All right, that hadn’t been at all good on the “amused” and “adult” parts, but she was right. Surely that counted for something.
Apparently not. “That was different,” her mother said. “You were a dancer.”
“And Kevin’s a rugby player.”
“Not the same thing.”
“I’d say exactly the same thing, except that he makes more money and is more famous. Same demands, same discipline.”
Her mother gave a faint, ladylike snort. “Hardly.”
“And you know this how?” Even though it was what she’d thought herself at the beginning, it infuriated her, because it wasn’t true. Kevin’s life had much more in common with her own—her former life, that is—than it had differences. Except that Kevin hadn’t been able to pursue it nearly as selfishly as Chloe had, had he? About one thing, Rich was right. She had been a diva. All she’d wanted to do, ever, was dance, and if anything had conflicted with ballet? It had given way.
When her mother didn’t answer, she went on. “And I don’t know much about his parents.” She didn’t mention that she’d find out on Saturday, if she went to his match. “I know something about him, though. I know that he has five brothers and sisters, and most of them have lived with him while they’ve gone to university. Which they have, whatever that does or doesn’t say about them. His parents don’t live close by and he was in a position to help out with that, so he did. You won’t hear him complaining about it, either. He just shrugs and says, ‘Roommates, eh,’ like everybody would do that. And that’s why I have to move—because not only are his sisters there, his brother and his family need the flat, too.”
Here she was, working herself into a passion defending Kevin’s housing choices. He’d laugh, no doubt.
“Six children,” her mother said. “All living together. Heaven help us.”
Irish Catholic, she didn’t have to say. Probably farmers.
“Four of them,” Chloe said. “Together, that is. And why isn’t that just ‘good Kiwi values?’ Family and all that?”
“If you want that kind of Kiwi. Muddy gumboots, mateship, and rugby. Not what I’d have chosen for you. Not what you’ve ever liked. You can do better, darling, and you know it.”
Chloe didn’t get angry much. She couldn’t afford it. Except that lately, she’d been getting angry constantly, and it was happening again. “But you’re not choosing for me. And what difference does it make to me whether his family lives with him? Other than having to move, but let’s face it, Mum—that could’ve happened no matter who’d bought the house.”
Geez, she was forgiving. “Maybe it’s because I didn’t go to university,” she decided to say, throwing all prudence to the winds. “I don’t have very elevated tastes myself. Anyway, how is loyalty to your family and your mates a bad thing? And what does it matter? He’s not asking me to marry him. I’m his tenant. Briefly.”
“Right, darling,” Fiona said. “I wasn’t born yesterday. A man doesn’t give your son gifts—however inappropriate—because he wants to be your friend. I’m saying he’s not in your class. And anyway, a man from that background—if he’s actually interested in more than a fling, he’s looking for a woman to have six kids for him, a woman he can keep barefoot and pregnant, just like his mum, and what happens to your dreams then?”
“What’s happened to them so far?” This passion—it was exhausting, it was stupid, and she was done. She got up, put her plate in the sink, and said, “I’m telling myself this is because you care. But I’m also telling you that I’m thirty, I’m a single mum, and I’m not a dancer. Not anymore. I don’t have any more dreams to lose. They’re gone.”
Then why did the treacherous tears come to her eyes in the lift on the way down, remembering the way Zavy’s face had lit up when he’d first held that silly, sweet pony, the way Kevin had smiled when he’d given it to him? Why did she want to wrap her arms around herself when she thought about how she’d danced Gamzatti, when she remembered the exhilaration and the magic of knowing it was that good?
I’m not a dancer. Not really. Not anymore.
I’m a single mum.
I don’t have any dreams to lose.
Then why did they still hurt?
Your dreams ... they hung around, even though you’d swear they were long gone. Like a phantom limb, aching just as hard as if it were still there, as if the wound were still fresh. Or like ghosts that haunted you, never leaving you alone. Never letting you forget how it had felt when they were alive. When you’d been alive, and all those hopes and dreams had been possible.
When you’d been living your dream.
On Saturday morning, she wasn’t thinking about her dreams, she wasn’t thinking about her mum, and she wasn’t even thinking about Kevin, even though she may have spent three of the past five evenings cooking dinner with him and the girls. Helping Noelle with her technique and watching her move more confidently, more precisely—and, she could swear, looking trimmer already—listening to the easy jokes, the barbed comments, the exasperated undercurrents, and the loving ones, too. To all the messiness that was family life.
Not now, though. At this particular moment, she was standing outside the house, Rich was pulling into the drive, and Zavy’s hand was clutching her own.
Kevin was there, too, although he was standing back a few paces. He had a game tonight, and he was meant to be doing his ... ritual things. She and Zavy had helped him wash his car the night before, but the second part of his ritual, he’d said, was sleeping late. Yet here it was only eight-fifteen, and Kevin was standing guard like a Beefeater at Buckingham Palace, just waiting for his heroic moment. What did he think was going to happen?
Rich pulled to a stop and got out of the Mercedes, taking off his dark sunglasses as if he were in an advert. Dark slacks, vivid blue shirt that matched his eyes. Pretty glam, which—face it—was one reason she’d been attracted in the first place. He didn’t do much for her now, though.
“Glad you’re ready,” he said. “Morning, Zavy.”
“I told you we would be.” Chloe shut her mouth on anything else. Like “you’re late.”
“We’re going to have an awesome time today,” Rich said, smiling at Zavy. “We’re going to go to Kidz Kingdom and go on all the rides. Won’t that be fun?”
He’s trying, Chloe told herself. Give him a break.
Zavy was still holding Chloe’s hand. “Can Mummy come too?”
“No, this is just for boys. We don’t want any silly girls along. They’d probably cry.”
Zavy was staring at him, not saying anything, and Rich asked, “What do you have there?”
Zavy didn’t show him. He clutched it closer, tucking it under his arm. “My pony.”
Rich was frowning, and Kevin had stepped away from the house. Chloe didn’t have to look at him to see the tension in his body.
Wonderful, she thought only semi-hysterically. She was going to have two men having a stoush in the driveway over a blue pony with rainbow hair, and one of those men was a rugby player. Only one way that would turn out.
“You’ll need to leave that here,” Rich said. “It’ll get lost.” He glanced at Chloe, and she could read that look just fine. You got that for him just to spite me.
“But I like to take Rainbow Dash,” Zavy said, his voice wavering but defiant, and Chloe lost any momentary spark of humor. “She wants to come too. She wants to go in the car.”
“I told you,” Rich said, “that’s for girls. I’m not having that. If you don’t leave it here, I won’t take you on the rides. Stop being silly, give it to your mother, and come get in. It’s time to go.”
Zavy’s bottom lip was sticking out. Chloe would have liked to explain that threats weren’t the best way to get a child to go along, or maybe she wouldn’t have. Maybe she’d just like to kick Rich. And yes, she could have tried harder to get Zavy not to take the pony, so he wouldn’t have been in the middle of this bizarre power struggle. She held that mature thought, crouched do
wn beside her son, and said, “You need to go with your dad, love. Give me Rainbow Dash, and I’ll keep her for you.”
Zavy said, “I don’t want to.” His lip wobbled, and so did his voice. “I don’t want to go with the man. I want to go to Carolyn’s house.” He was clutching at her hand, trying to pull her away. “I would go to Carolyn’s and be very good. I would take a nap and not pat Sam.”
Chloe kept it absolutely calm. She ignored the sigh from Rich, put her hands on Zavy’s shoulders, and said, “You know how, when you don’t want to take a bath, I say you don’t get to choose about that? This is the same thing. You need to give me Rainbow Dash and go with your dad. Come on, now.” She held out her hand, and Zavy put the pony reluctantly into it, hiccupping on the tears that had made their appearance at last.
She stood up and reached for the car seat at her side, but Rich said, “I have one.”
“Oh,” she said. “Good.” She wanted to take Zavy to the car, but Rich had hold of his hand now, and unless Chloe were going to literally tug her son between the two of them, she needed to let him go. She watched Rich buckle her boy, who was still crying, but quietly, into a complicated five-point harness, hoped desperately that he’d installed it right, and then stood and waved Rainbow Dash at the car as Rich drove it around the circular driveway and out to the street.
Kevin was beside her now, muttering something extremely obscene, and she gave a shaky laugh and said, “Yeh.”
“Isn’t there something you can do?” he asked. “A judgment or something? Go back to court, maybe? Do you have to let him take him? Doesn’t seem to me that he knows the first thing.”
Oh, yes. She definitely needed this. “If there were something I could do, don’t you imagine I’d have done it? There’s nothing. Rich is his dad. Dads get to take their kids. It’s like I told Zavy. We don’t get to choose about that. We don’t.”
He put a hand out, but she couldn’t hear it. She couldn’t let him hold her, or she’d break. She said, “I need to go. Work.”
A second passed, and then he said, “I’ll come for that lunch. Eleven-forty-five. I’ll see you then.”
This time, she just nodded and lifted the heavy car seat into her arms. Kevin took it from her, ignoring her protest, carried it to her car, and fastened it into the back as if he knew how.
“You don’t have to do that,” she said. Her mind was in the car with Zavy, and she needed to get it here. Needed to keep it out of the darkness.
Her mum was right. Kids spent time with their dads, and it didn’t have to be exactly like it was with Mummy. If things were rocky just now, they’d get better. It had been one time. Rich was motivated enough to keep trying, and that said something.
Her job was to make it easier on both of them, because that was the only way to make it better, and that was that.
It was a good pep talk. Pity it wasn’t working.
“I have to do something,” Kevin said. Oh. Installing the car seat. “This seems marginally better than chasing that bugger down and giving him a good hiding. Not nearly as satisfying, though.”
“He didn’t even do anything.” It didn’t exactly come out calm, but it was better. “I’m standing here reminding myself of that. It’ll be fine. He’ll be fine. They’ll be fine. I’ll see you.” She climbed into the car and left.
She was probably meant to kiss Kevin goodbye, but she couldn’t. She had to go. And if that wasn’t good enough for a man with an important rugby match against the Hurricanes tonight, who needed everything in his life to be calm and controlled today? It was a pity, but that was the way it was going to be. She didn’t have any more to give.
Kevin had planned to spend exactly forty-five minutes studying the exercise book holding the notes he’d made for the match, like always. He’d planned to drink exactly three cups of tea and eat two pieces of toast while he did it, too. Also like always. No matter how tense Chloe had looked, no matter how quietly Zavy had cried, and definitely no matter how much he’d longed to wipe the smug look off that bastard’s face.
Save the emotion for the park. Exercise book. Tea. Toast. Go. He’d been doing this job for ten years. He knew how to focus. He hadn’t counted, though, on Noelle practicing her dance steps while holding onto the back of the chair beside him.
He set his mug down at last and said, “D’you have to do that just here?”
“Yes,” she said, pointing her toe out to the side and moving her leg in little beats. “Chloe says, when I want to eat something because I’m nervous, to practice instead. And I’m nervous about class, you’re eating toast, and I want it, so I’m practicing.”
“You could practice in your room. In the ... the kitchen. Anywhere.”
“There’s not enough space in my room. And I’m watching in the mirror here. Besides, it’s soothing to look out at the garden.”
Discipline. Control. “If you tidied your room, there’d be enough space. I also know that there’s a mirror in there. Hung it myself, didn’t I. And I know it’s soothing to look out at the garden. That’s why I was doing it. Before my match.”
Noelle sighed aloud, a long-suffering sound, and Holly walked into the room and asked, “What?”
“Kevin doesn’t want me to practice,” Noelle said, “that’s all.”
“I don’t mind you practicing,” Kevin said. “I just said you could tidy your room and do it there. And so could you,” he added to Holly, throwing caution to the winds. “Yours is even worse. I don’t know how you both manage to come out reasonably tidy, keeping your rooms like that. And as for the bathroom, I avert my eyes and shudder. What d’you do, pick up the clothes off the floor and give them the sniff test? That’s a sight to set a man’s heart pounding, eh. He’ll be running away fast as his legs can carry him, is what he’ll be doing.”
All right, he was narky. Who wouldn’t be?
“Noelle doesn’t look that tidy,” Holly said. “And the clean clothes are in the basket, obviously. I don’t put on the clothes from the floor. They’re dirty. That’s why they’re on the floor. And could you not eat Marmite, please, Kevin? The smell makes me sick.”
“What d’you mean, I don’t look tidy?” The color was rising in Noelle’s cheeks. “What’s wrong with the way I look? I’m dressed for ballet. How are you dressed?” She eyed her sister’s dressing gown and rumpled hair.
“Except that I’ll look good when I leave the house,” Holly said.
“Stop,” Kevin ordered. “Just stop.”
He put more Marmite on his toast, and Holly said, “Ugh. Kevin, I just said ...”
He took an enormous bite. “My house. My Marmite.” About the only thing that was. What else was new, though? The boys had been even more disastrously messy. The word “pig” had come to mind more than once, along with some others, like “hellhole,” perhaps. They’d never been as bad as that at home, surely. Your big brother wasn’t your mum and dad, which was good in one sense—you had some semblance of adult supervision, but not too adult. A light hand, you could call it. That had been the idea.
On the other hand, Kevin’s tolerance for beer bottles and pizza boxes had probably been higher back then. Also, when the boys had had a problem, they’d shouted a bit, sworn, maybe done some shoving, and then it had been over. He could handle boil. He understood boil. He didn’t care much for “low simmer.”
Possibly he was also thinking about what would happen if he made further changes in his living situation. Possibly. In which case ... well, in which case, he was doomed, because no woman would want to venture into the middle of this. He didn’t even want to do it.
“I don’t know why you think you can talk,” Noelle told her sister. She was paying no attention to Kevin, instead rising on her toes and lowering herself again in furious succession, exactly like Chloe. Well, not exactly. Chloe always did it gracefully. Noelle’s version was more along the lines of a peasant trampling the grapes. “You’re always trying to make me think I’m fat. I hardly look any different from you. We’re twi
ns.”
“You don’t look anything like me,” Holly said.
Kevin stood up. Fast. “You both look like what you are,” he said. “Sisters. And bloody aggravating ones. You need to stop with this, because I’m tired of it.”
“Fine,” Noelle said. “Tell her.”
“I’m telling both of you.” And, Kevin decided, his pre-match ritual had just changed again. He was now taking a walk on the beach instead. Soothing. Relaxing. Yeh. That was the ticket. New house. New rituals. Lower redhead count.
“Can I borrow your car today?” Holly asked. “Noelle’s taking ours to ballet and the Takapuna Market, and I’m marooned here.”
“No,” Kevin said. “In case nobody’s remembered, I’m meant to be playing a rugby match tonight. It’s a wee bit important.”
“Not until tonight,” Holly said. “I’d be back in time. I promise.”
“No.”
Beach. Now.
He was going to get calm if it killed him.
He managed it. Like always. And a few hours later, he was in the lobby of the Arts Centre again, getting that same mad lift of the heart as always when Chloe came out from the back. Track pants over her tights, and one of those little wrapped sweaters—pink today—that made him want to take it off her, or give her a cuddle, or both. Feathers of dark hair, chestnut-brown eyes, pointed chin.
His nymph, not looking one bit relaxed. But when she saw him, she smiled.
She didn’t kiss him, and he didn’t do it, either. But when they walked out the door together, she took his arm and got closer. He tucked his arm in close to his side, holding her hand there, and said, “That’s better.”
Just Say Yes (Escape to New Zealand Book 10) Page 19