Page 95 of Kiwi Sin
“I will,” she said, “and then go for the glasses.” She looked around. “It’s so beautiful, I can’t believe it. It doesn’t even look like the samehouse.”
“Yeh.” I couldn’t help being proud. It had taken two long, hard months, and so many hours from me, these past two weeks, scraping off every drop of spilled paint, lining up every cabinet handle perfectly, leveling every appliance and doublechecking the hookups on every piece of plumbing, but we’d done it. “It is. It’s a good design, though. Good choice of materials, too. That was Gray.”
I followed her into the kitchen, and she said, “It’s justlovely.The benchtops …” She ran a hand over them. “What is it?”
“Soapstone,” I said, touching the deep-gray surface myself, because that soapy-smooth texture was so satisfying.
She said, “Are you trying to clean it all before Daisy sees it tomorrow? Is that why you have the hoover?”
“Yeh. It’s better if it’s clean, don’t you think?”
She didn’t say anything I’d have expected. She asked, “Can I help?”
I hesitated. “Everybody here’s being paid to work. I can’t—”
“I’d like to help,” she said, “if you don’t mind. I’d like it to be beautiful for Daisy, and I’m excellent at cleaning. Otherwise, how long will it take you? Please let me help.”
That was how we ended up working until after eleven that night, the last two standing. My cousins left, and then my brothers did, and Oriana was still spraying down the shower in the master ensuite, then on her hands and knees scrubbing the floor as I hoovered up dust and more dust, because there was no dust in the world like construction dust. My body protested against sixteen straight hours of labor, and Oriana’s must be feeling about the same, but she didn’t stop until we were standing in the master bedroom and she was gathering up rags and spray bottles while I wound up the cord on the hoover. The outermost room on the uppermost floor, and we were done.
Around us, the house ticked over in the way that houses do in the middle of the night, the overhead light gleamed on polished wood floors, and the heat pump came on with a lowwhoosh,because the night had grown cool. I said, “Thanks,” then tried to think of something else to say, but I couldn’t. Suddenly, I was bone-weary, and so dirty, I felt caked in grime. I blinked, and my eyes felt like sandpaper.
She said, “You were already here when I came out of the caravan this morning. You need to go home.”
“Yeh.” I tried to laugh, but couldn’t. I ran a hand over the back of my neck. “I do. I should kiss you or something, say something romantic, but …”
“Gabriel.” She stepped close, put a hand on my shoulder, then rose on her toes and kissed my cheek. “No, you shouldn’t. You should let me drive you home and then let me make you a cup of tea while you take a shower.”
“You can’t,” I said. “How will you get home?”
“By driving,” she said.
“The ute—” I began. Honestly, it was a bit hard to talk.
“I’ll bring you back for it tomorrow,” she said. “It’s Daisy’s and Gray’s big moment. Gray didn’t actuallysayto stay out of their way, but I know he wanted to. Frankie’s coming home at last, it’ll be mad, and …” She shrugged. “I’d be glad to have something to do, that’s all.”
When she walked into the flat behind me, I didn’t know what to say. When we found Rowan and Duncan playing video games,theydidn’t know what to say.
“Hi,” Oriana said, as self-possessed as I wasn’t. “I’m Oriana.”
“Uh … hi,” Rowan said, his eyes going from Oriana, still in her dusty overalls but also still so pretty and curvy, and then to me, evenmoredusty and not at all pretty and curvy. I guessed that no matter how good Oriana was still managing to look, we didn’t exactly exude waves of “just had sex.”
I told Oriana, “I’ll go take that shower, eh.”
“You do that,” she said. “And I’ll make you that cup of tea.”
I meant to be in the shower about three minutes, like usual. When the water hit me, though, then beat down on my aching back … I put my hands against the opposite wall, bent my head, and let it run. It was probably ten minutes by the time I was toweling off—the current towel was bright pink and nearly threadbare—then putting on pajama bottoms and a T-shirt, bundling up my sweat-stained clothes, and going to dump them in my bedroom laundry hamper.
When I padded barefoot into the lounge, my flatmates had moved. Duncan was leaning against the kitchen bench, telling Oriana, “Yeh, my mum didn’t like her much,” and Oriana was saying, “Oh, what a pity,” and pouring boiling water into three mugs of tea, then picking up the tea towel, because Rowan was doing the washing-up and she was drying.
I blinked. The shower had woken me up a bit, but not much, or maybe it was just that I seemed to have stepped into an alternate reality, one in which my flatmates cleaned. Oriana looked up, saw me, smiled, wide and sweet and glorious, and said, “You look a bit happier.”
I grinned and ran my hand over the back of my neck. “Yeh. I am. You need to get to bed yourself, though.”
She dried the frying-pan, which had served far beyond the call of duty by this point, and bent to put it in the drawer. “I do.” She opened the fridge, sniffed at the milk bottle, made a dubious face, and said, “Maybe not.”
Rowan said, “There’s another one in a bag in the back,” and went to get it.
Duncan said, “What the hell, mate. You hiding the milk away?”
