We ate outside on the porch, looking over the lawn to the little kauri trees running up the ridge, each one rimmed with gold by the sun that was low enough now to sneak in beneath the clouds. Dinner was a prawn, vegetable and cashew nut stir-fry, delicately flavoured with ginger and sweet chilli and served with sticky coconut rice. It was, though I say it myself, delicious.
Dad speared a prawn, examined it suspiciously, put it in his mouth, chewed bravely and said, ‘I don’t actually mind this sort of stuff, every now and then.’
Mike’s and my eyes met, and we both laughed.
‘You want to watch these fulsome compliments, Dad,’ I said.
There was a small, frozen pause before he asked, ‘How’s this landscaping thing of your brother’s going?’
‘Very well. He was really pleased to get that big subdivision contract up in Whangarei. He’s working pretty hard, though.’
‘Good on him. Won’t do him any harm at all.’
Surely, I thought, not everything my father said should offend me. I needed to stop taking things so relentlessly the wrong way. ‘Isn’t this light beautiful?’ I said.
‘Very nice. I suppose you’ve heard that Michael’s had enough of farming and he’s throwing in the towel?’
No, I decided, it wasn’t just me. Everything he said was offensive. Cheered by this conclusion, I raised my eyebrows and said, ‘What on earth was he supposed to do when you put the farm on the market?’
This comment did nothing to improve the meal’s tone. When we’d finished it and Dad had retired briefly down the hall, I said repentantly, ‘Sorry, Mike.’
He shook his head at me and smiled.
‘Every time,’ I said. ‘I promise myself I won’t bite; I’ll just let it all pass me by. And then every time, I fail.’
‘Just tell yourself it’s character-building,’ he said, standing up and starting to clear the table.
‘Hmm. Coffee?’
‘No, I thought I might go down and see Maggie. Unless she’s got a houseful?’
‘No, not until tomorrow. But you can’t leave me here with him, you rat!’
Mike laughed. ‘It’s good for you,’ he said.
Doubtful, but it would at least give me a nice opportunity for feeling selfless and noble. I sighed. ‘Fine. Desert me, then. Could you get Mum to give you the ribbon to go around the cake? I want to ice it first thing tomorrow.’
He did desert me, but he helped with the dishes before he went. As the car disappeared down the driveway, I opened the big chest freezer and took out the three tiers of wedding cake so they could thaw overnight. ‘Would you like an ice-cream sandwich, Dad?’ I asked.
‘Hmm?’ he said, looking up from the paper he’d been sitting with at the butcher’s block. ‘Go on, then.’
Anna and I had, after a bit of trial and error, settled on storing and serving the ice-cream sandwiches in little baking paper envelopes. I brought him one, and as he unwrapped it he actually said, ‘That looks smart.’
‘Thanks!’ I said, touched. ‘They’re quite popular – we’ve been selling them in boxes of five or six for people to take home, too. I’d like to do a bit more of that sort of thing; it’s so much less labour intensive than seating people here.’
‘Probably quite a good idea to have a few strings to your bow,’ he said. ‘What’s that you’re making?’
‘Ganache – icing – for the wedding cake. If I make it now it can cool overnight.’
He nodded, took a bite of ice-cream sandwich and remarked, ‘Place is looking pretty good.’
‘Thanks, Dad.’
‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘d’you think Robin would be interested in going farming?’
I stopped chopping chocolate and looked at him in surprise. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think he’s ever really thought about it. Why?’
‘No need to spread this around, but I was wondering if he’d like to take over the farm one day.’
‘But – what about Mike?’
‘Well, he’s leaving, isn’t he?’
‘Because you’re selling,’ I said, at the risk of labouring the point.
‘You don’t have to sell just because you put something on the market, Lia.’
‘No, you don’t, but the whole process does sort of undermine people’s sense of security about the future. And weren’t you talking recently about letting Gina take over?’
‘I’ve been considering a few different options,’ he said cagily.
I took a deep breath and put down my knife. It would, after all, cast a pall over the wedding if I stabbed my father in a fit of rage. ‘Dad, if you’re thinking of handing over the reins, don’t you think Mike’s kind of earned right of first refusal?’
Dad looked entirely blank – so blank that it was obvious he’d never even considered such a thing. It was his farm, and therefore his to do whatever he liked with. I think it was then that, for the first time, hurt anger at my father’s relentlessly negative, self-absorbed outlook took second place to pity. If you never consider anyone else’s point of view – if it doesn’t even occur to you that anyone else might have a different point of view to yours – everyone in your life will let you down, and you’ll never understand why. That’s actually quite sad.
‘I don’t think Rob and Anna would be keen, anyway,’ I said more gently.
‘Well, farming’s not a forty-hour-a-week job, that’s for sure. Weekends, late nights, early starts – if there’s work to be done, you just get on with it. You kids all talk a lot of guff about work–life balance these days – you seem to expect the rewards before you put the work in. I had to work my way up from the bottom.’
Dad’s father bought him that farm. And if ever Rob or Anna or I had talked about work–life balance, it would have been with the wistful hope that we might just possibly get a little bit one day, in some dim and distant future. My newborn pity and understanding slunk away with its head down, and incredulous wrath settled itself firmly back into the driving seat.
* * *
I spent the night on the dining room sofa, having won an argument with Mike over which of us would have my bed on the grounds that he was too tall to stretch out full length on the sofa, and we needed him uncrippled for heavy lifting in the morning. It was comfortable enough, but the dining room had too many doors and windows, and the coffee machine, so stylish and gleaming by day, looked alarmingly sinister, like a malevolent thing crouching on the end of the counter.
Idiot, I told myself crossly. You don’t have to lie here turning yourself into a gibbering wreck. You could just go to sleep like a normal person. Rolling over I closed my eyes.
Man, Dad was a prick. I’d have bet the thought behind this sudden interest in his younger son was that of a retirement spent being waited on by a beautiful daughter-in-law, while a cluster of adoring grandchildren gathered around his knee, eagerly gathering up the pearls of wisdom that fell from Granddad’s lips. Family, in theory, was important to my father – suitably attractive, successful, neighbour-impressing family, anyway.
Sighing, I turned over again. I missed Jed, and going to sleep without him felt wrong.
Although it was certainly roomier. Whenever I shifted in the night he would instantly advance, so that every morning I woke balanced precariously on the edge of the mattress while he lay like a starfish in the middle. It was like sleeping with a cat. He’s worth it, I thought, smiling sleepily. And he comes with a bonus Craig . . .
* * *
‘Hey,’ someone said. ‘Wake up, little blister, you’re alright.’
I sat up gasping, collided at high speed with Mike’s face and fell back against the pillow.
‘Ow,’ he said mildly.
‘S-sorry.’
‘My fault.’ He sat down beside me on the edge of the sofa and gingerly felt his nose. He hadn’t turned a light on, and I could see him only as a dark shape against the paler grey oblong of a window. ‘Nightmare?’
I breathed out on a long shudder. ‘Being chased. It’s always just being chased, not caught, or . . . Is your nose alright?’
‘Fine. You okay?’
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘Liar.’
I smiled. ‘Mostly okay. Just a bit fragile around the edges. It’ll come right.’
He stroked the hair gently back off my face, and my eyes filled, as they did these days at the slightest provocation. ‘You’re a bit of a legend, you know,’ he said.
‘No, I’m not,’ I said, sitting up and hugging him. ‘But what a nice thing to say.’
* * *
I was icing the wedding cake when Mike came into the kitchen at six thirty the next morning. It was a simple enough design – three tiers of decreasing size, each to be covered evenly with chocolate ganache and circled with a wide lemon-coloured satin ribbon, and then topped at the last minute with yellow and cream roses – but I was feeling somewhat stressed about the whole thing, knowing that Anna’s idea of a smooth and professional finish would almost certainly be smoother and more professional than mine.
‘Morning,’ he said.
I looked up and smiled at him. ‘Coffee?’
‘No, I’ll make a cup of tea.’ He yawned and ruffled up his sandy hair. ‘What did that cake ever do to you?’
I pulled the dowelling rod I had just sunk through the glossy chocolate coating of the biggest tier back out and cut it carefully to length with a pair of secateurs. ‘It’s for extra support. Otherwise the top tiers might crush the bottom one.’
‘Right,’ he said, crossing the kitchen to switch on the kettle. ‘It’s going to be a beautiful day.’
I looked out the window and discovered that, indeed, it was. The sun wasn’t up yet, and the sky was a cool, pearly blue, with one little pink-flushed cloud above the ridge. ‘Thank goodness. Imagine trying to put up a marquee in the rain.’
My cell phone beeped from my handbag, sitting on the window seat.
‘D’you want that?’ he asked.
‘Yes, please,’ I said, pushing the cut dowelling rod back into the cake, level with the top. ‘I think it’s Rob.’
Mike rummaged in my handbag, pulled something out, raised his eyebrows and put it back again. Looking up, I realised he’d found the Play Ultra, which I’d stuffed into my bag a good six weeks ago and forgotten all about.
‘I bought that by mistake,’ I said hastily.
He smiled. ‘Of course you did.’
‘I did, actually. From Mum’s friend Carole, just to make it even worse. It was all hideously embarrassing.’
‘What was?’ Dad asked, wandering in.
‘Oh, nothing. Morning, Dad. Did you sleep alright?’
‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘Does your hair always look like that first thing in the morning?’
And so it begins, I thought sourly, settling the cake’s middle tier on top of the bottom one.
Rob’s text message, bless him, read: Want me to take the old boy to Whangarei this morning?
Oh hell yes, I wrote back, so he came past at about eight and took Dad away with him to pick up the marquee.
That certainly helped, but it was still a reasonably horrendous morning. Tensions were running high, with a general readiness to take umbrage anywhere it could be found – and indeed, if no umbrage was to hand, to make it from scratch. Anna was exhausted, and so was Mum. Deidre, who had never become reconciled to the idea of the wedding being held on Mum’s turf instead of hers, niggled and questioned and changed everything she possibly could. Dad was inclined to resent his offspring’s focus on wedding-related issues rather than on his entertainment and amusement, thought the marquee site was poorly chosen and muttered audibly, ‘What in God’s name has your mother done to her hair?’ as she hurried past with a box full of tea-light holders.
We had the marquee up by lunchtime. Nobody had had the time or energy to make anything to eat, so Mike and I dashed to the Four Square for a jumbo-sized bag of slightly stale bread rolls, two wheels of camembert and a packet of processed ham. After spending ten minutes watching Anna pick bits out of the middle of a roll and crumble them between her fingers, Rob took her away, murmuring something about checking the order of service with the celebrant.
‘Take hours,’ I mouthed at him, and he raised his eyebrows in agreement.
There were chairs and tables to set out, and then move in accordance with Deidre’s instructions. The lights and sound system had to be connected up, the lawns mowed and about a mile of fairy lights strung along the paths. We cleaned a large green stain off one wall of the marquee, ran nylon lines spider-web fashion across the roof as a framework for tea-light chandeliers, picked up the alcohol and three hundred glasses and set the tables.
‘Where are we up to?’ said Mum distractedly, turning on the spot. She’d piled up her hair and skewered the knot with a ballpoint pen, her reading glasses had slipped down her nose and she looked like a mildly demented librarian. ‘Oh, what is the woman doing?’
Deidre was decorating a standard maple near the entrance to the marquee with fat blue satin bows.
‘Interesting,’ I said.
‘It’s ghastly!’
‘But look how happy it’s making her. Should we start hanging tea lights?’
Mum dropped her head onto my shoulder. ‘Why did I think this was a good idea?’ she said.
‘The tea lights?’ I asked, rubbing her back.
‘No. Having a wedding in my garden.’
‘It does all look amazing,’ I pointed out.
‘Hmm,’ she said, giving the beribboned maple a dirty look.
It did look amazing, though, and when Rob brought Anna back, looking considerably more cheerful than she had when she left, she stopped in the marquee doorway and said shakily, ‘Oh, wow.’
* * *
I left at four to start barbecue preparations, taking Dad with me for the sake of my mother’s mental health.
‘Lia!’ Anna called, leaning out Mum’s kitchen window as we crossed the lawn towards the car. ‘Call in to the garage and just make sure Monty knows it’s two thirty, and that he’s to come to the café!’
‘Okay!’ I called back. ‘Only a small detour, Dad, it won’t take long.’
I directed him across town to the garage, and he parked behind the workshop. ‘Won’t be a minute,’ I said, opening my door and getting out to cross the dusty gravel.
Monty was peering into the innards of a grey sedan, but he straightened as I approached, wiping his hands on a bit of rag. ‘Afternoon, Miss Lia,’ he said. ‘All organised for the big day?’
‘Getting there, I think.’
‘Good on you. Jed’s back there in the office somewhere.’
‘Actually, I’m here to see you,’ I said. ‘Anna was wondering if you could be at the café at half past two tomorrow afternoon.’
‘I thought the wedding was at three,’ he said.
‘It is.’
‘How long’s it going to take to drive down that hill? And isn’t the bride supposed to be fashionably late?’
‘Well, she said two thirty, and I’m not brave enough to argue with her. I just do as I’m told.’
‘Do you just?’ said Monty. ‘That’s not what I hear.’ Turning, he bellowed, ‘Jed!’ in the direction of the office.
Jed put his head around the office door with a clipboard in one hand and a portable phone in the other, saw me and smiled. ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ he said, coming across the workshop.
‘It all seems to be falling into place,’ I said. ‘Hopefully. Maybe.’ I hugged him, breathing in the sharp, metallic smell of his overalls.
‘Steady on there, you’ll embarrass Monty,’ he said.
‘I wasn’t actually planning to stick my tongue down your throat,’ I protested.
‘Go right ahead,’ said Monty. ‘Don’t mind me.’
Jed grinned, put his phone and clipboard down on the roof of a handy car, took my face between two slightly oily hands and kissed me comprehensively.
‘Ah, young love,’ Monty said soulfully as we broke apart.
I squeezed Jed’s hand – choosing, unfortunately, the broken one. He breathed in with a faint hiss.
‘Sorry!’ I said, letting go. ‘Damn. Sorry. See you tomorrow, guys.’
‘Two thirty,’ called Monty, waving his rag as I ran back across the gravel to the car.
* * *
Back at home, I was measuring yeast for a batch of focaccia into the bowl of the big mixer when Dad, who had withdrawn down the hall, came back into the kitchen carrying his chequebook.
‘Cup of tea?’ I offered.
‘Good idea. Got a pen? Better do something for the happy couple, I suppose.’
‘There should be one floating around by the phone,’ I said, filling the kettle. My cell phone buzzed, and I took it out of my shorts pocket. The message was from Anna.
Flower girl and family arrived. May shoot myself. Actually no, will shoot Mum. And them.
After a moment’s thought I sent back, Breathe. Good air in, bad air out. Will all be funny in 10 years. Then I made a mental note to live in sin for the rest of my life rather than contemplating anything as wearing as a wedding, switched the kettle on and started to make potato salad dressing.
Finding that his pen wouldn’t write, Dad discarded it and rummaged through my handbag in search of another one. At which point, inevitably, he found that bloody vibrator. He turned it over, read the packet, recoiled and dropped it back into my bag.
I couldn’t think of any comment that would make things better, so I just said, ‘Here,’ fished another pen out of the fruit bowl and handed it over.
* * *
That evening’s Leslie family pre-wedding barbecue was not a particularly scintillating occasion, owing both to a scarcity of relatives and a general feeling of exhaustion. It consisted of Mum, Rob, Mike, Dad, Dad’s elderly Uncle Neville and Aunty Freda from Morrinsville, and me. Gina’s lot, as well as Mum’s parents and brother, were arriving the next day.
‘Have you got room for some prawn kebabs, or should I grill them in the oven?’ I asked, taking a bowl of meat patties out to Rob on the kitchen porch, where he was barbecuing sausages under Dad’s expert supervision.
‘Bring them out,’ he said, slapping patties onto the hotplate. ‘We’ll find them a spot.’
‘How was the flower girl?’
‘Fairly special. Not as special as the rest of her family, but.’
‘Speaking of special,’ I said, ‘are Deidre and Ian staying at your place tonight?’
‘Yes.’
‘Lucky you.’
‘Sarcasm, Lia, is the lowest form of wit,’ said Dad, turning and going back inside.
Rob grinned at my expression. ‘That put you in your place,’ he said. ‘Hey. Cheer up. Who cares?’
‘Me, a bit.’
‘Well, stop. Miserable old coot.’
* * *
Dinner, which we ate at the biggest outside table, was memorable mostly for Uncle Neville’s hearing aid. He took it out to change the battery and lost it through a crack between two boards of decking. Rob had to pry several boards off the side of the porch to make a hole to climb through and retrieve it, armed with the flashlight on his mobile phone. He found it eventually, although he found a patch of stinging nettles and a mummified hedgehog first.
This excitement over, a lethargy fell over the party. Dad took Uncle Neville and Aunty Freda back to their motel, and Rob went home to put Anna to bed, by force if necessary. The rest of us retired to the kitchen to clean up.
Mum filled the kettle and switched it on, yawning. ‘What a day,’ she said. ‘I feel like I’ve been run over by a steamroller.’ She looked at herself in the polished metal side of the kettle and made a face. ‘Damn. I look like it, too.’
‘You do not,’ I said. ‘Does she, Mike?’
Mike was scraping plates into the compost bucket. Not looking up, he said evenly, ‘No. She looks very beautiful. As always.’
Mum whipped around and stared at him, her face turning first pink and then white.
Oh my god, I thought blankly, opening the fridge and rummaging through it at random to hide my face. Holy shit. Mum and Mike. She – he – Oh my god!
* * *
Long after everyone else in the house was asleep I lay awake and astonished on my sofa. Mum and Mike. Crikey. How long had he been in love with her? Years, probably. Thirty years, as likely as not.
My right hip met something small and hard, and I fished a plastic Minion out of the crack between two squabs and dropped it on the floor. What about Mum? Was she in love with him? Yes, I thought, remembering her face. Yes, she was. No wonder she wouldn’t go out with poor Hugh. No wonder she’d been so unhappy. She’d been labouring under a hopeless passion, poor petal.
I sat up, turned my hot pillow over and lay down again, gnawing the side of a fingernail. Well, for goodness’ sake, what a miserable waste of time. Why didn’t they stop fannying about and get on with it? It wasn’t, after all, as if they were actually related. I didn’t care, and Rob wouldn’t either – would he? No, I decided, he wouldn’t. And the general public wouldn’t be all horrified and disapproving, would it? Not in the circumstances. It wasn’t as if we were talking raddled-old-cougar-leaves-husband-for-teenage-stepson, here. Giving up on sleep, I threw back the cotton blanket, got up and padded across the shadowy dining room to sit down cross-legged on the kitchen window seat in the pale grey moonlight and open the laptop.
Can you marry your stepmother? I typed into Google.
My first hit was a discussion forum, whose participants had supplied various discouraging comments along the line of, I guess, you sad freak, and U need therapy.
Hmm. What sensitive and charming people.
Eventually, however, I tracked down an official-looking document on the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs website, headed Prohibited Degrees of Marriage and Civil Union.
Legislation specifies, it informed me, that a person may not marry or enter into a civil union with a person with whom they have a certain relationship. A person may not marry or enter into a civil union with their . . .
A long list followed. It started with parents, grandparents and children, which you’d hope wouldn’t come as too much of a nasty shock to anyone, and moved on to more convoluted and obscure relationships. Near the bottom we reached: parent’s spouse or civil union partner, and spouse’s or civil union partner’s child. A note at the end added: This list applies whether the relationships described are by the whole blood or by the half blood. In this list, a spouse and civil union partner include a former spouse or former civil union partner, whether alive or deceased, and whether the marriage or civil union was terminated by death, dissolution, or otherwise.
What? I thought indignantly once I’d translated this into everyday English. Well, it didn’t matter anyway; they could live together, if they felt like it. It wasn’t as if someone from the Department of Internal Affairs was going to come around and cast aspersions on their morals. On this thought I closed the laptop with a defiant sniff, retreated to my sofa and went straight to sleep.