Page 21 of Kiwi Gold
Wait, what? I smelled the air for smoke, didn’t find any, and said, “Hang on while I get my phone.”
It was still in the bedroom. I grabbed it, and noticed as I did that my text notifications were precisely nil. No answer from Poppy. Or from Laila.
I’d give it a day. After that, I’d—well, I actually had no idea, except that if Poppy knew who she was, I needed to give the ring to Poppy. And forget this.
When I got back to the kitchen, the little girl and the dog had come inside. I said, “Don’t do that, go inside a strange man’s flat. Not safe.”
“Why?” she asked. “Are you bad?”
“No, I’m notbad,it’s just … Never mind. Show me the danger.”
She grabbed my hand and pulled me out the door with the dog trotting after. “It’s my mum,” she told me. “She’s reallyill. Her appendix has maybe burst, or she might be having a heart attack, and I can’t drive the car to hospital and save her, because I can’t reach the pedals. You could drive, though. We could rescue her together. Come on. I’ll show you.”
9
LONGING FOR MICKEY
Laila
I heard the sound of the back door and thought,What?I pulled aside the wet facecloth I’d put over my closed eyes—how hadn’t I realized how much stabbing light my blinds let in?—and listened.
Nothing except the faint sound of the TV. Squeaky voices. That would be cartoons, and they’d be watching them.
Somebody had taken Long John out, that was all. Yasmin, probably. Good. I pulled the facecloth over my eyes again and thought about Panadol. The box was in the bathroom, unfortunately, so I …
The door again. The skittering sound of Long John’s toenails, and Amira’s voice, explaining. Amira was fond of explaining.
And aman’svoice. What?
Baba,was my first panicked thought. That somehow, sensing his daughter’s fall from grace from afar, my dad had decided to drop in and witness it for himself.
I didn’t sit up. It felt like a very bad idea.I have a tummy bug,I told myself, exactly as I’d told the kids. I didn’t know that Ididn’thave a tummy bug, and never mind the memory of the kids’ babysitter making the very same claim. I’d explain to my dad that I’d picked up a germ, and …
Darkness at the door to my dim bedroom, and then the man stepped inside with Amira beside him, still explaining.
“… and they strap you onto a very skinny bed, so you don’t fall off when the ambulance goes around the corners fast, and then they …”
“Oh,” he said. “Well, bug— uh, blow me down. Laila. All right? No, clearly you’re not all right. Tell me what’s happening.”
Yes, it was. My hero.
Oh,bugger.
* * *
Lachlan
She hadn’t sat up. She’d turned her face—herwhiteface—toward me as if it hurt, and was blinking at me, and if a blink could be a wince, hers was. Her chocolate-colored hair was in a single thick plait, the luxuriant length of it lying over her shoulder and across her breast, and she was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and longish, loose shorts, which was no kind of seductress outfit. The bedsheets were a tangled mess, and the white nightdress from the night before was thrown across the end of it, along with a plain white bra of the smaller type. Virginal, you could call those items. The look of the bed said, “Either a very good night or a very bad one,” and I had a feeling I knew which it had been.
If she was married, he wasn’t here.
“See?” the little girl said. “She never got ill before, not the kind where you stay lying down. So I think shemustneed to go in the ambulance.”
“I see,” I said. “What’s your name, then?”
“Amira,” she said. “And my sister’s name is Yasmin.”
Oh. Another face, because somebody else had slipped into the room. Another little girl. No specs, but the same height as Amira. Amira’s hair was shorter, but they both had the same dark fringe. They both had light-brown eyes, too, though Amira’s had more green to them and Yasmin’s had flecks of gold.
