Page 25 of Kiwi Gold
“Oh, that we’re all the other bloke’s,” Lark said airily. “After that, it was just following some breadcrumbs, applying some logic and some research skills, and eventually, we found him. Well, I found him. Of course, we had to have a bit of a think after that. You have to consider his privacy.”
“Oh, do you,” I said. “What part of considering his privacy is it to ring a fella up and say, ‘Hi! You provided an anonymous sperm donation more than twenty-seven years ago, and here we all are. Can we call you Daddy?’”
Laila turned her head and stared at me. I didn’t wonder at it.
“Obviously,” Lark said, “if he’s bothered by the idea, he simply doesn’t answer, and he goes about his business.”
“As long as he can ignore that ticking bomb outside his front door,” I said. “Ready to explode all over the life he’s created for himself over the past two and a half decades.”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” she said. “Maybe he shouldn’t have made the deposit, then. There’s no other purpose for a sperm donation than to help a woman make a baby, after all. He had to know that somebody like us was out there somewhere. Anyway, your point is moot, because last night, he answered. On New Year’s Eve, if you can imagine. Reckon he’s at an inflection point in his own life and wants connection. Midlife crisis, I expect. Surprise, though. He’s not American after all. He’s a Kiwi, somehow, and he’s here. And we agreed to a meeting. Possibly a little precipitately and with inadequate discussion and consideration of all possible outcomes. Did I mention we were pissed?”
Larissa’s voice, then. “I did try to convince them to wait to decide until we had time to think it over, but …”
“But we’re not ultra-cautious like you,” Lexi said.
“No,” Larissa said. “I wasn’tdrunklike all of you.”
Outside, the suburban houses had turned to lifestyle blocks set in acres of green, and Laila had turned left on a shingle road toward the sea and was stopped at a gate, speaking into a box. I needed to finish this. This wasn’t family time. This was …
All right, it was family time. With a different family. With little-girl twins, in fact. This wasn’t my life, or rather—it was. Much too much like my life.
I said, “I hope you’ve told Mum about this now. And what do you mean, ‘he’s here’? Where? Never mind, tell me tonight. Meanwhile—I can see it’s interesting, but don’t get your hopes up. Or don’t let Liana get her hopes up. He’s not going to be a dad. He’s a sperm donor.”
Laila shot yet another look at me, and I said, “Tell you later,” then told Lark, “I have to go.”
“Where?” Lark asked. “What could you possibly be doing that’s more important than this? You’re not having a relationship discussion, because, again—you just met this woman, presumably. This man wants to meet us. I feel we need support. Also, I thought maybe you’d like to explain to Mum.”
“You’re married,” I pointed out. “Isn’t Ewan support? And no. That sounds like thelastthing I’d like to explain to Mum.”
“He’s support forme,”she said. “After the meeting, because it’s not fair to the sperm donor to have to meet partners as well, not the first time. And what about Liana and Lexi? They don’t have partners. Don’ttheyneed support? I’ll be managing my own emotions and not available to support them. Besides, we need a neutral third party there—well, a sixth party—who can facilitate.”
“Facilitate,” I repeated, as Laila came to the end of the long drive and parked on the grassy verge. Two houses here, completely sheltered from the road, on a huge section that looked like an advert for the rural lifestyle. One old house, under major renovation, judging by the piles of lumber outside the door, and another dwelling that was a ... yurt. Surely, that was a yurt. Also a construction zone. Flower gardens, lawns, and trees filled the space on the downslope, all of it ending up, I’d bet, at the coastline. Kids from tiny to teenagers were playing cricket on the one patch of level grass, a few adults were milling about with beer bottles in hand, and the whole thing looked like a barbecue.
Or family time.
“Yes,” Lark said. “Facilitate. You’ll be good at that, because you’re detached, but you’ve also assumed a partially parental role with us.”
Larissa’s voice, then. “You were probably parentified, having to look after us so much. Here you are with the skills, though, and we need them. Think of it this way. Being in that role has given you some emotional intelligence. More than usual in a man, which doesn’t necessarily say much, but there you are, you may as well use it.”
“Thank you,” I said. “For that faint praise. I’ll ring you back to discuss it. And now I really do have to go.”
11
A PERM DONATION
Lachlan
We hadn’t even got out of the car when Amira asked, “What’s a perm donation?”
Well,thisshould go well.
“A perm is for your hair,” Yasmin said, which was almost the first thing shehadsaid. “It’s how you get curly hair. And donation is giving somebody something. So it’s giving somebody curly hair.”
“He said the person wasn’t a dad, though,” Amira said. “Just a perm donor. Why would a dad give you curly hair? Mummy has curly hair, kind of. Does that mean Grandad gave it to her?”
I looked at Laila, who was clearly trying not to laugh, and asked, “Do you want me to explain? Or no?”
She said, “You can think of an answer to that question?”
