Apples Never Fall

Another pause.

“No, I didn’t say I’m standing by him no matter what.” Her voice was full of suppressed emotion. “I’m just trying to do the right thing. Oh, go to hell!”

She dropped the phone into her lap and looked straight ahead. The receptionist lowered her eyes to her keyboard. It was awkward to witness another person lose control.

“Brooke Delaney?” Chris Marshall stood at the door of his office, smiling expensively.

“That’s me.” The woman leaped to her feet, breathed through her nostrils, and lifted her chin as if she were about to set that high jump record, and went striding into his office.

Chapter 36

LAST OCTOBER

Do a reverse image search, suggested the internet when Brooke asked how one would go about doing a background search on a suspicious person staying with one’s parents. It’s easy!

Not if I don’t have a photo of her, Brooke told the internet. She locked her hands together and raised them high above her head.

She was sitting at her desktop computer in her study at home, except it felt like she was sitting in Grant’s study at Grant’s computer in Grant’s home. It had technically been a shared study, but Brooke had been the one who always worked on her laptop at the dining room table, as if Grant’s career was the one that mattered. It had felt more important, although she didn’t know why Grant’s work as a geologist in a government “geoscience” department should be more important than hers as a physiotherapist.

Why was she thinking this? Grant had never once implied that his work was more important than hers. He also had bad posture, so he needed the chair with better lumbar support. That was absolutely her choice. She’d insisted on it, in fact.

Her marriage had been an equal modern partnership: nothing like her parents’ lopsided, old-fashioned marriage. It had been a shock to hear her mother say she hated cooking. No wonder Joy thought Grant was so wonderful. Grant was a great cook. They had never had a single argument over who did what around the house. It just wasn’t an issue for them. Everything was split so fairly.

Brooke was nothing like her mother. Nothing.

She readjusted the chair to suit herself. It was a good chair. Grant’s lower back probably missed it.

She turned up the volume on Taylor Swift to inspire her. She loved Taylor Swift. Grant said she couldn’t possibly love Taylor because she wasn’t thirteen, but she did so love her. It was kind of a relief not to have to sit and listen to the latest album from an alternative rock band Grant had discovered. You had to listen to the full album in the correct order because that was what the artist intended. Brooke just liked to listen to her favorite song on repeat.

Brooke had googled Savannah weeks ago, as soon as she got her full name. Initially her mother said she didn’t know it. “I didn’t ask! Why would I ask?” Yes, indeed. Why would you ask for the full name of the person who has moved into your home? And then her mother said her name was Savannah Polanski, “just like that dreadful film director,” and nothing had come up for Savannah Polanski except an obituary, and then, days later, “Oh, actually I got that wrong, it’s not Polanski, it’s Pagonis.” Brooke had googled again, and still nothing turned up except for a three-star review of a sushi restaurant in Byron Bay.

Now she stared with blank frustration at the computer screen. She was used to the internet providing all the answers she needed.

Wait, Brooke did have a photo of Savannah.

Her mother had texted her a photo of them on their shopping trip: a selfie of the two of them looking radiantly happy wearing new dresses, tags dangling, in a change room. The photo was in focus, so Savannah must have been the one to take it and hold the phone steady. Apparently they’d spent six hours at the shopping center! They stayed so long they would have had to have paid extra for parking if Savannah hadn’t discovered some extraordinary loophole regarding parking validation, which saved them seven dollars! They had apple crumble! It wasn’t bad!

Brooke had been irritated by the photo and the shopping expedition.

Now she found the photo on her phone, cropped out Savannah’s face, and did her first reverse image search.

The internet said, That’s not Savannah Pagonis, that’s Savannah Smith.

Two years ago, “Savannah Smith” had been photographed at the bookstore launch of a celebrity chef’s new recipe book. It was definitely Savannah, although her style had changed dramatically. Her hair was longer and curlier then, and she wore bright red lipstick and big earrings.

But what did that tell Brooke? That Savannah once had a different surname and hairstyle? A former marriage? It was hardly shocking that Savannah had been at the launch of a recipe book.

Brooke sighed. She shouldn’t be disappointed. She didn’t want to find out that her parents were living with a serial con artist, did she? Maybe she did. Maybe she was hoping for an excuse to drive over there and yell at Savannah, You stop being so nice to my parents!

She looked at the time. She kept forgetting that her friend Ines would be turning up soon. Word had recently got out about the separation (not thanks to her, she’d told no one except her family), and people had begun to message Brooke their condolences, as if Grant had died. Ines’s text had been brief. Just heard. I’ll come over tonight.

Brooke texted back, I might have plans!

Ines texted, No you don’t.

Well. It was true. Her only plan had been to investigate Savannah and write an article, “Ten Tips for Back Pain,” in the hope that she could get it placed on a women’s health website. She was trying to “build her profile.” She also needed to do a new “engaging” post on Instagram.

She kept googling “Savannah Smith,” trawling through multiple wrong Savannah Smiths across the world until she stopped on a grainy black-and-white image from a newspaper article dated fifteen years earlier. The headline read: ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD SAVANNAH DANCES INTO A BRIGHT FUTURE!