She tried the ‘techniques’ suggested by Amy, who was handling lockdown far better than her friends because they had never experienced the permanent low-level sense of existential dread that Amy had been experiencing since she was eight years old.
Eight! Joy wasn’t completely sure what existential dread was but it sure didn’t sound good.
First, she tried Amy’s breathing exercises but they always reminded her of being in labour, and as her labours had all been very aggressive and fast – those four children of hers barrelling their way into the world – that wasn’t exactly relaxing.
Amy also suggested ‘practising gratitude’， which was a technique where you listed all the things for which you were grateful, and Joy was good at that.
There were many things for which to be grateful. For example, Indira and Logan were not only back together but were also engaged. The ring was awful! But Indira seemed to like it, and the girls said Joy should absolutely not say a word about the ring’s awfulness, so she was keeping her lips zipped. She just hoped that one day, years from now, when their marriage went through a bad patch, Indira wouldn’t suddenly shout, ‘I’ve always hated this ring!’ Joy could hardly bear to think of poor Logan’s hurt feelings if that happened. ‘Yeah, I think he’ll live, Mum,’ said Troy.
Brooke’s clinic was still afloat, thank goodness, because physiotherapy was considered an essential service and Brooke said people were giving themselves dreadful injuries trying to do their own exercise routines at home and undertaking overly ambitious DIY projects, so that was great news.
Troy’s ex-wife, Claire, was pregnant with Troy’s baby, and because of the pandemic she had decided she wanted to make a life in Australia and her Poor Husband had reluctantly agreed to move here. Troy had decided he wanted to share custody of his child, and Claire had agreed. The Poor Husband wasn’t too happy about that.
‘Stop calling him the Poor Husband, Mum,’ said her children with blithe partisan cruelty. ‘It’s Troy’s biological child.’
（Joy’s first grandchild was due Christmas Eve. That son of hers always did give the very best gifts.）
Joy hadn’t met the Poor Husband yet, but she was going to be particularly nice to him when she did, because she had a terrible secret suspicion.
She remembered one particular match when Troy was playing against his nemesis, Harry Haddad, and Harry sent a cross-court shot so impossibly wide any other player would have let it go, but Troy went for it. He had to run almost onto the next court, but he not only made that impossible shot, he also won that impossible point, and the small crowd of spectators whooped like they’d gone down a rollercoaster. Even Harry grudgingly clapped one hand against his strings.
Troy always went for the impossible shots.
Well, Claire wasn’t a tennis ball.
She was a sensible, intelligent girl who would make her own life choices, and if Troy did somehow charm her out of her marriage, it wouldn’t be Joy’s fault, would it?
There was nothing Joy could do to change the outcome of her children’s lives, any more than she could have changed the outcome of their matches, no matter how hard she bit her lip, which she used to do, sometimes until it bled, or how much Stan muttered instructions they couldn’t hear.
Sometimes their children would do everything exactly as they’d taught them, and sometimes they would do all the things they’d told them not to do, and seeing them suffer the tiniest disappointments would be more painful than their own most significant losses, but then other times they would do something so extraordinary, so unexpected and beautiful, so entirely of their own choice and their own making, it was like a splash of icy water on a hot day.
Those were the glorious moments.
That’s how she finally made herself fall back to sleep: by remembering all the glorious moments, one after the other after the other, her children’s ecstatic faces looking for their parents in the stands, looking for their approval, looking for their love, knowing it was there, knowing – she hoped they knew this – that it would always be there, even long after she and Stan were gone, because love like that was infinite.
chapter sixty-nine
At first Brooke thought she imagined the sweet fragrance that drifted like a memory into her consciousness as she cleaned her exercise equipment with antibacterial spray.
She was cleaning with even more desperate vigour than usual because her last patient had mentioned, at the very end of his session, that he’d woken with a sore throat this morning ‘but he was pretty sure it wasn’t COVID’。 Then he’d coughed. Straight in her face.