Melbourne, Auckland, Christchurch. Of course there was a direct flight from Tullamarine to Christchurch International Airport, but if she were going to fly to the bottom of the world Orla was determined to take a few extra days and visit one of her oldest friends on the way. Her contract allowed for a flight via the cheapest, most direct route, but she whipped out her credit card and in a trice she was going via Auckland without a murmur.
Orla left Melbourne in a classic March heatwave, the worst for three years. Her mother insisted on driving her to the airport. She was English and wouldn’t be caught dead crying in public, but that didn’t stop her from weeping buckets in the car. As if Orla were sixteen rather than twenty-eight, or about to go off to war.
‘The Peninsula’s a perfectly civilised place,’ Orla murmured, although she wasn’t sure who she was trying to reassure.
‘I know that,’ her mother replied. ‘We even have family there.’
‘Do we?’ That was certainly a surprise.
‘A cousin of mine,’ she said vaguely. ‘You could visit her.’
No thanks, Orla thought, while simultaneously making noises suggestive of agreement. She didn’t want to create any obligations to visit her weird rellies. She didn’t want to come back and have her mother go on about why she hadn’t visited Gertie or Florrie or Mags.
‘You look nice, dear,’ her mother said next.
‘Do I?’ Orla was somewhat startled at her mother saying this. She’d certainly agonised enough over how she should look, but usually Mother — that’s what she said Orla should call her when she’d asked her to stop calling her Mamabear — didn’t comment on her appearance. Mother had always been one of those it’s-what’s-inside-that-counts sorts of people.
Instead of just dropping Orla off, Mother splashed out and paid to park within walking distance of the terminal. Since she was naturally frugal, this was alarming.
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ Orla asked as Mother trotted beside her carrying one of the bags.
‘Of course, dear. Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘You’re not acting like … you.’
‘Well, it’s not every day your only daughter leaves for such a faraway place.’
‘Mother,’ Orla said sternly, ‘I’ve been all over Europe and to England.’
‘London,’ she corrected Orla. ‘And London’s just London, isn’t it? London’s home.’
Orla sighed. There was no convincing Mother that London was home only for her. As far as she was concerned, London was the centre of the world and no upstart Paris, New York or Sydney would ever change that fact.
‘What are you going to do in Auckland?’ Mother asked over a quick coffee before Orla went through security.
‘I’m visiting Emma. You remember Emma?’
‘Of course. The loud one with the pink hair.’
Orla laughed and said, ‘Elephant memory! She only had pink hair for about one month when she was sixteen.’
As her mother hugged Orla goodbye, she suddenly blurted, ‘Don’t be desperate, Orla.’
‘What?’ Orla asked in amazement.
‘You don’t have to marry a movie star or become famous,’ she went on breathlessly, as if she’d been rehearsing her advice for hours and couldn’t wait to get it out. ‘Plenty of people have perfectly good lives just being … ordinary.’
‘Okay, Mamabear,’ Orla laughed. ‘Promise I won’t get there and turn desperate.’
‘And don’t call me that,’ her mother said primly, looking around furtively to see whether anyone had heard. She was so old-fashioned that she still thought people cared, and she still cared what they thought, but Orla could never bring herself to say no-one gives a shit, Mamabear.
Orla picked up her cabin bag and headed towards security. Before she disappeared, she turned back to wave. Her mother looked so small and alone and out of step standing there in her faded summer dress that Orla caught her breath. When had that old-lady solitariness become such a cloud around her?
After all, she wasn’t that old, only in her early sixties, an age when plenty of women still looked in their prime, especially with careful makeup and flattering clothes. But Mother no longer bothered with ‘all that’. ‘All that’ was what she called anything that involved looking good for its own sake, and that encompassed just about everything.
The flight to Auckland took four hours. Orla was excited for the first couple of hours, enthusiastic about everything from the drinks list to the elegant clothing on the woman sitting next to her. Then she grew restless. She started to read the best-selling memoir that the film script was based on. It was the story of an English girl — well, she was in her late twenties actually, but ‘girl’ was how they described her on the back-cover blurb — who had moved to the Peninsula (exact location rather fuzzy) to restore an abandoned vineyard.
What had actually motivated her was not quite clear to Orla, but her husband’s betrayal seemed to be the overriding factor. Still, imagine moving from one end of the earth to the other, leaving behind everything you knew and loved, just because your rat of a husband cheated on you! Couldn’t she have just moved to the English countryside? And really, how did she even survive if she didn’t know anything about grapes or winemaking? Some of these memoirs of moving to foreign countries and making a wild success of complicated and difficult projects seemed way too good to be true.
The flight attendants began serving a meal, and Orla put the novel away while her little plastic plate of plastic food was served, consumed and cleared away. After that she had a short nap, and then woke up to find the woman next to her slumped in her seat and snoring loudly. All her elegance was vanquished by the racket coming out of her throat.
Orla began reading the novel again, but was soon engulfed in a hubbub that was coming like a wave down the aisle. The passengers were all wildly excited about something, all suddenly chattering like monkeys and turning around to exclaim to complete strangers. When the news reached Orla, her blood froze. Apparently a plane had gone missing. She didn’t know where this information had come from, but it was obviously not the cabin crew who were now declaring it to be false and doing their best to quell the commotion. The elegant woman straightened her skirt and reapplied her lipstick, as if a camera crew on the ground in Auckland might soon be asking her opinion concerning the malicious rumour.
As they came in to land, Orla began thinking about the poor relatives of those on the missing plane, no matter how imaginary they might turn out to be. Suddenly it was her own mother forever standing in the airport in her coat and woollen hat, forlornly clutching her handbag. Orla had to admit that although she’d been good at denying it, she felt guilty about going so far away.
Mother hadn’t had any other family in Melbourne since Orla’s father had died and Orla’s brother had gone to London with his wife. Of course she had friends — old friends, good friends, friends that she’d had since their family had first arrived in Australia — but many of them now had their own health or retirement problems, and anyway, she’d always been way too English to ask for help.
The plane landed and Orla, feeling airsick, staggered into the terminal. It was a beautiful March day in Auckland, but she didn’t care. All she wanted was a hot shower and a long sleep.
The clothing boutiques in Parnell sold a bright array of iridescent hardly-there dresses to throw over skimpy bikinis, and Orla bought a few, hoping to look very come-hither on the beach at Port Levy.
When she showed them to Emma, her friend looked at her and said, ‘You do know what it’s like down there, don’t you?’
‘Down there? You make it sound like Hell.’
‘My idea of Hell anyway,’ Emma replied and laughed loudly.
‘What d’you mean?’ Orla asked, feeling uneasy.
‘Orla, it’s all paddocks and sheep and cows and old rotting shacks.’
‘How do you know?’ Orla was feeling put-out to say the least. Famous actress turned into in-bred country cousin in a trice.
‘Alex has some friends there. We took a trip down there a couple of summers ago.’
‘And what? You hated it?’
‘No, it’s beautiful. I just meant clothes like that are just too—’
‘Revealing?’ Orla interrupted. ‘You mean they’re going to jump on me like a bunch of slavering rams?’
Emma burst out laughing.
Orla was slowly getting annoyed.
‘And the weather,’ Emma added, struggling to get control of herself. ‘It isn’t hot in March like it is in Melbourne. Down there, autumn will have already started.’
‘What do you recommend, then? Something that covers me from head to toe?’
‘I didn’t mean they’re uptight, Orla. They’re not at all. I just meant those dresses aren’t warm or tough enough. You’ll probably rip the one you’re wearing on the first fence you climb over.’
‘I’ll be on a film set, Emma. I won’t be climbing any fences.’
‘Yes, you will. Guarantee it.’
Orla hated to think Emma was right. After all, she’d have plenty of time off because her part was so small. She was to play a close friend of the lead, who turns up and visits the vineyard over the summer, behaves badly on a few beaches and finally disappears on a sex fling until nearly the end of her trip. Apparently the plan had been to briefly lighten the negative mood of the lead’s troubled romance, so it had been written in a farcical kind of way, with the character doing a lot of prancing around in her bikini and throwing up whenever she had too much to drink.
‘Let’s go and buy ice-creams, and look at the denim shorts in the stores,’ Emma suggested. ‘If you buy some that are tiny enough, you’ll be able to look good and get over fences.’
While Emma was at work the following evening, Orla took a ferry to a suburb on the opposite side of the harbour, a pretty seaside village called Devonport. It was very peaceful and she enjoyed a glass of wine at an outdoor table in the warm, setting sun. Even though she was alone, no-one bothered her or stared at her like she was some poor fool who’d been stood up. The atmosphere was one of relaxed sophistication, and she didn’t feel as if she had to wave a banner saying no desperation here!
Thinking that made Orla recall the advice Mother had given her at the airport, obviously carefully chewed-over, and delivered at exactly the right moment — when Orla telling her off or snubbing her would have been incredibly unkind and inappropriate.
Do I look desperate? Orla wondered. How exactly does that look? Like every young woman without a man holding her up? Like any woman who’s an aspiring actress and on the wrong side of twenty-five? And what did Mother mean by an ‘ordinary’ life? Sure, she’s old-fashioned and pretty conservative, but hadn’t she jumped on a plane with my father and set off to another country where she didn’t know a living soul? How ordinary was that?
Anyway, to have a life less ordinary now, it wasn’t enough to move to another perfectly civilised, English-speaking country. You had to … jump off cliffs wearing a wing suit, or go into space, or even a thousand leagues under the sea, and if like Orla you were physically unskilled and basically terrified of heights, widths and depths, all you could hope for was that someone might let you pretend to do something adventurous, very safely, on film — while a stunt person waited in the wings for the tough stuff.
Get real, Orla! You’re in a rom com, for God’s sake. The most you’ll have to do is swim in the ocean, where the most frightening thing will be the temperature, and wear a bikini, the most alarming aspect of which will be the sneering looks of the other actors if your cellulite wobbles.
‘Excuse me,’ the waiter said, ‘would you like another glass of wine? Or perhaps dessert and coffee?’
Orla fancied another wine, but ordered coffee and cake instead. She didn’t want to risk feeling tipsy on the ferry back to the city. Tipsy — that was another of Mother’s words. She used it every Christmas when, after much pressure, she had a second glass of bubbly while the turkey cooked. No seafood or fillet steak for her and —
Oh God, why do I keep thinking about my mother? Orla admonished herself. I wish I’d never let her take me to the airport, and I wish she’d never told me to be ordinary!
The trip back across the water was stunning. The city lights were reflected in the calm, dark seawater and up above a clear sky was sprinkled with stars. Orla was very tired when she got back to Emma’s and fell into a deep sleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. She dreamed she was swimming in the ocean for the cameras, but instead of coming into shore after a short, splashy dip in the waves she kept swimming out to sea, doggedly paddling towards the horizon.
Orla was back at the airport by 9.00am, and the journey was certainly a lot more fraught than it had been on the day she arrived. But the honking, darting, rude behaviour of some of the drivers in the stalled traffic matched her own mood of excitement.
She might as well have been going to the moon, the way she felt. After flying into Christchurch airport, she would collect her rental car and then drive out to the Peninsula. She had a map of the bays in her handbag, a map that she’d been pulling out and studying every time she had a spare moment. Even though there was nothing more that the map could tell her other than where the roads and tracks went, she rolled the names of the many bays around on her tongue and willed the map to give up their secrets.
It didn’t. But she was happy to see that there was a road from Port Levy to Pigeon Bay, and the novel had described the latter so lovingly that she was determined to visit the bay while she still had the rental car. Sadly she couldn’t afford to keep it for the whole time she’d be there. With luck she’d have made some other arrangements by the time she had to take it back. Perhaps a bicycle?
It was a beautiful day when Orla landed. Warm and clear, with the smell of autumn leaves. For no reason that she could identify, Orla felt ridiculously happy as she filled out the paperwork for her rental car. She felt energised and ready for anything — and no-one seemed to be looking askance at her skimpy shorts.
‘Have a lovely holiday,’ the woman at the desk of the rental company said as she handed Orla the documents and keys.
‘Oh, I’m here to work,’ Orla replied, without thinking.
‘Work? You? On the Peninsula?’ She looked surprised.
‘I’m an actor,’ she explained. ‘I’m going to be in a film.’
‘Oh, that’s wonderful,’ the woman said with obvious sincerity. ‘How exciting for you! I wish I could do something like that. You’re so lucky.’
Yes, I am lucky, Orla thought as she started the car. After all this time and all this trying. She sailed down the road out of the airport, singing loudly.
The first roundabout was hair-raising. She’d thought she was coming to some kind of backwater, but there were trucks, cars and motorbikes flying at her thick and fast. Orla stopped singing and started to concentrate.
She made it through the roundabout in one piece and immediately found herself in a mesmerising sea of bright-orange road cones. God only knows what had occasioned all the roadworks, but they seemed extravagant to say the least. After chugging along single-file for what seemed like ages, the traffic thinned out and she saw some elegant horses munching grass in a paddock.
Orla came to a turnoff, the city to the left and the Peninsula to the right, and she hesitated for a moment or two. Did she need a big gulp of urban before she plunged into Hicksville? What, another big plunge, Orla? she asked herself, quickly deciding to take the right-hand turn. The traffic dwindled to a trickle and then vanished. Soon she was alone on the smooth road, driving fast, and feeling … so free.
The scenery began changing before her eyes, from flat fields dotted with sheep to softly rolling, verdant hills, and then to barren-looking stretches with stark, rocky escarpments. The sun was blazing and the sky was bright blue without a cloud in sight. The air was refreshingly crisp.
An hour or so later, Orla turned down Millard’s Road. She was a little apprehensive when she first saw how dusty and narrow it was. But the view was stunning: a high, wide vista of the blue bay and the long headland jutting out to sea; and just beyond the headland, across the open sea, were the mountains, just a faint outline in the autumn light, but it was easy to see that they would look majestic covered in winter snow.
The road was flattish for a short distance and then, after a right turn, it began to go steeply downhill, with a sharp drop on the right-hand side. Orla was nervous. What would happen if she met another car? The road hardly seemed wide enough for her tiny rental. She’d have to back uphill to the flatter area where she could pull over — and suddenly she had visions of backing over the drop.
‘Shit, Orla,’ she said out loud. ‘You’re a perfectly good driver, you won’t go off the road even if you do have to back up. Now concentrate on what you’re doing — or you’ll drive off the road anyway.’
Luckily she made it down to the end of Millard’s Road without meeting another vehicle. She did see a farmer performing obscure tasks in a huge pen of sheep, but his SUV was parked well clear of the road on a grass verge. All the way down she craned her head to catch sight of the houses, but most of them were tucked away up driveways or behind huge trees. She felt thwarted.
The lower end of Millard’s Road connected with the sealed road to Pigeon Bay, which she followed down to the seafront. The sea was glistening, birds were singing, and fat metallic-green and snow-white pigeons were sitting placidly in the trees. There didn’t seem to be anyone around.
Orla parked her car on the waterfront, immediately across the road from a tiny and gorgeous colonial-style church. She got out of the car with her plastic box of sushi and seaweed salad and sat on a bench, conveniently placed right in front of the water. Her lunch suddenly looked strange and out of place, and she felt as though she should be eating cheese sandwiches from a brown paper bag.
‘Lovely day,’ a male voice said behind her, making her jump.
‘Where did you come from?’ she asked. When she turned she saw a well-dressed man, roughly in his early forties, standing a couple of feet behind her.
He gestured to the white community house next to the church. Correctly interpreting her blank expression, he explained that he’d been collecting the mail. It was only then that she noticed the stack of metal mail boxes on the veranda.
‘So you live here,’ Orla replied.
‘No. I have property here, but I’m mostly elsewhere.’
‘Some interesting elsewhere, I hope.’
‘You wouldn’t be implying it’s not interesting here, would you?’ he replied with a wry smile.
Good one, Orla. Your first conversation and already you’re insulting the locals.
‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘Just visiting or —’
‘Working. I’m an actor.’
‘Actor, eh? I always thought a female actor was called an actress. But no doubt I’m behind the times.’
No doubt at all, Orla thought. ‘I’m in a film that’s being made at Port Levy.’
‘Oh,’ he said, suddenly looking apologetic. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know … they’re always making one movie or another over there. I don’t keep up with the details.’
‘It’s all right, we haven’t started yet,’ she smiled. ‘Anyway, it isn’t a big deal. And I’m not the female lead.’
There was a moment of awkwardness.
‘Henry Millard,’ he said, holding out his hand as if suddenly remembering his manners.
‘Orla Nolan,’ she replied, shaking his hand firmly. How quaint it must have looked to the pigeons: two strangers formally shaking hands in the middle of the day in the middle of nowhere. Then it struck her. ‘Millard? Like the road?’
He nodded. ‘My family built the road when they first settled the land. They were the original landowners in the area.’
‘What — the whole length of the road? On both sides?’
‘That’s right,’ he smiled. ‘But it wasn’t such a big farm compared to farms now.’
Orla didn’t ask any more questions. She didn’t want to initiate a discussion about the size of modern farms.
‘And what are your plans for the rest of the afternoon?’ he asked, so politely that she knew the matter was of no real interest to him.
‘I’ll probably go for a walk along the rocks,’ Orla replied, gesturing towards the left-hand side of the bay.
‘Be careful,’ he warned. ‘Those rocks are completely covered at high tide.’ He turned to go and then stopped. ‘If you’re interested, there’s a lovely hotel being developed at the end of the road on the right.’
‘Hotel?’ This bay with hardly more than a half a dozen dozing cottages had a hotel?
‘Over there,’ Henry Millard said, pointing across the water to some tall trees above which she could just make out a dark, corrugated-iron roof. With that he walked off towards an SUV parked outside the church.
Orla had no intention of walking along the rocks. The hills around the bay formed a natural amphitheatre, and she felt as if everyone currently in residence would be watching her inelegant progress. Even if it were just paranoia as a result of spending her whole life in anonymous cities, she still felt as if multiple eyes were watching her every move. So no walk. She was going back up the hill to civilisation.
Ignoring the recommendation of the ‘lovely hotel’, Orla pulled up outside the pub on the top of the hill. It was weatherboard and somewhat ramshackle, but the view from the carpark was magnificent. She could see all the way down the serene, glassy harbour to the heads.
Inside there were only four or five patrons, a not unexpected number given that it was early afternoon on a weekday. Orla ordered a coffee and took a seat at a small table. While waiting for her drink she checked her phone messages. Nothing important. Then all at once, nearly everyone went. There was only one other customer left in the place, a dark-haired man — thirty-something? — wearing fashionable dark glasses. He occupied a table near the bar and lounged in a way that suggested he owned the place, long legs stretched out in front of him and hands clasped behind his head.
When the sun that had been streaming through the windows went behind a cloud, Orla watched him take off his sunglasses and carefully polish them with a chamois before putting them in a case and placing the case carefully in his jacket pocket. She was amazed that he had the case with him, let alone the chamois, which even from this distance she could see was the proper cloth for spectacle lenses.
Orla herself couldn’t count the number of cases and cloths she’d lost within days of obtaining them, not to mention how many pairs of sunglasses she’d broken, misplaced or scratched as a consequence. But then, she wasn’t a finicky, neatnik sort of person. Not at all. She was the type whose bedroom was always a bombsite, the type who had to get someone else to check whether there was a visible stain or dog hair on her fashionable clothes. Oh yes, she loved fashionable clothing — it was just looking after it that was such a burden.
Orla smiled to herself. If she were ever to go out with a man like that — this being just a fun fantasy to while away the time, of course — no doubt he’d be attacking her with a lint brush every five seconds, or perpetually chasing her with a damp sponge. Then he’d go completely bonkers when he saw her running around in her bikini in front of the camera. Men like that always paid far too much attention to clothes and bodies and —
There was a sudden whip of lightning. Then another. Startled, Orla looked away from Mr Sunglasses and saw that the sky had taken on the colours of a bad bruise. Four or five seconds later she heard the thunder.
‘Did you know lightning is approximately one kilometre away for every three seconds between the flash and the thunderclap?’ Mr Sunglasses called out from across the room.
‘I think I was about twenty before I even knew thunder was the sound of lightning,’ Orla replied. This wasn’t exactly true, she’d exaggerated her age by quite a few years, but she wanted to distance herself from his smooth self-assurance. Who even addresses a perfect stranger across a room like that? Only a man fully accustomed to getting a positive response from every woman within cooee.
He laughed obligingly and stood up. Now that he’d forced her to talk to him, it was time to go. She knew the type. He pulled up his collar, and waving a cheery farewell to the barman ran out to his fancy SUV. Orla was useless with cars and hardly knew one type from another, but she recognised ‘expensive’ when she saw it.
Off back to his long-suffering wife, Orla thought, as his vehicle purred out of the carpark. She’d be as brushed and lint-free as a show cat, and she’d wear crisp white shirts, heirloom pearls and totteringly high heels to all social occasions.
‘Is he from around here?’ Orla asked the barman when she ordered a second coffee.
The barman shook his head. ‘I’ve seen him a few times, but he’s definitely a visitor.’
Orla took her coffee back to her table and watched the rain bucketing down outside. Before she’d even finished her drink, a howling wind was whistling around the old hotel causing a cacophony of creaks and bangs. She took out a book and vowed to get her daily dose of exercise as soon as the rain stopped. Then she’d forget about Pigeon Bay and drive over to Port Levy. She didn’t think anyone would really mind if she were a couple of days early.
Orla walked across the road towards the sea at Pigeon Bay. The wind slapped her about the cheeks and bullied her hair. It was no use putting up her umbrella because the wind would have blown it inside out. For a moment she thought of rushing back to the pub. But she’d sat there for as long as she could. Had sat there until boredom got the better of her. She desperately needed to stretch her legs.
From the waterfront she could see that the right-hand side of the bay would be reasonably sheltered if she stayed close to the cliffs. All she had to do was get there without getting soaked to the skin. She started to jog, and soon reached the relative shelter of the clay, bush-covered cliffs. There, the blast of the wind couldn’t reach her and she was able to put up her umbrella. She walked quickly along the road to the small pier. The grey sea was slapping hard against the piles, and waves were periodically breaking over the weathered boards. She scurried towards the shelter of the huge macrocarpas at the end of the road.
Standing under the trees, she could see the new hotel behind its neatly trimmed hedge. Obviously it hadn’t just been built. It didn’t even look like a hotel. It looked like a beautiful and very private old mansion. Probably it wasn’t going to be the kind of hotel where rowdy holidaymakers drank two-for-the-price-of-one cocktails and gorged on pizza; no, it looked ‘boutique’ — expensive, tasteful and subdued — and she had no doubt that the guests would be brought in by boat or helicopter.
Orla hoped there wouldn’t be too many helicopters. She didn’t like to imagine the peace of the bay being ruined by their comings and goings. And the guests who’d paid so much for the beauty and the peace and quiet — wouldn’t they be just as annoyed?
She could see nothing of the grounds that surrounded the hotel. Maybe she could just sneak through the hedge, through that hole where it joined the fence? She closed her umbrella and walked towards the hole. No-one was about. She pushed her way through, and the sight of the beautiful old mansion in its lovely setting of sculptural, autumnal trees took her breath away.
Just as Orla was about to push her way back through the hole, something caught her eye. It was a man standing on the front veranda, drinking something hot from a mug. She could see the steam. And at the very moment she saw him, he saw her. If she’d been a kid she’d have scrambled back through the hole as fast as she could, but at the ripe old age of twenty-eight dignity prevented her. She stood her ground until the man waved her over.
Orla walked towards the veranda and as she got closer she realised the man was Henry Millard. She stopped at the bottom of the short, wide flight of steps and he greeted her in a pleasant but rather formal way. Then he held up his cup. ‘Would you like some coffee?’ he asked politely.
‘I don’t think I’m meant to be here,’ she ventured.
‘I don’t think any of us are meant to be here,’ he said with a half-smile.
Orla shivered and said, ‘Why are you drinking your coffee outside? It’s freezing.’
‘Then why are you out roaming around?’ he responded, adroitly turning the tables on her.
‘I don’t have anywhere else to go.’ Not quite true — there were any number of bars and cafés down in Akaroa.
‘Well, come up out of the rain. If you don’t want coffee, maybe you can just take shelter for a while.’
‘I will have some coffee,’ Orla said, walking up the steps and shaking her umbrella. ‘Black with one sugar,’ she added before he asked.
He disappeared into the hotel and she looked around for something to sit on. There was nothing. Obviously the outdoor furniture hadn’t arrived yet. At least she had a good view of the garden. It looked even more beautiful spread out in front of her with the wild sea just beyond the hedge.
Henry Millard retuned with a steaming cup of coffee and handed it to her. ‘I had cabin fever,’ he admitted. ‘It’s dreadful out here, isn’t it?’
Orla nodded.
‘So what have you been up to since I last saw you?’
‘I’ve been at the pub on the hill.’
He half-smiled again in acknowledgement, but couldn’t seem to find any suitable comment.
‘I don’t suppose it’s your sort of establishment,’ Orla said slyly, and watched for his reaction.
‘Oh, it’s much better than it used to be,’ he returned quickly. ‘Quite a lot of money has been spent on it recently. But my sons often go there and …’
‘You hate your sons,’ Orla filled in cheekily when he trailed off.
He laughed drily and said, ‘Let’s just say I prefer not to watch them socialise.’
Orla put her cup down on a ledge without finishing her coffee. Really, she’d had more than enough for one day. ‘I’d better be going before the storm gets any worse. I’ve decided to carry on to Port Levy.’ She thanked him for the coffee and started down the steps.
‘Excuse me,’ he called after her as she set off across the wet grass. ‘But would you … would you like to come to dinner this evening?’
Orla stopped dead in her tracks. What on earth was he thinking? Was he just being sociable? She turned and said teasingly, ‘In a closed hotel?’
‘Oh, I’m sure there’ll be some food somewhere.’
She dithered over what to say while he watched her like a hawk.
‘That’s a yes to the dinner, then?’ he pressed.
Orla nodded and tried to look pleased as they settled on a time. But as she walked away, using the path and the gate rather than the hole in the hedge, she felt his gaze boring holes in the small of her back. Before she had even got back to the car she’d started worrying. Maybe the hotel was completely empty, no staff, not even any furniture, just like the veranda; maybe he’d be waiting inside with a syringe or an axe …
Oh, get a grip, Orla. Well-spoken, well-heeled property owners don’t start chopping people up in their home towns. Especially in places as small as this. It’s much more likely the whole event will be just plain boring.
Back in her car, Orla’s worries turned from being chopped into little pieces to the problem of getting to Port Levy after dark. Yes, the route she planned to take consisted of only a ‘minor’ road, whatever that meant, but still it was very short, much shorter than the route via the main road. Surely there’d be no trouble getting to the Port after dinner.
Orla sat in the car and watched the windscreen wipers scarcely coping with a new deluge of rain. Okay, so she was going out to dinner — but what to do to fill in the rest of the time? The day had taken a decidedly weird turn. She’d been expecting sunshine, a walk, and to arrive in Port Levy in the early evening. Instead she was sitting in the car in a rainstorm.
As the rain ran down the windows, Henry Millard’s face kept coming into her mind. There was no doubt he had a kind of chiselled handsomeness — chiselled was the requisite cliché for men of his age, wasn’t it? The kind of man Mamabear would approve of: maturely handsome. But she wouldn’t approve of that quality of … of what exactly? Orla found it hard to put her finger on. It seemed to her that Henry Millard had a kind of self-contained, loner quality. But how ridiculous, she argued with herself; he’s been tremendously polite and approachable. And wasn’t he the one who called me over when he saw me standing in the rain? Not to mention invited me to dinner.
A shiver ran down her spine, and not just at the thought of the unopened hotel. Why had she agreed to have dinner with that wolfish man? Yes, that was the word she’d been looking for: he was like a lone wolf padding through the pine forests, never mind that he wore expensive clothing, his hair was nicely cut and his fingernails manicured.
Still, she wasn’t going to dwell on it all afternoon. She would arrive fashionably late and leave early. She’d be economical with her smiles and wry jokes. She wouldn’t be entertaining at all. And until it was time to go to dinner, she would go down to Akaroa and put the whole thing out of her mind.