Just Not Mine (Escape to New Zealand) Read online

  Except that his family obligations turned out not to be complete at all, because it appeared that they’d only just begun.

  “What do you mean, back to the UK?” His body was telling him it was well past time to be in bed, his hand was aching badly now, and the news he’d just got was a blindside he didn’t need.

  “I need a holiday,” his aunt said. “And I need to go back to the UK. It’s still my home, I haven’t been back in nearly eighteen months, and that’s too long. You were just there last summer, and I haven’t been.”

  “I was working,” he said. “I wasn’t touring, looking at Big Ben. And I know you haven’t been back, and I’m sorry. But you must see that it’s not the best time, not with my thumb broken.”

  “Sorry, but I’m going anyway,” she said. “Because there’s someone I need to be with.”

  “Someone you need to be with?” He struggled to focus. “What kind of someone?”

  “What do you think?” She was looking at him with exasperation now. “The male kind. I know you think, ‘Oh, Auntie Cora, she’s past it, she’s happy to look after the kids,’ but I’m only forty-five. I was nine years younger than Edward. And all right,” she went on, even though Hugh hadn’t said anything, “I needed the change, being made redundant at the office on top of it, and that made it easier to come, but now I’ve got someone.”

  “Got someone how? Someone here?”

  “No. Someone there. Henry Selfridge,” she said, and the color was high in her somewhat homely face.

  “Who?”

  She sighed in exasperation. “The man who was here last summer, visiting, when you first came. I took him to Waiheke, remember?”

  “I thought he was … an old friend or something.”

  “He was. At least, you could call him that. But he was married before, and so was I.”

  “What?”

  “Of course it wasn’t that,” she said crossly. “I didn’t mean an affair, I meant, I knew him a bit from when he had a shop near us, and we always … there was something there, all right? And now he’s divorced as well, he came here on holiday, we reconnected, and we’ve stayed in touch. And he wants me to visit,” she finished in a rush, “and I’m going. He visited me, and now I’m visiting him, seeing his shop, seeing what happens.”

  “What kind of shop?” he asked. “What does this bloke do, exactly?”

  “He’s a butcher.”

  “Oh, no,” he groaned. “You’re joking. I’m going to read about you being stuck into a box somewhere.” This was why his long-divorced aunt had a new style to her hair, had lost the bit of gray, he realized, and why she was wearing makeup, too. For a butcher she barely knew, and what were the chances of that ending well?

  “You’ve got no right to tell me that,” she said, her face even redder. “It’s none of your bloody business, and I’m not a fool, no matter what you think. We’ve talked a bit about him selling up and moving here, but who knows? We’ve both been around the block, and we’ve got our eyes open. And I want to see the family, my friends, anyway. It’s been almost a year and a half, and I left in a hurry. I need to catch up. I was glad to come, but I need a break.”

  He scrubbed his hand over his jaw, the stubble, well on its way toward becoming a beard, still feeling alien. “And I’m glad you did come. I don’t know what we’d have done without you. Don’t know what we’ll do now, come to that.”

  Both things were true. When he’d got the news that his father and stepmother were gone, his half-siblings orphaned, Aunt Cora’s arrival had been the life preserver that had saved them all, allowed the kids to remain in their home, given them stability. Hugh had been able to play out his contract with the Hurricanes, accept his selection to the All Blacks during an all-important transition year, go on the multi-week tours required of an international before moving north to help out. He’d paid the bills, but that had been the easy part. He’d paid, but she’d stayed. But she wasn’t staying now.

  “You’ll manage,” she said. “You’ll have to for the next little while, because I don’t want to end my days as somebody’s dear old auntie, without any life of my own. I want a man again. I want a life again.”

  That one stopped him, because what could he say? That if they were talking about lives, he didn’t have much of one himself? That wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault, at least not anybody’s who was still alive to take the blame, it was just the way it was. And if she needed to take a holiday, she should have one, because he needed her back.

  “All right, then,” he said. “I mean,” he went on hastily, “I don’t mean ‘all right,’ as if I’m giving you permission. I mean, all right, I understand.” He hefted the hand that he’d taken from its sling. “Be easier without this.”

  “It’s your left hand, though. Not that bad, and you can hoover with one hand,” she said briskly.

  Hoover? Who was hoovering? He was, he guessed, even though he barely knew where the vacuum cleaner was.

  “And you can drive,” she went on. “I just saw you do it tonight, and it’ll get easier. You said you’d only be in the cast for a few weeks. You’re going to be out of rugby all the way until February. You’re on holiday yourself, aren’t you?”

  Some holiday. “I don’t know … their timetable,” he said, hearing the weakness of it. “How it all works.”

  “So ask them. They’re not babies.”

  “Right, then.” It looked like there was nothing more to say, and time to move on, however he felt about it. “For how long, and when are you off?”

  “Three months, and day after tomorrow,” she said, and he could see her tensing for the reaction that she must have known he’d provide.

  “Three months? And day after tomorrow? Could you have told me about this a couple weeks ago? Could we have talked about it?”

  “I thought I’d be going after you’d got back from the Tour, and I thought I’d only have six weeks or so. When you broke your thumb, well, it’s an ill wind that blows nobody good, isn’t it? Maybe it was a sign that it was meant to be, that your injury happened just when it did, especially since there was a last-minute sale on the tickets. And now I’ve got a chance to make it longer. It’s only until a bit after the New Year, hardly a few weeks out of their summer holidays. You’ll barely have Christmas, and I’ll be back. And all right,” she went on with exasperation as he continued to stare at her, “I didn’t want to feel guilty. What would be the point? You’re fine, the kids are fine, everybody’s going to be fine, and I’m going to the UK.”

  The Black Widow Speaks

  “And that’s that,” Chloe sighed when the last overly-invested mum had at last finished discussing her little ballerina’s progress, the last long-suffering dad had made his grateful exit. “Another one down.”

  “A rousing success, I’d say.” Josie helped her friend gather discarded programs and left-behind headpieces, an orphaned pair of butterfly wings.

  “Yeh, should do a bit toward keeping the doors open and the lights on,” Chloe agreed, locking up the auditorium behind them. “Come back with me and open a bottle of wine? Post-mortem?”

  “Why not,” Josie decided. “I’m not called for tomorrow, may as well go for the wild life.”

  “Gone nine, and you’re still vertical,” Chloe said. “Living the dream.”

  Back in Chloe’s little apartment, Josie got the wine out while Chloe paid the babysitter and saw her out.

  “Funny how life turns out, isn’t it?” Chloe said when they were into their second glass, propped against opposite ends of the couch.

  “You mean …?” Josie asked cautiously.

  “When Zavy turned up, I thought it was the end. The final nail in the coffin.”

  “I remember.”

  “And now …” Chloe gestured, the fatigue of the past hours, the wine clearly taking their toll, “I’m so … invested. In both things, Zavy and the school. Literally. I always thought I’d be a star, can I confess? Used to fall asleep—not even dreaming
of it. Planning it, it seemed so real. Now I just want to be … a success. But I do want that.”

  “A different kind of star, that’s all,” Josie suggested. “A businesswoman. But, yeh, I thought you’d be a star too. I was never as good as you. Never even close, was I?”

  “No.” Chloe smiled tiredly. “Just Head Girl, best in the netball and hockey, coming top in the prize-giving for the academics, that’s all. Not a star at all.”

  “Not at dance, which was what I wanted,” Josie countered.

  “Such a thing as being too athletic,” Chloe said. “I have a few students like that. Dead keen, hard workers, but they fling themselves about just the way you used to do. Can’t make it look easy to save their lives.”

  “But I could leap about like nobody’s business,” Josie said with a grin. “Nobody jumped farther.”

  “But who turned out to be the star pupil all the same, in the end?” Chloe asked. “You found your way, and so did I, even if it wasn’t the path we started out on. Talking of which, did you have the meeting with your agent?”

  “Yeh,” Josie said. “Yesterday.”

  After work, when she’d been tired already, and Geoff’s reaction to her inquiries hadn’t helped any. She’d ended up pretty discouraged, and that was the truth.

  “No such thing out there, from what I know,” he’d said. “En Zed television’s a small market, and the film business is even smaller, you know that as well as I do. You’re already a regular on the most-viewed non-sports program on air. No place to go but down, and why would you do that? Now, you want me to put you up for something in Aussie, even the UK, possibly, we could be in business. But you can’t have it both ways.”

  “You know how I feel about that,” she said. “I tried it, remember?”

  She had. Three long years across the Ditch, starting with the odd part in a TV show and some modeling assignments that had paid the rent on the luxury flat in Bondi, had got her into the papers, into the public eye. And then her big break, the regular spot on the courtroom drama playing a shark of a lawyer, the woman everyone had loved to hate.

  Success any way you looked at it, and she’d hated it. It had been Hollywood on an exponentially smaller scale, but it had been too much Hollywood for her. She’d known it was time to leave when she’d loitered so long in the toilet in the Auckland airport that she’d missed her flight, and neither Geoff nor anybody else had been able to talk her out of it.

  “I needed to be where the people live slow and talk fast,” she told Geoff now. “You know that.”

  He sighed. “Josie. My darling. Listen to me. Your Uncle Geoff who only wants the best for you.”

  “Your fifteen percent, you mean.”

  “Well, that too,” he admitted. “My fifteen percent of absolutely as much as I can get for you. Look at where you are. You’ve got what any actor would sell his granny for, a starring part on a show that’s got the legs only a soap can provide, with some very lucrative modeling on the side. You’ve just bought a house, for God’s sake. What more do you want?”

  “What I said. Another type of part. A show where I can try being funny from time to time, where I can be—well, if not three-dimensional, how about two? I think I’ve got myself half-convinced that I am evil, by now. That’s not acting, or not the way I want to do it. And besides—I’m not going to be beautiful forever, you know. Almost thirty, aren’t I. I don’t think the punters are going to want to watch Dr. Eva take her clothes off when she’s fifty.”

  “Referring to yourself in the third person’s a sure sign that you’re getting above yourself,” he warned her.

  “See? It’s not myself I’m referring to. Even you’re doing it.”

  “Anyway.” He cast out a dismissive hand. “Just don’t have a baby, and you’re all good.”

  “Not in the plans,” she said briefly.

  “Good. Or if you do get broody, do us both a favor and pay somebody else to carry the baby, too,” he said with a grin. “That way, no career break, no nasty stretch marks. Brilliant.”

  “I’m going to assume you’re joking,” she said, doing her best to laugh it off. “But keep your eyes open for me, will you?”

  “I’ll keep them open,” he promised. “But, Josie. All joking aside, I wouldn’t get my hopes up.”

  “So, nah,” she finished telling Chloe. “No joy. Looks like I’m the Black Widow for the foreseeable future.”

  “Well, cheers,” Chloe said, heaving herself up and clinking her wine glass against Josie’s. “To making the most of what we’ve got.”

  “Yeh, I get what he said. Fancy me whingeing about what I do. Enough to make me sick myself, thinking about some of the fellas back home. Picking kiwifruit all day, heading to the packhouse to put in a shift there, sleep in the backpackers’, just to make sure they can put food on the table the rest of the year. And here I am, not grateful for my success.”

  “I don’t think it’s that,” Chloe said seriously. “I’d say you’re grateful enough. But just because you’ve done well, does that mean you can’t ask for any more? Does that mean you can’t keep working to do better? You’re not asking anyone to hand it to you. You’re asking for the chance to work even harder, to stretch yourself. Doesn’t seem like ingratitude to me. Seems like ambition, and why’s that bad?”

  “Tall poppy?” Josie suggested.

  “Nah. Achiever.” Chloe smiled. “Star.”

  “Mm. That’s why we’re friends. Because you flatter me shamelessly.” Josie lifted herself off the couch with an effort. “I should go.”

  “Stay over, why don’t you,” Chloe suggested. “If you aren’t working tomorrow. We can kill this bottle, if you like.”

  “I’ll stop drinking, but, yeh, I will stay. Get a bit of time with my darling godson. Not to mention that my bedroom reeks of fresh paint, and I can’t sleep in it anyway. Shift yourself, then.” She gave Chloe a smack. “I’m going to sleep on this couch in about ten minutes, one way or another. And I’d like to do it with a sheet on.”

  A Positive Role Model

  “Hugh.”

  The woman was calling to him, and he smiled in his sleep, rolled over, and reached for her.

  “Hugh.” The shove on his shoulder wasn’t amorous, and neither was the voice. “Wake up.”

  “Huh?” He woke up hugging the pillow, rolled to his back and shoved himself up onto his elbows, blinking.

  His sister was standing there, hands on her hips, and he could swear her toe was tapping.

  “Wake up,” she said again. “It’s morning.”

  “Oh. Right.” He ran a hand over his jaw and yawned. He’d been up at four the previous morning to give Aunt Cora a lift to the airport, had been seriously drooping after his workout and visit to the physio at midday, had done the washing-up in a fog after a dinner cobbled together from the remnants of the previous evening’s meal, and then had once again been unable to fall asleep when he’d finally crawled into bed. Now, his body was telling him in no uncertain terms that it needed rest, but it looked like it wasn’t happening. Again. He normally slept until seven-thirty, but it looked like that had changed.

  “You’re supposed to get up before us,” Amelia informed him. “You’re meant to be waking us. Besides, children who eat breakfast with their families achieve better results in school. We need a committed parental figure providing a positive role model.”

  He squinted at her. “How do you know?”

  “Because I watch television, of course.”

  “All right. I’m up. Providing a positive role model.” When she continued to stand there, he added with exasperation, “If you’d leave, that is, so I can get dressed.”

  “Fine,” she said, and stalked towards the door. “We’ll be in the kitchen, eating cereal. Since nobody was available to cook our breakfast.”

  “Could’ve made toast, anyway, couldn’t you,” he muttered as he fumbled to pull his shorts and T-shirt on with one hand.

  “Right, then,” he said when he’d got
himself sorted, had padded barefoot into the kitchen. He flipped the switch on the electric jug, because coffee was definitely required. “Here I am. What’s this role model meant to do?”

  Charlie looked at Amelia and shrugged. They were both in their uniforms, eating cereal. He didn’t appear all that necessary to their progress, in his opinion.

  “What does Aunt Cora do in the morning, besides make your breakfast?” he clarified. “Which you could do as well as I can, Amelia. Better. You’ve got two hands. Can’t you fry an egg?”

  “No,” she said. “Aunt Cora always did.”

  “Well, time you learnt,” he said. “We’ll do it together tomorrow, how’s that. I’ll show you, both of you, for that matter, then we can take turns. How’s that for role modeling? Not what you had in mind, is it? Hah.”

  He got out the bag of coffee, pulled the plunger down from the cabinet, and did his best to hold the bag open with the fingers poking out from the cast on his left hand while dipping the spoon in with his right. He managed it, but not without a fair few grounds spilling onto the bench on their way into the glass carafe. Teamwork was the only way this was going to happen, he decided, because he was halfway to useless just now.

  When he’d got the coffee made and taken his first grateful sip, he sat at the table with the kids, watched them working their way through their Weet-Bix, and said, “All right. What else? If Aunt Cora were here, what would she be doing?” He should know, because he’d been around sometimes while she’d been doing it, but he’d never paid that much attention.

  “Umm …” Charlie said. “Checking if we have our lunches made, and our homework.”

  “Well, do you have your homework?”

  Charlie shrugged. “I dunno. That’s why she checks.”

  “What else? What else does she do?” Hugh amended when Charlie looked at him blankly.

  “Ask us about what happens after school today?” His brother looked questioningly at Amelia, and she nodded.

  “So what happens?” Hugh prompted.

  “I have rugby,” Charlie said.