She lifted her finger. Beckoned.
Impulse-control disorder. That was another one.
chapter nineteen
Now
A phone rang. A printer whirred. A keyboard clacked. A man laughed and said, ‘You’re kidding me?’ A woman sneezed and said, ‘Bless me!’ It could have been any open-plan corporate office on a weekday morning, with its grey nylon carpet tiles and beige walls, except that the people working here routinely dealt with the worst of humanity. It was no wonder the most senior of them spoke in similar brittle impatient tones that made their partners sigh, ‘Why are you always so cynical?’
Christina sat at her desk, drinking a full-cream double-shot piccolo from the café next to the station, thinking about Nico, this morning, sighing, ‘Why are you always so cynical, Christina?’ when she questioned why his friend-of-a-friend wedding photographer was demanding payment upfront.
Joy Delaney had been out of contact for thirteen days following an argument with her husband. This was a woman whose children couldn’t recall her going away for one night without her husband.
Why are you always so cynical, Christina?
Because nice ordinary people lie and steal and cheat and murder, Nico.
They’d paid the photographer upfront.
She drank the last of her piccolo, opened the file in front of her and read a printout from Joy’s Word documents on her desktop computer:
So You Want to Write a Memoir
Writing a memoir is an enriching experience. Think of this exercise as a warm-up to get those creative juices flowing. Let’s start with your ‘elevator pitch’ – tell us your life story in just a few paragraphs below!
My given name is Joy Margaret Becker. No relation to the famous tennis player Boris Becker, in case you’re wondering! （But I am a tennis player.） My mother’s name was Pearl, and she was a ‘beauty’， which is why she never quite recovered from the shock of my father walking out on us when I was four years old. He said he was going to meet a friend, but he didn’t mention the friend lived over two thousand kilometres away in the Northern Territory!
My father died in a ‘fist fight’ three years after he left us. He had a quick temper. I have a quick temper myself, or so I’ve been told, but I’ve never been in a fist fight! I was always told that my father adored me but that sure was a funny way to show it.
My mother moved back in with her parents, my grandparents, who were more like parents to me and brought me up. I was especially close to my grandfather, who was the chattiest man I have ever known. He could talk the hind legs off a donkey. I still think of things I’d like to tell my grandpa. My mother was quite a critical, unhappy person. It wasn’t her fault. She was born in the wrong time. I think if she was born now she might have been the CEO of a big corporation. Or she might have been a weather girl. She was certainly pretty enough and always very interested in the weather.
My grandfather loved tennis and one day when I was a toddler, I picked up his big wooden square-headed tennis racquet. It would have been so heavy for a three-year-old. My grandfather, just for fun, threw me a ball and I hit it straight back. He said he nearly fell off his chair. I hit ten balls in a row before I missed one. My grandmother said it was only five. My mother said she didn’t believe a word of it. Who knows! All I do know is that tennis was all I wanted to do when I was a little girl. I just loved hitting that ball. Hard flat shots from the baseline. That’s my favourite. （Too much spin these days. It’s the fancy new racquets.） I loved the sound. Clop. Clop. Clop. Like horse’s hooves. The smell of new tennis balls is one of my favourite smells. I have never taken drugs （apart from paracetamol, I do quite enjoy paracetamol） but I sometimes feel like tennis is my drug. When the match is over it’s like waking up from a beautiful dream.
I started entering tournaments when I was ten. When I was eleven, I played against a thirteen-year-old girl and she cried when I beat her. I didn’t feel sorry for her at all. I remember that very clearly. My prize for winning that tournament was an umbrella. （See-through with a red trim.） That was the same day I overheard a man tell my grandfather that I had the potential to be a world champion. That stuck in my mind. My grandfather and I had a plan. First I would win the local junior championships, then the state titles, then the Australian women’s singles, then I’d go overseas （I’d never been on a plane!） and win the French and US titles, and finally Wimbledon.
By the time I was twelve my grandfather had to build a new shelf for all my trophies.