Page 9 of Hired Help

Just like our relationship, nothing special after all.

CHAPTERTHREE

DAEGAN

The appointmentwith the mortgage broker stresses me so much, I turn up close to an hour early and spend the intervening time turning my nervous system into a jittery wreck.

Ten minutes out, I get a call and think it’s going to be him cancelling on me, saying I’m not the sort of client they’re after, but it’s worse than that. It’s my ex.

“Hey, Gwyn. What’s up?”

She never calls without a good reason, but my impatience fires, propelled by the overdose of caffeine, as she obviously juggles her phone while doing something else. Something that involves dropping things on the floor from the sound of it.

“Ugh,” she finally responds. “Has Harrison been in touch?”

“No,” is my curt reply as I wince at the suggestion, the familiar ache settling in my gut.

My son last spoke to me three years ago at a family wedding where I had too much to drink and made the unfortunate decision to address every perceived wrong in history at the one event. My memory of the whole thing is patchy, but I recall the disappointment on his face with crystal clarity. Considering he hasn’t responded to any of my overtures since, that’s the image which seems destined to stay.

There’s silence on the other end, and the query is so out of the blue that I ask, “Did you tell him to get in touch?”

“No, but he’s—Martin!” she abruptly yells, her husband’s name. “Can you take the dogs outside? They’re giving me a headache.”

I can’t even hear the animals, but Gwyn has always been high-strung. She hears noises that nobody else notices.

“He’s in trouble at school,” she says, returning to the call. “I only just got off the phone from the head telling me she’d had to discipline him, then he called, all upset, and asked if he could leave.”

“He’s eighteen,” I point out, swirling my cup so the last of the latte foam coalesces enough to swallow. “If he wants to sign out, he can.”

“And ruin his entire future?”

Her voice is sharp with worry, but I don’t know how much of that is because she wants him to stay or how much is dedicated to what her Devonport friends will think. Among the ladies-who-lunch brigade, I can’t imagine there are many whose children dropped out of high school.

“His marks last year were enough to qualify him for uni if he wants to attend,” I remind her, shifting in my seat. There’s a confident note in my voice, but my statement is mostly guesswork. Gwyn told me something along those lines, but I don’t know for sure. My ex isn’t above hyperbole, even in everyday conversations. “If he takes a break for half a year, it could be good for him. He might find a job.”

“Doing what?” She clicks her tongue against her teeth. “I can’t even get him to tidy his room.”

“Because you employ staff to do it for him,” I begin, then wince at the note of reprimand in my voice.

Given that my son wants nothing to do with me, I’m hardly a candidate for father-of-the-year. I have no standing to criticise her parenting decisions or who she employs in her home.

“Sorry, just…” I rub my forehead, then drum my fingers on the table. “What help do you want from me?”

“Back me up. If he calls asking permission, turn him down. If he, I don’t know, turns up on your doorstep or something, send him home.”

I’m down in Christchurch and she’s up in Auckland, more than half the country length away. A relocation that Gwyn always seems to forget when she’s stressed.

“He’s still at Dilworth, isn’t he? He’s hardly going to fly down here on a whim,” I remind her gently.

There’s a frustrated gasp, then a long pause. I sense there’s something more she wants to add, but I don’t know what. The distance between me and Harrison has never felt so acute.

“Plane tickets are cheap,” she finally says, snapping but that’ll be down to her anxiety rather than me, so I let it flow past. “And don’t start a lecture on how we give him too much of an allowance.”

“Could he go to your local school rather than boarding?” I ask, hoping my soft voice lands the right way. “Perhaps it’s a change of location he’s after?”

I don’t add how it aggravates me she sent him to a fancy establishment a ninety-minute drive from her place rather than keeping him home.

After the years-long fight we had about her decision to relocate to the North Island, it pains me to know he’s not even staying with her. That instead of being in a city with two parents on call, he’s stuck in a dorm room with none.

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