Dinner at Rose's (24 page)

‘Jo!’ Clare hissed.

I turned and saw her leaning out of the bathroom window. ‘Yeah?’

‘Did he ask you out?’

Her face was alight with anticipation and I started to laugh helplessly. ‘Yes. Was this your idea?’

‘Maybe,’ said Clare, looking as inscrutable as a woman can look while hanging precariously out of a window with a toothbrush in one hand. ‘What’d you say?’

‘No thank you,’ I admitted, and winced as she pointed the toothbrush at me like a pistol.

‘
Why
, you ungrateful slapper?’

‘I – I don’t like Scotty in that way.’

‘Couldn’t you go out with him and just
see
? I wasn’t even slightly attracted to Brett at the start. I just thought he’d be good practice.’

‘Clare,’ called Brett from somewhere inside, ‘you’re a horrible trollop and I don’t know why I married you.’

‘Because you adore me,’ she said over her shoulder.

‘Ignore her, Jo, she’s pissed,’ Brett called. ‘Goodnight!’

‘Goodnight,’ I called back, and climbed into my car.

Before I could start it, Clare opened the back door and ran across the lawn in bare feet. She opened the passenger door and got into the car beside me. ‘Shit, it’s freezing out here,’ she said. ‘Now, Jo, you listen to Aunty Clare.’

‘Don’t want to,’ I said, laughing. She was still clutching her toothbrush and she was indeed just a little bit pissed.

‘It’s time you got back on the horse,’ she said. ‘I know you were with Graeme for a really long time and being cheated on is a massive kick in the teeth, but you’re not going to get over him until you put yourself out there and start seeing someone else.’

‘I am over him,’ I said. ‘Well, just about, anyway. I’m still pissed off, and it’s not great for your self-confidence when your boyfriend decides he prefers your best mate, but I don’t want him back.’

‘So what’s the problem? Maybe Scotty wouldn’t turn out to be the love of your life, but you don’t have to
marry
him. You could just hang out with him a bit and see. I reckon the whole sexual chemistry thing’s crap – it’s not always there from the start.’

‘I agree,’ I said.

‘And seriously, Jo, you don’t want to put it off for too long. Everyone else gets coupled up, and then you find you’re already in your mid-thirties and your fertility’s declining and the only single men left are gay or weird, and –’

‘Stop,’ I begged. ‘Please stop, or I’ll cry. I
know
all that – you try not to think about it because you’ll turn into a sad and desperate person, but it comes and gets you in the middle of the night.’

‘So go out for a drink with the man! He’s had a crush on you ever since high school, for Christ’s sake! I know he’s a bit scruffy round the edges and needs a shave and haircut, but he’s a sweetie, and he’s really good with kids.’ She gestured with her toothbrush for emphasis and nearly poked me in the eye.

‘Clare,’ I said, relieving her of the toothbrush and laying it on the dashboard, ‘just settle down. I can’t go out with Scotty for a drink – there’s someone else.’

‘
What?
’ she demanded. ‘You’re seeing someone and you didn’t even
tell
me? What kind of a friend do you call yourself?’

‘I’m not seeing anyone,’ I said tiredly. ‘I’ve just got a – a stupid crush on Matt, and until I talk myself out of it I can’t really go out with his best friend.’

‘Huh,’ said Clare. ‘Matt King. I thought you were immune.’

I gave a miserable little hiccup of laughter. ‘If you ever tell anyone I swear I’ll hunt you down and dismember you with a teaspoon.’

She made a face. ‘Messy.’

‘I mean it.’

‘I can tell,’ said Clare. ‘You’re looking very fierce. So why don’t you do something about it?’

‘Because he’s going out with Farmer Barbie.’

‘You should just tell him. What’ve you got to lose?’

‘I can’t tell him,’ I said. ‘He’s not interested.’

‘How do you know?’ Clare asked.

‘Because he’s going out with Farmer Barbie,’ I repeated.

She dismissed this with a wave of her hand. ‘Yeah, but probably only because he hasn’t got around to cutting her loose. He’s not the most organised of blokes.’

‘If you liked someone else you’d get around to it, wouldn’t you?’

Clare shrugged and, picking up her toothbrush, pointed it at me again. ‘If you don’t ask you’ll never know.’

I began to get cross. ‘Oh, come
on
. Even if I decided I needed that extra little bit of rejection, how could I stay at Aunty Rose’s and see him every day? His aunt’s dying and he’s got two hundred cows to calve all by himself and his mother’s entirely useless and who
knows
what Kim’ll do next – the last thing the poor man needs is me telling him he’s the love of my life.’

‘Hmm,’ said Clare. ‘Crap. You have a point.’

‘I know.’ I leant across and impulsively kissed her cheek. ‘Now, go inside and sleep it off.’

Chapter 22

‘H
ELO, JOSIE. HOW
lovely to see you again. I don’t suppose you remember me?’

I smiled. ‘Of course I do. Hello, Mrs Titoi.’ Bonnie Titoi was a plump, charming Maori lady who lived in town; Aunty Rose had nursed her at the births of at least three of her children. I dropped my bag on the kitchen table and crossed the room to kiss Rose’s cheek and give her today’s mail. Aunty Rose was the only person I knew who received actual handwritten letters rather than just bills and announcements from
Time
magazine that she had just won a sumptuous, personalised gift.

‘Did you bring the paper in, sweet pea?’

I shook my head. ‘Never saw it. I thought someone must have brought it up.’

‘I think David aims for the ditch on purpose,’ she said. ‘Ah well, never mind.’

‘I’ll go down and have a look for it in a moment,’ I said. ‘Percy can come with me for the walk. How are you, Mrs Titoi?’

‘Very well, thank you, my dear. Hasn’t she grown up pretty, Rose?’

‘She’s not too bad, I suppose,’ said Aunty Rose.

I ran myself a glass of water, and perched on the edge of the kitchen table to drink it. I had spent half an hour this afternoon with Dallas Taipa’s feet, and another half-hour trying hard to explain to Keith Taylor that if he didn’t stop taking his newly reconstructed shoulder out on the quad bike he would stuff it up irrevocably. I was fairly sure he wasn’t going to listen to me, and that he was going to regret that for the next thirty or so years.

‘Josie, sweetheart,’ said Bonnie.

‘Mm?’

‘Please get off that table – it’s
tapu
. We don’t put our bottoms where we put our food, hmm?’

I slid to my feet. ‘Sorry. Aunty Rose, I’ll just go and get the paper.’

‘You mustn’t be offended, sweetheart.’

‘Of course not,’ I murmured, although privately I reflected that after all it wasn’t Mrs Titoi’s table. And my bottom hygiene is excellent, thank you very much.

Outside on the porch I took one of Aunty Rose’s ancient oilskin coats from its peg and slid it on cautiously in case wetas were hiding in the sleeves. It’s so disconcerting when a large spiky insect crawls out across the tender skin just behind your ear. Calling up my retinue of dogs and pig I went down through the orchard to the mailbox.

I had just retrieved the
Times
from the middle of a blackberry bush a good ten metres away from the little sign the paper man is supposed to aim for when Hazel’s white car came down the road and turned in beside me. The driver stamped hard on the brakes and stalled a mere foot away from Percy, who was sitting in the middle of the driveway scratching his left ear with his hind foot.

‘Idiot pig!’ said Kim crossly, winding down the driver’s-side window. ‘What’s he doing in the middle of road in the dark?’

Trevor the boxer-cross poked his nose in through the window at her and she patted him gingerly; you never knew what that dog had found to roll in since you last saw him.

‘Sorry,’ I said, climbing out of the blackberry bush. ‘Are you heading up?’

‘I’ll give you a lift.’

‘I might go up the track to the trig station first.’

‘In the dark?’

‘I feel like being outside for a bit, and the dogs need a walk.’ Lately I didn’t seem to have found time to walk any further than the washing line, and I was starting to fear my legs would atrophy from lack of use. Also it seemed a shame to inflict my current bad mood on Aunty Rose, who had more than enough to put up with.

‘Well, okay,’ said Kim doubtfully. Kim feels that the Great Outdoors is all very well in its way, but she much prefers to admire it from the comfort and security of an air-conditioned car. And exercise only counts if you’re wearing a little Nike crop-top and texting as you jog on a treadmill.

It was an eerie, gusty sort of night and the wind blew little mini-tornadoes of leaves across the rutted clay track that led from Rose’s back paddock up through the scrub to the trig station on the top of the hill. Percy gave up halfway and made for home but the dogs stayed with me, trotting ahead and vanishing intermittently into the fern. The air smelt nice – cold and fresh, laced with the sharp scent of crushed bracken and the lovely mushroomy smell of leaf litter. A pheasant chinked in alarm before breaking cover two steps ahead of me to fly up in a breathless flurry of wings, and I yelped in shock. I hate the way they do that, although you have to admire it as an escape strategy; the animal that might have enjoyed a nice pheasant lunch is far too busy trying to restart its heart to think about pursuit.

BONNIE TITOI HAD
left when I let myself and the dogs in through the little rusting gate beside the walnut tree three-quarters of an hour later. I could see Kim at the kitchen window, frowning in concentration as she stirred something.

‘Polenta and roasted vegetable stack,’ she said as I opened the door.

I fished the paper out of an enormous pocket in my coat and put it on the table near where Aunty Rose sat peeling wedges of pumpkin. ‘That sounds very fancy.’

‘It will be,’ said Kim.

‘It sounds like the sort of food that should come with a caramelised onion jus,’ said Aunty Rose. ‘Is a jus still the latest in modern dining, Josephine? I cancelled my subscription to
Taste
magazine last year.’

‘No, no,’ I said. ‘That’s
so
last week. You’ve got to have a pomegranate vinegar reduction if you want people to even
begin
to take you seriously. Although come to think of it, I’m out of touch – probably by now reductions are out of fashion too.’

‘Hey, Josie?’ Kim asked casually, spooning chicken stock powder into her polenta pot. ‘You haven’t got your friend Andy’s mobile phone number, have you?’

I met Aunty Rose’s eye and she shook her head, amused. ‘About a week was Matthew’s estimate, wasn’t it?’ she murmured. ‘And it’s been – what? Ten days?’

‘It was nice while it lasted,’ I said. ‘Kimmy, he’s way older than you.’

‘I’m not
interested
in him!’ Kim cried.

‘Methinks she doth protest too much,’ said Aunty Rose to the ceiling.

‘Oh, don’t be stupid,’ said Kim. ‘I just want to say thank you. And I think I was a little bit sick in his car. I thought maybe I should get him some chocolates or something to apologise.’

‘He likes Picnic bars,’ I told her. ‘Should I give her the number, Aunty Rose?’

‘Nice boy, is he?’

‘Reasonably nice.’

‘And unlikely to encourage her to dress like a member of Kiss?’

‘I wouldn’t have thought so,’ I said.

‘Or to impregnate her?’

‘We’d have to ask him.’

‘Make a note of it, Josephine, and I shall call him tomorrow.’

‘You guys are not as funny as you think you are,’ Kim said huffily.