Page 20 of Obsession Under the Southern Stars

Me:I think so.

Fraser:Has she succumbed to your ineffable charms yet?

It’s such a Fraser comment that it makes me laugh.

Me:I’m working on it. Night.

Fraser:Night.

I slide my phone back into my pocket. Immediately, though, it buzzes again, this time repeatedly, announcing a phone call.

I take it out again, wondering if Fraser wanted to add something, and then I read the word on the screen:Dad. I frown. There hasn’t been enough time for Fraser to text or call Dad and for him to respond. But he knew I was coming here tonight. Maybe he’s calling to see whether I won.

“Excuse me,” I say to the table in general, but they’re all talking, and nobody pays me any attention. I rise and walk across the room and go outside into the lobby. It’s still busy there, but I find a quiet corner and answer the call. “Hello?”

“Hey,” my father says. “Do you have a moment?”

I glance through the open doors to our table. Zoe is listening to Hori, but she’s watching me. She looks away when she sees me glance at her, though.

“Sort of,” I say.

“Elora called me this morning. I wondered whether she’d talked to you at all.”

I slide my left hand into my trouser pocket and look out of the window at the moon reflected on the inky black sea. He hasn’t called about the award. He doesn’t even seem to have remembered I’m here today.

“About what?” I ask, my tone clipped.

He hesitates. “About Linc Green. He revealed that I sent him away from Greenfield.”

Greenfield is the name of the school for troubled youths that my parents help run. My father—Atticus Bell—is a deacon and the school chaplain. He holds what he calls adventuretherapy, which means he takes groups of students out into the forests and mountains for team-building exercises, and also encourages them to talk to him and each other around the campfire at night. It’s a clever and successful strategy. Fraser, Elora, and I have joined him on many occasions. He was always keen to have us mix with the students as a kind of civilizing influence, I guess.

Lincoln Green—who insists he wasn’t named after the color of Robin Hood’s tights—was one of these students who came to the school at the age of fourteen. Linc and I became close friends, and with Fraser and another boy called Henry, we formed a close-knit group. Linc and Henry often came to our house on the school grounds, and after four years, my father treated both of them, and Linc especially, as his own sons.

And then, when Linc and I turned eighteen, it all went horribly wrong. I knew he was fond of Elora, who was four years younger, but I have to admit I assumed he thought of her as a sister, and I was shocked when I discovered he’d kissed her. Unfortunately, my father saw the kiss. I was present when Dad sent Elora off to her room and yelled at Linc, accusing him of taking advantage of his daughter.

We were all sent to our rooms while Dad sorted it out. And next morning, we discovered that Linc had left.

Dad told us that Linc had packed his bags, walked out, and thumbed a lift to Christchurch. Dad has already been in contact with The Archaeology Group for students with the intention of finding a place for Linc on an excavation, and he told us he’d put Linc in touch with one of the organizers, and they were placing Linc on a plane to Sydney, where he’d then be sent probably to a country in the northern hemisphere, where excavations were more prevalent.

It was 2010, and although most of us had a mobile phone, they were old-fashioned Nokias, and the phone culture was a lotdifferent from how it is now. We didn’t use them much because we all lived close to each other. Fraser and I listened to music on iPod shuffles, and if we wanted to go on the internet, we used a PC. Linc did have a phone—an old one of mine—but although I called him, it went to voicemail, and eventually I realized he must have ditched the SIM card.

So I lost touch with him for a few years. That was hard. We’d been close, maybe even closer than I was to Fraser, as Linc and I were nearer in age, and it was a wrench to have my best friend just vanish like that. Knowing that he’d kissed Elora had also been hard to stomach, and I’d also seen it as an abuse of his position at Greenfield.

Then, three or four years ago, I got a friend request from him on Facebook. After some debate, I accepted it, and spent a while looking through his feed. He was in England by then, although he’d worked in various countries before moving there, going from excavation to excavation—Egypt, Germany, Scandinavia.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about him, and we didn’t talk for a while, but eventually he messaged me, chatting about some dig he was on, and I replied, and we continued to communicate, right up to the moment when he said he was returning to New Zealand for his father’s funeral.

But we didn’t talk about the past. And we didn’t talk about Elora.

And then, just two days ago, we all met at Elora and Zoe’s place for a dinner party. Afterward, Fraser and I went for a drink with Linc. And I finally discovered that Linc didn’t walk out that night after he kissed Elora. My father sent him away.

At first I didn’t believe Linc. He’s smooth-tongued and persuasive, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he made up a story like that to try to get us to like him again. But even as the thought went through my head, I knew I was kidding myself. Linc lovedGreenfield, and we’d been like brothers. Of course he hadn’t just walked out. It made perfect sense that Dad had been so furious that he’d expelled the boy he’d felt had betrayed his trust.

Linc had then admitted he’d liked Elora a lot, and that he still has feelings for her. I knew she liked him. She cried for weeks when he left and pined for months afterward. And it was clear from watching her at the dinner party that she feels the same way about him.

So I’m not surprised my father is now calling. I’m sure he’s furious that Linc has come within a mile of Elora.

“Yeah,” I say, “I heard that you sent him away.” The resentment I felt at the time comes back now, making me stiffen. “I can’t believe you did that.”

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