Page 18 of Kiwi Gold
Lachlan
I was heading back to join Karen and Jax when I saw it: a glint of gold against the Oriental-style carpet. I’m not sure how I recognized it amongst the golden whorls that covered the carpet’s burgundy background, but it was just that little bit shinier, I guess. And besides—I had a nose for gold.
I picked it up. A wedding ring, thin and unadorned and probably costing under two hundred dollars. I looked around for the owner, then realized that this was the spot where my mystery woman had been fumbling under her nightdress.Highup under her nightdress. She’d had her wedding ring up there? Surely not.
Surely yes,I realized with a sort of cold jolt. It would explain everything.
I looked inside the band and squinted. Tiny letters, minimum cost to engrave.LD from KA.
LD. Laila.
I wasn’t good at romance, no. But romance also wasn’t very familiar with me. This being Exhibit A.
8
PORK FUMES
Laila
I’d told Poppy that I’d collect the girls before nine on New Year’s Day, and I did it. Somehow. When I got there, she asked me to stay for breakfast, but as soon as I smelled the bacon cooking in the oven, my stomach revolted.
I’d like to say it was because it washaram.Unfortunately, it wasn’t true.
Poppy said, when we were standing in the kitchen, waiting for the girls to finish getting their things together and come down, “I wanted to ask you about last night. We lost track of you for so long, I couldn’t imagine where you’d gone.”
A pounding of feet on the stairs. Three little girls, all rushing in at once. I said, “I’ll ring you later and chat. Got to go.”
“Wait,” Poppy said. “Tell me what happened. I need to ask you about something else, too.”
Unfortunately, Matiu, who’d run down the stairs after the girls, opened the oven door at that moment. A cloud of pork fumes filled the gourmet kitchen, and I gasped out, “Got to go” one more time and fled.
I drove down the hill again breathing shallowly through my mouth, half-listening to Amira telling me a long, involved story about popcorn and pirates, and glancing in the rearview mirror at Yasmin, who was snuggling Monk, her stuffed orangutan, and looking out the window after her first-ever sleepover. Keeping her own counsel, as usual.
I needed to ask her about it. First, though, I needed to be sick.
“Mum,” Amira said, “can we go to the beach today, please? It’s a day off for everybody, which means everybody’s meant to have a holiday and do fun things, and that would be themostfun thing. Except doctors don’t. Uncle Matiu says doctors never get a day off, because everybody else does stupid things ontheirday off, and doctors have to take care of them afterwards.”
“I’ll … think about it,” I managed to say, deliberately not thinking about pork fumes, and definitely not smelling pork fumes as if the bacon had taken up residence inside my nose. It was a sensory illusion, that was all.
“You’re meant to practice hard things every day,” Amira said. “So you get better at them. If I practice swimming every day, I can swim out to where the dolphins are, and they might think I’m a baby dolphin and swim with me. We could have ice cream, after, since it’s a special day. Auntie Poppy says there’s a kind that’s chocolate that has bits of fudge in it, too, and pink marshmallows, and sticky caramels like in lollies, and …
“Later.” I got the word out somehow. Nearly there.Don’t think about bacon or sticky, sugary marshmallows or sickly-sweet caramels. Don’t think about …
I found a carpark. Unfortunately, it was about two hundred meters from the flat.
No help for it. Climb out of the car, then the rest of it. The girls shouldering their backpacks, and Yasmin immediately dropping Monk, then going scrambling after him, off the curb. I grabbed her, got the orangutan myself, felt my head and stomach tipping over, and righted myself again, breathing more shallowly than ever.
Across the road. Over the pavement. Up the stairs. Right foot, left foot. Key in the door. Into the flat. Long John bounding forward, his tail wagging joyfully, his three feet off the ground as he frisked, turning in midair. His first time away from the girls all night, I thought vaguely as I …
Ran for the toilet.
Both girls in the doorway, then, and Long John poking his head around, too. Motherhood, eh. An audience for everything.
“Mummy?” Yasmin asked. “Why are you spewing?”
“I just have a wonky tummy,” I said, flushing the toilet, hauling myself to my feet, wetting a cloth, and passing it over my sweating brow with a shaking hand. I needed to brush my teeth again.
My stomach answered that one.No.
