Now he was brokenhearted and drunk, and he’d come home and remembered his single flatmate on the top floor, like remembering some leftover takeaway in the fridge, and he’d thought, Huh. He was a nice enough guy, sweet and polite and scrupulous about housework, but he read those boring biographies all the way through to the end, and he was an ex–rugby player, with a rugby player’s top-heavy body (she liked tall, lean, inscrutable men; there was nothing inscrutable about Simon Barrington), and he had a boring job she could never remember, something to do with telecommunications or property or possibly he was an accountant, and he was younger than her, and shorter than her, and men always said they didn’t care about the height thing, but they did, they surely did, and that repressed fury always came to the surface eventually.
So it would be once, and it wouldn’t be good sex, and then there would be awkwardness between them for the next seven months of her rental agreement, and then she’d have to find somewhere else to live, and she liked it here, she liked the neon light from the miniature golf course, she liked the possum with a panic disorder.
“Sorry!” Simon called through the door. “So sorry! I’ll go.”
She waited.
There was silence. Had he gone? She should let him go.
She got out of bed, put on a T-shirt, and opened the door. He was walking toward the top of the stairs.
“Simon?” she said. “Simon Barrington?”
He turned. His shirt was pulled loose from the waistband of his jeans, his glasses were askew, his eyes were bloodshot, and he was in need of a shave.
She lifted her finger. Beckoned.
Impulse-control disorder. That was another one.
Chapter 19
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 gray 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 up front.
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 up front.
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 kilometers away in the Northern Territory!
My father died in a “fistfight” 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 fistfight! 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 know
n. 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 favorite. (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 favorite smells. I have never taken drugs (apart from ibuprofen, I do quite enjoy ibuprofen), 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.
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 “backup” 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.