‘Is this where you grew up?’ Simon asked, looking about him.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Happy childhood?’ asked Simon. He looked at the big pots of flowers, the shiny clean terracotta tiles and the stone figurines in the carefully tended garden beds. ‘It looks like the setting for a happy childhood.’ He touched the tip of his runner to the base of the statue by the front door. It was a blank-eyed little girl in a bonnet holding an empty basket.
‘What happened to her eyes?’
‘The crows took them,’ said Amy.
‘She looks like a demon child,’ commented Simon.
‘I know,’ said Amy. ‘I always think that!’ Maybe she and the accountant were actually soulmates.
The door opened the tiniest crack.
A low, husky voice said, ‘Can I help you?’
For a second Amy wondered if she’d somehow come to the wrong house, anything was possible, but then the door swung open just to the length of the security chain, and Savannah stood there, wearing not Amy’s old clothes but a long-sleeved paisley shirt tucked into three-quarter-length black pants that Amy was pretty sure belonged to her mother. It was worse seeing Savannah in her mother’s cast-offs than in her own.
‘Oh, hi, Amy,’ she said. ‘How are you? Your mum is asleep at the moment.’
When Joy collapsed on Father’s Day, it had been Savannah who caught her and carefully laid her on the floor. Joy’s head had ended up resting on Savannah’s lap, and one could hardly say, Get out of the way, strange girl, that’s my mother, her head should be resting on my lap.
‘That’s okay.’ Amy had talked to her mother a few times on the phone since she’d got out of hospital and she knew she’d been napping. ‘I won’t wake her. What’s Dad doing?’ She waited for Savannah to hurry up and release the security chain.
‘He fell asleep in front of the television,’ said Savannah, and she stuck out her lower lip to convey Aww, isn’t that adorable? ‘I think he got a real fright when your mother was in hospital last week, so they both have some catching up to do.’
‘Oh,’ said Amy. Her father was a veteran snoozer. He always dozed in front of the television. He’d be awake any minute. ‘Well. I’ll still come in and –’
‘Now is not such a good time,’ said Savannah.
Now is not such a good time? Did she really just say that?
Amy felt many emotions on a given day: desire for inappropriate men, nostalgia for long-ago days that never actually happened, great rolling waves of happiness and sadness, bouts of high-level panic and low-level anxiety, but rage was an emotion with which she was not familiar, so it took her a moment to identify the feeling whooshing through her veins.
Was this girl really going to block her from entering her own childhood home?
‘Hi there.’ Simon leaned in front of Amy. ‘I’m Amy’s boyfriend. Sorry to be a pain but could I come in and use the bathroom? I’ll be very quiet if everyone is asleep.’
He didn’t really think he was her boyfriend just because they’d slept together twice, did he? She gave him a look. He winked.
There was a beat. Of course Savannah knew Amy was single. She knew everything about Amy’s family although they knew virtually nothing about her. Savannah tapped a fingertip against her lower lip, almost as if in parody of Joy, who did the same thing to indicate scepticism.
If Savannah denied Amy’s ‘boyfriend’ this valid, ordinary request, she would kick down the door.
‘Come in.’ Savannah opened the security chain with an upward flick of her finger, opened the door and stood back, as if she lived there, which technically she did, but temporarily. Supposedly.
There was just nothing guest-like in her behaviour.
Steffi, the traitorous hound, sat at Savannah’s feet as though she were Savannah’s beloved pet, and politely cocked her head at Amy like they were meeting for the first time.
Once again, Amy registered how the house felt perceptibly, but pleasantly, different, as it had on Father’s Day. It was like it had been styled by a clever real estate agent for inspection by potential buyers. There were flowers on the sideboard in a vase that Amy had never seen before. All the family photos on the wall were the same but they’d been straightened, or dusted, or polished so that all those familiar shots of their childhood were suddenly thrown into sharp relief.
Simon held out his hand to Savannah.
‘Hi there. I’m Simon Barrington,’ he said in a loud, showy voice, completely unlike his own. ‘So pleased to meet you.’