7

‘Like the car?’ Marcus’s first words, post-hello. Sitting in third, the air rushing about our designer cocoon, pushing and whispering at its edges. The stereo silenced, so that the schoolboy fantasy of an engine can sing its song uninterrupted.

‘It’s alright.’

‘Just alright?’

‘Well, you know, I feel a bit of a wanker sitting in it, to be honest.’

And he laughs.

Here is my plan. I have nothing to offer these people, not a thing. Luck, good and bad, has brought me here, and this will be my point of difference. I will remain unimpressed, in the face of the most impressive man and impressive machine on this very impressionable planet. And that might stand out, in their heads, when it comes to the decision. Not much of a plan I know, but what else do I have?

‘Don’t worry,’ he tells me, just when I think I’ve got my worrying well hidden. ‘It’s not like school tests. We’re just going to spend some time with you, get to know you a little.’

‘Whatever.’

A bus up ahead. We are out and around it so quickly it might not have happened at all.

Hedges blur into shopfronts, into cyclists, a taxi, another bus. We head up to Karori through the backroads. Green spills up from every gorge, tumbles down off every bank, fighting back.

The engine talks to us, a deep restained growl. Take me out of this place, it says, of pedestrian crossings and parallel parks. I have work to do. We go south, past the mountain bike park and into the tight turns of the Makara hill. At the top he indicates politely and pulls to a stop on the roadside gravel. He looks at me. He’s enjoying my nervousness. I’m not.

‘Wanna drive?’

‘I’m on my restricted.’

‘Yeah, so that’s fine.’

‘I don’t … yeah, okay. You got life insurance?’

What the hell else am I going to say?

We get out, stalk each other around the car. He stalks me. I’m just pretending. I try to relax into the seat. Feel the wheel in my hand: thick, surprisingly small. I slide back the seat a fraction. I am taller than Marcus; in the final analysis my only advantage. I look at my passenger. He is doing something with his watch.

‘Away you go then. Let’s see what you’ve got.’

I put in the clutch, try out the feel of the gears. I am Pete. Good shit/bad shit, definitely weird shit, rains down upon me. I am past thinking what this might mean.

‘Come on,’ he urges. ‘Go.’

Power. To be able to take this world by the neck, force it to look you in the eye, pay you some attention. To hold a gun, turn a crowd, seduce a woman, release the clutch at the top of the hill, feel the thrill of a hundred years of automative design deliver themselves up to you. To know, in the too-fast approach of the first rush of rock, that this life will never be yours, that the brand will always win, Mother will never be proud of her little boy.

The steering wheel twitches, trying to overrule my inexperienced hands. I stab at the brake, feel the back end move out, feed the accelerator, feel a mighty corrective push (still only in first) through the line of the corner. Second gear, a panicked, clumsy shift. Left, too slow now, more power. A blur to my left, a wall of dirt closer than it should be, then backing away. Sharp in the foreground: Marcus, unflinching, unconcerned. Shitting myself for both of us then. No problem there. Still too slow, I know it, try to relax, find a rhythm, listen to the car. The fifth corner comes more smoothly, using the throttle to straighten out a gentle S, braking messily, down to second, sharp U, too wide if there’s oncoming traffic. There isn’t.

I sit forward, having a real go now. Momentarily into third, spurt, cut back to second. Jesus, I feel alive. My senses sharpening, my body and brain negotiate dosage. Anything is possible. The steering wheel stops fighting me. A tractor. The smallest of gaps. Don’t look at the tractor, concentrate on the gap. Full throttle, the quicker you pass the smaller the danger. Dealt with. Next to me Marcus whoops. I feel the same, but my breath is spoken for. I am part of the machine, the last few sweeps to complete. Rubber, metal, machinery and me, a hard-on of hi-speed meant-to-be. Fuck school. Fuck the internet. This is it. The moment its own reward. Powerful. Goodbye cemetery. Lurch, flick to correct. We hit the bottom of the hill, the road straightens, Marcus points for me to pull in opposite a small white church.

My heart beats fast, my eyes are wide, my head is crystal clear, sharp, beaming. I begin to laugh. Marcus does the same.

‘Excellent isn’t it?’

Nonchalance bailed at the first bend. There’s no pretending now. Marcus, big brother, claps me on the shoulder.

‘Okay, my turn.’

He drives just as quickly, but with less drama. We weave along the valley, melt through the scenery, turn left onto a little road I have never seen before. I am happy.

Lucinda is there to greet us, and I am happier still.

And if I notice her first, which I do, the scenery rushes in for a close second. I expect shearing sheds and sheep shit, broken down tractors and breaking down old men, leathery skin and hairy white chests. This is farm country, or used to be. Things change. Off stage and out of view, because that’s the point.

The view is magnificent. Marcus and Lucinda smile as I look at it, as if they have arranged the weather. We are at the edge of the land, sheer cliffs drop away beneath us. To the north the cut-off profile of Mana Island, beyond that, Kapiti’s reptilian crouch. To the south, the scattering of the Sounds, the sparkling divide between them and me surely too narrow. Beyond those the majesty of mountains again. And all around the bright green of farmland, the smells of animals, of kelp, the cries of seagulls, the sky so blue and the sun so bright, as it gathers speed on its late afternoon descent.

And then there is The Lodge. That’s how she says it. ‘Welcome to The Lodge,’ capital letters plain to hear. She smiles, and I am distracted for a moment, climbing out of the car, stretching, breathing in a new world.

You can’t fake real money. The building is low-slung, eased modestly into the rolling lines of the country, but it is confidence, not modesty, that relaxes it so. Wooden, new, huge windows with no hint of salt spray. The gardens are careful, measured, precise. There is no reception area and the hired help are following their instructions and staying well out of the way.

I’m impressed. Let’s not pretend. Cynicism is so easy from a distance. More than easy, compulsory. But here, up close, luxury enfolds you. And she smiles, and he swaggers, and you see your reflection in the glass, all three of you. Together. The three of you, and this.

Don’t judge me.

‘Your home for four days,’ Marcus tells me. ‘Think you can cope?’

‘I’ll do my best.’

‘Play golf?’ Lucinda asks.

‘Not really.’

‘I’ll teach you then. Later, when it gets dark, we’ll put on the floodlights and smack a few balls into the ocean. It’s great. Come inside first.’

Inside is as effortlessly grand. The curtains are heavy, the carpet deep, the furniture begs you to come and sit, and feel the support of privilege.

‘There’s no one here,’ Marcus tells me. ‘No other guests I mean. It’s all ours. Here, this is us.’

We enter a large living space with a view to the south. Leather couches, huge flatscreen TV across the wall, drinks cabinet, keyboard on a low rimu table. Marcus is the guide. He flicks about, opening doors. Three. Each a bedroom with ensuite.

‘This one’s yours. Throw your gear in, if you want.’

‘You guys staying here too?’ I ask. The first of a thousand questions. An easy one to start with.

‘That’s how it works.’ Marcus smiles at Lucinda, Lucinda smiles back. I smile too, bluffing again.

‘Have a seat. I guess you’re wondering a little bit how all of this is going to work.’

Lucinda sits on the couch beside me. I look around for Marcus but he has a way of fading.

‘A little I guess.’

‘Right, well it’s fairly simple. Marcus and I will be taking all eight of you through the same process, which involves some testing, and some hanging about relaxing too. We’re observing you the whole time, I won’t pretend we aren’t. That’s the point of course, but look, between you and me, this works a lot better if we all act as if it isn’t the case. At the end of it all we’ll make the recommendation based on what we’ve observed. We’re not after a specific set of skills as such. There isn’t a checklist to go through. It’s an impression thing. The trustees want us to give it to the right sort of person. Someone who doesn’t just have the right skills, but also the right attitude.’

‘People like you?’ I ask. It’s not meant as a challenge. She smiles to show she understands.

‘I guess that’s a reasonable thing to assume.’

And then she gives me a look, a Lucinda special I’d call it, although that’s not helpful if you’re not there to see it. A look that says, ‘There’s more to you than meets the eye. I’m interested in you. In what you’re thinking. In what you get.’

And if I can’t describe the look exactly, I can tell you how it makes me feel. I feel like she might be right. Thoughts, feelings, bits of me I would normally dismiss as nothing special, suddenly grow in stature. If that’s who you think I am, then that’s who I will be, is what the voice says; the voice in all of us, the voice most of us never hear.

‘So I’m not the first one then?’ I ask, my confidence rising up beneath my curiosity.

‘Actually you’re the last,’ she replies. ‘And that’s the only information you’ll get about the others.’

‘So what are you looking for, exactly?’ I know she isn’t allowed to answer, same as I know she expects me to ask.

‘We’ll know it when we see it,’ she replies, then looks behind me. Marcus has walked back in.

‘Right, let’s get the formal stuff out of the way then shall we?’

He sits at a chair across from me and taps at the flat keyboard on the table between us. The screen on the wall comes to life.

‘Ever done an IQ test?’ he asks me.

‘A couple,’ I reply, thinking back to the early days, when they thought I was different.

‘How did you do?’

‘Cheated, so they’d think I was stupid,’ I reply. Lucinda smiles, he laughs. This is a game, Saying and Doing the Right Thing. And I’m getting better at it.

‘Well then, thirty minutes, go hard. Time starts now.’

He slides the keyboard across to me. I look up at the screen.

If bad is seven, what is good?

Easy enough. I do the maths in my head. O is the fifteenth letter of the alphabet. G the seventh. D the fourth. So 41. I check the answers available. It’s there. I click and continue.

If all babbles are busts, and some busts are bracks, which options includes only statements that could be true?

I like these ones. Could be true. So that means B. All bracks are babbles. Possible. No bracks are babbles. Also possible. I draw a little diagram in my head to check. No busts are neither brack nor babble. I read that one twice, to be sure what it means. Nice. And possible.

They are watching me closely. Maybe the answers aren’t the thing. Maybe it’s how I handle the pressure of being watched. Doesn’t matter. I’m good at this. So why would I mind them seeing?

The third question is a number pattern. 3, 10, 101. Square and add one. 10202. That takes a moment, without a calculator, but still, not hard. Then come the language questions, swallow is to throat as throw is to: Arm is the best option, although technically there’s more of the body involved. I want to note that somewhere. I’m in that sort of mood now. Superior. Confident.

House is to enough as lantern is to:

More obscure. It takes me a moment. Now I can feel them watching me. Look at the letters again. Four in common. No good. Five goes to six. No, doesn’t match. Got it. As lantern is to nil. First and last letters reversed.

They keep coming. Pattern recognition, which is my strength. Then some 3D stuff. Which net cannot make this shape? Three of them. Getting harder and harder. This isn’t a normal test. It’s been devised for high end IQs. Which is good, that they know it’s right for me, but now I’m sweating. Thirty minutes doesn’t feel long enough. Ten minutes in. I’m on the fourteenth question, but they’re getting harder.

A ball bearing is dropped into a swimming pool. Another identical ball bearing is dropped into a cup floating in a swimming pool. Which causes the water level to rise more?

I think it’s the same. I think the displacement is the same. Almost click it. Don’t really know. Running low on time. No, wait. Wait. In the water it displaces its own volume, in the cup, the volume of the equivalent weight of water. And it’s heavier than water, so …Yes yes yes. In the cup it displaces more. D. It’s D.

The questions are graded. I know at the end I’ll just be guessing. And guessing is quick. So I slow down. Tactics. Here’s where I should be careful.

More pictures. Looking for patterns. I see the first, and the second. The third is beyond me. Just a hunch. I go with an instinct, long for a question I recognise.

Parturition means:

I don’t know. Look at the options. Look at the word. What does it look like? Partur? Can’t think. Can’t connect it. Childbirth? It’ll do.

Put these in order of their date of birth: Copernicus, Darwin, Shakespeare, Newton.

This is the sort of shit I should know but never do. I’m not interested. There needs to be a ‘not interested’ option. I want to sulk. If there was time I’d sulk. This doesn’t test mental ability. It’s a test of interests, of specific knowledge. They’re cheating. Breaking the rules. Or maybe that’s the whole point. Are they watching me now?

Okay, guess B. Copernicus first, but I’m not convinced it’s Shakespeare next.

I finish with 20 seconds to spare. I’m proud of that. I knew 20. I’d guess I got 22 then, and I’m pretty sure 22 is good.

I sit back on the couch. Take a deep breath. No point pretending that wasn’t an effort, wasn’t hard out.

‘Want to see how you went?’ Marcus asks.

‘Twenty-two out of thirty,’ I tell him.

He takes the keyboard, enters a code.

Twenty-three answers correct. IQ 154.

‘Surprise you?’ Marcus asks.

‘Does it surprise you?’ I ask right back.

‘Not at all,’ Lucinda tells me. And she pats my leg, a small congratulation. ‘Don’t go relaxing just yet though. Intellect’s nothing without personality.’

I don’t relax. But I do feel good. Very, very good. Right now, at this exact moment, I’d back myself against a speeding bullet, at least over the longer distances.

Lucinda stands, walks around beside Marcus, sits on the arm of his chair, takes the keyboard. This time nothing shows on the screen.

‘Five simple questions. Answer them within thirty seconds. Give your instinctive response. Don’t justify it.

‘First: The world is a better place now than it was fifty years ago. Yes or no?’

To which there is no correct answer. No sensible answer. And if I can’t explain my answer, then what are they looking for? That’s all I’ve got in my head. Not the question, not the state of the world, but what are they looking for?

‘Yes,’ I say, and wish I hadn’t hesitated.

‘Question Two: In the future it will be possible to genetically alter the make-up of an embryo in order to increase the likelihood of the child being intelligent. Should we use such technology?’

‘Yes.’ This time I don’t hesitate. I don’t believe it. I don’t know enough about it. But I know yes seems like the right answer to give; feels right, tastes right.

‘Question three: History explains but does not excuse. Agree or disagree?’

This time I have an opinion, and it comes straight away, so I lie, and give the opposite answer. Because they aren’t expecting it, and I could justify, if I had to.

‘Disagree.’ The confidence is back. I am in the game.

She records the answer without a flicker of surprise. I don’t believe her. I don’t look at Marcus. That would be obvious.

‘Would you sacrifice the lives of two strangers to save one family member?’

‘We are not clever enough to solve the problems we are clever enough to cause. Agree or disagree?’

‘Disagree.’

‘Alright, next set of questions.’ Marcus takes over. This tag team thing is getting too cute.

‘No score this time?’ I ask.

‘Yeah, you failed,’ Lucinda says.

‘Hope that’s a good thing,’ I say right back, and now she smiles. She’s making me work for it. I like that.

‘I’m going to give you two words, you’re going to say which best describes you. Ready?’

‘Grateful or dissatisfied?’

‘Dissatisfied.’

‘Intuitive or constructive?’

‘Intuitive.’

‘Energetic or calm?’

‘Optimist or pessimist?’

‘Pessimist.’

‘Idoliser or iconoclast?’

‘Iconoclast.’

‘Risk taker or risk averse?’

‘Risk averse.’

‘Emotional or phlegmatic?’

‘Emotional.’

‘Creative or practical?’

‘Creative.’

‘Compliant or rebellious?’

‘Rebellious.’

‘Decisive or indecisive?’

‘Indecisive.’

‘Neurotic or oblivious?’

‘Neurotic.’

‘Loyal or shifting?’

‘Open-minded or closed-minded?’

‘Open-minded.’

‘Believer or cynic?’

‘Tactical or reactive?’

‘Reactive.’

‘Fine. Thanks.’

He hits a few buttons. Looks to the screen. K19 comes up.

‘K19. Cool,’ I say. ‘I was hoping for twenty, but you know…’

It comes out sounding lame, like I’m trying too hard. To their credit they don’t patronise me by smiling, just let it droop to a little death between us. Fair enough.

‘One more question. We video this one.’

Lucinda walks into one of the other rooms and returns with a camera and a tripod. Small, expensive. Of course.

‘Stand over there.’

She points to the wall next to the small kitchen area. I do as I’m told, stand and feel like a stranger to myself, a collection of body parts filling a space, awaiting instructions. I realise I am suddenly feeling very tired. I try to ignore it. Hang in there.

‘Alright, I’m going to ask you a question, and this time you have as long as you want to answer it. We’re recording the answer. Fair enough?’

I’m not going to try for another smart-arse comment. Not for a while.

‘Okay, we’re recording. This is Pete, candidate number eight.’

I swallow. My mouth feels dry. My lips have turned to rubber. This is no time for a panic attack. I try to convey this to the part of my brain that controls such things, but it’s programmed not to trust me when the stakes are high.

‘Right, Pete, here’s your question. Tell me what pisses you off.’

I smile, can’t help myself. Take a deep breath, a moment for the swarm of thoughts to form an orderly queue. It’s like I’ve cheated. The one question I studied and it comes up. Studied? Lived for.

The first word still comes out more like a cough, but you get that. By sentence number two I’m picking up steam. By the third they’re both nodding along, and it’s just a matter of braking for the corners. I’ve always been good at this stuff. In Year 12 I won a regional speech competition.

‘What pisses me off is people. People who don’t get it. People who think that happiness will be delivered shrink-wrapped, with a best-before date stamped across the front and the charges automatically made to the credit card of their choosing. What pisses me off is a world where people can’t tell the difference between the product and the packaging. A world where the more information we’re bombarded with the more helpless we feel, so there’s no conspiracy to keep the truth from us, there’s a conspiracy to give us too much truth, more than we can cope with.

‘What pisses me off is off-roaders that never go off-road, and children that never play. Designer mothers with designer babies pushed through leafy suburbs in buggies that were bought because they matched the upholstery in their car.

‘What pisses me off is a world where being clever isn’t as important as making stupid people feel like they’re clever too. Where every exam paper has an option that tells the examiner ‘I agree with you’, and if you tick it you pass. What pisses me off is a world where we talk about the weather, and the rugby and the latest television programmes because all the things we want to talk about are too frightening to mention.

‘What pisses me off is a world where people think they know what I want, when I don’t. And people who think asking “Who’s to blame?” is the most sensible response to every problem, so “How do we make it better?” never makes it into the discussion. What pisses me off is the way we all want to belong to something, anything, so that when people attack us we’ll have someone at our side. But the only way to prove you belong is to attack someone else.

‘What pisses me off is living in a world where we’re scared of being different, where we’re taking away the tape measures because we hope it’ll stop us noticing that some people are tall and other people aren’t.

‘I get pissed off by a world where drinking till you’re soft makes you hard, where people believe the right haircut and the right deodorant and the right pair of shoes might get them laid. Where funeral parlours are franchised and you can’t get your lawns cut if you don’t buy into a brand. Where life is a product with a price tag and a barcode, and the world’s thermostat is fucked and everyone knows but our arses have got so fat we can’t haul ourselves off them to do something about it.

‘And there’s other things too, but I think you might get the idea.’

I stand here, in front of them, shaking with something I don’t recognise or understand. It’s not Pissed Off. Pissed Off was never in the room. That was a facsimile, which made it so much easier to say. It just sounded good, sounded right; a stream of thoughts I could turn on or off, point in any direction. I was in control. I think I know what it might be, this feeling. I think it might be pride.

You want to know the truth? Right here right now? Nothing pisses me off. Not a thing. There is no Pissed Off here, there is no Sadness. This is a different world, where such thoughts don’t belong. Lucinda and Marcus are smiling, nodding their approval. Lucinda turns off the camera. Marcus begins to applaud. I want to stay here, with them. Forever.

Dinner is delivered to the room, a platter of finger food and it all tastes good. We pick at the meal and the conversation. I can’t tell the difference between their talking and their testing, and have stopped caring. Then Marcus walks back in with three wetsuits, tells me to go to my room and put mine on. I waddle out, the way you do; the rubber is thick and smells of dive stores. They come out of their rooms, dressed the same, moving stiffly like puppets, smiling their special smiles, of knowing what’s coming next, and how they’ll deal with it. I want a life that feels that easy. Or, second best, to look like I’ve found one.

‘Right then, follow me.’ As if I wouldn’t. Lucinda leads us outside. The air is cool upon my face, and the ground soft beneath my booties. I don’t say a thing. There’s a way of reading their approval. It swirls about me in a cloud, and all I have to do is stay in the middle of it, following on, asking no questions. Marcus is close behind me, his footsteps muffled, the suit’s cap thick and warm. She leads us to a gate, through a paddock. The sky is clear; stars shyly fill it, looking away if you stare. There is a low hanging moon to the north, full enough to leave a silver trail on the water.

The water. I can hear it below me now. We must be near to the edge of the cliff. Lucinda turns, smiles again. In this light her eyes are an endless black but still I stare.

‘Alright, Pete, I suspect you’ve played trust games before, but maybe none like this. Remember, at any stage, if you’re feeling uncomfortable, you can just say. Nothing we do here is compulsory. That’s up to you. Here’s what’s going to happen. Twenty metres below, when the tide is just right, is deep clear ocean. I am going to run and leap over the edge. You are going to follow me. Then Marcus. Here’s how you need to hold your arms, and this is what you should expect to feel.’

She describes falling through the air, the dark cold collision of water, a moment of panic and disorientation. Letting go, drifting to the surface with the buoyancy of the wetsuit. I can hear waves down there, waves on rocks. I don’t want to ask. I want to do this without saying a word. It’s what they expect.

‘Which direction, to avoid the rocks?’

I’m not stupid.

‘Here. Straight ahead.’ She takes me by the shoulders, lines up my body. Smiles again.

‘You ready?’

Lucinda turns, runs, disappears into the night. I hear her screaming, whooping, before she hits the water.

‘Now you.’ Marcus’s voice in my ear. I close my eyes, breathe in deeply, open them again, rush forward, terrified.

The land gives way beneath me and then there is only air. I remember. Toes pointed down, knees together, arms crossed on my chest. It is too dark to be sure of up and down, but the rush of air is unmistakable. I am close to passing out when the water hits, slams up into me from below. And insanely, it is unexpected. I let out a gasp as the coldness enfolds me, then closes up with a choke. Down, down, and the blackness is getting heavy. She is not wrong, about the panic. My arms and legs spasm about me, to push me up, but there is no way of knowing if it is the right direction. I could drown now. That realisation hits me clean and clear. There is nothing in place for my safety. Only the little she has told me, and the way the mind has of remembering the important things. This is it, as close as I have been, as frightened as I have been. I lie back, or what I think is back. My chest is bursting now. I starfish out, let the suit do the work.

The light of the surface comes in from a crazy angle. I swivel towards it, swim the last metre. The air is beautiful, thrilling. To my left Marcus torpedoes into the water. There she is, Lucinda, grinning, floating on her back, as if there was no other way this might have gone. As if caring is impossible. How many of the others jumped? I want to ask her. And were you always this relaxed? So how did you know? How did you know none of us would drown? And if one had, then what would you have looked like? Then what expression would have clouded your pretty face?

Marcus surfaces beside me, spits sea water into the air. All around is the crashing of water against rock: slowly, relentlessy – winning.

‘This way,’ he tells me. Lucinda has already struck out. They didn’t even ask me if I could swim. I turn on Marcus’s stroke and follow closely behind.

The sound changes as we approach the cliff. I feel the weight of rock above us, the land standing firm. Crashing turns to echoes. We swim in through the entrance of a cave. Lucinda turns on a headlamp, and scrambles to the shore. We follow, and pull ourselves up onto a flat limestone shelf. I follow the scanning of her light. The cave is low and wide; an ancient past drips and bubbles from its smooth walls. We can not stand. It is impossible to say how deep the cave goes.

‘Well done,’ Lucinda says. ‘Sit close and say if you’re getting cold.’

All three of us sit together, watching the point below where Lucinda’s headlamp meets the push and suck of water. Their approval cloud swarms tight around me. I am doing well. Layered over the sound of rock and water is a clean, intense silence. In the moments when the water has withdrawn a single drip can echo all around. Even my own breathing is a loud, unexplained stranger.

‘I grew up in Masterton you know,’ is the way she chooses to break this noisy quiet. ‘Does that surprise you?’

‘Um, yeah, yeah it does.’

‘Where would you have expected me to have grown up then?’

I think about that for a moment.

‘I can’t imagine you not being grown up.’

It’s a truth that’s fading. There’s a little girl in the voice behind the light, and this is what I think. I think I wish I could have known you then. I wish you weren’t born too early, or me too late. I could never have had you, probably, but I would have tried.

‘Funny,’ she says, ‘I feel the opposite. I feel a little bit like a fraud. You know, when my mother was my age, I was seven. And I still don’t think I’ll ever be as old as she was then. It’s an alright place to grow up though, a small town. The world is close to you. You can learn a lot, if you watch carefully.’

A pause. Marcus doesn’t say anything. Neither do I. There is more.

‘I hated my neighbour. He had a swimming pool. Well, it was a whole family really, but I always thought of it as just him. We didn’t have a pool, or a new car every two years, or a beach house or a boat. But he did. And he would always offer, loudly, over the fence. If we ever wanted to come out fishing with him, use the bach one weekend, just say. But Dad never said. The rest of them hassled him, told him not to be so proud. Not me, even though there were plenty of times, as a teenager in Masterton, when having a bach to escape to would have been wonderful. You know why I didn’t? Because I hated my neighbour.

‘I was four. It was hot, proper February heat. Mum was melting and Dad was out at work, and I was grumpy with the temperature. Mum got me all dressed up in my togs, and took me over next door, to ask if we could use the pool. And even at that age I could tell how much she hated doing it. He came to the door, dressed in his own togs; there was wiry black stomach hair sprouting at exactly the height of my eyes. He smiled when Mum asked, and then said sorry, no, but he was having people around that night, a bit of a party, so he needed to keep it clean.

‘Mum took me back and sat me under the sprinkler, and that night the party came in through my open window, and I swear he had the music up just a little bit louder than he usually would, and I can tell you now that I learned more in that single day than I learned in twelve years at school.’

I tried to imagine her at four, or any age really, before now. Any age when she wasn’t perfectly formed, in control. It was beyond me.

‘So that’s my thing. That’s what I hate. I hate a person who has to do that, who has to find a way of making a mark. That’s the strangest thing about this scholarship. We’re looking for people who do things because there’s value in the doing. Who understand how small you’d have to be, to need a house and a boat and big car to stand on, before the world could see you. You get that, don’t you Pete?’

So what do you think I do? I nod and hope it’s true. I imagine her neighbour. In my head he wears dark glasses, and blue Speedos, and smokes because it keeps the weight off. I hope that he and I are opposites. That only me, Lucinda and Marcus, and maybe one or two other people in the world, understand this. That I am one of them.

‘There are two ways out,’ Marcus tells me. ‘If we jump back in the water and swim across to the other side of the entrance there’s a chain ladder to climb up. Or, if you’re feeling adventurous, there’s a vent further along in the cave. You can climb right up to a paddock. It’s hard work, but sort of cool. Your choice.’

‘Ladder,’ I tell him. I’m ahead on the scoreboard, and exhausted.

I want to sleep but Marcus makes me stay up with him to play computer games on the big screen. A car racing thing he’s found on the internet. It’s good but I’m fading badly. We talk, but not about much that’s important, just giving each other shit really.

At the end he leaves me to shut down, but it’s a strange system, and I can’t find my way around it. He comes back out to rescue me, doesn’t make too much of it, but I see Lucinda standing in the background, watching too. I hope it wasn’t a test. I hope they aren’t holding my lack of computer skills against me.