Zack breathed a windy sigh of relief. “Can you come, Mum?” he begged.
“I think I could manage that,” Emma said with a smile at Nic. “That’d be fun.”
“Then let’s have a wander round,” Nic said. “Take the tour.”
Zack wasn’t much interested in the lounge, kitchen, dining room, and study that took up most of the ground floor, however impressive they still were to Emma. He showed a bit more enthusiasm, though, for the patio outside.
“You have a spa pool!” he said with delight. “Is it really hot?”
“Yeh,” Nic said. “And you’re not to go in that unless your Mum or I are with you, understand?”
“Maybe a lock for the cover,” Emma said to Nic quietly. “Just to be on the safe side.”
“D’you ever practice in the garden?” Zack asked, looking longingly at the level patch of grass beyond the patio.
“Never had anyone willing to do it with me,” Nic said. “Maybe you’d like to help me out with that, when you’re here.”
“No kicking,” Emma put in hastily. “Or that’ll be the end of your windows.”
“Oi. I’m more accurate than that,” Nic protested.
She laughed. “I wasn’t talking about you, and you know it.”
Zack’s interest waned again on the first floor, until they reached the exercise room. “Cool,” he said, looking at the sets of weights stored on specially built racks, the ranks of dumbbells and heavy round plates meant to fit onto the long barbell rods, all stacked neatly against the mirrored wall that stretched the entire length of the room.
“You have just about everything, don’t you?” Emma asked, taking in the weight bench and bench press rack, the state-of-the-art exercise bike and treadmill, the exercise balls and stretching mats arranged in the corner. “I wouldn’t need a gym membership, if I had all this.”
“You wouldn’t be able to take those classes, though,” Nic pointed out.
“How do you know about my classes?”
“Saw you there one day,” he admitted. “Working out. D’you go often?”
“Most days, at lunch. I get a membership as part of my job. One of the few perks.”
Zack had climbed up onto the bike, was trying in vain to reach the pedals. “Where am I going to sleep?” he asked Nic. “When I’m here?”
“Got a spot in mind for you,” Nic assured him. He led them up yet another flight of stairs, opened a door at the end of another gleaming hardwood passage. “This is what I was thinking,” he said. “Come in and tell me how it strikes you. A bit like a treehouse, see?”
“Yeh,” Zack agreed, going over to gaze out the big window into the treetops beyond. “It’s cool.”
He was still uncertain, Emma could tell. And she was, too. It all felt pretty new. Pretty strange. “Nice ceiling,” she said encouragingly. It did, indeed, slope on both sides, here at the top of the house. “It makes it cozy, but it’s still a good height.”
“Where do these stairs go?” Zack asked, standing on the first step of the twisting iron stairway that stood in an alcove at one end of the room.
“Ah,” Nic smiled. “Why don’t you go on up there, see for yourself?”
“Awesome!” they heard a moment later. “Mum! Come see!”
Emma emerged at the top, closely followed by Nic. “It’s the turret!” she exclaimed. “How great!”
Zack was kneeling on one of the window seats that lined two walls of the little tower, peering out. “You can see the sea, Mum!” he told her excitedly.
“Thought you might like that,” Nic said with satisfaction. “It’s a pretty good place to read a book, or just look out at the kitesurfers, watch the storms come in, check the tides. A good place to be a boy. And a person could even build a Lego set up here,” he suggested with a twinkle, pointing out the built-in desk on the third wall. “If he had a new one, of course.”
“It’s so cool,” Zack said again. “Can I sleep up here, too?”
Nic laughed. “You may be more comfortable in a bed, but it’s your room. Come on down and see the rest of it.”
Zack left the little tower reluctantly. “Be sure to hold the handrail on the way down,” Emma cautioned him. “And to watch yourself on these twisty steps.”
“Mum,” Zack said with exasperation. “I’m not a baby. I can do stairs.”
Downstairs again, he eyed the room a bit dubiously. “This bed is really big. And fancy.” He looked at the pale green satin duvet cover, poked it gingerly.
“I thought we could get you something more your size,” Nic suggested. “That’d make a bit more room in here, too. So you could have a desk, shelves, all that.”
“A desk? Like a real one?” Zack asked.
“Yeh,” Nic assured him. “A real one. Don’t look so excited. You’re meant to do your homework at it.”
“D’you think Graham could come sometime?” Zack asked him shyly. “To see my room?”
“Don’t see why not. Give you a bit of company.”
“Bunk beds,” Emma said. “If you think so,” she added hastily with a look at Nic. “But it’d be better, if you mean it about Zack being able to have a friend over. We could put them against this wall,” she planned.
“Wow,” Zack breathed. “Bunk beds would be awesome.”
“Bunk beds it is, then,” Nic decided. “And a desk, and shelves. And clear out the rest of this clobber.”
Emma had to laugh at that. Any one of the pieces of “clobber” in this room would, she knew, have cost more than all the furniture in her little flat.
“How d’you want it to look?” Nic asked Zack. “When it’s done?”
“What d’you mean?” Zack asked blankly.
“I mean, decorated,” Nic explained. “The paint, and that. Want the walls white like they are, or colors, like at your mum’s?”
“Can I have colors?”
“Course. It’s your room. You can have what you like.”
“Black, then,” Zack said firmly. “I want an All Black room.”
Emma and Nic shared a look. “Teach you to issue open-ended invitations like that,” she grinned. “Boy, do you have a lot to learn.”
“The whole room being black would be too dark,” she explained to Zack. “It’d be like a cave, in here. But I know,” she went on as his face fell. “How about if we did a wallpaper border, up at the top? I’m pretty sure I could find that. Keep the walls white, but with a border. Black, with the silver fern and ‘All Blacks’ on, all the way around?”
“Yeh,” Zack decided. “That’d be choice. And can the rest of the room be All Blacks too? Can I bring my posters from home, maybe?”
“Nah,” Nic told him. “We’ll get you new posters. So you’ll have them both places. And,” he told Emma. “If there’s anything, sheets, duvet, and that, that he wants. All Black stuff. I think you can get that kind of gear. Since we’ve got a theme going here.”
“Can I, Mum?” Zack asked eagerly.
“Sure,” she smiled down at him. “If Nic says.”
“Right,” Nic decided. “I don’t know what to buy, though. What would suit him. Maybe you wouldn’t mind buying the furniture, and all the rest of it. And a carpet too,” he realized, using a toe to flip up the edge of an Oriental carpet in a delicate pastel paisley pattern. “Because this isn’t going to work, eh. Just tell me how much it was, and I’ll put it back into your account.”
“Uh . . .” She stopped. “Sweetie, I need to talk to Nic for a while,” she decided. “Let’s go get you set up with the TV, just for a few minutes, OK?”
“I need to tell you,” she said when she and Nic were in the room again, alone this time. “I can’t, actually. Buy the furniture and everything, I mean.” She was embarrassed, but it was better to be honest. “I told you, money’s not my best thing. And a few years ago, I had a pretty big problem. I spent too much on my credit card, then I had some car trouble, and . . .” she trailed off. “Anyway, I got it all paid off, finally. Took forever. But I lowered my credit limi
t, so I couldn’t do that again. I only have a few thousand dollars on there, for emergencies. Which happen a lot,” she admitted. “There isn’t enough to buy all this.” She finished, feeling ashamed as always when she talked about money, but relieved too. He might as well know the worst.
He didn’t say anything, just pulled his wallet from his back pocket, selected a credit card and handed it to her. “Right. Use this, then.”
She looked at him in puzzled surprise. “You’re giving me your card to use? After what I just told you?”
He shrugged. “What did you tell me? That you had a problem, and you took care of it. And saw to it that it wouldn’t happen again. Why would that make me not trust you? What am I missing here?”
“I just . . .” She stopped in confusion. Put the card into her own wallet, snapped her purse closed again. “I’ll only buy stuff for Zack,” she promised. “And I’ll try to remember to save all the receipts for you.”
“No worries. I’ll see the statement,” he reminded her. “Besides, that card doesn’t have much of a limit on it itself. If you tried running away to the Gold Coast for a flash holiday, you wouldn’t get too far. So I’m not taking much of a risk, after all.”
“But you should tell me,” she said as a new concern occurred to her. “How much I can spend on it. What your limit is.”
“Were you planning on antiques, then? Are there designer bunk beds I don’t know about?”
“No, of course not. Well, maybe there are. I wouldn’t know. But there are different options. Normally, I’d try the Op Shops first. Then go to the outlet stores, if I couldn’t find anything. There’s always a cheaper way.”
“No Op Shops,” he said firmly. “Not saying there’s anything wrong with that. But you don’t need to do all that, not this time. Just go to the regular shop.” He gave a frustrated gesture. “Whatever that is. I have no idea. Claudia did all the rest of this, with the decorator. But go where you think will be good, buy what he needs, and we’ll be golden.”
“Oh, and come look at this with me,” he remembered, taking her by the hand. He took her down the stairs and along the hall to the main guest bedroom. The one, Emma realized with embarrassment, that they’d used two nights earlier.
“The nights Zack’s here, like I said, I’m thinking I may be able to talk you into coming too,” Nic told her with a smile. “And that you may want to sleep in here. Wake up in here, anyway.”
“I will,” she said with relief. “I want to be with you, but I don’t want Zack to know we’re sleeping together. It’s too . . . complicated, just now. He has enough to deal with. I was wondering how to do that.”
“Well, this is it, don’t you think? Anyway, this is yours. It has a bath—but you already know that. Has the right bed, too, in case we ever need to use that again.”
She looked at the carved posts, and could feel herself turning red. “Yeah,” she said, her voice sounding constrained in her ears. “A bath would be nice.”
He smiled. “And the bed? How about that?”
“Nic,” she pleaded. “Quit it. I’m so embarrassed, I can’t stand it.”
He took her face in his hands and gave her a long kiss. “Sorry,” he said, though he didn’t look sorry in the least. “You’re right. I’m teasing. We’ll use my bed. It’s bigger. Just keep this one for special occasions. That suit you?”
“That does,” she agreed, turning her head to rub her cheek against his hand. “Special occasions. That works for me.”
“What I really brought you in here to say,” he told her, releasing her reluctantly, “is that when you’re buying that stuff for Zack, if you need anything for this room. Sheets, towels, duvet cover, like that. You should go ahead.”
“But you have those things already,” she objected. “It’s all done.”
“Yeh.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose ruefully with a thumb. “Just thought, you know. Colors, and that. They may not suit you.”
She looked at the light-charcoal walls with their chalk-white trim, the silver-gray duvet cover and white linens. Envisioned the gray towels in the bath. “Well, I wouldn’t say they’d be my first choice,” she conceded. “But it’s very elegant. And the color scheme matches the walls. Too much work to change everything. No point.”
“I want you to be comfortable, that’s all,” he said. “So you’ll be here as much as possible.”
“It’s fine,” she said. “I’ll focus on Zack’s room. That’s going to be plenty, no worries.”
Chapter 30
“Did my bed come?” Zack asked on Wednesday afternoon, as he’d asked every day since they’d bought it. Never mind Emma’s explanations of delivery schedules.
She opened the car door and slung his pack into the back seat, made sure he was fastened. “Well, you know what?” she told him happily as she climbed into the driver’s seat and prepared to leave the childcare center carpark. “It did! Nic texted me that all the furniture was delivered today, and the guys got everything set up. And he invited us to come over and get your room ready tonight, if you want. So it’ll be all set for you when we go to stay this weekend. But maybe you’re too tired,” she added seriously. “Maybe you’d rather wait till Friday.”
“Mummmm,” Zack wailed, then saw the smile peeping out of the corner of her mouth and laughed in relief. “Can we really go? Straight away?”
“Almost,” she promised. “We need to stop by the house first and get the other stuff we bought. And get me changed into some jeans, if I’m going to be hanging your wallpaper border and crawling around on top of a bunk bed. Plus you need to eat something, before we go. A quick tea. Beans and toast, how’s that?”
“OK. But can you drive really, really fast?” Zack pleaded. “Because I can’t wait.”
He was out of the car and running for the door, when they eventually did get to Nic’s, before Emma even had the boot open. She came up behind him, loaded down with a bulging bag of bedding, just as Nic opened the door to find Zack dancing impatiently on the doorstep.
“Hi there. Come to do a bit of redecorating, eh,” he said. “D’you need to pee?” he asked in alarm, seeing Zack’s wiggly performance.
“Nah,” Zack said indignantly. “I’m just excited.”
Emma laughed. “You catch on fast, don’t you?” She gave Nic a quick kiss. “There’s a bunch more stuff in the car,” she told him.
“Got it. Leave that thing there,” he demanded. “I’ll fetch it all, bring it up. Meantime, go have a look.”
Nic came through the door of the bedroom, dropped his armload of purchases. “Shit!” he yelped, making it across the room just in time to catch Emma as she overbalanced and tipped off the seat of Zack’s desk chair, the wheels rolling out from under her.
“What the hell were you thinking?” he asked in exasperation, setting her down. “Standing on something with wheels? It rolls, you know? That’s the bloody idea. Why didn’t you wait for me, ask me to get a stepstool?”
“I just wanted to start hanging the border,” she said lamely. “I had the chair shoved up against the wall. I thought it’d be OK.”
“You’re too bloody impulsive. Are you trying to get yourself hurt? You need to think, damn it!”
“Don’t shout at me. It was stupid, OK? I admit it. And I was scared, when I started to fall. I don’t need you to shout at me.”
“Aw, geez.” He reached for her, gave her a cuddle. She was trembling a bit, he realized. It really had scared her. “Sorry. But you scared me, too.”
“Anyway,” she said, rallying now, “you haven’t always minded my impulsivity, have you?”
“Nah,” he said with a smile. “You’re right. I haven’t.”
“You said a lot of bad words, Nic,” Zack told him from his perch on the upper bunk. “Mum says I’m not allowed.”
“You’re not,” Nic said. “Slipped out, that’s all. And I’ll go get a stepstool, do the rest of this,” he told Emma. “You go put sheets on, or something. Something safe.”
&nb
sp; “I can do it,” she objected. “I’ve done everything at our flat, you know. All the painting, hanging everything. I own an electric drill. I even kill my own spiders. And if you’ll get me the stepstool, I’ll do this too.”
Nic sighed. “Right. You’re competent and strong. And clever. Even though I stand by the stubborn bit. So let me ask this another way. Would you please allow me to hang the wallpaper border, participate in this decorating exercise?”
“Are you patronizing me?” she asked suspiciously.
“Nah. I’m not. Really not. I still think the rolling-chair thing wasn’t your best moment. But I’ll acknowledge that you could do it. I’m asking you to let me do it.”
“Would somebody please do it?” Zack pleaded. “I really, really want my All Blacks room. Please?”
Emma had to laugh. “We’ll do it together,” she told Nic. “Just yell when you need me to hand you something.”
By the time he had the rest of the border hung, with very little help needed from her, she had to admit, Emma had both beds neatly made with their matching All Blacks duvets.
“I still wish we’d got the sheets,” Zack sighed, sitting on the bottom bunk and bouncing experimentally. “Then I’d have everything.”
“Boy, give you one thing, and you’re a regular conspicuous consumer, aren’t you?” Emma chided him. “They’re ridiculous. These white ones have a higher cotton count, and they’re a quarter of the price. It’s all those licensing fees. We spent enough of Nic’s money as it was.”
“Oi,” Nic protested. “Those licensing fees pay my wages, you know. Looked at another way, you’re just putting a bit more back in the pot for later, when my agent’s negotiating my next contract. So you could view all this as an investment, eh,” he said with a wink at Zack.
“Yeh, Mum!” Zack said triumphantly. “It’s a vestment!”
Emma laughed. “You don’t even know what an investment is. And for the record, that means when you put your money, or you work hard, toward something that’s going to be earning you money back later on. Like working hard in school helps you get a good job when you’re big.”
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