‘Wouldn’t you? I understand that’s exactly the word you did use.’ They held each other’s gaze. It felt perversely intimate, as if they were about to kiss.
Stan Delaney’s eyes, brown and dark lashed, were young and wary in an old man’s face. Was it a young man’s violent rage that had been responsible for this old man’s unthinkable actions?
‘What do you mean?’ His voice quavered. He was cracking. At last.
‘You said to your wife that you’d never felt so betrayed.’
‘Who told you that?’ Stan’s jaw shifted back and forth as though he was grinding his teeth. Ethan could no longer see the young man, only the old man. An old man wondering which of his children thought he was capable of murder.
‘I’m hearing that your wife may not have been faithful. I’m hearing that she betrayed you professionally.’ Christina was going in for the kill now. ‘You lost your temper. Justifiably so. Harry Haddad could have and should have been your greatest professional success. Your wife stole that opportunity from you and kept it a secret.’
She pushed the Polaroid of the bloodied t-shirt across the table. ‘Mr Delaney, we found this t-shirt buried in bushland near the back of your house,’ she said. ‘Have you seen it before?’
The colour drained from his face.
‘Buried,’ repeated Stan Delaney. ‘You think I buried Joy’s t-shirt?’
‘Did you?’
‘No.’
‘Do you recognise the shirt?’
‘It’s my wife’s shirt. I’m sure you know that,’ said Stan. He pushed the picture away from him, contemptuously, as if it meant nothing to him. ‘It’s covered in my wife’s blood. You probably know that too.’
Christina’s tone was now almost jocular. ‘Mr Delaney, this is not looking great for you. I really think it would be in your best interests to turn your mind to your last interaction with your wife.’
Stan sighed. He tipped back his head, stuck his thumbs in his pants pockets and studied the ceiling. ‘I think it might be in my best interests to shut up and get myself a lawyer.’
chapter fifty-three
Valentine’s Day
It was seven am and Joy couldn’t see the point in getting out of bed. There was nothing pressing to do. It would just be another day like yesterday and the day before that. The smoke haze outside her window was as grey and sombre as a midwinter sky, except for the blood-red summer sun that burned like a cigarette end.
Joy had never experienced asthma, but she had recently found herself taking small, shallow, lady-like sips of air. Was it the smoke or the state of her marriage?
It had been months since Savannah had left and it didn’t feel like anything was lessening or softening. The opposite: their anger was hardening and solidifying.
She and Stan had been through bad times before. The difference was that there were no distractions now: no work, no children. When they were younger there hadn’t been time to obsess and brood over how the other person had wronged them. They’d been too tired to keep sharpening the edges of their hurt feelings.
Now they were stuck in this big empty silent house and there was no way to escape the invisible yet tangible conflict between them. Joy felt like she could trace its outlines in the air.
January had been especially bad because of the Australian Open. Harry Haddad’s comeback had crashed and burned after a ‘shock loss’ （some went as far as to say an ‘embarrassing loss’） in the first round to an unseeded nineteen-year-old Canadian. Ten double-faults and over eighty unforced errors! Harry and his new coach, Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan, were parting ways. Joy hadn’t watched the match, but she’d walked past the living room and seen Stan gripping the sides of his chair, crackling with so much fury and distress it had felt like he was a live electrical wire. If she’d touched him she’d have gone flying.
Now, if one of them walked into the room and saw the other one there, they walked away again. They spoke only when necessary. They hadn’t slept in the same bedroom since Savannah left.
Stan slept on a mattress on the floor of Logan’s old room. Amy’s bedroom would have been more comfortable, but perhaps he didn’t want to sleep where Savannah had slept, so well done to him, that sure showed her. Joy bet his back hurt. She hoped it did hurt. Did that mean the love was finally gone? It seemed possible that not a droplet remained. She was as dry and desiccated as their desperate-for-rain front lawn.
She heard the sound of water running from somewhere in the house. She’d stopped cooking after Christmas as a test to see if Stan might offer to prepare something, to put some toast in the toaster or to order takeaway, but he hadn’t said a word.