She pulled her seatbelt tighter, the way a nervous flyer does, and she felt him notice and she felt him care, the way nice, well-brought-up boys care about fragile, frightened girls. He needed fragility. She could give him fragility. She wasn’t dressed right – girl next door would have been better – but it was all in your delivery.
The engines roared. That moment before take-off always seemed impossible. Against the laws of nature. But things happened all the time that were seemingly against the laws of nature.
The plane lifted into the sky.
The girl looked down at the patchwork quilt of suburbia below: miniature houses with tiny backyards and swimming pools, matchbox cars travelling along winding streets past sportsgrounds and tennis courts.
From here above the clouds, life looked so peaceful and manageable: Jump in your matchbox car and drive to that cute little city to earn your living! Go to those dear little shops and buy your dinner! Love and feed your children! Follow your dreams and pay your taxes! Why was it so impossibly hard for some people to do those things, yet so easy for others?
Her seatmate was describing his mother. ‘She’s a homebody. Not exactly active.’
‘My mother is the opposite,’ said the girl.
She saw a woman who looked just like her, running her a bath, checking the temperature with her hand, sloshing the water back and forth to get it just right. She saw her standing at her bedroom door late at night with an extra blanket because it had ‘suddenly got so chilly’。 She saw her pulling a dress off a rack that was ‘just her colour’ and then clapping her hands with delight when she walked out of the change room. She saw a woman furiously scolding her for her behaviour, but then moving on, as if it was possible for even the most terrible of actions to be forgiven.
The girl said, ‘My mother plays tennis.’
acknowledgements
Thank you as always to my incredible editors of many years: Cate Paterson in Australia, Amy Einhorn in the US and Maxine Hitchcock in the UK. Thank you also to Danielle Walker, Brianne Collins, Kathleen Cook, Conor Mintzer, Joel Richardson and Alex Lloyd for your invaluable editorial comments and suggestions.
Thank you to my sisters and fellow authors Jaclyn Moriarty and Nicola Moriarty for reading the very first draft of this book and my sisters Katrina Harrington and Fiona Ostric for reading the very last draft. Special thanks to Jaci for texting me the writing prompt that began this novel.
While writing Apples Never Fall I needed to learn about competitive tennis, tennis coaching, police investigations, trading, physiotherapy, life in the seventies, accounting and ballet. I am hugely grateful to the following people who gave so generously and patiently of their time and expertise: Matthew Futterman, Mike Lowers, James Harb, Paul Francis （please support his wonderful charity, The Humpty Dumpty Foundation）， Rob Who-Knows-Who-He-Is, Mark Davidson, Kim Ivey, Rob Collins, Elina Reddy and Yan Levinski, Elina DeCinque （via Marisa Colonna）， Dr Teresa Lee, Cameron Duncan, Scott Harrington and Julie and George Gates. Thank you to Beau Loughhead, who contributed absolutely nothing to this book, but I feel guilty every time I see him because I forgot to thank him for a real-life anecdote I put to fictional use in a previous novel.
There is a certain kind of thoughtful, well-connected person who, upon learning that you are researching a particular topic, texts you the very next day with an introduction to someone with the exact qualifications you need. Thank you Lisa Faddy, Jackie Aloisio and Charles Anderson for being those sorts of people.
Thank you Molly （Cherie Penney’s dog） and Daisy （our family’s Chocolate Labrador） for helping inspire the character of Steffi.
In spite of all this generous expertise, I know there will be mistakes and they are all mine. Before you point them out, please note that I have taken some artistic licence with the real world particularly in relation to timing. （For example, the song ‘Popcorn’ was released when Joy was nineteen, not seventeen.） However there was nothing fictitious about Australia’s catastrophic fires early in 2020. The Authors for Fireys Campaign raised funds for bushfire relief and Sulin Ho and Nicole Jourdan-Lenoir both donated to this wonderful initiative to have their names appear as characters in this book. Simon Barrington was also the winning bidder at a Rural Aid Charity auction to have a character in this book named after him. Thank you Sulin, Nicole and Simon for your donations and your names.
Thank you Caroline Lee for superb narration of my audio books.
Thank you to my remarkable translators around the world.
Thank you to fellow Australian authors Ber Carroll and Dianne Blacklock for being my ‘office mates’ for more than a decade now. Thank you to my wonderful publicists, Tracey Cheetham in Australia, Gaby Young in the UK and Pat Eisemann in the US. Thank you to my fantastic literary and film agents: Fiona Inglis and Benjamin Paz in Australia, Faye Bender in the US, Jonathan Lloyd and Kate Cooper in the UK and Jerry Kalajian in LA.