Troy was showered and clean and wearing a nine-hundred-dollar shirt and a Louis Moinet watch, and he might have made some bad choices in his life and he might right now be facing an ethical dilemma of monumental proportions because of those unfortunate choices, but he had never hit a woman and he never would, he had inherited not a single one of his villainous grandfather’s villainous genes, and he liked the fear and confusion on Harry Potter’s face. Harry Potter deserved to feel fear and confusion, because he was legally, morally and spiritually in the wrong.
It happened so rarely that you knew that you were right and the other guy was wrong; Troy was Spider-Man, the Hulk, Captain America. He was goddamned Batman.
He had never felt better.
chapter seventeen Now
‘So she sends her sons over to pick up this girl’s stuff. Doesn’t know her from a bar of soap but she lets her move in!’
It was late afternoon and the packed salon hummed with the roar of multiple hairdryers. Senior stylist Narelle Longford only half-listened to her three pm half-head highlights as she prattled on about Joy Delaney. Nearly every one of her clients had been prattling on about Joy Delaney over the last week. Joy was well known in the local community.
‘It has to be connected, don’t you think? This strange girl and Joy’s disappearance?’
‘I don’t know.’ Narelle removed the towel turban from the woman’s head. Isabel Norris was known to be difficult about her colour.
‘Wait. Don’t you normally do Joy’s hair?’ Isabel spun her head to look at her. ‘You probably know more than me! Have the police talked to you?’
‘No.’ Narelle plugged in the hairdryer. ‘Smooth with a bit of volume?’
‘Did she tell you she was planning on going away?’
‘She didn’t,’ said Narelle.
‘I heard that Joy and Stan were having issues. They were barely speaking.’
‘I don’t know anything about that,’ said Narelle, who knew all about that.
‘Did she ever mention that girl to you?’
‘Savannah?’ said Narelle.
‘Wait, did you meet her?’
She met Isabel’s eyes in the mirror. ‘I did. I cut her hair.’
‘Did you?’ Isabel looked animated. ‘I heard she was a little, you know . . .’ She mouthed the word. ‘Slutty.’
‘She seemed nice,’ said Narelle.
‘It’s all tied up somehow,’ said Isabel. ‘Too much of a coincidence. Strange young girl moves in and then the wife vanishes. Don’t be surprised if the next thing we hear is that Stan just happens to be in a relationship with this girl now he’s got Joy out of the way – ow, that’s a bit hot on my ear.’
‘Sorry,’ said Narelle unapologetically.
She was Joy’s confidante and confessor, as bound by secrecy as a priest or lawyer, but if Joy missed her next appointment Narelle would go to the police and hand over thirty years of secrets. She’d tell them about the betrayals. The ones referred to obliquely and the ones discussed in frank detail. She’d give the police everything they needed to convict her husband. She would say, Here is one possible motive and here is another, because any marriage of that many years has multiple motives for murder. Every police officer and hairdresser knows that.
chapter eighteen
Last September
It was close to midnight and Amy Delaney, oldest daughter of Stan and Joy Delaney, part-time taste tester, part-time normal person, part-time not so normal person, sat cross-legged on her unmade bed, naked, her hair in a perky cheerleader’s high ponytail, looking at the poem she’d just written in her journal. Her bedroom was at the very top of the inner-city terrace she shared with three flatmates. Red and blue neon light from the sign above the miniature golf course next door flickered across the page as she read:
A Strange Girl
There is
A Strange Girl
In the house where I grew up
Sleeping in my discarded
Bed
Wearing my discarded
Clothes
Making lasagne for my
Discarded
Mother
And my mother had to go
In the middle of my call
（I still had things to say）
Because the Strange Girl
Called out her name
In two syllables
As if she had the right
My mother’s name is Joy
And when she answered
The Strange Girl
Her voice was full of
Joy
Amy languidly drew thick rectangles over various words in her poem as if she were a wartime censor, tore out the page, crumpled it up, and ate it.