Page 100 of Obsession Under the Southern Stars

I text back,Hey you, yes I’ll come down tomorrow.

He comes back immediately,Great! I’m so pleased. Ten a.m. flight from Wellington to Christchurch? I’ll pick you up at the airport and drive you home.

Me:Okay, thank you.

Joel:How are you doing? How are your parents?

Tears run down my face.Yeah, all good. I’ll see you tomorrow.

I turn off my phone and toss it on the bedside table. Then I roll over and bury my face in the pillow, and let the tears come.

*

I cry myself to sleep, wake up in the night, and cry some more. It’s as if all the resentment, bitterness, and rage that has been simmering like a saucepan of milk on the stove for the pastnine years is finally boiling over. My eyes feel hot and scalded, my throat is raw, and my nose is completely blocked, but still the tears won’t stop.

They had no right to take my son away from me. Yes, I was a fool to get pregnant so young. And I understand how it came as a complete shock to them, and why they reacted like that. But that doesn’t excuse what they did.

I cry for the baby I gave birth to and never got to hold, not as his mother, anyway. I cry for my lost womb, and for the fact that I can never give birth to another child. I cry for my lost innocence, not because I blame anyone else for what I did, but because I’m angry at myself, and at God or Fate or whoever’s in charge up there. I cry for Charles, because I did love him, and his failure to understand and support me absolutely crushed me. And I cry because I’m afraid Joel will do the same, and I’m so, so scared to tell him all of it in case it changes the way he feels about me.

In the end, I fall asleep out of exhaustion, my face wet, tissues crumpled in my hand.

The next time I wake, it’s seven a.m. I go into the bathroom, look at myself in the mirror, and shudder. I look awful. But there’s time to repair the damage. I take a shower, blow dry my hair, then spend some time applying my makeup, using foundation to cover my blotchy cheeks and the dark shadows under my eyes, and applying my usual dark eyeliner and mascara. By the time I’ve finished, I look presentable enough.

I’m not sure how long Joel’s expecting me to stay in Hanmer Springs, so I pack a bag with a few changes of clothes, then lock up the apartment and catch an Uber to the airport.

I’d assumed that Joel had booked with Air New Zealand, but the sweetheart has organized another charter flight, and I have a whole plane to myself. Trying not to think about theenvironment, I accept a coffee and a muffin from the flight attendant, curl up in my chair, and spend the flight looking out of the window at the Southern Alps and the Canterbury Plains as they pass below me.

Even though Wellington is right at the bottom of the North Island, and it’s a relatively short journey on the ferry across the Cook Strait, I don’t travel to the South Island much. Elora goes there often to visit her folks, but most of my family is in Wellington, and although I might make a trip to Auckland once in a while, or to the Bay of Islands for a holiday, I rarely go south. It makes a change, therefore, to look out at the vast, stunning landscapes so reminiscent ofThe Lord of the Ringsmovie, to see the mountains and the fields, and some of the twenty-five million sheep in the country.

It’s funny to think that Joel, Fraser, and Elora grew up down here. I’ve heard stories of their adventures in the mountains over the years, the ‘adventure therapy’ they used to go on with their parents, and the children they met at Greenfield Residential School for troubled adolescents. I know now that Linc was one of those, although Elora didn’t tell me about him until a week ago, when he arrived back in the country. It’s strange that we’ve been so close, and yet neither of us has told each other everything about our pasts. I guess despite the passage of time, some things remain too fresh and too raw to expose to the bitter air.

The plane lands in Christchurch just after eleven, and when I exit the gate, the first person I see is Joel, hands in the pockets of his jeans, waiting for me.

At the sight of him, my heart lifts in a way it hasn’t in such a long time, shocking me with how happy I feel. Leaving my case, I run up to him and throw my arms around his neck, and he lifts me up and spins me around, laughing.

“Hey you,” he says, lowering me back down. His blue eyes are alight with pleasure at the sight of me—he’s happy to see me.

“Hey.” I force a smile onto my face, even though tears prick my eyes again. Jesus. What’s wrong with me?

He takes my face in his hands, his eyes searching mine. “How are you doing?” he asks softly.

“I’m fine,” I reply brightly, turning away to collect my case. “So what’s been going on in your world?”

He jogs to catch up with me as I head for the exit, and gestures across the road to the car park. “Yeah, it’s been busy. Fraser and I heard from Linc on Friday night.”

“Oh?”

“He asked if we’d fly down and meet him at Hanmer Springs on Saturday. He wanted moral support because he was going to ask Dad for permission to marry Elora.”

My jaw drops. “What?”

He grins. “I know. We were just as shocked. We had no idea how it was going to go. The last time he saw Dad, Dad told him if he ever saw him again he’d call the police.” He gestures at a Range Rover and clicks the button to unlock it, then picks up my case and places it in the boot. I slip into the passenger side, and he gets behind the wheel. He starts the engine and heads toward the state highway.

“So how did it go?” I ask.

“Linc and Dad went out for a walk. I don’t quite know what Linc said, but he managed to talk Dad around somehow, because he gave his permission, and when they got back, Linc proposed.”

“And she accepted?”

---