The One That Got Away

by Jennifer Palgrave

  She changed the subject again. ‘If you listen to the recording and follow up what you can, I’ll see what I can find out in Cambridge. I’ve decided I’m going; I’m not going to be put off because it’s Brett Wilson funding it. In fact, if he’s there, I’ll make sure I talk to him and ask what he knows about that time in the eighties. Even if he’s not, I bet some of my old friends will have kept tabs, and be able to tell me what happened to him after Cambridge and how he made his money.’

  ‘But what about your holiday with Kirsten?’

  Lauren looked pleased. ‘I’ve worked out I can probably fit everything in–being a research guinea pig, seeing my friend Rachel and my family, and then meeting Kirsten and the others in Greece, instead of travelling with them.’

  ‘That’s great,’ said Ro. She looked at her watch. ‘I’d better get to the library, they were supposed to be hauling out some papers for me this morning. I’ll see you soon, and remember–not a word to anyone else about the plot.’

  Lauren glanced at the time–six-thirty, usually a good time to call Kirsten. She carried the phone to her favourite armchair, sat down and punched in the number.

  ‘Kirsten here.’

  ‘Hello darling, have you had a lovely day?’

  ‘Just got in the door, I’ll call you right back.’

  A few minutes later her phone rang and Kirsten started talking about the account she’d been trying to land for weeks. ‘Nearly there,’ she said, ‘the client loved our pitch with the netball team in the changing rooms. Maybe a little exploitative, but it’s fun.’

  Lauren suppressed a feminist response. How could Kirsten feel excited about using women’s bodies to sell toothpaste! ‘Do netballers really brush their teeth after a game?’

  ‘Don’t pour cold water, darling,’ Kirsten replied. ‘Anyhow, how are you? You didn’t call yesterday.’ (Neither did you, thought Lauren.)

  ‘Busy. I think I told you I was helping Ro Wisbech with an interview. I did it yesterday and talked about it with her this morning. We came up with some unexpected material, and it might keep me busy for a while.’ She hesitated; she would like to have told Kirsten how horrifying she’d found the discovery of the plot, but Ro had asked her to keep it quiet. Besides, she had a sinking feeling that Kirsten might not see how momentous it was; she sounded unengaged.

  She changed the subject. ‘I told you my Cambridge trip was being funded by Brett Wilson, and that I knew him when I was a student? I hadn’t realised–he was in New Zealand a lot in the eighties–Ro told me he was one of the money men pawing over our state assets then. I still can’t understand why he’d be supporting a project on women and ageing, no matter how wealthy he is. I wonder if he’s got an ulterior motive.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, darling. You’re always so suspicious of anyone who’s made a pile. He’s probably perfectly nice and wants to do something useful with his money.’

  Lauren doubted it, but decided not to pursue that line of conversation. They chatted on in a desultory sort of way, before agreeing to phone earlier the next night, as they both had Saturday outings planned. They signed off with their usual, ‘Love you.’

  Lauren reached for her book, a new sci-fi that her friend Megan had recommended. She could have been making calls to people, urging them to vote Labour in the election; or working on how she could find out more about Kevin Driscoll. But she decided what she needed was a cosy evening at home with a good book. She became absorbed and went to bed ridiculously late.

  Lauren had promised to go to the Newtown market the next morning, to help with Labour electioneering. She groaned when she woke up and saw the time, leapt out of bed and was at the market by nine o’clock.

  The market was already well under way. The Newtown School grounds were completely transformed, stalls butting close together, canvas tops to keep out the sun or rain, and fruit and veg displayed invitingly on stall after stall. Familiar fruit like apples, oranges, pears and kiwifruit, as well as mangoes, persimmons, guavas. Vegetables and herbs for Asian cooking: kohlrabi, bok choy, lemongrass–Newtown was known for its cultural diversity. Lauren made a mental note to do her own shopping before she left, but in the meantime, joined the little cluster of red-jacketed figures by one of the entrances.

  ‘Oh Lauren, you’re here! Take this – one of them passed her a clipboard–‘and give out these.’ The face of Jacinda Ardern, new leader of the Labour Party, looked out from the front of a pamphlet. ‘And if people aren’t on the electoral roll yet, get them to fill out one of these if you can, and we’ll gather up the forms and get them to a PostShop. You go that way.’

  Lauren obediently walked off in the direction he indicated. She gave herself a mental shake, put a smile on her face and said, ‘Good morning,’ cheerfully to people as they passed. ‘An election coming soon,’ she said, ‘Are you on the electoral roll?’ The reactions were predictable. A ‘No thank you’ from National voters taking in her red jacket, a ‘Good on you’ from Labour sympathisers, or a note of uncertainty from others.

  One man came up to her and said, ‘So why should I trust your party? David Lange promised us the earth, before they sold us down the river.’

  That was an interesting mixed metaphor, Lauren thought, but she had to agree with it. ‘A lot of us felt betrayed at that time, but I have faith in Jacinda Ardern. Why don’t you give her a go?’

  The guy harrumphed and walked off, leaving Lauren to reflect that the state of the government under Lange was even worse than people realised, if it had come to poison!

  She finished her stint, returned the paraphernalia–jacket, clipboard and the rest–to the organiser, bought her own fruit and veg for the week, and headed home.

  There was more electioneering that she’d promised to help with in the weeks ahead: pamphlets to deliver, street corner meetings, house meetings. She also had an urgent batch of editing to complete before she went to England. Any work on the Lange plot would have to wait till she returned, she decided. Ro had her head down, finishing her book; Phyl’s contact in the police was in Australia on some exchange scheme; and she herself had to get her paid work done. No point in worrying about it; after all, the case had been unsolved for years. When she was in Cambridge she would try to find out more about Brett and the money men, and by the time she got home, Ro and she would both have more time.

  5

  ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune’

  The eleven-hour flight from Auckland to Singapore was as ghastly as usual. Lauren had flown from Wellington earlier in the day, then transferred from the domestic to the international airport. She had called Kirsten while waiting in the departure lounge, but had managed only the briefest of farewells since Kirsten had been in a meeting. As she settled into her seat, on the aisle with two strangers beside her, she recalled how ceremonious the departure had been on her first trip to England, back in the 1970s.

  She had chosen to go the old-fashioned way, by ocean liner. Her family made the trip to Auckland to explore the ship with her before they were called off to join the crowd lining the wharf. The ship pulled slowly out from its mooring, streamers linking passengers and those farewelling them. The air had been filled with brass band music, the crowd singing along to ‘Now Is the Hour’. Streamers snapped one by one and trailed in the water. Lauren’s last sight was her mother wiping her eyes, her father’s arm around her shoulders. Six blissful weeks ahead, time for tackling the Cambridge reading list, not to mention enjoying foreign ports and shipboard romances. Now, it seemed, your partner could leave for the other side of the world with barely a goodbye. Not worth interrupting a business meeting!

  The six hours between flights allowed time to walk off those hours of sitting and dozing, but mostly it was an interval to be endured. Usually, she would have built in a night or two’s stopover. Tacking the trip to England onto the original holiday arrangement had not given her the luxury of spare days.

  With relief she boarded the plane
to Heathrow. The thirteen-hour flight was a nightmare of screaming babies and hacking adults. She was desperate for sleep now, but her usual tricks of counting in fives or going through the alphabet, first with girls’ names then boys’ names, did not work. She got right through to Zachariah and then spent the hours in a fugue-like state, aware of her aches and pains and worries and distanced from the life of the bodies pressed close around her.

  She dwelt on the possible meeting with Brett Wilson. What would she say to him? She tried rehearsing some opening lines, but did not have the concentration to settle on any one strategy. Thinking of Brett made her think back to Kevin and she worried away at his reported attempt to kill Lange. What did Judith Butler mean by saying she thought he might have slipped something in a drink. Slipped what? Why was Butler unsure? When did it happen? Who put Kevin up to it? Did whatever was slipped into the drink, if that was it, have any effect at all? It was all difficult to imagine and she wished the interview had been more satisfactory. Sure, she got the plot confirmed and Driscoll named, but the details were irritatingly patchy.

  When Lauren was not thinking about Kirsten, or how to squeeze information out of Brett, or Driscoll’s nefarious behaviour, her anxieties circled round to the election taking place in New Zealand at this very moment. She had voted before leaving and she had given as much time to electioneering as she could afford. There was so much resting on the result, but Labour’s chance seemed slight. Despite coming back from the dead with Jacinda’s stellar rise, they were still behind in the polls. But surely people would not vote for things to go on as they were. Lauren would jerk properly awake, horrified at the thought, then sink back to semi-consciousness. She roused herself altogether as the plane’s lights went on. Breakfast came eventually and Lauren managed to adjust her off-key body clock enough to tackle bacon and eggs with surprising relish. Soon after, the plane landed.

  Passengers shuffled off, red-eyed and half asleep, to join the long queue at customs. Lauren blessed her dual citizenship as she joined the much shorter queue for ‘British and EU passports’. If nothing else, Brexit would make this queue even shorter. Uplifting her bag, a small one that she could comfortably manoeuvre around airports and train stations, she was through Customs quickly.

  She looked around the waiting crowd and saw someone frantically waving in her direction, her granddaughter Tamsin held up high by Julia. Soon they were embracing, with Tamsin in her arms, Julia’s solid hug and Adam clinging to her trousers. Lauren didn’t go in for emotional displays but she felt her throat constrict. Damn, she thought, there were twelve thousand miles between them. She wished they would come home.

  The grandchildren were all over her in the train from Heathrow and in the taxi to their hotel. Julia had brought them up the night before as a treat, and booked two adjoining hotel rooms. Lauren threw down her coat and bag on a bed and slumped in a chair. A weekend in London with her family–in New Zealand it had sounded like a great idea. The children both talked at once, their voices getting louder as they tried to be heard over each other; they patted her for attention, told her they were going on the Eye, and to the zoo. But right now, all Lauren wanted was a shower and a lie-down.

  She pulled herself up straighter, tousled Adam’s hair and said it all sounded lovely but first Gran must have a rest. Over the children’s heads, Julia and she agreed–Julia would take them shopping and Lauren would meet them all for a late lunch at Giraffe, a child-friendly restaurant nearby, before taking a bus from Baker Street to the zoo. ‘But before you all go, there’s something even more important–we have to see what’s happened in New Zealand.’

  ‘But Gran, haven’t you just been in New Zealand?’ That was pretty good for a five-year-old, Lauren thought.

  ‘Yes, Adam, but while I was flying here, there was a general election, and everyone will have voted by now. Your gran’s been working hard to help try to get a new government and I want to find out if we have.’ She checked the time–ten-thirty–so it would be ten-thirty in the evening back home. Usually far too late to phone people but she’d already arranged with her friends that she’d be in touch during the election night party. Though since they all voted on the left, it hadn’t been much of a party the last couple of occasions. She was praying that this time it would be different. She dug in the bag for her laptop and said to Julia, ‘I’m skyping, so they can fill me in properly.’

  There was the usual fiddling, then they were connected. Ro’s face on the screen didn’t look ecstatic. ‘Doesn’t look like Labour can do it,’ she said. ‘They’ve got lots more seats than last time, but the Nats are still ahead. Even if Labour and the Greens went into coalition, they still haven’t got the seats. I hope you voted before you went?’

  ‘Of course I did! So we’re stuck with a National Government?’

  ‘Probably–they can’t govern by themselves but no doubt they’ll cobble something together.’

  ‘With ACT and the Māori party again?’

  ‘Nope, the Māori party’s out of Parliament. Guess who’s got the balance of power?’

  ‘Oh no, not Winston again.’ Lauren groaned. ‘When will we know? What’s he saying?’

  ‘Nothing that says which way he’ll go, but I suppose it’ll be the Nats again. Now here’s Pam to say hello.’

  Pam’s face replaced Ro’s, and she waved at Lauren. ‘It’s not all gloom and doom,’ she said, ‘Labour’s done really well, good on Jacinda.’ She began giving Lauren the details, but Lauren could feel her attention wandering–that shower and sleep had to be soon. She finished the call. ‘You heard all that?’ she said to Julia.

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry Mum, I know you’ve been working hard for Labour. And I’m dying to know whether you think the new leader is as good as all the besotted journalists seem to think.’

  ‘Jacinda? You bet.’ Lauren was fervent. ‘We’ll have a good talk this evening, once the children are in bed.’

  As Lauren and Julia walked and the children alternately skipped and dawdled round London Zoo that afternoon, Lauren mused on the wonder of standing under running hot water and lying flat. Followed with the walk in the fresh air, it was a good cure for jet lag. It took her mind off historic cold cases too–she might have been dreaming about attempted murder on the plane, but since landing, she’d only had time to think about New Zealand politics now, not in the nineteen eighties. Even those thoughts were receding as her grandchildren swung on her hand, chatted to her, marvelled at the tiger’s huge feet, giggled at the baboons’ red bottoms, and pointed at a giraffe’s blue tongue. She wondered how it was that one’s own grandchildren were so much more likeable than anyone else’s.

  When evening came she still felt energetic enough to help Julia get the children to bed. Adam and Tamsin both enjoyed their baths and being bundled in the hotel’s soft white towels. Lauren patted them dry and helped them into their pyjamas while Julia mopped up water from the bathroom floor. Then she sat down with Tamsin on her knee, put an arm round Adam as he leaned in to her, and read them a bedtime story. She had brought with her a picture book, a fresh new edition of The Lion in the Meadow, once their mother’s favourite.

  ‘That was a mission,’ said Julia, collapsing into a chair. ‘It’s always harder when they’re out of routine.’

  ‘They’ll sleep soundly now, and I can tell you all about the exciting times we’ve been having back home.’ Lauren sat down on the edge of the bed.

  ‘Great, Mum. It sounds extraordinary. One moment you were emailing me to say there’s no hope and the next the whole damn world’s talking about Jacinda Ardern.’

  Lauren laughed. ‘You’ve nailed it! It was exactly like that. Labour had its worst poll ever, Andrew Little leading them into an election that they should have won easily but that seemed increasingly unlikely. The Nats had a tired government, they’d swapped their leader for someone with less appeal, and there was lots of disaffection. Next thing you know Andrew stepped aside and this 37-year-old unknown is leader of the Labour Party and fighting a g
eneral election with just seven weeks to go.’

  Julia stood up and swapped places with her mother. She gathered the children’s discarded clothes on to the bed beside her as she continued talking. ‘Sounds just like Jeremy Corbyn here. How did the party supporters react? Were they cross about such a late change?’

  ‘Not on your life. She never put a foot wrong from the moment she took over. Said she’d be relentlessly positive and she is.’

  Lauren was enthusiastic as she reminisced, but suddenly she became subdued. Goodness knows how Jacinda would be feeling now. All that hard work and they hadn’t pulled it off.

  ‘Seven weeks would have been a tall order, Mum. And I guess the Labour Party never has enough money, just like here. Fancy having to redo all its publicity stuff.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I thought, so I sent them a donation and so did thousands of other people. They got this huge influx of funds.’

  Julia folded the children’s clothes as her mother continued.

  ‘Money’s not everything, though, and they got lots more volunteers. We were all out there door-knocking, phoning, running house meetings, public meetings, street corner meetings. She had a rally at the St James Theatre in Wellington and the queue to get in stretched right along to the Taranaki Street corner. People were so excited! And she made a great speech!’

  Julia put her hand gently on Lauren’s shoulder. ‘Sounds like a bad case of Jacindamania, Mum.’

  Lauren had to laugh. ‘It’s true, I guess. But if you’d been grown up in the eighties when Labour just about wrecked itself with the Lange-Douglas goings on, you’d understand how wonderful it is to have something to believe in again. It’s just such a shame that they won’t get in.’

  ‘I learnt about the Lange years at school,’ Julia said.

  ‘Knowing about something isn’t the same as living through it.’ Part of her life, Lauren thought, but just history to her children. ‘It might seem like ancient history. But it’s not to me.’ She hesitated, Ro had asked her not to tell anyone about their discovery–but Julia was a long way away, and she could trust her daughter to keep it to herself. 'My friend Ro, you’ve met Ro…’