Apples Never Fall

“Well, obviously I’d never get a real live-in housekeeper!” said Joy.

“I’m just saying that we don’t really know that much about Savannah,” said Amy, and she lowered her voice and looked toward the door.

“I actually know lots about her,” said Joy. “We’ve had some long chats while I’ve been recuperating. Do you know—and I find this just so interesting, so fascinating!” Joy’s face lit up. “Savannah has something called highly superior autobiographical memory.” She ticked off each word on her fingers as she said it. “She can remember whole days in her life with a degree of detail that you and I, ordinary people, would find impossible.”

“Really?” said Amy skeptically. She bristled at the way she had been lumped into the category of “ordinary people.” She herself felt she could remember events from her life in quite significant detail, thank you very much. “She’s actually received a diagnosis of that?”

“Well, I don’t know, I don’t know if you get diagnosed with it, I don’t think it’s an illness, as such, although she did say it’s both a blessing and a curse, because while it’s nice to remember the good events, she said she also remembers the bad ones, and, as we know, she has not had a normal happy life—poor girl.”

“Huh,” said Amy.

She took the hairbrush that her mother had left sitting on the bed in front of her and replaced it carefully on the dressing table, then she went and quietly closed the door and sat back down again.

“What is it?” Her mother sat up straight and propped a pillow behind her back. “What’s happened? Has something bad happened?” Panic flooded her face. “Dammit, I thought that new counselor was helping? I thought you were good at the moment!”

“I’m fine, Mum,” said Amy testily. Why did her mother always assume there must be some crisis or other in Amy’s life? She registered the irritated dammit that accompanied her mother’s panic. Her mother would never shout, “Stop being so ridiculous, Amy, pull yourself together!” like she had done when Amy was a kid—she now knew all the correct supportive modern things to say about mental health—but Amy knew that there was an unconscious part of her that still wondered if Amy did indeed need to just stop being so ridiculous and pull herself together. Amy was like a defective household appliance that would never be replaced but that everyone knew could break down at the most inconvenient of times.

“So what is it?”

“Logan called me today. He saw a rerun of a documentary on television, and it was about domestic violence, and the girl on it told almost the exact same story that Savannah told him about her boyfriend—he said it was virtually word for word.”

Her mother knitted her brow, baffled. “So, what are you saying? I don’t—”

“It just seems like too much of a coincidence,” said Amy.

“But I still don’t understand. Are you saying this girl on the television knows Savannah?”

“What?

No! I’m saying maybe Savannah saw that show herself and thought, That would make a good story, and if she really does have this ‘superior memory’ thing, I guess that’s why she could remember it so well.”

“There was no ‘story,’ Amy,” said Joy, coldly, furiously, totally unlike the helpless sleeping old lady of moments ago, more like the mother of Amy’s youth who had “had it up to here with you lot” and “was at the end of her tether.” “I bandaged up that injury myself.”

“I’m not saying her injury wasn’t real, but maybe the cause of the injury—”

“You’re accusing a woman of lying about domestic violence.” Amy’s mother’s eyes were bright. “That’s outrageous. You’re a feminist! Have you heard of the I believe her movement?”

Oh God, she was simultaneously so with it, and so naïve.

Amy said, “Mum, it just seems like a really big coincidence—”

“That poor girl is in my kitchen right now making my favorite soup,” said Joy. “Do you know how much effort goes into minestrone? How much chopping? It’s extremely laborious! Let me tell you, Amy, I believe her.”

She was ready to march the streets, a placard held high. Somehow their positions had reversed. Amy was the middle-aged cynic, her mother the zealous, idealistic teenager.

The bedroom door swung open and her father was there, holding a mug of something steaming.

“Hi, sweetheart,” he said to Amy. “Does the young bloke sitting in the kitchen belong to you?”

Chapter 29

NOW

“Did you ever meet the mother?” Liz Barrington asked her younger brother as he sat at her kitchen table doing her tax return for her.

Simon didn’t look up from the pile of receipts.

“The missing mother,” clarified Liz.