But this sadness she was feeling now felt natural, wholesome and uncomplicated, as if finally, after all these years, she was grieving the way normal daughters grieved for their mothers: the way she’d like her own daughters to grieve for her one day, not coldly stuffing their mother’s clothes into a big black garbage bag, the way Joy had done, the day after her mother’s funeral, without a single tear, or even a tender thought, but also not crying on the laundry floor weeks later in that strange paroxysm of grief that would have so mortified her mother. （‘Get up!’ Pearl would have cried, yanking Joy up by the elbow. ‘Someone might see you!’）
‘Thank you.’ Joy leaned back as the waitress delivered their apple crumble. She said to Savannah, ‘I know just the shop for that necklace. We’ll go there straight after this.’
‘Well, only if . . . if that’s okay,’ said Savannah, suddenly looking uncomfortable. ‘You’ve already spent quite a lot on me. Your children might not approve.’
‘Darling, I should be paying you a salary,’ said Joy. ‘You are like a full-time chef! And housekeeper! This is the least I can do.’
‘Well, but don’t forget I’m getting free rent,’ said Savannah.
‘I’m the one getting the bargain here,’ said Joy stoutly. She thought of Brooke, on the phone this morning: ‘Mum, if you actually want to employ this girl as a housekeeper or whatever you want to call it, you need to do it properly.’
Of course Joy couldn’t employ Savannah as a full-time chef or housekeeper. She didn’t know anyone with a housekeeper. That was for movie stars and Americans. Possibly people from the eastern suburbs. Not for ordinary people like her and Stan. However, it had occurred to her last night that perhaps they could let Savannah stay as a kind of lodger. Why not? Savannah could get a job, somewhere local, and stay in Amy’s room, and pay nominal rent, or no rent at all if she kept on doing the cooking.
But Stan wasn’t at all keen. He said, when they were in bed last night, the door shut, that it had been over six weeks now and it was probably time for Savannah to think about finding her own place.
‘But why the rush?’ Joy had said, taken aback. She thought he enjoyed Savannah’s company as much as she did, but since she’d come back from the hospital, he’d become more reserved around Savannah. All that chattiness had stopped. He found excuses not to join them at mealtimes. He and Savannah didn’t seem to be watching that television series together anymore. It was such a pity.
‘Did something happen while I was in hospital?’ Joy had asked him.
‘Like what?’ said Stan, his jaw clenched.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘You just don’t seem as happy about Savannah as you were in the beginning.’
‘She’s been here long enough,’ said Stan. ‘That’s all I’m saying.’
It had been so odd.
After a moment she’d said, ‘Have you been talking to the children?’ The children were being such children about Savannah. She could not believe that Amy had accused Savannah of making up the story about her boyfriend, based on some documentary Logan had supposedly seen with a similar story, as if there couldn’t be similarities in people’s experiences.
Stan had said nothing and she refused to give him the satisfaction of innocently, idiotically repeating the question, a little louder, the way she would have when she was twenty, or yelling, ‘Answer me!’ like she would have when she was forty.
She was sure she was right: the children had got to him and that’s what accounted for his sudden coolness towards Savannah. He was more influenced by their opinions than he liked to pretend. He would argue vehemently with one of them about a particular issue and then, just a month or so later, spout the very same argument presented by one of the children as if it were his own, and categorically deny that he had ever said or thought otherwise.
It was all very well for Stan to say that Savannah had been there long enough. He wasn’t the one who would be back in the kitchen at five pm every day, staring with despair and boredom at the refrigerator’s contents, sliding the vegetable crisper open and closed, open and closed, hoping for inspiration.
This hatred of cooking must represent something else, because why get so worked up about it now, after all these years? Once upon a time Joy was up at five am every day, she’d coach class after class, deal with the laundry, the dog, the accountant, the homework, her mother, her mother-in-law, and then she’d cook dinner for a family of six （at a minimum, there were always extra people at the table）， and she’d done it without conscious resentment or complaint.