Dinner at Rose's (29 page)

Kim scowled at me, then laughed. ‘That’s the one,’ she said. ‘How did you know?’

‘She had a little word with Aunty Rose about sending you off alone with the pig hunter,’ I said. ‘So Aunty Rose told her Andy’s family owns most of Hawkes Bay.’ Although this ploy appeared not to have worked; perhaps even pig hunters with rich land-owning parents were too low-class to associate with.

‘They do?’ said Kim.

‘Goodness only knows. So how come you’re not on the school bus?’

‘I got off again.’

‘Do you think that was wise?’ I asked.

‘I don’t give a rat’s
arse
,’ said Kim, borrowing a phrase from her brother. ‘Josie, she was
awful
. I brought Andy home for a cup of tea – I was just being polite, since he’s your friend . . .’

‘How kind,’ I said.

‘Shut up.’

‘Sorry.’

‘She acted like he’d come to nick the TV. She went all icy and upper-crust, and put on her horrible classy English accent. It was
so
embarrassing. And – and it wasn’t like he was even
faintly
interested in me anyway. I’m just some dumb little school kid who threw up in his nice car.’ She became less irate and more mournful as she spoke, and swiped a hand across her eyes with a touchingly childlike gesture.

‘I’m pretty sure he doesn’t think you’re a dumb little school kid,’ I said gently.

‘Well, even if he didn't he'll never want anything to do with me ever again,’ said Kim. ‘Not now that he knows I’m related to
that
.’

I fished in my desk drawer and found my emergency Kit Kat. It was half gone – I had needed two rows after my last encounter with Bob McIntosh – but I passed the other half over. ‘You know what?’

‘What?’ asked Kim as she unwrapped the chocolate. She divided it carefully into two and passed half back to me.

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I reckon that any bloke who makes a lame excuse to come out and see you after you threw up in his car, braving Aunty Rose and Matt and me, probably isn’t going to be that easily put off.’ Kim looked up at me with eyes of hope, and I added, ‘But, Kimlet, don’t forget to pass your exams, will you? I know boys are more exciting than school work, but – oh, I’m sorry. I won’t tell you how to run your life anymore.’

‘Yes you will,’ said Kim resignedly. ‘But I forgive you.’

‘You’re so kind.’

‘I am,’ she agreed. ‘And if it makes you feel better, I have no intention of failing my exams or getting pregnant or piercing my nipples or
any
of the things you all seem to think I might do.’ She swallowed the last of her Kit Kat and added, ‘Aunty Rose says she’ll come back and haunt me if I don’t behave myself.’

‘She would, too,’ I said.

I USHERED OUT
my four-thirty appointment, blew my nose for about the seven hundredth time since breakfast, removing the last remaining skin cell from its tip, and dug through my desk drawer to find a cough lolly. The packet was empty but I ran one to ground in a far corner, stuck to a paper clip and a random piece of fluff. Inserting it into one cheek (I had bought savage menthol cough lollies by mistake and if you sucked them directly they seared the taste buds off your tongue), I grimaced in distaste and opened my email inbox.

There was a message from Stu, which was the first nice thing to happen that day.

Angel, I hope you haven’t frozen to death yet. My toes have finally thawed after the Extreme Survival Experience, and I don’t think I’m going to lose any after all. Fabulous to see you, and give my love to Aunty Rose and the delectable Matthew.

Young Chrissie has finally decided on a date for the society wedding of the year, or whatever the hell it’s going to be. A beach ceremony, the second Saturday of next February. With any luck she’ll be bitten by a crab. She asked me to be bridesman in a lavender silk suit, but I have politely declined to be the funky gay talking point of her bridal party. Just quietly, I suspect she’s having difficulties finding enough girls – if you’re going to run off with your best friend’s man the rest of your gal pals tend to get a bit wary. I am cynically awaiting the announcement that she’s decided against bridesmaids in favour of making the ceremony that much more intimate.

Not meaning to hurt you, sweetie, but I figure it’s better to know these things. Come over for a weekend when the backblocks start to get you down, and we’ll do designer drugs and go clubbing till dawn. Take care.

I expect he was right, and it was better to know the details than to wonder. But as I transferred my nasty cough lolly from one cheek to the other and blew my nose for the seven hundred and first time I wondered drearily what the hell I’d done to deserve that. I closed down the computer and picked up my bag from under the desk.

‘I booked a five o’clock appointment,’ said Amber as I closed the consulting room door behind me.

‘Did you have to?’ I asked wearily. ‘I just want to go and crawl into a hole somewhere.’

Heather Anne’s sign next door creaked as the wind stirred it on its rusty hooks, and the niggling repetitive squeak grated like fingernails down a blackboard.

‘Bob McIntosh. He said it was urgent.’ Amber rubbed the back of her hand across her nose, leaving a glistening trail. She wiped the hand against the fabric seat of her chair, and sudden fury swept over me like a wave.

‘Ring him back,’ I snapped. ‘I’m sick, and I’m going home. And for Christ’s sake, use a tissue! If I see you wipe your nose on your hand one more time I swear I’ll cut it off!’ I neither knew nor cared whether it was the hand or the nose I would be severing; whichever was closest would do.

Amber looked completely unmoved by this threat. ‘But I don’t know his number,’ she complained.

I shoved the local phone directory towards her across the desk. ‘There.’ I jabbed a finger at the advertisement on the front cover for McIntosh Farming Solutions.

‘But it’s such short notice – he’ll already be on his way.’

‘Then
call his mobile
! Could you just try for one
second
not to be so fucking
useless
?’ After which stunningly unprofessional outburst I burst into tears, turned on my heel and stormed out of the building, slamming the door behind me.

Chapter 26

A
T THE END
of that evening’s meal Aunty Rose’s plate looked pretty much the same as it had at the beginning. It held a very modest serving of one chicken drumstick, three kumara chips and a tablespoon of peas – not the most exciting meal in the world, but considering the mental state of the cook this evening it could have been much worse. ‘Could you eat a little bit?’ I pleaded.

‘No,’ said Aunty Rose as she pushed her chair back. She lay down full-length on the chaise longue, mouth thinned with pain, and closed her eyes.

Hazel arrived as I dried the last of the dishes. ‘Good evening, girls,’ she trilled, putting her head around the kitchen door. ‘Rosie, darling, I’ve brought a book you might enjoy.’

Aunty Rose opened one eye. ‘I hope it’s a trashy novel,’ she muttered.

Hazel gave a little rippling laugh. ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘It’s all about the macrobiotic diet – suggestions for natural healing.’

The eye closed again. ‘Thank you,’ said Rose dully.

The kettle shrieked and switched itself off, and I poured boiling water into an ancient rubber hot-water bottle with a crocheted cover. ‘It might help,’ I said, handing it to Aunty Rose.

‘I doubt it,’ she said, but she took it and tucked it into the small of her back.

‘Rosie,’ said Hazel reprovingly, ‘it’s very kind of Josie to try to help.’ Her words were greeted with silence and she continued, ‘People
are
kind, aren’t they? Myra Browne – dear Cilla’s mother – lent me the book.
Her
friend had a very rare form of skin cancer, and apparently the doctors had given her up for lost when she discovered this macrobiotic diet. And now she’s completely cancer-free.’

‘Hazel,’ said Aunty Rose tiredly, ‘I wish you’d stop this.’

‘At the very least it can’t possibly hurt.’

‘I very much doubt I’ll live any longer if I subsist on mung beans and tofu. Although it may well resign me to death.’

‘Don’t talk like that, Rosie!’

‘I have secondaries right through my lungs and a lump on my liver the size of a cricket ball that I can feel through the skin.’ I looked at her sharply; this was news to me. ‘My body is being taken over by this revolting disease. It’s like being chained to a rock below the high-tide mark and waiting for the water to come in. And
surely
by now you know my views on people who peddle useless cures to the terminally ill.’

‘Oh, Rosie,’ said her sister helplessly, her eyes filling with tears.

‘
Don’t
weep all over me,’ said Aunty Rose. ‘Not tonight; I don’t feel strong enough.’

I sneezed into a tissue – the side of the box had assured me it was aloe vera–impregnated and gentle on the skin, but it felt like sandpaper on my skinless nose – and Hazel said worriedly, ‘I don’t know if Josie should be here, with that cold. She might give it to you.’

‘I probably passed it on a week ago,’ I said. ‘Too late to do anything about it now.’

‘Just be careful with hygiene, won’t you, dear?’ Hazel told me. ‘Wash your hands carefully and try to cover your mouth rather than coughing over Rose.’

The response on the tip of my tongue was one I would no doubt regret, so I got up silently and went to have a shower.

‘Perhaps,’ Aunty Rose suggested as I left the room, ‘she could ring a little bell and shout “unclean, unclean” as she approaches.’

A head cold is not a very serious ailment, but mine had now reached that unhappy stage where you feel as if your eyeballs have been left out in the sun and your sinuses filled with concrete. I stood limply for some time under the miserable dribble of water that comes out of Aunty Rose’s shower, and then climbed into my onesie, took two Panadol tablets and went back down the hall. Hazel was still in the kitchen, mopping her eyes in a way that suggested she had indeed been weeping all over her sister.

‘For the love of God, Josephine, please take off that hideous thing!’ said Aunty Rose, eyeing me with distaste.

‘You’re just jealous of the – the
awesomeness
of the one-sie,’ I replied.

The onesie and I had been together for a week now. Cold feet in bed? Not when you have a onesie, my friend. Troubled by uncomfortable pyjama-leg ride-up? Hell, no! That onesie was the nicest thing to happen to me for months. The morning after our first glorious night together I sent the man who had brought it into my life a text from work:
Onesie brilliant. So are you
.

Glad u like it
, he sent back.

‘I fail to understand why you feel this uncontrollable urge to make the least possible of yourself,’ Aunty Rose said.

‘I’m not going to start wearing it in public,’ I protested, and pulled the hood up defiantly.

Aunty Rose shut her eyes as if my appearance caused her actual pain. ‘Josephine,’ she said, ‘it is
criminal
to be blessed with naturally blonde hair and legs to your armpits, and then go and swathe yourself in that thing.’

I smiled at her, touched. ‘It’s warm and comfortable,’ I told her, ‘and I love it very much. So there.’

‘Oh, don’t be so wet,’ she snapped. ‘If Matthew gave you a potato sack you’d treasure the bloody thing. I’m going to bed – goodnight.’

She left one of those awful, pregnant silences behind her in the kitchen. At length I managed to unpeel my tongue from the roof of my mouth, and said, ‘Thank goodness you’re taking her to the pain clinic on Friday.’

‘Yes,’ said Hazel. ‘Yes, thank goodness.’ She was silent for a moment and then added carelessly, ‘I’m glad Matthew didn’t feel he had to come over tonight. He’s so devoted to Rosie and has
such
a strong sense of duty, but I know it’s a strain. It’s nice for him to have a chance to spend time with Cilla.’