Stone Cold Kiwi (New Zealand Ever After Book 2) Read online

  Stone Cold Kiwi

  New Zealand Ever After, Book 2

  Rosalind James

  Bellbird Publishing

  Copyright 2020 by Rosalind James

  Let’s inventory, shall we?

  State of my professional life: Brilliant, if counted in terms of sales of eight Poppy Cantwell children’s books starring my often-confused blue hippo, Hazel; the very substantial proceeds from selling my Kiwi Adventures New Zealand glamping business; and any number of glossy magazine articles about my charmed existence. Of course, I couldn’t seem to write or draw anymore, but that would pass. Surely.

  State of my personal life: Murky. A mysterious siren I was not, in my nursing bra and only-kind-that-fits maternity panties.

  My three redheaded children? Good thing. Good, exhausting, frustrating, terrifying, wonderful thing.

  My marriage? Living with a failing marriage is like living with a toothache. It’s not going to get any better, and eventually, it’s going to get heaps worse, but who wants a root canal?

  Beginning to fall for the much-too-charming, not-quite-available, stone-cold-beautiful Dr. Matiu Te Mana, on the day he delivered the third of those children on the grass outside Otago General Hospital, a few short minutes before my marriage began its spectacular and very public final implosion?

  Possibly tricky.

  Cover design by Robin Ludwig Design Inc., www.gobookcoverdesign.com

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  1. Butterflies, Interrupted

  2. The Red and the Green

  3. One Husband, Slightly Used

  4. Somebody Else’s Everything

  5. The Non-Doctor

  6. Glamour Central

  7. Year One

  8. Everybody Has to Eat

  9. Cri de Coeur

  10. Here for the Ride

  11. Unwelcome Information

  12. Chasing the Demons

  13. The Demons Arrive

  14. The Homewrecker

  15. Hazel’s Powerful Placenta

  16. Facing Facts

  17. A Perfect Plan

  18. A Missing Piece

  19. Irresistible Appeal

  20. Changing Times

  21. Pretty to Boys

  22. Rock Breaks Scissors

  23. Impulse Control

  24. Inner Animals

  25. Night Bloom

  26. Untransformed

  27. Diving Into the Dark

  28. Like an Amazon

  29. Not Your Buyer

  30. Relationship Goals

  31. Darkness and Light

  32. Face to the Sun

  33. Buddy

  34. Not a Meerkat

  35. Not Dancing, Either

  36. Deep Water

  37. Out of the Woodwork

  38. A White Heron

  39. Glad to Go

  40. A Little Mold

  41. How to Listen

  42. Home Truths

  43. The Winning Hand

  44. Maturity. Wisdom. Etc

  45. Exposure

  46. Into the Darkness

  47. Shaky Ground

  48. Not Ridiculous

  49. Larnach Road

  50. Not the Only Jaguar

  51. A Time to Dance

  52. Strong as the Sea

  53. A Thousand Years

  Explore More

  A Kiwi Glossary

  Links

  Also By Rosalind James

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven:

  A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

  A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.

  - Ecclesiastes 3:1-4

  1

  Butterflies, Interrupted

  Poppy

  I was in the butterfly house on the day my life imploded.

  Possibly, I should have known better than to venture out on Friday the thirteenth. With two children under the age of five. When I was thirty-seven weeks pregnant. Not that I believed in the idea of bad luck, but still—there you were.

  There were a lot of threes in my life, which was supposed to be a good thing, although I wasn’t all the way up on numerology, and I didn’t believe in it, either. I’d always thought that three was a comfortable number, though. A round-looking number, not a spiky one. A welcoming number, with its curved arms open for a cuddle, and those lovely circles for your mind to rest on.

  So—yeh. Here I was, full of threes. Thirty-three years old, the second of three children, awaiting the birth of my own third child, which felt like it would never come and like it would come too soon, and, as of eleven-oh-three A.M. on the aforementioned Friday, the thirteenth of September, too restless to stay home.

  The sunlight wasn’t what you’d call “tropical” here in Dunedin, on the chillier southerly end of New Zealand’s South Island, at the tail end of winter, but it was there, and it was calling me out of the house. My husband, Max, was out of town, but that wasn’t one bit unusual, and he’d promised it would be the last time before the baby.

  I was thinking determinedly positive thoughts on that score, and I wanted to keep doing it. I didn’t seem to be quite succeeding, though, judging by the roadblock I’d hit in my latest Hazel the Hippo book, Hazel’s Sleepover. Hazel’s dad kept insisting on saying unhelpful things to her little brother when he wet the bed, no matter how many times I rewrote the scene, and I didn’t think any parent was going to pay for a book called Hazel’s Unhappy Home. There was tackling real subjects, and then there was just being depressing.

  Hamish and Olivia had both come a week or more late, I was sure this baby would, too, and at this moment, I felt like I couldn’t sit around for three weeks more and wait for it. I was lucky to work at home, lucky to have such a wonderful job to do, lucky to have healthy kids and a beautiful life, and I knew it, but still—I couldn’t sit around and wait today, and I absolutely couldn’t stand to have time to think.

  I thought, Change of scene, and also, Brain-stimulating environment, closed the metal lid on my beloved box of Derwent drawing pencils, packed my cheerful floral tote with two pairs of training pants and a change of clothes for Olivia, who’d just turned three and was still having the occasional accident, gathered up sun hats and anoraks for the kids to cover all possibilities, filled plastic containers with dry cereal, cheese cubes, and grapes, in case we couldn’t get to a food source fast enough, added a coloring pad and crayons for Hamish, my five-year-old, and a reusable sticker book for Olivia, and loaded the kids into their car seats in the back of the SUV for the journey to the Discovery Centre at the Otago Museum.

  You know, the Mum version of spontaneity.

  At first, everything went well, other than feeling like I had a bowling ball bouncing against my cervix with every step I took. We had lunch at the museum cafe, where the kids didn’t finish their cheese rolls but did finish my cake, and were watching butterflies land on rotten bananas in a warm, humid pseudo-jungle when I realized that if I didn’t make it to the toilet right now, I’d be writing Hazel Gets Embarrassed.

  “Come on,” I said. “Mummy needs to go to the Ladies’.”

>   “I don’t want to,” Olivia said, bang on cue. “I want to watch the butterflies.”

  “Come on, Livvy,” Hamish said. “I’ll hold your hand.” Which had me thinking two things at once. First, that I was a very lucky mum indeed in my firstborn’s nurturing skills, and second, that the situation was getting more than urgent.

  We got there and hit a roadblock. School holidays. Educational displays about where the poo went when you flushed, with too many little girls crowded around them, and no way I was getting into a stall. I shoved the wild thought out of my mind that all these kids were about to find out what happened when you didn’t flush, took my own offspring by the hand again, and headed to some more adult-intensive toilets, where I waited in a queue and finally crowded both kids and myself into a cubicle too small to hold us as I thought about my former days of modesty and how far gone they were. And, within about two minutes, realized with a sort of cold, prickly feeling that this wasn’t so much a Toilet Situation as a Baby Situation.

  Right. Fine. I’d just get out of here and deal with it. The baby was far enough along to be born safely, I knew how to birth a child, and my water hadn’t even broken. By the time I exited the cubicle and got everybody’s hands washed, though, I was wishing for a bed.

  Sit down and rest, I told myself, herding the kids out into the atrium, where Olivia said, “I want to go back and see the butterflies,” wrenched herself free of my grip, and started running.

  I took off after her and couldn’t keep going. Another mum grabbed her, brought her back, and asked, “All right there?”

  I nodded, because what was I going to say, and asked a group of preteen kids sitting on a bench, “Could you get up, please, and let me sit down?” They did, because they were Kiwi kids, raised to be polite, and I grabbed the sticker book out of my bag, shoved it at Olivia, told Hamish, “Look after your sister, please,” and got out my phone.

  I tried Max first, of course, even though he was in Christchurch, nearly five hours away by road and about the same by the time you flew and managed airports, which was what he was doing. He’d be back this evening, but I needed him now. I didn’t get an answer, because he was no doubt in a meeting, so I left a message.

  “Hi,” I told him. “Seems the baby’s coming early after all. Pretty ... uh ... fast. Come meet me at the hospital when you get in. And come sooner, if you can.”

  The last bit was a gasp. He wouldn’t be happy at cutting things short, because he’d told me this trip was urgent, or he wouldn’t have gone. He’d also said again, like a joke that wasn’t, “You wouldn’t want me to be supported by my wife. Have to even the scales, don’t I.” The situation as usual, but right now, I couldn’t care.

  Olivia said, “I want to go see the butterflies,” Hamish said, “Look, Livvy, let’s stick the chickens next to the barn,” and I thought, Mum.

  Not me. My mum.

  Only one problem. It was one-thirty. She’d be at the gym, starting her kickboxing class, followed by her yoga class. Which was lovely, except when your daughter was in labor. I left a message anyway, rang off, and tried to think. Hamish and Olivia had come blessedly quickly, but it had still been—what? Five hours? Six? I couldn’t remember at the moment, because a boa constrictor was squeezing my insides. I waited for the squeezing to subside, then rang the midwife and explained the situation.

  She said, “Go now, and I’ll meet you at the hospital.” I was having the baby at Mercy Hospital, the same place I’d had the other two kids, because that was exactly how predictable my life was. As luck would have it, I was only two kilometers away. Brilliant, right? If I’d stayed home instead, it would have been twenty minutes’ drive, and I couldn’t have driven twenty minutes.

  For the present, I decided on an Uber and punched in my information, keeping myself right here, in this blessed little circle of decisive non-emotion. The ride would only take about five minutes and wouldn’t be worth the driver’s time, but what else could I do? I stood up, propped my hand against the wall and breathed as the next wave came and went, thought about whether your kids could be in a delivery room with you, decided the answer was certainly “No,” wondered what the alternative was, told myself that my mum and/or husband would surely have found me by then, and told the kids, “Time to go.”

  Olivia cried. Of course she did. I hauled her outside anyway, every step feeling like walking through quicksand, or possibly like a poker was stabbing me from the bottom up, if you catch my drift, and had been waiting at the bottom of the museum stairs for about two minutes when the car pulled up.

  The driver got out, which was nice of him. Older fella. Fatherly, maybe. That was good. Until he said, “I can’t take you, sorry, missus.”

  “What?” I said. “I know the ride’s too short. Look, I’ll ... I’ll tip. But I need to go.” I wondered again what I’d do with my kids once I got there, and realized for the first time that I could ring my dad. Why hadn’t I thought of that? He was only a kilometer or so away. Not the most hands-on grandad ever, but capable of taking charge of my babies while I delivered another one into the world. At least until my mum could come.

  Or my grandparents could have come. They didn’t drive into the city anymore, but they could’ve taken an Uber and collected me.

  “It’s not that,” the driver said. “I can’t take them without car seats, sorry. Against the law. You could ask for a car with a child seat, but I don’t know of any driver who has two.”

  I said, “It’s five minutes. Maybe even four. Please.”

  I’d sunk down for just a second with my hands on my knees, and the driver was looking fairly wild-eyed, which was an overreaction, surely. I was wearing black leggings and one of Max’s shirts, a red-and-black flannel one that clashed with my hair, but was brilliantly soft and about half of my maternity wardrobe at the moment. I wasn’t exactly beautiful, but I wasn’t displaying any nakedness, either.

  “Sorry,” he said again. “I’d lose my permit. Can’t do it. Want me to ring for the ambos?”

  “No,” I said. “Thanks.” They wouldn’t let me take the kids in an ambulance, I didn’t think, and what else could I do with them? Also, how long would an ambulance take to get here? My grandparents were out, too, for the same reason, and the same problem. Car seats.

  Even if I had time to wait, how could I keep both kids still for that long? Olivia was straining against my hand, talking about going to see the turtles now, and Hamish was looking worried. I needed to do something about both those things.

  The bloke left, and I tried my mum again, tried Max again, then called my dad’s number and got his voicemail, which meant his secretary wasn’t there, either. I thought about ringing the firm’s main number and asking somebody to track him down, but it seemed too hard. I’d have to find the number. I’d have to ...

  I’d drive myself. Why hadn’t I thought of that? Except that I’d parked about five streets away, and right now, that might as well be five kilometers. I couldn’t even quite remember which street I’d parked on, even though I knew I did know. Somewhere in my brain, or maybe I’d written it on a sticky note somewhere. It was in the nappy bag, or in my bra. Somewhere. But once I did find the car—what then? When the pain came again, I’d have a smash, maybe hurt somebody else. I’d also have to lean over and buckle the kids into their car seats, and right now, that seemed impossible.

  Wait. There was another hospital not even two streets over. Very nearly across the street. Barely five minutes’ walk, and we’d be there. If I needed to rest along the way, I would. And meanwhile, my mum would get the message. They’d let me lie down when I got to Emergency, and I had snacks and games for the kids. It was the closest, and the time to get there was the shortest. We’d be fine.

  “Come on,” I told Hamish and Olivia. “We’re going to take a lovely walk.” It wasn’t even raining. Easy-peasy. The sweat was beading on my upper lip and forehead, and my legs were starting to tremble, but that was just labor. You were meant to walk during labor. It was a good
thing. I rang my mum one more time, explained the change in plans, asked her to meet me, thought about ringing Max again and didn’t, got the kids across the street, leaned against a tree for a minute to catch my breath, and set out.

  It was a few hundred steps, I reckoned afterwards. Five hundred, max, even at preschool pace. I felt every one of them. They sort of ... stabbed. I was aware that Olivia was talking, and then that she was lying down on the pavement and sobbing, “Want to see the ... butterflies!” That her fine strawberry-blonde hair was coming out of its pony, and her nose needed wiping, and I hadn’t thought to put her on the toilet while I’d been there, so she was likely to have an accident, if she hadn’t already, because crying made you do that. I was aware, too, that Hamish was pulling on her hand and saying, “Come on, Livvy.”

  Somehow, I got her into my arms and carried her. She had had an accident, but that was fine. I had clean clothes in the bag, which felt like it weighed about twenty kilograms. I wanted to hold Hamish’s hand, but I couldn’t. I told him, “Stay with Mummy.”