Gordon says, ‘You think because you have a little body, a childishly taut body, that people will continue everlastingly to spoon food into your mouth, and carry you about on their shoulders?’
‘No,’ Cynthia says, alone in the dark. She feels stupid, but continues, ‘I expect to die.’
He goes on as if he hasn’t heard her: ‘She will not want you now, or even me, after what you’ve done. But after your murder of the teenager, you see—oh yes, I know you know that I know—we’re all together now, probably forever. Breathe, Cynthia. It’s important that you breathe.’
She clamps her lips shut, to spite him.
‘I saw her face when she smelled it. Every love opportunity is over.’
The smell, the rank, deep, sharp smell, and Cynthia remembers how it felt lukewarm on her leg. She wasn’t looking at Anahera, not when it first poured out. She can’t remember where she was looking. At the wall, probably.
‘You must be going limp,’ he says.
But she’s hard, strained; the air in her is stalled. She scrunches up tight against the cabin wall. His is the language of debtors and employers—love yourself, it says. Make yourself contented. She listens to him settle back into the bed. Anyway, Cynthia never got a job.
When he’s silent she stands on the deck, watching the water. In the dark it’s only more darkness, and that’s all water is. Transparency and transparency on top of itself until you can see nothing through it. Her father was moustached and rich and distant. She never saw him in shorts, and she can’t imagine him with tanned legs or pale ones. He hasn’t texted her in over a month, no one has. She remembers her old bed, and how soft it was. The laxity of Snot-head’s sleeping limbs, and his gentle breathing.
There’s sound from inside. Cynthia peers through the door-crack and can see only the lines of someone’s limbs moving through shadows, but they’re Anahera’s. Things are being picked up, and there are shuffling sounds. The noise of a zip, and the thump of a full bag being put down on the ground. Anahera’s packing. Cynthia squeaks, her knees are weak. She holds the doorknob for support.
Anahera lifts her head up into the light from the window, big-eyed, and says, ‘I thought we might have a day out tomorrow, hey?’
Cynthia bites her cheeks and stares back.
‘I’ve just got some Weet-Bix, Nutella and a sweater,’ Anahera says.
Cynthia says nothing, and continues to stare while Anahera puts the bag down, gives her a nod, and gets back under the blankets with Gordon.
She needs to regain the bed immediately, by force if necessary. She stands in the doorway to examine the situation. They’re each lying at far edges of the mattress. All she needs to do is place herself between them, and sleep. She pees first, even though she doesn’t need to, so that after claiming her position there’ll be no need to relinquish it. Then she steps, carefully, over Anahera’s body so she’s standing on the bed. Gordon rolls and moans by her feet. Silently, she lowers herself down, onto her knees, then her elbows, and finally her stomach. There she is, then—that easily!—lying between them.
She doesn’t really sleep, her tendons feel tight and weird. She just lies there, tensed and breathing. He smells salty. Then, when the morning light is still only arriving, Gordon rolls onto her, opens his eyes and yells. He doesn’t make words, only a deep, long roar. When he’s exhausted and regained himself, he looks at her and says, ‘Creep.’ He shoves her hard against Anahera, and Anahera pushes back silently. Cynthia struggles for breath between them.
‘I’m sorry, excuse me,’ he says. ‘I do not feel comfortable with your body so close to me in bed.’
Cynthia pulls in as much air as she can—they’re still both pushing—and says, ‘Then you know what to do, Gordon.’
He stops pressing. ‘Oh, I’m not sure?’
It’s still dark, but Anahera fake yawns and gets up. ‘Well,’ she says. ‘Today we’re going for a trip. All of us together. Confined space clearly isn’t aiding our psychological health.’
Gordon gives Cynthia a hard shove, and she falls onto the floor. Immediately, she clambers back up and over him onto the good side of the bed—the safe side, by the wall, where he was, and where she won’t be expelled nearly so easily again. He doesn’t fight her, and she doesn’t know why till she sees Anahera’s backpack, visible from where he is now, leaned against the kitchen cupboards.
‘Is your plan—extensive?’ he asks Anahera.
She nudges the bag with her foot and smiles, very nicely. ‘I’ve packed some food and things. I couldn’t sleep last night.’
She’s lying. Cynthia moans and bangs her head against the wall.
‘You see,’ he says, speaking over her, at Anahera, ‘you are giving us agony.’
Cynthia hears herself moaning and moans louder. He’s turned to face Anahera, and his back obscures her from Cynthia’s view. All she can see is wall and ceiling; all that flaking paint. There’s more light now, it’s nearly daytime.
‘What do you mean?’ Anahera says.
Cynthia watches his mountainous back shrug.
‘Well,’ Anahera says, ‘I’m awake now. Thanks to both of you. So I’ll go for a swim, then when I come back we’ll go?’
The lump lifts and fall again, another shrug. His muscles ripple. Anahera goes, and Cynthia and Gordon lie still for twenty minutes. Then, she reaches up and digs her fingers into his back. His muscles are hard, her fingernails can’t find purchase. Then, one of them catches on a mole. ‘I’m not giving you my bed back, ever,’ she says. ‘You came here, and you ruined my life.’
He slumps onto his back, and covers his face with his hands. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Nothing that happens to you means a thing, you are too young. Your life is not possibly ruined. Do you have a father? It is my life that is a great heap of ball-sack. It is you who have ruined my great dreams.’
He’s pathetic. She looks at his body. His thighs are thick, and his chest’s very solid. She leans over, and touches his stomach with a fist. She presses it down hard, but nothing happens. He doesn’t have any squishy part at all. He opens his eyes, and tells her, ‘You know she thinks she’s going to run from us?’ He laughs and laughs. ‘She will not run from us,’ he says, and he twists and resettles himself under her fist, still pressing. She lifts it up and punches him once in the stomach, so he makes an ‘Urrgh’ sound.
Satisfied, she lies back to watch the ceiling for twenty minutes more.
‘A lot of boys would like you, Cynthia,’ he says casually, ‘but not me. There are specific qualities I look for in a woman.’
How annoying, and after that he pulls one of his knees up, and squeezes it against his chest. He releases it, blows out three short, sharp breaths, and looks at her sideways. ‘Well,’ he says. Cynthia wishes she knew a stretch she could do lying down. She can’t copy his, but she feels very tense. He does his other knee, still looking at her.
‘Anahera practically said I was allowed to make you my criminal slave,’ she tells him.
He raises his eyebrows and releases the second knee.
‘But you’re just too shit. I was going to make you steal corned beef, and steal that guy’s yellow boat, but you’re just too shit.’
‘Where would you contain me?’ he asks.
She doesn’t hesitate. ‘I’d tie you to the table.’
‘But then where would Anahera sleep?’ He lies there, ogling her.
She’s about to say that, actually, she’d lock him in the cabin, when he puts a finger to his lips and nods towards the door. Anahera’s on the ladder. ‘See how mature I am,’ he says. ‘I will give you the whole bed.’
He gets up and pours the last of the Coco Pops onto his face, and into his mouth.
Anahera arrives in the doorway and looks down at the carpet where a good deal of them have fallen. He stamps them in with his bare feet, and says preemptively, ‘There were a lot already spilled there.’ The big toe on his right foot twitches, and he grabs it by the ankle to lift it and remove a half-crushed Coco
Pop from the crevice between that toe and the ball of his foot. Having flicked it away, he tells Anahera quietly, ‘You won’t leave us.’
‘What? Why?’ she asks, panicked.
‘What, or why?’ There’s a fleck of Coco Pop caught in the slight hair above his lip.
Anahera gives him a reducing look, then goes back onto the deck. ‘Cynthia,’ she says, loudly. Her voice is bright with deceit, but Cynthia comes, like a called animal. ‘There’s the busy town we’ve been going to,’ she explains, pointing to Paihia. Cynthia nods, she knows. ‘But then,’ Anahera shifts her arm, so she’s pointing in the opposite direction, ‘on the other side of the estuary is a much quieter place, Russell, with secluded beaches. I thought we could all go there for the day.’
It doesn’t make sense, what Gordon’s been saying. Anahera could have left on her own in the night, in the dinghy. She could already be gone. She moves behind Cynthia now, and touches her hair. ‘I’ll plait it,’ she says. There’s no wind, it’s quiet, and her voice sounds almost girlish, sweet in the cool, still air. ‘Fish-tail or French, you pick?’ Cynthia’s thinking of Snot-head. He had very watery eyes, some days. The hair’s pulled softly at her scalp. The tips of Anahera’s fingers slide under Cynthia’s ponytail and wriggle, loosening it. ‘Fish, then,’ Anahera says, and Cynthia can’t help her posture rising up towards her touch.
52.
They’re silent and squashed in the dinghy like sardines. ‘So,’ Anahera says, and neither Cynthia nor Gordon says anything. ‘Well,’ she says. Then, finally, ‘Alright then.’ Gordon paddles. The sky’s thick and weighted with waiting rain. Cynthia and Anahera sit side by side, and Anahera’s arm twitches.
When they arrive, Anahera tugs Cynthia up, and they walk to sit on some grass at the edge of the sand. The only visible buildings are high above them, on the hills. Gordon joins them after shifting the dinghy from the sea, yawns loudly, and lies back. His shirt lifts right up and shows his hairy belly-button. Around them, the grass is rough, and in patches it’s beige like skin. The water’s grey, and tides heave up onto the beach, one after the other, near to where he’s left the dinghy. He didn’t drag it far.
Anahera’s looking around, worried they’ll be seen, but Cynthia doesn’t bother. Let them take us, she thinks, and lies back as peaceful and loose as Gordon, to imagine herself being caught, photographed, shamed and locked away forever.
Rain falls on them in plops. ‘The town’s over there,’ Gordon says, shuffling up on an elbow to point where the beach curves around, away from them. Then he lies down again, and brings his lips to Cynthia’s ear. ‘This place connects to the mainland, you know,’ he whispers.
Anahera’s sitting up, and she turns back to them with a lazy, forced smile, then unpacks the picnic. They’re nearly out of food. There’s a Weet-Bix for each of them, and Nutella to spread on top. ‘We can put it on thick,’ Anahera says hopefully. ‘And to wash those down . . .’ She presents a huge bottle of water, one of their last ones, almost grimacing. Gordon takes a Weet-Bix gingerly in his big fingers, and slathers it like he’s been told to.
‘I always loved these,’ he says.
Cynthia ignores him. No one loves Weet-Bix.
He laughs hysterically. ‘Just kidding, I am German.’
‘Fuck off already, Gordon,’ Anahera says. She’s been sitting, looking dumbly at her own wheat biscuit, and now she throws it into the sand and stands up. She walks to the water.
‘Boof!’ Gordon puffs out after her, but quickly all his attention is on the Weet-Bix, and he’s brushing the sand off with the careful soft of his fingers. He places it down at his side, away from Cynthia, on his cardigan. Only then does he screech after Anahera, ‘What do you know about the incident, woman?’
She doesn’t turn.
He yells again, ‘Suspect!’
Cynthia couldn’t care less about any of that nonsense; the boy, the police or anything. He makes a little wheezing laugh under his breath, and together they watch Anahera ignore him.
Water laps at her feet.
‘Killer,’ he says.
‘You’re a child if you think we’ll be hurt that way,’ Cynthia tells him, and begins to crunch through her Weet-Bix, dry.
He laughs, and nods at Anahera. ‘She will be hurt, she is that way.’
Cynthia wants to tell him what sort of person he really is, but there’s not enough saliva in her mouth to swallow what she’s chewed. Anahera’s kicking the water, and she stops to squat down and look at it. Cynthia takes glugs from the water bottle, and swallows her mouthful in three portions. When she’s done the moment’s passed, and she and Gordon watch Anahera together. The air between them feels peaceful to Cynthia, as if there’s no truth left to be spoken or changed.
‘We were going to take all your money,’ she tells him. ‘Before we knew you knew about the kid.’
He shrugs. ‘You thought that.’
She narrows her eyes so Anahera becomes a dark blotch before the reflected light of the sea. But, what else would she expect him to say? She closes her eyes and lies back. ‘You see?’ he says. ‘She is a sweet woman. She could have paddled off, but then you and I would have no dinghy. So she took us here, so she could run, and we could use it to get back to the boat. A real darling, she is.’ He yells at her, ‘You’re a real fucking sweetheart, are you not?’
When Anahera does come back to them, she says, ‘I thought I might just go for a little walk.’
‘Where?’ Gordon asks.
Anahera waves her hand off to where the land curves away, behind a corner.
Cynthia wriggles her feet, thinking to get up and go with her, but Gordon speaks. ‘You can go,’ he says, coldly. ‘You can go wherever you like. I will not follow. I will not tell the police any bad thing of a good woman like you. You can trust me.’
Anahera squats down, grasping her thighs and looking hard at him. Cynthia sits quietly alongside.
‘It is Cynthia,’ he says, ‘that you cannot be sure about.’
Anahera swivels, and she’s looking at Cynthia. Her lip twitches. Cynthia tries to look up sweetly, to push all her generosity and love into her face, but it doesn’t seem to be working. Anahera blinks, and wipes some hair from her eyes, then continues her deep looking. A laugh-choke comes out of Cynthia.
Gordon adjusts himself in the grass. ‘Cynthia,’ he says, ‘I put it in her bum, in my tent.’
There’s not a thought, just dull, vicious noise. Anahera’s eyes, nose and mouth are all Cynthia sees. They turn away from her, all at once, to face Gordon.
‘Fuck off,’ Anahera says.
She turns back to Cynthia, but Cynthia’s eyes have opened so wide they hurt. Her guts are rising in her throat, and all she can think of is vomiting on Anahera’s so-close face. ‘What?’ she asks Anahera. What he said is true.
‘Please, ignore him,’ Anahera whispers.
Cynthia shouts back, spitting, ‘What?!’
Anahera says nothing.
‘What? So you can run off and leave me with him? So when you leave me I won’t call the police on you?’ Cynthia spits more.
Anahera doesn’t move or wipe her face till Cynthia’s done. She waits, and says, ‘Right, I think we should all head back to the boat.’
Cynthia’s fingers are in her mouth, and she’s pushing them back. For a moment she finds them there, pauses, then continues pushing deliberately. Anahera grabs one of her elbows, trying to pull them out, but Cynthia slams her head against them, harder. She doesn’t think why; doesn’t think. Bile comes up and touches her fingers. Her fingertips are wet and her throat burns. Anahera pulls Cynthia’s arms harder, so the joints hurt, and their faces are near each other again. ‘I’m sorry,’ Anahera says. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ She’s crying. She’s going to say more, so Cynthia throws herself up, out of Anahera’s arms, and runs.
Gordon’s ahead of her, putting the dinghy back in the water. She runs past him, screaming, into the sea. She trips and falls when it’s at her knees, cries
out, stands, and continues running, but falls again.
Anahera’s yelling, ‘Don’t, don’t,’ then she catches up and grabs Cynthia. ‘Don’t,’ she keeps saying.
‘Don’t tell me don’t!’ Cynthia kicks at her legs, but Anahera’s holding her by the stomach, and her grip tightens. Cynthia swings her arms, still kicking, not touching the ground anymore, and screams louder.
Gordon looks over, from where he’s waiting now at the dinghy. ‘Just let her go,’ he says. ‘She’ll come back.’
Cynthia bites, but she’s only biting salty air. Anahera lets her go, and she runs, struggling against the tides, till she’s in water too deep to stand in. She can’t see a thing through her tears, the water and her hair which has slapped wet in one mess over her face. There’s water in her throat, her mouth and her eyes. She’s heavy, but she tries to swim back to the boat. She remembers waiting for Anahera outside Countdown with Snot-head, and a man coming out and looking at her, and she thinks, Of course, of course, over and over again.
Anahera’s voice isn’t far away, calling her name. She looks sideways and the dinghy’s right there, floating gently in the water beside her. Anahera’s hand’s out, waiting. Cynthia doesn’t want to touch it. She swims over, and struggles to pull herself up, out of the water, but slips four times. Before the fifth, Gordon offers his hand, and she takes it.
He paddles. The water all around them is unbearable green. He’s sitting opposite them, and his whole body rolls forward and back with each stroke. Anahera’s hands are on her thighs, and her knees press tightly together. Cynthia looks at her, then at the water again, and her throat burns with salt. She swallows to soothe it, but it won’t feel better. Anahera leans forward, with her hands and her fingers spread, murmuring to comfort her.
‘Anahera,’ Cynthia says, ‘who did your husband catch you having sex with?’
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