I was quite young when I married a tall （very tall!）， dark and handsome young tennis player called Stan Delaney. We planned tennis careers. We drove all over the country playing in tournaments while still trying to support ourselves. It was hard but fun. I did a secretarial course after school. My mother wanted me to have a ‘back-up’ in case ‘tennis didn’t work out’。 Her hope was that I would marry a ‘businessman’。 She thought tennis was a fairy tale and perhaps she was right because my husband had a very bad injury when he was only twenty-two. He tore his Achilles playing the third set of the Manly Seaside Tournament quarterfinals. He would have won the match if not for that injury. So that was his Achilles heel! （But it was his Achilles tendon.） So we left the circuit and a few years later we started Delaneys Tennis Academy, which went on to become one of the most successful tennis schools in the state, if not the country, if I do say so myself! （I told my mother that I ended up becoming a ‘businesswoman’ myself but she thought I was trying to be funny.）
We had four children, two boys and two girls. Even Stevens! All four were very talented players. We have no grandchildren as yet.
We recently sold the tennis school and now we have the time to tick things off our bucket list! If only we had a bucket list! Oh well.
‘Christina?’
She looked up to see Ethan, in a turquoise shirt today, at her cubicle entrance, gleaming with health and optimism. ‘These young guys are like fucking Energizer Bunnies,’ one of the other detectives had sighed to Christina, and he was fifteen years older than her, but she knew what he meant.
‘Joy Delaney’s internet search history for the day she disappeared,’ said Ethan, handing her a sheet of paper. He’d highlighted relevant lines in yellow.
Joy had Googled the following questions:
How do you know when it’s time to divorce?
Divorcing after sixty
How does a divorce affect adult children?
Does marriage counselling work?
Does whiskey go off?
‘So much for that wonderful marriage of theirs,’ said Christina.
‘I know,’ said Ethan sadly, and he momentarily bowed his head as if to honour a loss, but then he immediately lifted it again, and said brightly, ‘I’ve also got her phone records. One hour before she sent that text –’
‘If she sent that text,’ said Christina.
‘One hour before that text was sent,’ Ethan corrected himself, ‘there was a forty-minute telephone conversation with a Dr Henry Edgeworth. He’s a forty-nine-year-old plastic surgeon, married with two children. He’s currently overseas and not returning our calls.’
‘A plastic surgeon?’ Christina frowned. ‘How does that fit?’
It didn’t fit.
‘Booking in for plastic surgery so she could change her identity?’ suggested Ethan.
‘Yeah. Because she got mixed up with the Mafia,’ said Christina.
‘Should I look at potential connections with organised crime?’ asked Ethan enthusiastically.
She looked up to see if he was joking. She couldn’t tell.
She said evenly, ‘We need to look at all potential connections.’
Ethan nodded. He looked down at his notes. ‘There was that huge hailstorm two days after Valentine’s Day.’
‘So you’re thinking she got hit by a hailstone and now she’s got amnesia?’
He looked up at her. Now he couldn’t tell if she was joking.
She said, ‘How are we going with that house guest of theirs?’
‘I’m closing in on her.’
‘Good,’ said Christina. ‘Because I reckon all roads lead to her.’
chapter twenty
Father’s Day
On Father’s Day morning, Joy woke late and well rested. She was sprawled facedown right in the middle of the bed like a child. There was a little circle of saliva where she’d dribbled onto the sheet. Stan wasn’t there. Spring sunshine poured through the window, warm on the skin of her legs, which were bare beneath her t-shirt. She could smell jasmine from the garden and bacon from the kitchen. Savannah must be cooking breakfast.
She was getting far too used to having someone cook and clean for her. This was what it must be like to be a celebrity. No wonder they were so charismatic and cheerful on talk shows. Joy could feel herself becoming more charismatic and cheerful by the day.
In fact, Savannah seemed to treat her and Stan as if they were talk show guests and she the host, fascinated by the intricacies of their celebrity lives. She wanted to hear everything about them: their tennis, the tennis school, the club, the children. She asked questions Joy was sure her own children had never bothered to ask: When did you know you were right for each other?