I pack my travel guide into a bag, along with some sun cream, an extra toggle – mine are forever snapping under the weight of my hair – and a bottle of water, and head off in the direction of Queenstown Gardens beside the lake.
It is not yet ten a.m., but already groups of young travellers are stretched out in rows on the tiny beach. It baffles me how they can lounge there all day. What was it Anna always used to say as she rubbed cream into my bare skin as a child? ‘There’s no such thing as a healthy tan.’
I reach the gardens and pause for a moment to gaze up between the branches of the red-and-black oak trees. The flat leaves are barely stirring in the calm, still air, and I can hear the insistent buzz of insects busily going about their days.
As before, the lure of the lake proves too strong to resist, and I pick my way slowly over the stony shoreline, passing an idle tyre swing hanging from a willow branch, before settling down on a clear patch of ground. I’m wearing pale-blue denim shorts and a thin green shirt today, which I’ve knotted at my waist. I haven’t bothered with make-up, save for a light coating of mascara, and my only jewellery is my treasured jade-stone ring and some gold stud earrings.
How Anna would have loved this place, I can’t help but think, just as I did the first time I ventured into these gardens. How cruel and unfair that she will never get to see it. If I could swap places with her now, be gone while she lives on, then I would.
I’m just about to take my book out of my bag when there’s a loud shriek from somewhere behind the treeline and a girl erupts down the bank and runs with arms flailing to the water’s edge, barely pausing for breath before jumping up and leaping on to the tyre swing. A moment later, a small dog follows suit, yapping excitedly at the girl’s feet as she lifts them upwards.
‘Tui,’ I whisper in recognition, just as a loud male voice bellows her name, and the next moment Kit is through the trees, too, a grin on his face and a Frisbee in his hand.
‘If you keep running off like a naughty little puppy,’ I hear him say to Tui, ‘then I’ll have no choice but to put you on a lead.’
I should stand up, or call out to them, but before I have a chance to decide which, Kit turns his head and sees me sitting there.
‘Genie?’ he calls, and I nod, lifting a hand of greeting that turns into a wave.
‘Hey.’
Kit’s smile spreads even wider as he starts crunching over the stones towards me.
‘Push me, push me!’ yells Tui, and Kit stops abruptly in his tracks, raising his hands to the heavens.
‘It’s OK,’ I call out. ‘Wait a sec and I’ll come to you.’
I stand up and brush the dirt from my shorts, feeling a flush of heat envelop my cheeks as I gather up my bag and slip my feet back into my sandals. As I straighten up from fastening the straps, I find that two more people have joined Kit and Tui beside the water – a man and a woman, both of whom stare at me curiously as I make my way over to join them.
‘Genie,’ Kit says again, offering me one of his big hands to shake. Turning briefly, he gives Tui’s swing another gentle push.
‘Tui you know,’ he begins, then adds, ‘this is Allie and her brother Griff.’
‘Hi,’ I say, my eyes flickering over each of the group in turn. Tui is the hardest to take in, because she’s swinging around in circles so fast that her laughing face is little more than a blur. The man, Griff, who is even bigger and broader than Kit, but with straight blond hair instead of tight black curls on his head, steps forwards and offers me a hand.
‘G’day,’ he says, beaming at me.
The girl, who glanced at me briefly as she was introduced but has made no move to unfold her arms from across her chest, is tall and slim like Hayley. Her light-brown hair frames a neat, heart-shaped face, and she looks me up and down without speaking.
‘Aren’t you gonna say hello, Allie?’ teases Griff, and the girl rolls her eyes.
‘Hello,’ she says. ‘You’re Bonnie’s old friend, right? From England?’
‘I was just telling the guys about you,’ explains Kit. ‘Saying what a ’mare it was that you showed up just as Bon buggered off.’
At the mention of Bonnie, I feel myself clam up, and mutter something about it not mattering, and that I’m happy to wait for her to get back.
Allie allows her arms to fall down to her sides. She has a shrewd expression on her face, as if she’s holding back from saying something.
Kit, who is watching both of us, stops pushing Tui and picks up the puppy.
‘This little fella is Beavis,’ he says, coming so close that the dog is able to give my nose a lick of greeting. ‘He’s much less of a nitwit than Allie.’
‘Right charmer, this one, isn’t he?’ Allie deadpans in her Kiwi drawl, but she’s definitely thawed a fraction.
Tui stumbles off the swing and reaches for her dog, noticing me properly for the first time as Kit places Beavis in her arms.
‘Hello, Tui,’ I say, choking out the words through the closed fist that my throat has become.
Tui peers at me through her lashes. She’s around the same height as me, with very dark brown, rather wild hair, large almond-shaped eyes and the small, upturned nose of a Ragamuffin cat. She’s no longer a little girl but not yet a woman, and her cheeks still carry the plumpness of youth, and I can see the indents of matching dimples on either side of her full lips. She is wearing a white vest top with a picture of Snoopy printed on the front, and tatty black shorts.
‘You’re a very pretty lady,’ she announces, startling me so much that I laugh.
‘Er, thank you,’ I say, feeling hopelessly touched. ‘I think you’re very pretty, too.’
Tui shrugs and then nods her head up and down rapidly.
‘Yes,’ she says, apparently in agreement, before lifting Beavis up towards my face.
‘This is my dog,’ she informs me proudly, her voice slurring even as she takes care to pronounce each word correctly.
‘He’s lovely,’ I tell her. ‘Very sweet. And I like his name, too – did you choose it?’
Tui nods solemnly. ‘No,’ she says, and Kit chuckles.
‘It’s nodding for yes and shaking for no,’ he reminds her, and Tui quickly shakes her head, making a low moaning sound as she does so.
‘She doesn’t like it when I point these things out to her, do you, Tui?’ he explains, and Tui nods again, this time looking more mischievous.
‘Who are you?’ she asks a moment later, pointing right at me. Griff laughs at this, and I make a half-hearted attempt to follow suit – anything to give me time to formulate an appropriate reply. I can’t exactly blurt out the truth, that I’m the half-sister she has never known existed.
‘My name is Evangeline,’ I say, settling for basic facts. ‘But my friends call me Genie.’
‘Gee-nie.’ Tui tests the word a few times, drawing out the first ‘e’ sound. ‘Genies live in lamps,’ she says, turning to Kit so that he can confirm it.
Before I can reply, Tui starts cackling with amused laughter, so loudly that Griff puts his hands over his ears in mock-horror.
‘Worse than that,’ jokes Kit over the din. ‘This Genie here lives in England!’
Tui bellows even more loudly at this, then steps forward and hooks her hand around the back of my head, pulling me against Snoopy and hugging me. She is surprisingly strong and, caught off guard, I wobble for a second, trying not to fall forwards.
‘Come on now, put the poor chook down,’ Kit says, prising Tui’s hand away from where it’s tangled in my hair. My hat has fallen off on to the ground, and he picks it up and gives it back to me.
Tui does as she’s told and grins at me, her expression open now and accepting. I blink at her, trying to gather myself together, and cast an equally enthusiastic one back.
‘Blue eyes,’ she says wonderingly, her own brown pair focusing in on mine.
‘The same as Mummy.’
13
‘Did you say Frisbee golf?’
&nbs
p; Kit’s eyes crinkle up at the corners. ‘That’s right,’ he says, reaching into his backpack and extracting three more plastic circular discs in various colours, one of which he hands to me.
‘See that net?’ he asks, pointing to a wooden post in the near distance. There’s a wire-mesh contraption attached to the top, rather like a hanging basket without the chains. I nod.
‘The aim of the game is to throw your Frisbee from each marker,’ he explains, gesturing to a flat paved area twenty metres or so in front of the post, ‘and get it in the net. You’re after a hole in one, really, just like you would be in a round of golf, but those are a rarity.’
‘Speak for yourself, bro,’ Griff interrupts, flexing his fingers until the joints crack. ‘Last time we came out here, I nailed you guys.’
‘Oh, shut your hole,’ Allie chides, pulling a face at him. I try to catch her eye, hoping to engage her in some form of female camaraderie, but she glances quickly away, giving Griff a light push and laughing when he stumbles over his own feet. Tui accepts a red Frisbee and clutches it tightly with both hands, her expression one of excitement, while Kit has stooped down to clip a lead to Beavis’s collar.
‘Sorry, mate,’ he says to the dog. ‘Can’t have you fetching all the Frisbees while we’re trying to play.’
Tui shrieks with laughter. It’s loud, throaty, and so full of unmistakable joy that I find it impossible not to laugh too. I notice that Kit, Allie and Griff are all grinning at her, too. I still can’t quite fathom the fact that this girl is my half-sister. My real flesh and blood, a sibling, right here, standing in front of me. I keep waiting for the shock to render me speechless or even send me into a full-blown panic, but so far, all I really feel is curious.
‘You go first, Gee-nie,’ Tui says to me, as we reach the first marker.
I glance uncertainly at Kit.
‘I think Griff should start us off, Tu,’ he tells her, putting one of his big hands on her shoulder. ‘Genie here has never played before, so she needs to watch us take a few turns, right?’
‘Ohh,’ Tui moans, clearly dismayed.
‘Honestly,’ I say quickly, smiling at her with as much reassurance as I can muster, ‘Kit’s right – I don’t have a clue what I’m doing. I’ll probably end up throwing this,’ I hold up my blue Frisbee, ‘into a tree.’
Tui bellows with laughter again and Kit’s approving eyes meet mine. Griff, meanwhile, is limbering up to throw, making a big show of extending his arm and lining up the shot by squinting into the distance.
‘Oh, get on with it, you great ape,’ says Allie, and Griff swings around.
‘Oi!’ he cries. ‘You’ll give a guy a complex one of these days.’
‘Will you two stop bloody bickering?’ tuts Kit. ‘They’re always like this,’ he explains to me. ‘Makes me glad to be an only child.’
Griffin misses his shot and curses in good humour, and then Allie steps up to take her turn, throwing wide of the target and swearing with a gusto that makes Kit raise both his eyebrows at me. When he gets into position a moment later, Allie promptly moves in behind him and slips a hand into the back pocket of his shorts.
‘Lay off, woman,’ he says, wriggling away. ‘You’re distracting me.’
Allie pouts.
‘If you don’t want me to grab your backside, stop sticking it out,’ she replies, tossing her hair over one shoulder. I decide that there’s definitely an element of the stroppy mare about her, and wish I could placate her with a Polo mint as easily as I used to do with Suki.
Kit ignores the comment, and Allie only just steps out of the way in time to avoid being knocked over sideways by the swing of his right arm. The Frisbee soars through the air, curling up and around the trunks of several trees, before landing neatly in the net.
‘Yes!’ he yells triumphantly, unable to hide his delight.
‘That,’ says Griff, turning to me, incredulous, ‘is how it’s done.’
I’m not sure whether it’s beginner’s bad luck or a severe case of nerves, but it soon becomes humiliatingly apparent that I am utterly hopeless at Frisbee golf. After joking to Tui that I will probably lob my disc into the surrounding trees, I end up doing exactly that on more than one occasion during the first half of the game, and each time Tui finds my shambolic display hilarious. She is arguably no better than I am when it comes to technique, but unlike me, she has the benefit of Kit’s guiding arms and gentle encouragement. Allie and Griff grow in confidence the further around the course we go, whereas the opposite is true for me. No matter what angle I bend my arm or which direction I throw the Frisbee, it stubbornly falls way short of the net. In fact, I’m so far behind the others by the time we reach the fifteenth target that they simply stop bothering to keep my score. As someone who regularly annihilates Billy at pool and never scores less than a spare at the bowling alley, my ineptitude cuts a deep wound in my ego, leaving me with no choice but to laugh uproariously at myself every time I miss. Which is every single time.
Kit is sympathetic to a point, but he’s also amused by how useless I am. Griff, on the other hand, is positively angelic, going into raptures every time I get my little blue disc within ten feet of the net and berating his sister every time she makes a sarcastic remark. After showing such an interest in me at the start of the game, Tui hasn’t said much else, preferring instead to stay close to Kit and pick up stones and leaves off the ground.
Beavis watches the four us with his little head on one side, puzzled as dogs so often are by the seemingly random behaviour of their human companions. David had suggested that we get a puppy about six months after Anna’s accident, and I had not reacted well. It felt like such an obvious tactic, and in my head, he wasn’t giving my grief the right amount of respect. How could he think that a pet would make up for losing a parent and my cherished horse? I had yelled at him and slammed doors and spewed forth a whole range of venomous retorts, but remembering that vile tantrum now makes me wince. David may have needed something new to love, too, and I should have factored in his sorrow. But I wasn’t able to see past my own.
I force my mind away from the past and try to focus on the present. On the light-dappled ground and the sound of the leaves crackling in the wind; the sensation of warm sunshine on my bare limbs and the brilliant blueness of the sky above. Grief is black crayon scribbled across a painting, a cold empty room with a locked door. If love is the light, then grief is its shadow, and where there is one, there must be the other. I know that if I did not love Anna and Suki as much as I did – and still do – then I wouldn’t feel their absence as keenly. But would I sacrifice that simple happiness so I could avoid the agony that later followed? No, I would not.
‘Genie.’
Kit is standing right beside me. I didn’t see him approaching.
‘Sorry,’ I say, blinking away tears. ‘I was miles away.’
‘A bit like your Frisbee,’ he jokes, but his tone is tentative rather than teasing. The others are up ahead on the crest of a small hill, and as Kit and I stare up, Allie beckons an impatient hand at us.
‘Chill out, woman,’ he calls up with a frown, before turning to face me.
‘She’s in a right stinker today,’ he mutters.
I wonder how I would feel if my boyfriend had invited a strange foreigner he barely knew to spend the afternoon with us, and decide that Allie has at least a smidgeon of justification for being a little put out.
‘Have you two been together long?’ I ask, as we stroll over to retrieve my errant Frisbee.
‘Me and Allie?’ Kit crinkles his brow. ‘I reckon it’s coming up to almost three years. Feels like longer, though,’ he adds, with a snuffle of laughter.
‘Gosh,’ I say, unsure how to respond. ‘That’s a long time.’
Kit lifts one shoulder in a half-shrug.
‘I guess. We all went to school together, me, Griff and Allie, and then she got a job at the stables at around the same time I started helping out. It kind of just happened, you know? But I tell yo
u what, Griff was not best pleased when he found out that his best mate had started carrying on with his little sister.’
I glance up towards Griff, who is busy teaching Tui how to make Beavis jump up for a stick.
‘He seems nice,’ I remark, thinking as I do that ‘nice’ is a terrible word – so vanilla.
Presumably because he feels guilty for telling me his girlfriend was in a ‘stinker’, Kit then says, ‘Allie is a cool girl. It’s not like her to be so mardy, but maybe I deserve it. I’m not gonna win an award for boyfriend of the year anytime soon, that’s for damn sure.’
I watch as he chews the inside of his cheek. Kit has so many tattoos decorating his arms that it’s hard to tell where one ends and another begins.
A bird lets out a deep, echoing caw from amongst the trees, and Kit and I look up simultaneously into the dense tangle of branches high above.
‘If it makes you feel any better, I’ve always been a useless girlfriend,’ I confess, smiling when his eyes widen in surprise. ‘I have always been too preoccupied with ho—’ I falter. ‘Hobbies – I have a lot of hobbies.’
Kit looks more puzzled now than anything, as well he might, but I blunder on regardless.
‘I, er, knit,’ I tell him, ‘and I read a lot.’
At least the latter is true.
‘You and Tui have that in common,’ Kit says, starting up the hill.
‘Oh?’ I reply, following him, eager to hear more about my half-sister’s interests. The others have moved away out of sight now, but I can still hear her infectious laughter.
‘Not knitting.’ He emits a low chuckle. ‘She would never have the patience for that – but she loves her books. I used to read to her when she was younger, but these days she manages fine all by herself.’
The question about Tui’s condition sits like a cactus in the back of my throat, prickling whenever I swallow. I used to run the Riding for the Disabled scheme back when I was still working at Mill House Stables, but none of the disabled teenagers who came along were as capable as Tui. It feels too soon to ask Kit about it – the subject too private. What is abundantly clear is that he cares about Tui very much indeed, and I don’t want to say the wrong thing and risk damaging the fragile threads of our burgeoning friendship – not to mention ruin any chance I might have of spending more time with my new half-sister.
One Winter Morning Page 7