Trilemma (35 page)

No one had ever followed up Fergus's disappearance. The friends he had in New Zealand thought he'd left for Scotland. Presumably, the friends he had in Scotland thought he had changed his mind and stayed in New Zealand.

When I let myself in through the French windows, the rooms still glow with beauty. Christopher's absence has not made the slightest difference to the house.

Alison is in the kitchen preparing food. Vivienne is in her bedroom, but she's awake, Alison tells me. She holds my gaze and then nods her head to the doorway.

When I take in the tray, the face peering back at me from the bedclothes is pink and puffy. Unlike the house, her beauty has dimmed.

“I am sorry, Viv,” I say, taking her hand in mine. “So very sorry about Christopher.”

I am sorry about Christopher. Sorry he was such a monster, sorry that she loved him, and sorry she is hurting now.

“He was such a handsome man,” she says.

“Indeed, he was a very handsome man.”

“I want to remember him as he looked yesterday, wearing the jeans I'd bought him for Christmas and that blue shirt. He never saw the color, but it was his favorite. He used to say it smelled like summer.”

“Summer?”

“I dried it on the line down in the garden. He always said he could smell the scent of honeysuckle on the laundry in summer.”

“I guess blind people rely on their other senses a lot more.”

“It was uncanny how he knew where I was in the house. He could sense where I had been by the perfume I wear. And his hearing was so sharp! He knew by the sound of people's footsteps who it was even before they spoke.”

“I didn't know him well.”

“He didn't like strangers much. He preferred being here in the house with just me.” Vivienne's face crumples and her eyes start leaking tears. “I can't bear to think of him running away through the dark and then, oh, I can't bear to think of him at that ridge!”

“You must eat something. Alison has made your favorite soup.”

“Why didn't he wait and talk to me? I would have stood by him, I would have made sure people understood it wasn't his fault! How I wish you'd never fallen in that hole!”

“At least now you and Max know why Fergus never replied to any of Max's e-mails.”

“I would rather Christopher was alive!”

“I guess he couldn't face being blamed for Fergus's death.”

“But it was an accident! It must have been!”

Her eyes lock on mine, but I glance away, casting around Vivienne's bedroom, desperately seeking to distract her. Unlike the rest of the house, here there is but one picture, of a Maori warrior with feathers in his hair and a
moko
, tattoo, covering his face.

“What a beautiful painting! The detail is so intricate.”

Vivienne's sobs stop and her swollen eyes stare fixedly at me. “It's a Goldie.”

“Ah? I don't know anything about New Zealand artists.”

“That's my favorite of all my pictures,” she says.

“I'm not surprised. Oh, I have seen it before! Didn't it used to hang in the studio? I think it's in the photograph I have of Dad.”

“Bitch!” she suddenly shrieks and the next instant the bowl of soup bounces off my cheek, its contents sliding down my face like duckweed.

“I hate you! It's all your fault, you and that Chinese whore who stole my father!”

Her face is contorted and her mouth sprays saliva. “I hate your stupid face and I hate your horrible eyes!” She screams hysterically and flings the cutlery at me.

I retreat and slam the door shut. Alison comes running down the hallway as I lean against the door, shaking.

“Lin! Are you all right?”

“All I did was admire that painting she's got by her bed. Then she starts screaming and calls me a bitch.”

“Oh. You saw the Goldie.”

“So what?”

“That will stain,” she says. “I'll put it through the wash for you.”

“No more fricking secrets, Ali!”

Alison's kind face is resigned, but she is silent. I awkwardly pull the damp shirt back on around my injured shoulder and wait for her to speak. She hands me a clean towel to wipe my face and lets out a sigh.

“Mum gave the Goldie to Dad for their first anniversary. She loved that picture and Viv loves it too. Now it's worth a small fortune. And there is no doubt the Goldie belongs to you.”

We can hear the sound of Vivienne keening, louder and louder. Alison's eyes flick toward the room and back to me. Vivienne is her twin; they have been inseparable since they were born. I am merely the bastard latecomer.

“You'd better go to her,” I say. “But first, let me tell you what I'm going to do.”

Afterward, I trace my way back through the beautiful house, leaving wet footprints on the polished floor. The works of art shine forth their messages of beauty and wonder, the living room glistens in its pristine shades of cream and brown, the garden sprawls alongside the walls in a splendor of colors and shapes.

There is a sharp pain in my chest. I cannot imagine facing Vivienne again, Vivienne who hates my stupid face and my horrible eyes. How much more would she hate me if she knew what I'd done?

I'd done it for her. But we couldn't tell her that.

I pause on the path and look back at the beautiful home she and Rose created. Ngatirua. A sacred place.

A brilliant career, a close family, a great love—it is a woman's trilemma. You might get one, and if you're lucky, two; but few of us can have it all. I should have known I wouldn't get to keep my sisters.

I turn back onto the path and walk away.

Red velvet curtains frame the stage, chandeliers drip from the ceiling, and cables festoon the corners of the room in which Hera is holding its press conference.

Stewart Hobb stands at the podium gripping the microphone, behind him the portly figure of Mark Stanton and the plump shape of Pita Lane.

The journos balance laptops on the papers they've been given, faces turned to the stage, waiting to hear what they've been enticed here for. The photographers focus on capturing images of the important people and ignore what is merely spoken. There are a few coughs, assorted buzzes from cell phones, and scraping of chairs as bottoms shift to seek comfort.

So far there have been no surprises. Hobb has announced the launch of our new broadband service and he has placed a call to the minister of broadcasting via our new network. That had required a few mirrors and a lot of smoke, but we made the connection.

“Mr. Hobb, can you confirm the rumor that Ozcom is buying out the other shareholders?”

Hobb's face freezes; he looks down at his notes and then raises his head and looks across the floor. “There have been discussions about a potential buyout, but nothing is confirmed.”

Hobb stretches his mouth in a smile, and the audience buzzes back at him with interest.

“Mr. Hobb,” calls another journo. “Would this be an amicable buyout?”

Hobb's smile evaporates. “No decision has been made. There is some disagreement over future strategy that we expect to resolve after further consultation and discussion.”

“What strategy is that?”

“We can't divulge Hera's detailed plans,” Hobb says, shaking his head.

“Mr. Hobb, are you still expecting Hera to be a partner in the consortium?”

“We expect Hera to be a player in New Zealand's broadband future,” he says. “But the form remains to be seen.”

“What does this mean for your chief executive, Linnette Mere?”

Corporate psychopaths don't need to use their hands to murder people in order to get what they want. There are plenty of opportunities in the ordinary and legitimate power they have.

They do kill things though, if you let them.

At the Board meeting three days before, Hobb had proposed to halt the network build, sack most of the staff, and use the remnants of the company to support Australian business in New Zealand. Ozcom had always been more interested in protecting their trans-Tasman business than they were in investing in New Zealand's residential infrastructure. What they wanted were business connections for the New Zealand branches of Australian companies. They certainly didn't want to spend money on anything that would be purely for the benefit of New Zealanders. Mark Stanton, always more interested in minimizing risk than in creating something new, voted with Hobb.

They had expected us to fail to hit the launch date. With Hera's ability to compete in tatters, Ozcom expected to be able to buy out the other shareholders for a pittance. And I have no doubt my unloyal CFO Scott Peake expected to see himself at the helm of a new branch of Ozcom. Twig, really.

But because we made the launch there was a choice over
Hera's future. Hera could join the consortium and become a real player in New Zealand's broadband future.

The American and Asian shareholders voted to continue with the network we'd started building and to join the consortium.

Pita Lane held the casting vote.

Pita called for a
hui
at very short notice to discuss what the
iwi
wanted to do with their investment in Hera. The Maori elders came from all the regions the
iwi
held. We watched them troop into the Marae, the Maori meeting place on the waterfront across the road from Hera's offices, and we ferried documents out to them whenever they asked for more information. Ian and I worked on models to show different financial scenarios whenever they came up with a new angle.

It is a difficult time when your Board is in fundamental dispute over the very existence of the company as an independent entity. I kept Peake out of it, even though as CFO, he should have been the man to present the finances. But we didn't trust him.

Tom's people laid on a
hangi
to feast them. He brought food back to Ian, Fred, Marion, and me, slaving away in my office. We feasted on packages of vegetables and meat, slow cooked for hours on hot rocks, buried under flax and earth. We nibbled on fresh crayfish from the southern coast, and clams from the beaches to the north. I didn't eat the rotten corncobs, but I developed a brief, unlikely to be repeated, taste for muttonbird, the oily swamp fowl of New Zealand.

By Wednesday morning, the Maori elders had reached a consensus: they would not support selling out to Ozcom, and they wanted to keep building the network. They wanted the jobs created by Hera. Both the jobs and the competition would be better for New Zealand.

Lane's vote killed Hobb's proposal. At least until the next
pool of funding was depleted, and by that time, money should be coming back into the accounts and Hera formally confirmed within the consortium. The buyout price would be a lot higher, and the prospect therefore rather less attractive to Ozcom.

Or so Robert and I thought.

There was something else Lane wanted before he cast his vote to save Hera. He wanted control over the appointment of the chief executive. He wanted a better cultural fit, he said. A local.