Forty was too old to be eating bad poetry for dinner, to be living in a share house with twenty-somethings, to have no savings or furniture or boyfriend. She and Brooke should swap lives, except that if Amy was married to a man as deeply enamoured of his own supposed intellect and supposed wit as Grant Willis, she would have to answer ‘yes’ to that ubiquitous question: ‘Have you been experiencing suicidal thoughts?’
She reminded herself to get herself a new boyfriend soon, so she wouldn’t wake up alone on her fortieth birthday.
Would this strange girl, this Savannah, still be living in Amy’s old bedroom by her fortieth birthday?
She listened to the panicked scuttle of a possum’s paws as it ran across the roof tiles above her head. Her heart raced within the cavity of her chest and her thoughts scuttled as fast and as foolish as a hundred panicked possums.
It’s your fight-or-flight response, explained each new therapist, kindly and patronisingly, as if this were a brand new concept for her. Often they spent precious expensive minutes of the session explaining how cavemen needed the fight-or-flight response, because of the sabre-toothed tiger, but now there was no sabre-toothed tiger, but still we responded as if there was one （they were always so excited by the tiger!） and Amy would drift off, thinking about how there could be occasions in the modern world where you could actually face a tiger, like if you were on safari, for example, or if one escaped from a zoo, or how a rapist could represent the tiger, and you needed to race off down the alley, and how she was fast, she was a fast runner, faster than most, she would get away from any rapist or tiger, but she could never get the fuck away from her thoughts, her crazy, stupid thoughts and next thing, time was up, and that will be three squillion and fifty-six dollars, thank you, and our next available appointment is in three years’ time, shall we book you in?
She did the four–seven–eight breathing technique.
Breathe in for four. Hold for seven. Out for eight.
In for four. Hold for seven. Out for eight.
Her heart rate slowed from full-blown panic to an acceptable level of high alert, as if she were no longer running from the tiger but she’d climbed a tree and was watching it circle and snarl below. She hadn’t climbed a tree in a while but she used to be good at it.
She yawned hugely. Don’t fall asleep in the tree, Amy!
Tomorrow was Father’s Day. She needed to sleep. She had to be up early to make chocolate brownies. Her dad loved her chocolate brownies. If she stayed awake all night, which was a real possibility, she’d have dark circles under her eyes and her mother would notice and worry, or perhaps she wouldn’t because she would be so busy noticing and worrying about Savannah, who had proper problems, like homelessness and abusive boyfriends.
She considered her options to make herself sleep:
Sleeping pill.
Hot bath.
Hot milk.
Guided meditation.
Orgasm.
Really boring book.
One of her flatmates read giant, hardback biographies of important men and they were so boring they made Amy want to weep.
Her dad said he played imaginary tennis in his head when he couldn’t get to sleep. Amy said, ‘Doesn’t that wake you up?’ Her mother suggested doing the ironing.
Amy couldn’t think of anything less restful than playing imaginary tennis and she never ironed. ‘That’s evident,’ her mother said.
Amy rolled onto her side, adjusted her pillow.
She might love this girl who was trying to steal her parents. This Savannah from the savanna where the sabre-toothed tiger roamed.
When she asked Troy about Savannah he said she was ‘fine’， which was the word he used when a waiter asked, ‘How was your meal?’ and Troy thought it wasn’t that great, but it wasn’t bad enough to get all Gordon Ramsay about it.
Logan said he had no opinion on Savannah. She could hear his shrug.
Brooke would be meeting Savannah for the first time tomorrow too, but when Amy last spoke to her, she said that she’d spoken to Mum and she wasn’t worried and Amy shouldn’t worry either, and that their parents were doing something nice for a domestic violence victim and they should all feel proud.
Amy had never had a boyfriend hit her, although she’d had a couple who fucked her when she was too out of it to consent, but that was before consent got fashionable. Those kinds of incidents used to be considered ‘funny’。 Even ‘hilarious’。 The worse you felt, the louder you laughed. The laughter was necessary because it put you back in charge. You didn’t remember, so you created a memory you hoped was the truth. Sometimes she kept dating a boy, temporarily convinced herself she loved him, just to keep the correct narrative on track. Well. No need to go all the way back there. Her mind was filled with catacombs it was important to keep sealed shut, like the sealed-up fireplace in her parents’ living room. The brick hearth where her grandmother had smashed her face was long gone.