung in Amy’s room, which Joy found depressing but Amy loved. Troy blazed rage and venom straight at Savannah. ‘I think you did the right thing, Mum, because obviously these charming people have no problem cheating, lying, scamming –’
‘Okay, that’s enough now,’ said Joy.
‘What? We need to show good manners to her?’
Troy had such passionate yet fluid convictions about justice and morality. His teenage drug-dealing empire was perfectly acceptable but Savannah’s scamming him for money was not; cheating at tennis was an unforgivable sin, but then he’d gone right ahead and cheated on his lovely wife.
‘Look, if you’re going to get all worked up about it, I’ll transfer the money back to you,’ said Savannah to Troy. ‘I just needed some cash to re-establish myself.’ She sounded as if she were talking to a sibling about a loan she hadn’t repaid. Was this her way of admitting that she’d lied to Troy when she made those dreadful accusations about Stan? What if Troy had actually refused to pay up? What would she have done next?
Had Savannah understood the power of Joy’s secret she’d just shared? Would Joy have paid up if she’d attempted to blackmail her? Possibly.
Joy’s head spun. She couldn’t align Savannah the sly blackmailer with the Savannah who had nursed Joy so tenderly when she came home from the hospital.
‘Keep it,’ said Troy viciously. ‘We just want you out of our lives.’
‘That was my intention,’ said Savannah. She stood and picked up her handbag, the new one Joy had bought for her with the crossover strap. ‘I mean, to get out of your lives. This was only ever temporary.’
She sounded like she was trying not to cry and Joy knew perfectly well that it could be fake emotion, or someone else’s emotion she was channelling for her own purposes, but her heart still broke for her.
Only ever temporary. Was that the way this child lived her whole life? This child who had been starving in their midst and they’d shouted at her, ignored her, refused to help her. Joy remembered how she’d slammed the laundry door with her foot. She couldn’t see the child’s face in her memory, just the outline of a little girl, her features a blur, but she could certainly remember the savagery with which she’d slammed the door in a child’s face.
They hadn’t known she was hungry. How could they have known? But Joy prided herself on being observant. She wanted to go back in time and do all the things the sort of person she thought she was would have done: feed the kid, listen to her, rescue her from her awful childhood.
‘Well,’ said Joy. ‘You don’t need to go right away –’
‘Mum,’ said Brooke. ‘I think she probably does need to go right away.’
‘Yep,’ said Savannah. She looked at Joy’s children. ‘It’s been a blast, guys.’
‘Where will you go?’ asked Amy.
‘She’s fine,’ said Troy abruptly. ‘She’s got money.’
‘I am fine,’ said Savannah. ‘I’ll be back at some point to pick up my stuff.’ She smiled radiantly at Joy, and now she was a dinner party guest taking her leave. ‘Thank you so much for your hospitality.’