Apples Never Fall

“I’ll keep an open mind.” He looked pleased.

“I’ll just go put my unironed jeans on,” she said.

“No problem.” He courteously waved his hand to let her pass him on the stairs.

She was a head taller than him, so now that she was on the step below him they were eye to eye. He had bushy old-man eyebrows and good, honest, taxpaying eyes.

“Before I do that,” said Amy. She moved a fraction closer.

“Before you do that,” repeated Simon, and there was a catch in his voice.

It was like the satisfaction of striking a match first go. She saw the understanding spark and shine in his eyes.

“We could work on your spontaneity,” she said.

“We could,” said Simon.

“Just very quickly,” said Amy.

So they did that.

* * *

An hour later, Amy stood at her parents’ front door and rang the doorbell that didn’t work, just in case it had been fixed, and then, without waiting, because she knew it would never be fixed, knocked hard with her knuckles.

She looked at her clean, delicious flatmate, standing next to her in his white T-shirt matching his white teeth, with his buzz cut and broad shoulders and glasses, like a door-to-door missionary or the nerdy best friend from a teen vampire movie. Her mother would ask Simon lots of probing questions, and Simon would be the type to answer them in polite comprehensive detail, and her mother would remember that comprehensive detail for years after Amy had forgotten Simon Barrington’s very existence.

He was a distraction from the visit’s main purpose, which was to subtly collect as much biographical data about Savannah as possible, particularly as it related to the alleged assault.

You brought your flatmate? Why? She could just hear her sister and brothers, that careful patient tone they sometimes used, as if she were an explosive device that could detonate at any moment.

“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 sneaker to the base of the statue by the front door. It was a blank-eyed little girl in a bonnet holding an empt

y 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 castoffs 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.