Page 9 of Just for Me
When they’d washed up and gone downstairs onto the deck, overlooking about a hectare of green fern trees and palms and the calm blue waters of Manukau Harbour far below, and were letting the warm breeze take away the stiffness and the smell of paint, Nyree said, “This is a very good house. Like you’re out in the bush, but comfortable. A bit different from Paris, Luke. Feels so much more … remote.”
“True,” he said. “But you’re right. Comfortable.”
“Do you have a house in Paris?” Rhys’s daughter Casey—the bunny-lover—asked. “Like inMadeline?Is it covered with vines?”
“It’s a book,” Rhys said when Luke looked confused.
“I have a flat in Paris, yeh,” Luke said. “That’s where I live. No vines, though.”
“Because he plays for Racing 92,” Zora’s son Isaiah told his cousin. “Itoldyou.”
“You said France,” she said. “Paris isn’t France.”
“Yes, it is. Paris is the capital of France.” He sighed. “It’s good that you’re going to be in Year Three next year. You need to learn more things.”
“Oh,” she said. “I thought Paris was very fancy, though.” She looked at Luke doubtfully, and he smiled.
Oh, no. He was every daddy fantasy Hayden had ever had,andhe was kind? He should have said no to pizza. His waistline did not need pizza. He also didn’t need to do any more yearning.
“It is,” Nyree said. “Paris is magical, even in the rain.Especiallyin the rain. There’s no place in the world that looks better in gray than Paris. The buildings are colored cream, the silvery light glistens off the river in a way that makes your heart heal, and the streets are made of stone.”
“Well, some are,” Luke said.
“Luke’s flat doesn’t look one bit like you might think, either,” Nyree went on, ignoring him. “The front doors of the building are arched and painted blue, and the stone above them is arched, too. Luke’s flat is at the very top, up five flights of very old stairs, and the wood of the banisters and the red stone tiles on the landings have been rubbed smooth by hundreds of hands and feet over hundreds of years. Imagine all those people with their secrets and their joys, going up and down those stairs, living their lives.”
Casey had stopped eating and was staring at Nyree in awe. “Inside,” Nyree went on, “there are huge, dark oak beams going across the ceiling all through the main room. Six of them, with nicks on them from where somebody shaped them a long time ago, and white plaster between them, and shiny wood floors that have been walked on and polished and loved, over and over again, that look like a craftsman did them who lived only to make beautiful floors, because he laid out the wood in the shape of fish bones. There’s a kitchen with black-and-white tiles on the floor, set like diamonds instead of a draughts board, just because it’s more beautiful, and a tiny black-iron-railed balcony off the dining room that you get to through a pair of French doors with curved tops and curving black metal handles. The glass between the panes is wavy and thick, because it’s so old, and it makes everything outside look a bit wavy, too, like a painting. There’s just enough room out there for a little round table and two chairs, and there’s a perfect view across the tiled roofs of more cream-colored buildings where more people have lived for hundreds of years, and between them, you can see the branches of trees in a tiny park. In the summer, the swallows fly over the roofs. Their wings are a dark blue, bright as jewels, and pointed at the ends, and so are their tails, and they swoop and dive like …”
“Like fairies?” Casey asked.
“Exactly like fairies,” Nyree said, and Hayden could practically see the swallows getting painted onto that wall. She had, what, two days to finish this mural, and she was still adding things on?
Elite rugby players were some of the most disciplined people on the planet, and Nyree’s stepfather was a rugby coach. She was marrying an elite rugby player, too. None of it seemed to have influenced her much.
“You’ve seen my flat once,” Luke said. “When you tear a ligament in your knee, the stairs aren’t quite as nice, the kitchen’s pretty small and the bath is smaller, and you have to duck through a doorway to get to it or you hit your head. You have to stand in exactly the right place to see the park, and some people would say that it doesn’t have storage space. But I like it all the same.”
“Sounds good, though,” Hayden said. “Are you secretly sophisticated, Luke?”
“No,” he said. “I just like it.” His face went wooden, so, again, he’d seen.
No more flirting,Hayden told himself. He told himself that heaps. It usually didn’t work. He couldn’t seem to turn it off. And if the fella was this hot? Hereallycouldn’t turn it off.
Never mind. He was insouciant.
“It sounds very fancy and very expensive,” Casey said. “You can still make your apartment pretty, but you can only have a view if it’s expensive, because views cost extra.”
“That’s probably because French rugby pays better,” Isaiah said. “Itdoes,”he said, when Zora looked at him. “New Zealand rugby only pays about five hundred thousand dollars a year even if you’re an All Black for a long time, unless you’re a verytopAll Black, and French rugby can pay twomilliondollars a year. That’s four times as much.”
“I don’t get paid two million dollars a year,” Luke said.
“But you’re the captain for England, too,” Isaiah pointed out. “When you play on an international side, you make evenmoremoney. If you win a championship, you get more than that. That’s why Uncle Rhys is so much richer than my dad was, because my dad wasn’t an All Black very much and Uncle Rhys was always one. Also, Uncle Rhys is a coach, and coaches get paid the most of all. Maybe you’ll be a coach later, and then you’llreallyhave a lot of money. Then you could have a bigger flat where you don’t have to duck your head.”
“We’re not going to talk any more about what Luke gets paid,” Rhys said. “As it’s not very interesting. Beer. Hang on.” He went inside for it.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Hayden said. “Of course, I’m a lawyer, so I have an excuse, but I find money pretty interesting.Nothaving it can get interesting, hey, Zora.”
“It can,” she said.
“Being poor isn’t interesting,” Casey said, “because you can’t do as many fun things when you’re poor. You can do fun things that don’t cost money, though, so it can still be interesting that way. You’re supposed to say ‘broke,’ though, not ‘poor.’ ‘Broke’ sounds better, like you might be richer later on, so you just need school lunch for now. That’s what my mommy said when she was alive.”
