Just Say Yes (Escape to New Zealand Book 10)

by Rosalind James

  She didn’t answer, because Zavy had come out of the bedroom. Instead, she said, “This is your dad, love. He’s going to take you to be with him today, like we talked about.”

  Zavy said, “Are we going to Nana’s house?”

  “Not today,” Chloe said. “Today is a special day with your dad, remember? You’re going to his house.”

  Rich said, “I thought you said he’d be ready.”

  “And he is.” No choice. Do it. She handed over Zavy’s bag. “There’s an extra change of clothes in here, and his anorak in case it rains, and his boots, and a bag of cheese and crackers in case he’s hungry. And here ...” She opened the zip pocket in the front of the bag and pulled out a piece of lined paper. “I’ve written out his schedule and some tips to make it easier.”

  Rich made no move to take the list, and she put it back in its pocket, zipped the pocket shut, and asked, “What are your plans?”

  Rich smiled at Zavy and said, “If I tell our plans, they won’t be a surprise, will they? We’re going to do heaps of fun things.”

  “He’ll do better,” Chloe said, “and have an easier time, too, if you let him know what’s coming up next. If you give him advance notice. He doesn’t do as well with surprises. Keeping to the timetable will help, especially for nap and lunch, but tell him everything else ahead of time, and then remind him. And if you have any questions, if I can help, call me. I have classes, but I’ve put the office number on there as well. You can ring them if there’s an emergency. Any time.”

  “Mummy’s no fun, is she?” Rich said to Zavy. “I’ll bet she’s wrong about you. I’ll bet you love surprises.”

  “Really,” Chloe said, the desperation mounting even as she tried to keep this positive. “Sticking to the routine will make everything easier.”

  “You want to go in my fast car, don’t you, Zavy?” Rich said. “We’ll go across the bridge. We’re going to have heaps of fun.”

  Zavy still hadn’t said anything. He was standing against the wall, and his thumb was creeping toward his mouth. He didn’t suck his thumb anymore except when he was sick, but he was about to do it now.

  Chloe went over and took his hand. Rich wouldn’t listen, so all she could do was show him. “Let’s go downstairs,” she said, as briskly as she could manage.

  Rich said, “I can take him.”

  “Do you have a car seat?”

  “He can just use a seat belt, surely. He’s not a baby.”

  “It’s the law.” The cold was clutching her, as icy as Zavy’s hand in hers. “I’d think you’d know that. I’ll loan you mine for today. Come on, love. Time to go.”

  Zavy walked down the stairs with her, still silent, but when she hefted his seat out of the back of her car and handed it to Rich, he asked, “Is the man going to take me to Carolyn’s?”

  Rich, who was fumbling the seat into the back of his black Mercedes, said, “He isn’t slow, is he? Nobody told me he had problems.”

  She was going to hit him. She wasn’t going to be able to stop herself. “No,” she said. “He’s confused.”

  Which was when Kevin came out of the house, and today, he wasn’t laughing. He looked at Rich, who was swearing now in the back seat, then at Chloe, still holding Zavy’s hand, and said, “Morning.”

  Rich shoved his way out of the back of the car and asked, “Who are you?”

  Chloe felt as if she were caught in some bizarre dream, when you kept trying to wake up and you couldn’t. “Kevin McNicholl, this is Rich Clemmons, Zavy’s dad.”

  Kevin didn’t offer to shake hands. He asked Zavy, “What kind of car do you have there, mate?”

  Zavy opened his hand and said, “’Ment mixer. It’s not a car. It’s a truck.”

  “That’s good, then,” Kevin said. “That’ll do you. You hold onto that.”

  Rich said, “Right. Up you go, Zavy. Time we were off.”

  Zavy didn’t move, and in the end, Chloe had to lift him into the car seat and buckle him in. While she did it, Zavy said, “I don’t want to go with the man. I want to go to Carolyn’s. I want to go to the park and do the swings.”

  She said, “We’ll go on the swings tomorrow, love. Today, you’re going to have a special day with your dad.” Then she shut the car door on him, because she had no choice, even though all she wanted to do was to grab Zavy and run. Instead, she said to Rich, who’d already climbed into the driver’s seat, “Everything’s on the sheet. Call me if you have any questions or if you need to bring him home early.”

  He nodded but didn’t answer, just headed off down the drive, and then he turned the corner and was gone.

  “All right?” Kevin asked from beside her. “Want to come in and have a coffee?”

  She shook her head, but couldn’t respond any more than that. It was hard enough just to breathe. “I have to go to work,” she said, and then, after a minute, “Good luck tonight,” before she headed around the house to her stairway.

  Class at nine. Go to work now. This afternoon, you’re going to look at those apartments. Then it’ll be six, and Zavy will be almost home.

  Step, step, step. One foot in front of the other.

  Eleven hours. One day. One step at a time.

  She went to work, she taught her classes, she looked at her phone after every one and checked in with the office, but Rich didn’t call. He didn’t text, either. Nothing.

  Kevin texted, though, midmorning. Hope everything’s going OK. Let me know if you need my help. I’m home till 1.

  She couldn’t imagine what kind of help he could give, especially on a day when he needed all his focus on his own performance, but it was so nice of him, it brought too-easy tears to her eyes. She walked a couple quick circles, breathed, smoothed her hands over her ballet skirt, and texted back. I’m OK. And then she stood there, stumped. She couldn’t think of anything else to say, when even the two words she’d written were a lie, and she’d already told him “Good luck.” So she just wrote Thanks and hit the button.

  By two-thirty, when her final class ended, Rich still hadn’t called. That was good, though, surely. That meant that however bumpy the road was, he and Zavy were getting through it. There was nothing else she could do, and nothing to think about that didn’t scare her, so she went to her fallback position. She gave herself a barre for a full hour, working up to the most technical combinations she could conjure up, forcing the focus, the concentration that didn’t allow any other thoughts in. Only the relentless pursuit of perfection.

  Afterwards, she took a quick barely-warm shower from the tap in the utilitarian concrete compartment of the ladies’ toilets, dressed again in respectable jeans, added makeup for good measure, and drove to see an apartment in Hillcrest that had looked too good to be true online, and was.

  Whenever those photos had been taken, it hadn’t been in this decade, and she had her doubts about the century. The listing had said the place had “character,” and it did. Bad character. You could say it had extras, too. Extra-old carpet with extra-old stains, and extra mold to boot. She didn’t fill out an application.

  After that, it was Northcote, a sunny two-bedroom in a fourplex built of ugly yellow brick, but you wouldn’t be looking at the outside when you were inside.

  “The motorway’s just a hop, skip, and jump away,” the agent said, and it took Chloe a moment to realize that she meant that as a plus.

  “I’d like an application, please,” Chloe said. “It’s lovely.” Which was an exaggeration, but it was bright, clean, and convenient. It would do.

  “Will it just be you, then?”

  “Myself and my son.” Chloe pulled out a pen from her purse and said, “I’ll fill this out now, if you don’t mind. I can give you references from my former and current landlords.”

  “Your employer is the most important,” the woman said.

  “I own my own business,” Chloe said. “But I’ve given you my banking info.”

  “Oh,” the agent said. “Well, that’s not quite the same, of
course. How old is your little boy?”

  “Three. He’s very quiet. And of course, the good thing about renting to a mum and child is that you don’t have any loud music or secret smoking.”

  “That’s a thought, certainly,” the agent said. “Just leave that with me, then, and I’ll let you know. I’m showing the property to a number of other couples tomorrow, so I really can’t say.”

  Don’t call us. We’ll call you. And a self-employed dance studio owner with a child isn’t going to beat a couple with two verifiable jobs. She got it. She handed over the application just in case, walked outside again, blinked at the violently colored brick and aluminum-framed windows, and thought, I don’t like you anyway, Yellow House.

  Then she checked her phone again. Still no Rich. But at least it was nearly five o’clock.

  She stopped at Countdown on the way home, carried her groceries upstairs and put them away, and cleaned the apartment, which took care of another hour and a half. After that, she took a longer, warmer shower and changed into her comfy clothes.

  She didn’t cook dinner. She couldn’t get interested. When the doorbell rang at seven-fifteen, she was watching her landlord, dressed in a tight blue jersey and short shorts, doing groin stretches on TV. At least it was distracting. And a second later, she was jumping to her feet and getting to the entryway so fast, Rich’s hand was still hovering in the air when she flung the door open.

  She barely looked at him. Zavy’s hair was rumpled, his eyes glassy, and his face marked with red around the mouth and cheeks. It stopped her heart for a moment, and then she was gathering him in, lifting him onto her hip, and kissing that stained cheek.

  “Tomato sauce, eh,” she told him. “You’re a messy fella.”

  His arms went around her neck, he rested his cheek against her shoulder, and she had to swallow hard.

  Rich said, “What am I meant to do with this?”

  He was holding the car seat. She said, “Put it inside.”

  He did, then set Zavy’s bag on it, and she asked, “How did it go?” Normal. Open.

  “He’s a bit spoilt, I’d say,” Rich said. “He didn’t behave like that with your mum, so I wasn’t expecting it. Crying when he doesn’t get his way really isn’t on, you know.”

  Zavy clung to her even tighter, and Chloe worked to keep her voice neutral. “New experiences and changes in routine can upset him, like most three-year-olds, I imagine. Did he have a good nap?”

  “By the time I got him to eat his lunch, there wasn’t time. He slept in the car on the way to the zoo.”

  “Which was what?” She wasn’t doing well at all with her “neutral.” “Twenty minutes? Half an hour? And then the zoo? What, all afternoon without a nap?”

  Rich looked at his watch. “I’m sorry, but I need to go. I’m late for dinner as it is, and I need to clean up first.”

  “You told me you weren’t bringing him back until eight,” Chloe said. The level tone was nearly impossible to maintain now. “It’s not even seven-thirty. Surely you have a few minutes to tell me more.”

  Rich had some red stains himself on the dress shirt he’d changed into, she realized, and now, a dark flush was mounting to his well-defined cheekbones. “I didn’t do anything but give him the kind of day any boy would dream about. I don’t know what more I could’ve done. If I expect him to be able to go along with the program, a program I worked out entirely for his pleasure, that doesn’t seem like too much to ask.”

  “If you’ll tell me what the program was,” Chloe said, “and what happened, maybe I can shed some light. Maybe I can help it go better.” She didn’t want to. She wanted to shove him out the door, lock it, and never let him in again, but that wasn’t an option. Not if he was coming back.

  Wait. She should have said that differently. She was no good at manipulation. By the time she thought of the clever way to work somebody around, the entire conversation was long since over. Maybe, though ... She said, trying hard to make it sound sincere, “But if it was too much, maybe it’s for the best. It’s a lot to take on all at once. You don’t have to do this. He’s fine. You’re paying the child support. There’s nothing that says you have to see him.”

  Maybe that was wrong. Maybe a child did deserve to know his father. But Zavy’s clutching hands didn’t feel that way.

  Rich had stiffened. “I didn’t say I couldn’t do it. Of course I can do it. Of course I’m going to do it. I’ll come again for him in two weeks.”

  “Maybe it would be easier,” she said, still trying, “if it wasn’t all day. For both of you. A shorter visit.”

  “I’ll text you,” he said. “I’ll let you know.”

  She wanted to say something else, but she couldn’t think what. Her mind was a blank, and Zavy was a dead weight in her arms. Rich had turned and was heading downstairs, and she shut the door. Shut him out.

  Do the first thing. Do the important thing. “Goodness, love,” she said to Zavy, keeping her tone light with a supreme effort, “you’re covered with tomato sauce. Let’s get you into your bath.”

  “With my frog,” Zavy said against her chest.

  The warm water revived him a little, and as she wiped the sauce off his face, she said, “I think you’re wearing your tea, darling. What did you eat? Mm ... I’m guessing ... lovely chips?”

  “That hamburger had the bad sauce,” Zavy said, clutching his frog. “I don’t like that bad yellow sauce. I told that man, ‘My mummy says, only tomato sauce.’” He held up his frog, squeaked it once, and told it, “I don’t want to hear that nonsense again, do you hear? Eat what’s on your plate.”

  Anger. It was a red tide, pushing up from her belly into her chest. She got the towel, pulled the plug, and said, “Hop out like a bunny. Pj’s, teeth, and bed for you, mister.”

  When he was asleep at last, she picked up his bag from the doorway and opened the zipped pocket. There was her list. Had Rich even looked at it? She couldn’t tell.

  She spent what was left of the evening on the floor, looking at the TV without really seeing it, hearing the announcers talk without really listening, trying not to think, and stretching. The Blues were behind at the half when she got back to the lounge from Zavy’s room. For a long time afterwards, nothing much happened, as far as she could tell. She sat with her knees on the floor and the soles of her feet touching, pulled her torso over until it was on the ground and her face was pressed into her arched feet, breathed into the stretch, and tried not to think about Zavy’s glassy eyes when she’d opened the door.

  The main announcer was sounding excited, finally. “James has found a gap,” he said, “and he breaks the line. The Blues are in with a chance here. He offloads to Wilkinson. Soft hands, and it’s back to McNicholl, and the big winger shakes off a tackler, then another, gives a good fend, and keeps the legs going. And he’s over for the try!”

  Oh. McNicholl. She sat up. On the screen, Koti James and another man were thumping Kevin on the back, Kevin was grinning, looking oddly toothless until she realized he was wearing his mouthguard, and the Blues were all jogging down the field again. The Number 10, Will Tawera, who’d asked her for her phone number more than a year earlier and never called her—which was fine by her, but there you were—made a kick all the way from the side, and the scoreboard added two more points.

  Ten to seventeen. The Blues were still behind, and the clock showed seventy-two minutes gone. That didn’t seem like much time to stage a comeback for, what? A draw?

  They were showing the try again on the screen, and she saw Kevin running in tandem with two other men, in the outside spot. He had the 11 on his back, which was his position, but she recognized him anyway, somehow. The ball was flicked back from the first man—that one was Koti James—in and out of the middle man’s hands in a movement so quick, she almost missed it, and then into Kevin’s left hand, the hand that had caught the drying rags last night.

  He did the same thing now as he’d done then, plucking the ball out of the air as if both it and
his hand carried magnets. As if it were inevitable. The ball hit his palm and ... stuck, somehow, without him breaking stride.

  He kept running, too, even though he was being dragged at by one huge figure, then another. He stiff-armed a third man, who bounced off, then came back, but Kevin was already gone. His legs churned, his entire body drove, and he was carrying the two men with him toward the white line, and was stretching that left arm holding the ball out long even as they dragged him down. He had a grin on his face, too, as he hit the turf in an impact that must have jarred every bone. She could swear he hadn’t even felt it.

  She’d known he’d scored. She’d heard the announcer say so. And she still wouldn’t have believed he could have made that catch, or run through all those players. Her heart was galloping, and she had a hand on her chest.

  He really was that good.

  The Blues lost anyway. None of them looked as fazed as she’d have expected, though. Maybe, she thought as she watched Kevin grab a Chiefs player’s shoulder and pat him on the back with a smile, she just hadn’t lost enough. Maybe you had to practice this, too, practice smiling and waking up tomorrow and trying again.

  Except that Zavy wasn’t a game.

  She was in a movie theater, and she was holding Zavy, but she couldn’t keep him in her grip. She knew somehow that he was a newborn, but he was the size of a hummingbird, and even though she had him wrapped in a blanket, he kept slipping through. She was patting the blanket, but it was empty. Somehow, he’d fallen. He was someplace on the sloping, sticky concrete floor, and she was groping for him in the dark, but she couldn’t find him. He was too little.

  Something was poking at her, shoving her, and she couldn’t find him.

  “Mummy. Wake up, Mummy.” There was another poke in her side, and she sat up with a gasp.

  Oh. Morning. And Zavy in his truck pj’s, saying, “I waked up.”

  “Oh.” She blinked and laughed. “Goodness, I slept, didn’t I?” She had a quick look at the clock. “Seven-thirty. We both slept like lazy logs.” It had taken her a while to get to sleep the night before.