Page 68 of Kiwi Gold
“No,” I said. “Not today. Today’s our date.”
“Oh,” Amira said, and looked like a CEO who’d been sadly disappointed in her new intern.
“What does that mean?” Yasmin asked.
“It means only the people doing the date go,” Amira said. “Kids don’t go. And they both dress very fancy and do kissing, and the boy always brings flowers, and the girl says, ‘Oh, they’relovely!’So I don’t think this is a date,” she told me, “because you didn’t bring flowers or dress fancy, and Mummy doesn’t do kissing.”
Didn’t I know it. “How do you know about dates?” I asked.
“Priya told me,” Amira said. “After you and Mummy went before, when she wore the dress where you could see her legs.”
Ah. That explained it. The babysitter was a recent arrival from Mount Zion, I’d heard, so perhaps not the most culturally literate guide to modern Kiwi sex practices.
“But can you take us to the beachlater?”Amira asked.
“We’ll see,” I said.
Amira told Yasmin, “That means no, but he doesn’t want to say yet.”
Now, Laila was at the door. Finally. Asking, “Why are you girls keeping Lachlan out on the porch?” She was looking pretty, as usual, in loose brown trousers and a short-sleeved black T-shirt that emphasized her seriously tiny bones. Her hair was in its usual knot, too, but she wasn’t giving off any ready-for-our-date vibes, at least not the kind with fancy dressing and kissing. But then, I hadn’t brought flowers, either.
She definitely didn’t look like a woman who was about to say, “Let me grab my bag,” whilst anticipating a slow stripping-off of shirts on a quiet beach while you looked at each other’s bodies and were glad to have the excuse to do it, followed by leisurely glasses of wine, food you forgot to eat, longing looks, and gentle touches. Let alone the kind of eveningIhad in mind. Instead, she said, “Please, Lachlan. Come in,” and looked distracted.
Was this non-dating with the most frustrating woman in the world working out for me? No, it wasn’t. And yet, of course, I came in.
Laila shut the door behind all of us, then held up a hand and said, “Just a minute, if you don’t mind.” She had a kind of delicacy, a kind of poise, that came through in everything she did.
Grace, that was. She was a lady, and she had grace. Huh.
Was I out of my depth here? Yes, I was.
“Of course,” I said.
She turned to the girl who was tidying up the studio with an efficiency that made her look older than her face suggested, and said, “You needed to ask me something, Oriana. Oh—you met Lachlan earlier, didn’t you? At the barbecue?”
The girl said, “Yes. Hello,” without actually looking at me. “Never mind,” she said. “It can wait.”
“No,” Laila said, starting to unpin the huge piece of fabric that lay on top of the posing table, or whatever you called it. “Go on and ask.”
The girl looked even more uncertain, and I said, “If it’s private, I can go back home again. Easy as. Text me when you’re ready, Laila.” Because who knew what she was going to ask? I’d already explained sperm donation, and look how wellthathad gone.
“Oh,” Oriana said. “No. I wanted to ask … do you often do that? The thing you did today? Telling the customers not to pay you as much? I thought in business, you were meant to get people to spend more money, not less.”
Laila laughed, her eyes darting to me, and said, “Yeh, you’ve caught me out. Not always the best businesswoman. A client who was struggling a bit with the new-mum thing,” she told me. “She clearly needed more help at home.”
“So Laila told her to spend the money on that instead of all the photos,” Oriana said. “I thought you were lovely to her. So understanding. I didn’t know people Out—” She broke off.
“People Outside,” Laila said. “Matiu told me that’s the word.” And started to pin a new cloth to the table.
I took a few steps away and pretended to be interested in the baby photos. There was one curled up in a hollowed-out pumpkin. That was something you didn’t see every day. Baby had a big head, too.
“Just … it’s confusing,” Oriana said. “What the rules are, especially when people are like that. Helpful, I mean, and not caring about money.”
“I think the rules are,” Laila said, “whatever you want them to be, and you have to choose that for yourself. Or if you look at it in a less elevated way, this business is about word of mouth, and it matters how your clients see you.”
Oriana said, “I see. Thank you for telling me. I’ll go start the washing from today, then, and Priya and I will get dinner started.”
The next thing I heard was Laila’s amused voice, coming from behind me, saying, “First—I probably take advantage of that girl, because she’s tireless. It’s bad to appreciate the virtues of an employee who grew up in a cult, I know, and yet here I am. And second—never tell me you’ve always dreamed of having your daughter dressed in fairy wings and a sparkly headband.”
