‘You didn’t let Dad move in to your house the moment you met him,’ said Brooke.
‘No, but I let you move in!’ said Joy, which she thought was rather witty, but Brooke’s laugh sounded hollow.
‘Anyway, she hasn’t “moved in”，’ Joy reassured her. She picked up the Navratilova ball. ‘This is temporary. Obviously.’ She spoke in the brisk, business-like voice she used with the accountants. ‘It’s just until she gets back on her feet. There’s really nothing to worry about. You’ll like her when you meet her. Logan liked her today! I could tell. You know what she’s doing right now?’
‘Going through your jewellery?’ said Brooke. ‘Stealing your identities?’
Sometimes she sounded so much like her father.
‘I don’t own any jewellery worth stealing,’ said Joy. ‘She’s welcome to it. No. She’s cooking dinner. Pasta.’ The scents of garlic and onion wafted from the kitchen. ‘This is the third time she’s cooked! She keeps insisting! She says she loves to cook! Do you know how wonderful it is to have someone else cooking for you? Well, you do, because Grant cooks.’
There was a moment’s silence, and then Brooke said plaintively, ‘I’ve cooked dinner for you, Mum.’
‘Of course you have,’ soothed Joy. ‘Many times.’ Brooke was a perfectly competent cook, like Joy herself, but, also like Joy, she took no obvious pleasure in cooking, grimly plunking down plates with a put-upon sigh.
Joy’s family had been, and still were, big eaters. Keeping her family fed had been a never-ending, arduous task and now that it was just Joy and Stan, she had to force herself into the kitchen each night, with the thought: This again? Savannah, on the other hand, cooked as if it was a lovely pastime, not a chore to endure, humming and cleaning as she went.
Brooke didn’t answer, and Joy heard the traffic in the background, the angry toot of someone’s horn, and she imagined her daughter behind the wheel, frowning, worrying about that damned new clinic that Joy wished she hadn’t so bravely started, worrying about her parents who didn’t yet require her concern. The time will come, my darling, we’ll get frail and sick and stubborn and your stomach will twist with love and terror each time we call, but plenty of time, don’t get ahead of yourself, we’re not there yet.
‘The thing is, I hate cooking,’ said Joy. The words rushed out of her mouth: traitorously, venomously. ‘You’ve no idea how much I hate cooking, and it just never ends, the cooking, night after night after bloody night. Each night at five o’clock, like clockwork, your father says, “What’s for dinner?” and I grit my teeth so hard I can feel it in my jaw.’
She stopped, embarrassed.
‘Gosh, Mum,’ said Brooke. She sounded shocked. ‘We should get one of those meal services for you, if you really hate cooking that much. I had no idea you felt like that! All those years. You should have made us help more when we were growing up but you never let us in the kitchen! I feel terrible –’
‘No, no, no,’ interrupted Joy. She felt ridiculous. It was true she hadn’t let her children help in the kitchen. They were too messy and loud and she didn’t have the time or patience to be the sort of mother to smile lovingly while a floury-faced child cracked eggs onto the floor.
（She would be that sort of grandmother. Grandchildren would be her second chance to get it right. Now she had the time and the eggs to spare, and she would be present with her grandchildren. When she looked at photos of her children when they were little, she sometimes thought, Did I notice how beautiful they were? Was I actually there? Did I just skim the surface of my entire damned life?）
‘I was being silly, I don’t really hate cooking. I just like it when someone else puts a meal in front of me, as if I’m the lady of the manor! And it’s no big deal at all now, when it’s just for your father and me, it’s easy! Now . . . how are you, how was your weekend?’
‘It was nice,’ said Brooke. ‘Quiet.’
A sudden instinct, something about the tension in Brooke’s voice and the memory that Brooke had said she might drop by over the weekend but then never had, and Joy had been so busy with Savannah that she only just remembered now, made Joy say, ‘Did you have a migraine over the weekend, Brooke?’
‘So what else has this Savannah been doing all day?’ said Brooke at the same time. ‘Apart from cooking?’
‘She’s been resting,’ said Joy. ‘She needed a rest. I think she’s been through quite a stressful time.’