Transformation of Minna Hargreaves, The (18 page)

So just like that, I left the island. Dr Hunter settled Mum on to a stretcher strapped into the chopper. I sat in the seat by her head where I could reach out and hold her hand. We lifted off the ground. I waved to Dad and Noah and the chooks.

Mum’s face went the colour of a fairy prion’s tummy. She shut her eyes but she didn’t spew.

Halfway there, I said to Dr Hunter, ‘Are you sure? About the media, I mean.’

She nodded. ‘Yes. Very sure, Minna. But remember, just because somebody asks a question it doesn’t mean you have to answer it.’

For the rest of the flight I thought about what questions I might get asked. And what I thought was that
the answers to them were nobody’s damn business but mine and my family’s.

A few moments later we were dipping down to land, back where we’d lifted off from a lifetime ago. I looked out the window and groaned. Why hadn’t I done my hair, put on make-up — changed my trackies for my jeans for god’s sake? The ground was awash with people waving cameras, people clutching microphones and people with gawping faces.

We landed. ‘Ready?’ Dr Hunter asked.

Mum closed her eyes. I wished I could do the same. ‘Ready as I’ll ever be,’ I said, and jumped down from the chopper into a firestorm of camera flashes.

I turned my back and hovered over the ambulance men who were lifting Mum from the chopper.

‘Minna! What do you think of what your mother did?’

‘Minna! Are you pleased about the baby?’

‘Meenna! Do you blame your father for what happened?’ That had to be an Aussie accent.

Cara was there, elbowing her way through the crowds, her cameraman behind her. She grabbed my arm. ‘My car’s over here. Come on, let’s get you out of here.’

I shook her hand off me. ‘I’m going with Mum in the ambulance.’ I scrambled up the steps into the back of it. Lizzie would have done it gracefully, angling her best side towards the cameras. I probably looked like a wet sock on a clothesline. Too bad. It would be nothing they hadn’t seen before.

Mum lay still and pale with her eyes shut. ‘Sorry, Min,’
she whispered.

I dropped a kiss on her cheek. ‘Don’t worry about it. They’re all bastards.’

Then I thought that maybe wasn’t tactful, seeing as how the baby would technically be one as well.

The ambo guy doing the driving called back over his shoulder, ‘I’ve radioed ahead for security at the hospital. Looks like you two have the paparazzi after you big time.’

It wasn’t far to the hospital but it felt like a nightmare drive. Even though I knew we weren’t going fast, it felt to me like we were speeding, with everything zapping past the windows in a blur. Other cars hurtled past us — whoosh and they were gone. It was like the land yacht ride, only a million times faster.

How long before I got used to it again?

The ambulance stopped. ‘This isn’t the hospital,’ I said.

The ambo guy sitting beside Mum grinned at me. ‘It is. Private. Lucky for you the TV company is paying.’

All right. Maybe I would talk to Cara next time she popped up — which looked like right now, actually, if she could get through security who were trying to shoo the camera-wavers and microphone-clutchers away. I grinned. ‘It’s like herding chooks.’ I waved at them and that set off another frenzy of clicking and flashing.

Cara yelled, ‘I’ve got your luggage in the car.’

I waved again. ‘Back in a mo.’ She could wait. A couple of orderlies were in the middle of transferring Mum on to a trolley. Her face had gone green. ‘Mum, I’ll come with you.’

She opened her eyes. ‘It’s okay. Can you talk to Cara? Find out where we’re going to live?’

I’d rather be with her. She looked awful, but we were in a hospital. They would take care of her. ‘All right.’

A nurse smiled at me. ‘You can go to your mother’s room if you want.’ She told me the number. ‘Your mum will be fine. I promise.’

I watched them wheel her away. I did some deep breathing and went outside — a little fish going into the sea of sharks all calling my name and yelling out dumb questions.

‘Are you still friends with Lizzie?’ That accent was American. Or Canadian.

I walked, blinded by flashes, to the three big, solid security men who grinned at me as if I’d arranged this whole spectacular party entirely for their benefit. It made me feel better. ‘Can you let Cara from the telly in?’ I asked. I pointed her out. ‘She’s the one with the chook-coloured hair in the silver car.’

I waited for her inside the building. You can have enough of questions and flashes.

She came in, carrying a load of something, didn’t look at me and strode off down a corridor. I followed. She bashed open a door. I followed again. She still hadn’t said a word to me. I’d never credited her with being sensitive but maybe she’d picked up the odd vibe that told her she wasn’t on my list of favourite people.

There were flowers in the room.

I sat in an armchair by the window. Cara pulled hers away as flashes lit the place up. I did the same. She put the stuff she was carrying down on a coffee table. ‘Food.’

I was so hungry. She let me eat it — heavenly chicken and rice (sorry chooks, but it was good) — before she said another word.

Then she talked. I’d thought she might try to be terribly nice, sympathetic and as false as snow on a Christmas tree. But she didn’t. Cunning old Cara.

She talked about money. We would have lots and it was already rolling into the bank.

She talked about where we would live. ‘Your tenants moved out yesterday. I’ve had the place professionally cleaned and the moving company is shifting your stuff back in tomorrow.’

‘Did you kick the tenants out?’ It would be so like her to do that.

She stretched her lips in a faint smile. ‘No. They always knew it was month to month in case you didn’t last the distance.’

Well! There was a lot I could have said about that, but why bother?

Then we got to the question of the media and the sharks lurking outside the gates. Cara got brisk. ‘The best thing to do is have a media conference. Get it over and done with.’

‘How much will you charge them?’ No way would she do this — correction: make
me
do this — for free.

‘Nothing,’ she said, very briskly. ‘It’s excellent publicity and there will be things further down the track we’ll charge for.’

I looked her in the eye. ‘Not from me there won’t be. I never asked to be a media star. If you wanted a performing seal, you should have got Lizzie.’

She wasn’t worried. ‘We’ll see. No hurry.’ She smiled at me but I wasn’t in a smiling-back mood. ‘Have you finished here? The sooner we do this the better.’

I stayed in my chair. ‘I’m not moving till Mum comes back.’

She stood up. ‘Okay. I’ll schedule a conference for 4pm at the studio. I’ll come and get you at 1.30.’

And I would only go if Mum was back in her room and didn’t need me. Cara said goodbye. I didn’t answer her.

So. Here I was. Alone in a hospital room that had a telly — and a phone. I leapt for it, dialling Addy’s number, because if the girls were at anyone’s house it would probably be Addy’s.

They were. They yelled and laughed. I yelled and laughed — and cried.

Addy told me to come and stay at her house until Mum was ready to go home. Friends. I had my friends back. Some of them, anyway.

The door opened and there was Mum on a stretcher and attached to a drip. But she looked better, she wasn’t green any more.

‘Gotta go.’ I hung up. ‘Mum? Are you okay?’

‘I’ve had a scan,’ she said. ‘Would you like to know what the baby is?’ She sounded unsure, as if I wouldn’t want to hear anything about the baby. Well, it was going to be a fact of life. Get used to it, Min.

I gave her a careful hug. ‘Of course I want to hear. It’s a girl. Right?’ It had to be a girl.

Mum actually managed a chuckle. ‘Wrong. It’s a boy, Min.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘The next one might be a girl.’

She shuddered. ‘Not funny. Not at all funny.’

I patted her shoulder. ‘Sorry.’ I wanted to ask her something, but I didn’t know how — and anyway, was she up to the hard questions right now? She was still pale, even with the drip feeding nutrients into her system.

When the nurses left, she turned her head slightly to look at me. ‘What? You’ve got a question written all over your face. Spit it out.’

Damn. So much for a career as a spy or a poker player. The question burst out of me. ‘Why are you having it? The baby. Why didn’t you have an abortion?’

She reached for my hand. ‘Would you have done that? If Seb had got you pregnant?’

I stared at her. ‘I don’t know! He wouldn’t have, anyway.’

‘Minna, you don’t know. You just don’t know. And you don’t know what you’ll do till it comes down to the wire.’ She stopped for a deep breath or two. ‘That weekend I caught you when you were going off with Seb — remember?’

I nodded, although I had never actually admitted that’s what I’d been going to do.

‘I’d booked in for an abortion. But when it came to it, I couldn’t do it.’

Wow! I stared at her, but her eyes were shut and she looked tired to death. ‘Mum — are you sorry? Sorry you didn’t have the abortion, I mean.’

She sighed. ‘There have been times — on the island — when I wished passionately that I’d had it.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Min. It worries me — I worry
that I won’t have the energy to bring him up.’

I squeezed her hand. ‘Maybe it’s lucky Robert wants to be part of his life.’

She didn’t respond to that. She just said, ‘I don’t want you to make such a mess of your life, Min.’

I stroked the hair back from her face. ‘Go to sleep, Mum. Things always look bad when you’re tired.’ A direct quote from herself and it made her smile.

I sat beside her, waited for Cara and thought about what I might say to all the dumb questions waiting for me at the conference. Conference! A bone-picking session by a pack of vultures, more like.

Cara came and I tiptoed out, leaving Mum asleep.

Cara had a strategy and I had to admit it was a pretty good one. She stopped at a shop I’d never go into unless I had unlimited funds, and therefore I never went into. She said the magic words: ‘Choose something to wear for the conference. I’m paying.’

I stared at her, then I stared at the racks of to-die-for clothes — and I couldn’t do it. ‘There’s too much. I don’t know where to start.’ I wanted to cry. Such an opportunity and I couldn’t take advantage of it. I needed Jax and Addy — or even goddamned Lizzie.

Cara smiled and got brisk again. ‘Don’t worry. It’s a kind of culture shock — you’ve been isolated for months. It’s going to take a bit of adjusting back into the real world.’

And whose fault was that? I gave her a dirty look. It wouldn’t do to let her see I was grateful she’d told me I wasn’t losing my mind.

She spoke to the shop assistant — a trendy girl who
looked like she spent a million dollars getting to look the way she did. ‘This is Minna Hargreaves and we need an outfit for her media conference.’

The girl’s eyes nearly fell on to the elegant carpet but she leapt around, pulling out skirts, jackets, jeans, tops until my head whirled. I hoped I could cope with the media better than I was handling this, which should be a dream come true but was playing out pretty much along nightmare lines.

In the end we settled for jeans, because no way was I going to wear a skirt without shaving my legs. The top they chose for me was black with straps Gran H would think disgustingly narrow,
and those sparkles make you look cheap, Minna
. I looked good except for my tramping boots, which did not enhance my telegenic qualities.

The girl produced a pair of strappy sandals.

I shivered and wondered if I could put my serviceable jersey back on.

Cara grabbed a million-dollar, crazily gorgeous jacket and gave it to me. She grinned. ‘Okay. We’ll hit make-up and get your hair done and we’re ready.’

She might be. I never would be. But the clothes were good. I felt more on a level with my persecutors than I had in my island clothes.

She drove me to the studio and it was worse than in the ambulance because I could see more and it was all too fast and too scary. In the end I shut my eyes.

I shut my ears too when she talked to me about the media conference while people whirled around me doing my hair and make-up: ‘Just keep it very natural, Ginny. We want her to look young.’

Thank you very much.

After a million years Cara said, ‘Okay, we’ll get this show on the road in a minute. Now, Minna — you’ll remember everything I’ve told you?’

I turned to look at her. ‘I can’t remember a thing, Cara. I feel like my head is stuffed full of a zillion things and they’re all racing around looking for attention.’ Since the island — here was so much busier, noisier, faster. I’d forgotten.

She gave me a glare, but whatever she saw in my face changed her mind about something. ‘Come with me. I’ll let you sit by yourself for ten minutes. Try to relax.’

I tried. Don’t know if it worked but that was the fastest ten minutes of my life. Perhaps time went faster here too.

Cara came for me. She led me to the shark-fest.

They fired questions at me in their medley of accents: Kiwi, Aussie, American and back to Kiwi again.

Reporter with large, fluffy microphone: Minna, why was your mother unfaithful?

Me: Explain to me why that is any of your business?

Fluffy microphone: It’s a matter of public interest.

Me: Why? Will people die?

(Laughter)

Reporter with tiny, scraggly beard and American accent: Minna, do you hate your parents?

Me: No.

Tiny, scraggly American beard: You said you did.

Me: And now I’m saying I don’t. Are you going to arrest me?

(Laughter)

Well-known TV journalist: Minna, it must have been a difficult time for you.

Me: How perceptive of you.

(Laughter, except from pissed-off journalist who had another go at me): Minna, what is your opinion of your mother?

Me: (glaring straight into his pseudo-caring eyes) I think she is the bravest person I know.

That got their attention. They all started yelling and clattering at me. Would this never be over? I glanced around for Cara. She held up a hand. ‘Minna will explain what she means if you give her a chance.’