He bent his head to her receipts again.
‘Oh my God, Simon,’ she said. She felt a rush of love for her clueless little brother. First his cow of a fiancée breaks his heart, then his weird older flatmate gets her claws into him. You had to watch those cougar types who dressed like twenty-somethings. Boys couldn’t see the Botox. Although Liz was pretty sure Amy wouldn’t have had Botox, she was too hippie and new-age, but she definitely dressed and acted younger than her wrinkles.
‘Amy must be, what? Fifteen years older than you?’
‘Twelve years older,’ he said. ‘Twelve years, three months and twenty-four days.’
chapter thirty
Last October
‘I’ll try the apple crumble,’ said Joy to the waitress at the David Jones cafeteria, where she sat opposite Savannah, surrounded by a triumphant array of stiff, shiny, string-handled shopping bags at their feet.
‘With ice-cream or cream?’ asked the waitress.
‘With both,’ said Joy firmly.
It was a family tradition to always try the apple crumble whenever it was on the menu, in the forlorn hope that they might one day find an apple crumble as good as the one Stan’s mother used to bake. It was her signature dish, like Amy’s brownies. Everyone apart from Joy got misty-eyed when they ate apple crumble and said, ‘Not as good as Grandma’s,’ while Joy thought to herself, Trust the old bag to never share her secret recipe. One day someone would work out the missing single ingredient and then she’d be properly dead.
‘Please may I have the apple crumble too?’ said Savannah in that funny, almost childlike well-mannered way she had. ‘Also with ice-cream and cream.’
‘Same as your mum, then.’ The waitress flicked her notepad closed. It was the second time that day they’d been mistaken for mother and daughter as they’d shopped, trying on clothes in adjacent change rooms. ‘Do you want to see what your daughter thinks?’ a shop assistant had said to Joy as she tried on a long-sleeved floaty floral dress in a colour she would never normally wear.
Savannah had convinced Joy to buy the dress. ‘You look really beautiful,’ she’d said, eyes narrowed. ‘And it’s twenty per cent off. It looks well made.’ She’d dropped to her knees on the floor beside Joy and folded back the hem of the dress to show her. ‘Look at the stitching on the lining. That’s real good quality.’
That’s real good quality.
The phrase had snagged in Joy’s consciousness. It sounded incongruous from a girl of Savannah’s age. Like something Ma from Little House on the Prairie would say. And yet it was one of those moments where Joy felt she was seeing the real Savannah, as if her interest in the dress made her forget herself for a moment and a veil was lifted. Savannah was so ready to serve, like a hotel concierge, unfailingly courteous and warmly interested in your plans, that Joy sometimes had to remind herself not to bask in that interest, just like a self-absorbed hotel guest. It was an effort to make Savannah talk about herself but she was chipping away at it. She’d noticed it helped if it was a bit later at night, and just the two of them, especially if Joy suggested a nice little glass of brandy. That was when Savannah had told her about her ‘highly superior autobiographical memory’。
They’d been talking about Joy’s memoir-writing class and how there were some periods of Joy’s life that were just a blur.
‘I wish my memories would blur a bit,’ Savannah had said, looking into her glass. ‘I remember everything. The details never fade.’
Now Joy pushed aside the cutlery on the café table to lean forward, chin resting on her hands, to properly examine Savannah. She definitely looked better than when she’d arrived on her doorstep. Joy wished she could say it was because she’d done such a good job looking after her, when in fact the opposite was true: Savannah had done such a good job looking after her.
‘Are you feeling tired?’ Savannah asked her.
‘Not at all,’ said Joy, although she was a little. ‘Thank you for convincing me to get that dress.’
Savannah smiled. ‘I bet Stan will love it.’
‘He’ll love the discount,’ said Joy.
‘It’s a good dress,’ said Savannah.
Joy’s mother would have appreciated Savannah getting on her knees to check the dress’s lining. She used to do that sort of thing: check the stitching of the seams, tug at the hems. Sniff contemptuously if it wasn’t to her liking.
Joy had loved a long lingering day of shopping with her mother. It had been hard when the children were little and their tennis was all-consuming, but once every year she and her mother would have a day just like this. It was so satisfying, so pleasurable, going from shop to shop, hunting out bargains, accessorising an outfit, realising that the blue in that new blouse was a perfect match for the blue in that skirt, and then sitting down for a break at a café like this to rest your aching feet and discuss what else you needed.