Lavender came back from the bathroom with this dangerous air about her. She’d not long ago dyed her hair bright blue and that night she had spiked it up like Jack Frost. She was all sharp edges and icy colours that night, and she fizzed with self-righteous anger. I could feel it coming off her. Seth apparently couldn’t, or didn’t want to, because he just laughed at her, all scornful and dismissive. I will never forget the look on her face when she turned to me and calmly told me to ask Seth what had happened in Brighton.
I was confused, because as far as I knew, he had gone off to Brighton on his own when I couldn’t go with him. It was after that weekend that he’d started being really sweet to me. I told Lavender to shut up then. I was fed up with her for ruining my day, and I was too frightened to have any desire to hear Seth’s answer. In the end, though, he didn’t say a thing. Lavender sighed, and said that she had to tell me – and she did. She told everyone at that table how Seth had invited her to Brighton at the last minute, and how they had spent pretty much the entire weekend in bed together.
I almost hurled. The blood just drained right out of me, and I tried not to cry, but it was as if I had been possessed. I was wailing and screaming and shouting at both of them. Seth tried to grab my arms, but I found some superhuman strength inside me and managed to pull away from him. All I could think was that I had to get away from both of them, from her need to hurt me so inexplicably, and his pathetic lies as he tried to persuade me that she was playing a trick on me – that the whole thing was some sort of sick bloody joke.
I ran out of the pub without my jacket, and the bus was right there at my stop, so I got on, and I saw Seth out of the back window, chasing up the street behind me. I loved the guy so much that I wanted nothing more than to get off, but I knew that Lavender was telling the truth.
The signs had been there all along, but I had allowed myself to become blind to them. Even when I knew Seth was manipulating me in order to get his own way, I excused his behaviour. I thought that’s what love must be, and that his need to control me was fuelled by genuine affection, but there was always a small voice telling me that things weren’t quite right – that I should want to have sex with him rather than feel as if I owed it to him. My worst fears had come true, and having all my horrible insecurities confirmed in such a cruel way had upset me, of course, but it had also made me angry. I was fuming.
I went straight back to my home away from home, where I knew I would be safe and looked after. The professor, who I’m sure by now you have worked out is David, was shocked when he saw the state of me, and then he was furious. I didn’t know he had it in him to be so cross, but it made me feel better, seeing him so affronted. It made me feel as if I was worth something after all, even if Seth clearly didn’t think so.
Once I had stopped my crying and we were talking it all through, I started to feel even angrier – this time on David’s behalf. I was pissed off with his wife for the first time. Because how dare she walk out on him? How could she blame him for something that was nobody’s fault? I told him what I thought, too. I said that she was stupid – even more stupid than I had been to put my trust in Seth – and he did the oddest thing. He started laughing, then he picked me right up and swung me around, said I was the first person to ever take his side, and that me being cross meant that he could be cross, too. He needed to shout – we both needed to – and that’s what we did. We yelled and we swore and I think we even smashed a few glasses. It was cathartic, and even though it was the worst day of my life, it somehow became one of the very best.
Bonnie took a breath. She had been writing so fast that sweat had beaded on her upper lip and under her arms. Tracey must have switched the heating up to tropical again. Her friend could not bear to be cold, and there were soft pink blankets draped over the back of every chair in the house.
It felt good to have reached this place in the story – it was a poignant memory that Bonnie had been dreading delving back into, so she was glad to find that it hadn’t upset her as much as she’d feared. And it was all true, anyway – that day had turned out to be one of the most pivotal of her life.
Putting the lid back on her pen, Bonnie collected up her empty coffee cup and went down to the kitchen, where she found Tracey weeping over a copy of the local paper.
‘Shit.’ Bonnie was beside her in seconds. ‘What’s the matter? What’s happened?’
‘Oh, nothing.’ Tracey dabbed her eyes with a corner of her Pink Panther apron. ‘Just this horrible story, that’s all. I’m just being silly as usual, duckie.’
Bonnie scanned the headline. A young child had been left orphaned after a traffic accident.
‘That is awful,’ she agreed. ‘So sad.’
Tracey’s voice cracked. ‘I just feel so sorry for the little darling,’ she sobbed. ‘No child should have to lose their mum and dad.’ Then, glancing sideways at Bonnie, ‘Oh God, I’m sorry, love – I didn’t mean that as a dig at you.’
‘It’s fine.’ Bonnie gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. ‘That’s why I’m here, you know? To make up for the past.’
Tracey shuddered as she closed the newspaper and folded it in half.
‘It reminded me of this terrible story from last Christmas,’ she told Bonnie. ‘That one really upset me. Tea?’
Bonnie nodded as Tracey made her way towards the kettle.
‘This woman was killed while she was out riding her daughter’s horse on Christmas Eve, and the pony had to be destroyed, too. Imagine that, right before all the festivities, all the presents under the tree that would never be opened. My heart broke for that girl and her dad.’
‘That is tragic,’ agreed Bonnie, the thought of anything happening to her horses dropping like a stone through her insides. ‘Where did it happen? Around here?’
Tracey paused as she separated two tea bags.
‘No, I think it was over in Cambridgeshire or somewhere. The woman’s husband was some sort of famous author, if I remember rightly, so it made all the papers.’
Bonnie suddenly felt as if a fist had closed around her throat. Picking up her phone, she opened the internet search function and typed in a few key words. The stories and photos that came up made her cry out in such horror that Tracey dropped the mug of tea she was holding so it smashed into pieces all over the tiles.
‘What the hell is going on?’ she cried, but Bonnie was already running from the room.
35
Despite enduring a two-day whisky hangover that would have measured a strong ten on anyone’s ‘what the hell were you thinking’-o-meter, I have felt pretty good since my trip out to Oamaru. Queenstown is even busier now than it was in the run-up to Christmas, as backpackers and holidaying New Zealanders alike converge on the South Island’s party capital, ready to see in the New Year.
I haven’t seen Kit or Tui since they dropped me off back at my apartment, but I have been thinking about them – mostly about how much I will miss them when I eventually go home. It has been eighteen days now since I landed here, but I feel as if I have been here for so much longer, and with no return flight yet booked, I feel pleasantly untethered. And it’s not just the winter sunshine warming me up, it is the people that I have met, and the person that I have started to become once again – someone less brittle and more at ease, someone who is able to find the funny in every situation. I didn’t realise how much I had missed myself, how much I needed to feel something other than sad and hopeless. My main concern now is what will happen when I go back to England.
To give myself a task for the day that will hopefully go some way towards distracting my freewheeling mind, I set my alarm early and leave the apartment before the sun is fully up, going directly to the bus station and buying a ticket out to Wanaka – a picturesque area about two hours north of Queenstown.
Like many of the towns in Otago, Wanaka boasts a quaint sprawl of houses, shops and businesses, but its defining feature is the lake. As the bus pulls in, I spy the Southern Alps in the distance, glaring down like
proud parents at the landscape below, and admire the tribes of colourful flowers bursting out from window boxes and pots. There are a handful of cafés on the opposite side of the road to the water, but instead of eating in as I usually would, I order a flat white and a muffin to go, keen to keep moving after the long drive.
The sky above the lake is part obscured today by a swell of donkey-grey clouds, the sunshine subdued for once behind them. Crunching underfoot, the shore is nature’s button box of colourful stones, interrupted at regular intervals by tree roots, bursts of emerald-green mountain grass and untamed thickets of wild flora in radiant yellows and harmonious mauves.
I walk along slowly, sipping coffee and breaking off pieces of muffin, my tatty old Converse finding easy purchase on pebbles long since softened by tides. Gnarled trees bend over like crooked old ladies, caressing the water with their fingers of fronds, and I smile at a black dog as it splashes through the shallows, a stick almost as long as me clamped triumphantly between its jaws. Red and orange kayaks litter the shore, their oars poking up like diffuser sticks, and further along, small wooden rowing boats lounge belly up like sunbathers, displaying cracked patches of paint that were once perhaps white.
There is a rawness here in Wanaka that is absent in the more polished Queenstown, and as such the beauty feels more authentic somehow, less intrusive – a morning after rather than the night before, a place where dust settles rather than being kicked up.
I could not have chosen a better location to stop for a while in order to think.
I came to New Zealand in search of my mother, but instead, I have found a sister. And I met Kit, too. I am not sure what to call him. Certainly, he has become someone I consider to be a friend – but will that still be the case when Bonnie returns, and Kit finds out who I really am? Any day now, Kit said – any day now I will finally have to face the woman who chose to give me away. I could have grown up surrounded by all of this, but because of her, I am only just discovering it now.
I watch a flock of birds sweep out across the water, their little bodies gliding in perfect harmony, unknowing skywriters as they soar first up and then down. How lucky they are to belong to one another; how simple it must be to fall in line and become part of something far bigger than yourself. David would argue with that notion if he were here – my adoptive father would tell me that being an individual is far more important, and that one person can harness just as much power as a thousand if they so choose. That may be true of some, but not of me. I’m tired of being the only one. I do better with other people around me – and it is here in New Zealand, more than anywhere else since I lost Anna, that I feel as if I really belong. If I go home, will I lose that feeling? Will I be alone again?
At this moment I look up and see the lone tree in the middle distance. One that has strayed away from its companions up on the shore and set down its roots in the shallows of the lake, as if it is a child that has been ushered forwards to paddle. There are a handful of people crowded around taking photos, and with the backdrop of the mountains and the clouds now breaking up overhead, the little tree looks lost and vulnerable.
Charmed that such a kindred spirit should emerge on my horizon, I venture closer to examine the tree in more detail, taking in the rustic knots in the bark, the freshly uncoiled leaves of dazzling green, and the jaunty way it bows reverently to one side, as if curtseying to Mother Nature. It is the lone pawn that heads out to confront a queen, the bugle player on a battlefield, as brave and foolish as any soul that dares to face the world alone.
I understand then that I have a choice: I can see myself as lost and alone, or I can find the courage to step out and accept the hand that I have been dealt. Isn’t that what Evangeline would do? Isn’t that what Anna and David have wanted me to do all along?
I continue walking until I reach an impassable section of the lake. There is a fallen tree not far from where delicate waves are tickling the shoreline, and I sit down on the bleached husk of its splendidly decaying body. Only a few weeks ago, I would have been uncomfortable to be this close to death, but Kit has made me remember that life goes on, that old makes way for new, that a future can be altered but not destroyed – he has managed to turn his face towards the sun and let shadows fall behind him, and now I am finally starting to believe that one day, just maybe, I might be able to do the same.
Thanks to this place and these people, I am starting to find ways to be less bitter, and less afraid. I was fearful that being around horses would be too painful, but my desire to spend time with Tui was strong enough to carry me through. I started this trip by only giving away the tiniest pieces of myself to those around me, and now I want to scale one of those distant peaks just to scream from its tip that I have a sister – and that she is the best and bravest girl I know.
Whatever happens now, I know one thing for sure – I must keep Tui in my life. I want her to know what she means to me, and that I will always be there for her, no matter what. If I have Tui, I know that I can cope with anything – caring about her has made me stronger. As fast as the thought occurs to me, so follows another: that I don’t want to wait any longer for Bonnie to return – I want my sister to know who I am now.
I don’t even realise that I’m crying until the tears land on my bare knees, and I smile as I wipe them from my cheeks. For once, I don’t feel sad to be shedding them, because I know that this time they have nothing to do with sorrow at all.
36
Having made the decision that I want to tell Tui the truth about who I really am, I find myself impatient for it. The temptation to hurry straight back to Queenstown and jump in a taxi to the stables is an ardent one, but I know that the more sensible option would be to sleep on it. Plus, I want to tell David first. I feel bad for the way I have shut him out since I’ve been here, and I worry that he will be upset to learn about it all after the event. Anna and I had so many shared interests and spent so much time together that David inevitably ended up being left out, which must have rankled a tiny bit, even if he never showed it. I want to start letting him in again. We used to be so close when I was young – surely we can get back to that place again?
When I take out my mobile to call him from the bus, however, there is no answer. David’s voicemail informs me cheerfully that he is ‘probably reading, writing or sleeping’, while the house phone simply rings out. I know it’s only around seven a.m. in the UK – and a Sunday, granted – but my adoptive dad is an early riser. He always has been.
Frustrated and beginning to worry, I put a call through to Hayley instead.
‘Hello.’ She sounds bleary.
‘It’s Genie – did I wake you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Shit, I’m sorry, but I need a favour.’
‘Hang on a minute.’
I hear the ruffling sound of a duvet being lifted, then what appears to be a male voice asking if everything is OK. Hayley has not had a boyfriend for years, and for a moment, I am so surprised that I almost forget why I was calling her in the first place.
‘Who’s there with you?’ I ask, as soon as she comes back on the line.
‘What? Nobody. You must be hearing things.’
‘The thing I heard was a man – in your bedroom!’
There is a pause.
‘No comment,’ says Hayley, and I respond with a ‘hmm’, before filling her in on my MIA dad.
‘Maybe he’s still asleep,’ is her response.
‘He never sleeps past seven,’ I argue. ‘And he never switches off his phone either. I tried both – the mobile and the landline.’
‘What can I do?’ She sounds more resigned than concerned.
‘I guess, if you don’t mind, you could maybe drive over there? Just to make sure he hasn’t fallen over or something?’
‘He’s not even sixty yet,’ she chides. ‘I doubt we’re looking at a slip and fall situation.’
‘Pretty please,’ I plead, closing my eyes and willing her to agree. ‘You know I wouldn’t ask you unl
ess I thought it was absolutely vital.’
‘Oh, OK then, as it’s you.’
The next half-hour passes like a week, and not even the stunning swathes of scenery rushing past the window can distract me. It’s stupid, but I keep envisaging David submerged under his bath water, or in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairs. I check my phone to see the date of his last text – three days ago. Before I went to Oamaru. I didn’t even tell him that I was going. Now, suddenly, I want to tell him everything.
I’m still holding my phone when Hayley calls me back, and the shrill ringtone makes me jump so much that I almost drop it.
‘Talk to me,’ I say, not bothering with pleasantries.
‘Well, it’s really weird,’ Hayley says, sounding far more awake now than she did during our initial conversation. ‘I’m outside your place now, and there are no lights on or anything. I’ve been knocking and calling through the letterbox, but he hasn’t answered.’
‘Shit! Can you see anything through the windows?’
‘The curtains are drawn,’ she says, and I hear the sound of gravel crunching underfoot as she makes her way around the side of the house. ‘No, no sign of him in the kitchen either.’
‘Try chucking a stone at the front bedroom window,’ I say, but Hayley isn’t keen.
‘If he didn’t hear me shouting, he’s not going to hear a stone. Hang on – I’ve got another idea.’
All I can hear is her feet on the driveway, and I hate myself for being so far away. It’s been days since I called – he could have been trapped for ages.
‘Oh,’ Hayley says, and I clutch the phone.
‘What?’
‘I’ve just had a look through the letterbox again, and I can see a pile of mail on the mat.’
One Winter Morning Page 20