Page 9 of Seduction Under the Southern Stars

“I’m not a strong person,” she says. A statement, with no guilt or resentment attached.

I understand. Dad was a monster who wanted to control everyone and everything around him, and who punished those who didn’t fall into line. It was hard for me to stand up to him; it was impossible for a woman to.

But I was her child, and it was her responsibility to look after me. Frustration and fury sweep over me. “He beat me every day, Mum. He put me in hospital, for fuck’s sake.” My voice breaks.

Still, she says nothing. Sean puts a hand on my arm, which feels like a warning, although he doesn’t say anything.

You’re supposed to love your mother. Every Mother’s Day, I see it in the cards and on the adverts for gifts—the earrings, perfume, and chocolates you’re supposed to buy to say thank you for your love.

But I hate her. I feel guilty for thinking it, but it’s the truth. She’s never defended me or protected me. She’s never been in my corner.

This is pointless. It’s too little, too late. I gather my wits together as if I’m catching chickens and stuffing them in a bag. I need to leave before I say something I’ll regret.

“Does he know about me?” I ask. “Edmund?”

She shakes her head.

I have a thousand questions I want to ask. But I don’t want to spend one more minute in her presence.

I look at Sean. His face doesn’t register surprise—he knows, or he’d guessed, anyway.

I turn and, without another word, I walk away.

*

I walk all the way back, through the Botanic Gardens and past the Beehive to the waterfront. It takes me over an hour, walking fast. It rains at one point, warm summer rain, soaking my suit and flattening my hair to my head, but I barely register it.

I’d like to say I take the time to think about my predicament and ruminate on my past, but I don’t. Instead, thoughts and emotions churn around in one big mess, like a bucketful of animal viscera tossed in a washing machine. I arrive at the museum rumpled and exhausted with aching feet, and I stand out the front and realize I can’t go in like this. I should have gone back to my hotel, but I can’t even remember what it’s called at the moment, let alone where to find it.

My feet continue walking, down Jervois Quay and then off toward Frank Kitts Park, and I end up on the waterfront by the Wahine Memorial. I read the plaque on the front, which explains how fifty-one people died when the ship sank off Steeple Rock in 1968, and I think about how, when I was nine, my father forced my head under the water in the bath and kept me there, and how I thought I was going to drown. About when I was eleven and he held my hand on the hob and burned it so badly I still have the scars. About the day before my fourteenth birthday, when he took a golf club to me and beat me repeatedly around my back, shoulders, and head. And a small part of me recalls feeling a thrill as he did it, because I knew he was going too far, and it meant they’d finally take me away from him. He did time for that, two years, I think. He could have done two hundred years, and it still wouldn’t have been enough.

I sink onto the wall and gaze out across Lambton Quay.

All these years, I’ve felt as if I have a demon inside me, my father’s DNA forming a double helix of cruelty and spitefulness I knew was inseparable from mine. But, like the sun coming out, the realization sinks in that he wasn’t my father. I haven’t inherited a single thing from him. I don’t have his blood. He’s nothing to do with me.

It’s as if someone has reached down and gently undone the padlock around my ankle, and the weight pulling me down has lifted.

It starts raining again. At least I think that’s why my face is wet.

Chapter Three

Elora

It gets to one p.m., and Linc still hasn’t turned up. I start to think maybe he isn’t coming back. He must have had second thoughts about seeing me again and returned to his hotel instead.

Then I remind myself that seeing me isn’t a big deal for him. It’s more likely he’s gone to visit his mother and brother after the funeral, as Joel said he hasn’t been back to New Zealand since he left.

Telling myself I’m relieved, and trying to ignore how devastated I feel that I won’t get to see him again, I head down to The Albatross Café to get some lunch, buy a chicken salad and eat it looking out at the sea, then treat myself to a chocolate muffin to cheer myself up.

I don’t know what makes me walk back along the waterfront while I pull off pieces of it and nibble them, but it’s only as I approach the memorial that I see him sitting on the wall facing the harbor. He’s still wearing his black suit, although as I draw near, I can see he’s taken off his tie, which is sticking out of his pocket. His elbows are on his knees, and he’s sunk his hands into his hair. I can just see the black ink of a tattoo peeking above his collar on either side of his neck—a pair of wings, maybe, like David Beckham has.

He obviously doesn’t want to talk to anyone, or he’d have gone back to the museum. But I know a figure in pain when I see one, and I can’t just walk away. He means more to me than that.

“Linc?” I say cautiously as I get nearer.

He lowers his hands and looks around, revealing red eyes and an expression that illustrates his emotional turmoil.

I don’t even have to think; I drop my bag beside him, kneel, and put my arms around his neck. “I’m so sorry,” I whisper, hugging him.

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