by K T Bowes
“Yep.” Leslie put her hands on her ample hips and looked at Hana through the tops of her eyes. “And your tāne is leaving now. Your vehicle’s waiting at the bottom of the front steps. A coach almost rear-ended it.”
Hana hissed through her teeth. “Bloody man!”
Leslie threw back her head and laughed. “Too true, kōtiro. But if he says he’ll leave you here, then he will. Youse best run.”
Thwarted, Hana jogged along the narrow corridor towards the reception area. She slowed to a walk as she skirted a spiral staircase and forced a casualness into her movements. Too late, she noticed Logan watching her from a pillar in the lobby. He leaned against it, arms folded across his muscular chest and his lopsided smirk of victory set a fire burning in Hana’s guts. Stepping through a crowd of new guests, she kept her eyes fixed on his self-satisfied grin and balled her fists by her sides.
Logan shifted, turning to leave before she reached him. He winced as he unhooked his cast from its position resting on his other arm. He’d won and he didn’t even allow Hana the dignity of waiting for her. She sped up, consumed by the desire to slap his face. If she could reach.
Hana didn’t see the suitcase trailing across her path, pulled by a businessman in an expensive suit. He cut in front of her, his attention diverted by a shiny phone in his hand. Hana inhaled as her feet became entangled in the small wheels and saw the ground fly up to meet her. One hand went forward to break her fall and the other moved across her abdomen. The businessman swore and yanked his case free, compounding the problem and leaving only hard tiles in front of Hana.
Logan’s arms wrapped around her torso, hauling her upward and saving her. He grunted at the inevitable pain in his elbow as he took her weight and stood her on her feet. Not letting go, he glared at the businessman and whirled Hana away from the man’s apology. Frog marching her from the hotel, he opened the passenger door of Bodie’s car and thrust her shocked body inside. “Geez, Hana!” he bit as he settled himself into the driver’s seat. He cranked the seat controls to allow for his long legs and adjusted the mirror.
“It wasn’t my fault!” Her wide green eyes channelled hurt and shock as she turned her face towards his rebuke. The effort of not crying in front of him made her face tingle. Logan pursed his lips and turned away from her, concentrating on making more adjustments to his seating. Hana faced the passenger side window and let the tears fall onto her cheeks out of his sight. Her right hand strayed to her stomach and she caressed away the frightening sense of what might have happened. A week of shooting and riding and she almost blew the game walking across a hotel reception. Anger and rejection fuelled her temper and she watched the mountain scenery pass without registering the beauty it put on show for her.
Pastor Allen said the danger with anger lay in the false sense of exhilaration it induced. He said people responded to it by choice and got sucked into the addictive emotions it bred. Hana pushed his wise words to the back of her brain, choosing to avoid eye contact or conversation with Logan as they rode home in silence. He responded by shutting her out of his psyche as surely as if he’d bolted the door in her face. Hana felt sick at her stubbornness. She started the foolish argument and powerlessness stopped her from finishing it. She wanted to trust Logan as he demanded, but hit a brick wall when she least expected it.
They travelled back to Ngaruawahia in silence, the atmosphere tense and strained. The weather punished her for missing the mountainous display and rain threatened from darkening clouds above. Once at Culver’s Cottage, Hana broke out the vacuum and cleaning products, throwing herself into physical toil to dispel the growing sense of depression hanging over her head. Logan took the car and disappeared. The cat acted snooty in response to her prolonged abandonment and turned his nose up at the kibbles she put in his bowl. Three dead mice and a kingfisher sat on the flat roof above the garage and he twitched his tail in disgust at her sigh of irritation. “I know, I know,” she said, scratching him behind the ears. “Sorry I missed your gift. Can we please not kill kingfishers? They’re beautiful.” She peered through the glass at the entrails leading to the door. “But at least I know why you aren’t hungry.”
A call to Izzie found her daughter in a church meeting and unable to talk. Hana’s sense of isolation grew. She dialled a different number and the person on the other end sounded delighted to hear from her. She made a decision, took a firmer grip on the reins of her life and settled into bed feeling more in control.
Eight hours sleep meant Hana woke feeling refreshed. Logan didn’t disturb her with his arrival home or when he slipped into bed. His sleeping form seemed a million miles away from her and he didn’t rouse as her phone alarm vibrated on the bedside table. Hana showered and dressed in the bathroom and closed the front door behind her. She counted thirty-one jerks of the seat handle to get it back into a position where she could see over the steering wheel. Thirty-one reminders of her irritation with Logan.
A sense of freedom overwhelmed her and Hana cheered on reaching the hundred kilometre sign on River Road. She cranked up Bodie’s loud rock music on the stereo to cover the sound of the BMW’s wiper blades shepherding sheet rain off its windscreen.
Hana parked in her rightful space and walked into school, trepidation in her heart. New hair and a new outlook vied with her desire to sink back into old comforts. She felt unguarded and vulnerable, waving to the staff in the front office with feigned happiness and avoiding conversation.
“Hana!” Sheila ran from the other side of the office and wrapped her in enthusiasm and welcome. “I can’t believe you came!” She jerked her head backwards and surveyed Hana through narrowed eyes. “I love your new hair.” Her gaze roved across the blouse hanging loose and the skirt cinched at the waist with safety pins. “Why are you so thin?”
“I’m dieting,” Hana answered, brushing off Sheila’s concern with a fake laugh. Her colleague let the issue drop, but eyed her with suspicion. Gratitude trumped the need for information and she let Hana hang up her jacket and began work, keen for normal service to resume. Out of sight, she measured her wrist with her other hand and frowned at the way her fingers overlapped. “Worry and stress,” she whispered to herself.
Hana’s desk resembled a veritable junkyard of paper and mail. Her keyboard languished somewhere underneath and attempts to find it sent a landslide onto the floor. Starting outwards and working in, Hana satisfied a need to keep busy and stave off the nausea building in her upper abdomen. She cleared and binned, resorting to cloth and cleaning spray once she found the shelves and table surfaces. Filling the empty brochure racks took an hour, punctuated by calls to colleges and universities for more stock. Boys filed in and out, as Sheila caught up with appointments.
“Thank goodness you’re back!” Evie Douglas wrapped Hana in a relieved embrace. “Pete’s useless. He flicked every enquiry on to the guidance counsellors. Last week he sent a lost parent to Paul for directions to the main reception. He had to leave a crying boy to point them in the right direction.”
Hana squashed the sense of dismay bubbling in her chest. She adopted a professional expression and nodded. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m back now. Once I’ve found my keyboard, I’ll log into your calendar and sort it all out.”
Evie glanced at the pile on Hana’s desk and nodded, patting her shoulder with understanding. “Okay. I’ll leave you to it.” She left in a hail of perfume and hair spray and Hana’s stomach reacted.
As Hana sifted and filed outstanding correspondence, Sheila emerged from her office with a lipstick in her hand. She reapplied it without looking. “Do you know what that stupid little man did?” she raged. “He told the Year 12s to treat it as a gap year! Thank heavens most of them ignored him and waited for me to come back. Tertiary institutions look at the Year 12 results because the boys apply in their final year. It’s their last complete year of results.”
“Oh.” Hana winced. “Did any believe him? How do you find those boys?”
Shei
la snapped her lipstick closed and waggled her eyebrows. “How did that man ever get a teaching qualification? Does he have any brain cells?”
Sheila retreated into her office to deal with the next boy and Hana sorted her desk. She skim read most things and put them into piles relating to urgency. Creating a folder of items that should have gone to Sheila, she noticed requests from parents for appointments that were weeks old. Polishing the wooden surface of her desk before lunch, Hana heaved a sigh of relief. Satisfaction went some way towards lifting her mood as she counted the neat piles on the floor at her feet. She knelt and gathered one of the piles into her hands.
A sudden click and heady draught preceded an almighty crash. The rear door smacked into the stock cupboard and Pete followed. “Hi.” He stepped across the piles of paper, scattering them far and near. Staring at Hana, he kept walking, a flicker of recognition in his face. When he hit the filing cabinet, he swore and caught the printer which plunged to its death from the top. “Do I know you?” he demanded, dumping the printer on the floor. “Are you new?”
“It’s Hana, you idiot!” Sheila spat a small boy from her office and hauled in the next one. “Put the printer back on top of the cupboard where you found it. And be more careful!”
Pete ignored the printer and left it on the carpet in front of the door. He walked towards Hana and peered at her face. “Oh, hello,” he said. “I thought you were Hana’s replacement.” He leaned closer and sniffed her hair. “I don’t like it. Change it back.”
Hana sighed and stood, the blood rushing to her head and faintness threatening. She reached out and righted herself using Pete’s arm and he stared at her fingers in surprise. “Actually, don’t change it.” He screwed his face into a coy grin. “The old Hana never touched me.” He fluttered his blonde eyelashes and moved closer.
Hana let go and took a step back. “You’re forgetting I’m married to Logan Du Rose,” she said, her voice sickly sweet.
Pete jumped away and looked around the office. “Where is he?” he demanded. “Is he watching?”
Looking down at the mess at their feet, Hana gripped Pete by both shoulders, facing him toward the scattered documents. “Pete, this is important. I’m trying to make sense of the budget and invoices from when you were in charge.”
His eyes widened like large lemons in his pale face and he shuffled backwards, eyeing the mess with suspicion and fear. His lips formed a round ‘o’ of distress. “It’s not my fault,” he began. His voice rose at the end of his sentence. “The sleep deprivation almost killed me.” Clutching his heart, he continued backing away. Hana jabbed a finger at the papers littered around her feet. “Touch these and I’ll quit. I need total silence and tea every half an hour or I’m done.” Hana put her hands on her hips and raised an eyebrow in challenge. “And I’m not kidding.”
Pete gasped in horror and turned to make a run for it. The open space of the common room stretched before him. Bounding backwards like a squash ball hitting a wall, he contacted the bulky frame of the head of technology. “You can’t come in.” He pressed his skinny fingers against the man’s robust chest. “The office is closed.”
Hana bit her lower lip and watched Pete shuffle the man backwards through the doorway. When the door shut in her face, she clasped her hands over her eyes, cringing at the ensuing argument outside. She ate a pie from the tuck shop for lunch and didn’t break from her spring clean. The constant ringing of her phone resulted in her turning it off and tossing it into her handbag in the bottom drawer. By the time the boys changed lesson for the last time that day, the office looked its usual organised space and Hana felt satisfied with her progress. Apart from the piles of paper stacked next to her desk.
The steady hum of chatter from the common room ceased and Hana expected to see Alan Dobbs appear in the doorway. He didn’t.
“So this is where you’re hiding.” Bodie leaned against the doorframe, his police radio chattering against his Kevlar vest.
“I’m not hiding.” Hana closed the cupboard door with a sigh of pleasure at its immaculate state. A glance past her son showed boys craning their necks to see if she might be in trouble. A rumble of curiosity ripped through the group which dropped its pretence at study. Hana gave Bodie a tired smile. “Am I under arrest officer?” she asked.
Bodie slumped into Pete’s chair and leaned forward. “No madam, but your frantic husband is considering lodging a missing report for you.” He chewed gum as he waited for her answer, growing impatient as she pushed paper around her desk and ignored him. “What happened? You disappeared for a week and turned up at work where I asked you not to go. Judging by Logan’s call, he didn’t know either. Where’s your phone?”
Hana sat, her legs wobbling beneath her. It all seemed too hard to explain. “My phone is off because I’m busy.” She tried to sound casual. “I needed to come back to work, so I did.”
“Telling no one?” Bodie raised an eyebrow and leaned forward. His touch on her forearm felt like an electric jolt. “If the marriage isn’t working out, I can help you. You’ve lost heaps of weight since you married Logan. Are you sick or is he hurting you?” He closed his eyes and ran a hand over his face. “What’s wrong? Please tell me.”
His sincerity cracked her resolve. “We argued,” she said, lowering her voice. The boys’ collective radar twitched on high alert. “I wanted to stay at the hotel because I felt safe but he booked a meeting in Hamilton.”
“A meeting with who?” Bodie’s body stiffened.
Hana shrugged. “He didn’t say.” She licked her lips and sighed. “It’s probably innocent, but he hated me prying. I handled it wrong and we fought.”
“But you don’t know where he went or who he saw?”
Hana exhaled, realising her massive mistake as she drove the wedge further between her men. “It’s nothing,” she said. “We’re tired and fed up of hiding. It gives me cabin fever and we both get snappy.”
“How long did he go out for?” Bodie demanded and Hana stood, terminating the conversation.
“It’s nothing. Please leave it.” One more question and he’d ask if Logan used his car. As he opened his mouth to speak, Hana raised her hand. “Bodie, enough!”
Her son puffed up his chest but refrained. Hana heard the radio cackle through the earpiece he’d removed. The wire dangled over his shoulder like black spaghetti and he picked up the bud and slotted it into his ear. “Gotta go,” he said, forcing a grin onto his lips. “Be careful, Mum.” He placed a peck on her cheek and the nosey boys outside gasped. Hana watched him stride from the office with a confident step, knowing his warning extended to within her walls as well as outside.
Sheila let her leave early. “You’re amazing,” she cooed, looking around the office. “I thought we’d never get it cleared up.”
Hana turned away and bit her lower lip at her use of the plural. Neither Sheila nor Pete put in any effort, leaving it all to her. “See you tomorrow,” she said, gathering up her handbag and making her escape.
Using the door to the soccer field, Hana skirted the chapel and checked the car park before venturing into the open space. She jogged to Bodie’s car and dashed into the driver’s seat, shooting the button for the central locking. Sighing with relief, she started the engine and pulled out onto Maui Street.
Logan waited on the porch as Hana drove up the hill. Bodie’s car strained at the incline and exhaustion shrouded her as soon as the gate clicked shut. She clumped up the steps to the porch, embarrassed by Logan’s intense stare. He blocked her route into the house, tall and striking with a guarded expression. Damp hair from a recent shower clung to his forehead and Hana inhaled his clean scent. Pressing a kiss to her forehead, Logan said, “I made coffee.”
She stepped across the threshold and the smell of freshly percolated coffee greeted her like a strong, brown wall. Whirling around, Hana shoved at Logan’s solid chest and tripped over the threshold. She landed on her knees and pushed her face through the porch r
ails before vomiting over the flowerbed beneath. The poor daisies bobbed their pretty heads and rued their rotten luck for the second time that week.
“Sorry,” she spluttered as Logan crouched next to her, rubbing her back.
“It’s okay,” he soothed as she retched. The scent of coffee hung around the porch, filtering through the open front door. Logan left her, emptying the machine and opening the windows before Hana could enter the house. Even in the bedroom, she still smelled it. The roof garden seemed like the only safe place for her fragile stomach. Logan’s leather jacket covered her shoulders and she sat on the garden bench overlooking the bush.
“Hemi helped me lift the furniture up here,” Logan said, indicating the pots and heavy table. “You can move things around where you want them.”
“Thanks.” Hana pulled the jacket closer around her. “It looks good.”
Logan shifted next to her like a small child seeking her approval. She glanced down and saw his fingers writhing with discomfort. She fought the urge to reach out and offer reassurance through touch. His behaviour the previous day damaged her trust in him. A voice in the back of her head whispered dangerous suggestions about where he might have gone. Hana inhaled and pushed away Caroline’s image. “I want to go to bed now,” she said, her voice hoarse. It sounded more plea than statement.
Logan nodded and stood to help her inside. His brow furrowed and Hana yearned to press her face into his safe chest and forget her doubts. Shrugging off her tight clothes and snuggling into bed, she watched Logan open the window and close the curtains. “Is this what happens?” he asked her, his eyes filled with concern.
“I can’t remember,” Hana sighed. “I think so.” She pressed her face into the pillow and closed her eyes.
“What did you eat today?” Logan squatted next to the bed and stroked her hair back from her forehead. A clip caught against his fingers and he struggled to loosen the clasp.
“I don’t know.” Hana screwed up her face. “Don’t talk about food.”