When Troy and Claire had been married they had lived one of those hybrid lives where they continually travelled back and forth between the US and Australia, as if New York and Sydney were merely a bus ride apart. That’s how Claire became friends with a Texan girl in New York called Sarah, who eventually invited her to her wedding, a year after Troy and Claire had split up, which was where Claire met Sarah’s divorced brother, Geoff, and there was nothing wrong with Geoff, except for his address. Austin was a very fun and friendly city, but so was Sydney! Her new son-in-law just smiled when she pointed that out. He wasn’t quite as interested in her as Troy had been. Troy had been kind of flirtatious with her. Teresa had enjoyed his flirtatiousness. It upset her now to remember that. They’d all been hoodwinked. Geoff was no Troy. He hated flying. He didn’t want a hybrid life. He wanted a life where Claire saw her Australian family maybe once a year. Claire was back in Sydney now, staying in the spare room, which was wonderful, but once she got back on that plane, Teresa might not see her only daughter for months.
So thank you for nothing, Troy Delaney.
She pushed the point of her scissors against the headline of the newspaper article: CONCERNS GROW FOR MISSING WOMAN.
His damned mother would choose to disappear right now, of all times.
She had liked Troy’s parents. They were just an ordinary, down-to-earth couple, like her and Hans. She had imagined them all being grandparents together. Surely she would have noticed if there had been cracks in their marriage that could have led to . . . something catastrophic. But that was five years ago, and maybe every marriage had secret cracks that could turn into chasms.
She laid down the scissors and crumpled up the carefully clipped newspaper article into a ball. She wasn’t going to say a word to Claire about her former mother-in-law unless she mentioned her first, and then she’d tell her that yes, it was upsetting, but she must try her hardest not to be upset. The Delaneys were nothing to do with them anymore.
If only that were true.
Damn that Troy Delaney.
chapter sixteen
Last September
Troy Delaney watched the streets of his childhood glide by from the passenger seat of Logan’s car: lush lawns, sharp-edged hedges, ivy-covered brick walls. A postman on a motorbike slid a single letter into an ornate green letterbox, a magpie swooped violently towards a cyclist’s helmeted head, a dog-walker trotted after three little designer dogs, a young mother pushed a double stroller. There was nothing wrong with any of it. There was nothing to complain about （except for the magpie, he hated magpies）。 It was all perfectly nice. It was just that the unrelenting niceness made him feel like he was being lovingly suffocated with a duvet.
He closed his eyes and tried to recall the cacophony of noise and canyon-like streets of New York, where he’d been twenty-four hours earlier, but it was like Sydney suburbia cancelled out New York’s existence. Now there could be nothing else but this: this soft, bland reality, his older brother driving, a tiny, smug grin on his unshaven face, because Logan knew Troy didn’t want to be here.
‘Love the scarf, mate,’ he’d said, predictably, when he saw Troy, who’d worn it just to annoy him. ‘You look really intimidating.’
‘Pure cashmere,’ Troy had answered.
‘This is really very kind of you guys,’ said a low female voice from the back seat.
‘It’s not a problem.’ Troy turned and smiled at the girl sitting composedly behind them in his brother’s shitbox of a car.
Savannah. His parents’ bizarre little charity project. She sat upright, her hair pulled back in a schoolgirl ponytail to reveal slightly protruding, tiny ears, like an elf’s. Her pale face was make-up free. She had the kind of thin bony body and hard face that speaks of addiction and the streets. There was a nearly healed cut over one eye with faint purplish bruising, and Troy tried to feel the sympathy she obviously deserved, but his heart was as hard and suspicious as an ex-girlfriend’s.
Troy’s parents had no idea that being abused didn’t automatically make you good. Savannah could be a petty thief, a psychopath, or just an opportunist who had seen their big house and soft elderly innocent faces, and thought: Money.
He and Logan were ‘the muscle’ in case the boyfriend showed up. Troy covertly checked out his older brother, who didn’t have a gym membership but still looked gallingly buff, although he’d stacked it on around the belly. He wondered what Logan could bench-press if he could ever be convinced to bench-press.
How would they handle it if this guy did make an appearance? When Troy was in his ‘angry young man’ stage he would have relished the opportunity to hit someone with justice on his side, to defend a wronged woman, to blow off all that angry energy, but he no longer walked around with his teeth clenched as tight as his fists, looking for someone to blame. That stupid angry kid no longer existed. Now the thought of being involved in a physical altercation seemed grotesque.