I was reclining, one lovely November evening, in the springy grass beside the cliff path, recovering from the run uphill from the beach and looking out to sea. The air was warm and golden and one small pink cloud hung motionless above the horizon. It didn’t, here, seem all that important that most of this month’s income had come from last month’s GST refund, or that some loathsome person had written a Trip Advisor review that described Pretty Delicious as having ‘tolerable food, served in pretentiously rustic surroundings’. There was a shining cuckoo somewhere in the bush above the path – and, less idyllically, something prickly digging into the side of my right breast.
I peered down the front of my top and discovered a large praying mantis clinging to my bra strap, looking back at me with alien, wicked-looking black eyes. I flicked at it in mild panic and it vanished, biting me vindictively in the armpit as it went. Leaping up I whipped off my shirt, and of course it was then that Jed Dixon came around the corner of the path.
That was bad, but to make it worse I squealed in shock. Squealing is only acceptable for those under eight, and even then it’s not all that cool.
‘It’s okay,’ he said hastily.
I clutched my T-shirt to my chest like a frightened virgin, and the praying mantis, lurking in its folds, bit me again. ‘Shit!’ I shook my shirt vigorously, and it fell into the grass beside me. ‘Sorry. I’m sorry. Praying mantis down my shirt.’ I dragged the shirt back on, inevitably both inside out and back to front.
‘Your brother’s not going to turn up with a gun, is he?’ Jed asked.
‘What? No. No. Only for suspected serial killers, I promise.’
‘That’s a relief,’ he said.
‘Why is it,’ I said bitterly, ‘that every time you show up I manage to make a total fool of myself?’
‘That’s not true. Last time you just made me a cup of coffee. Good coffee, too.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘But you did see my mother sniffing the curtain rods.’
He smiled. ‘Yeah, that explained a lot.’
It’s nice when people assume you have enough of a sense of humour to be laughed at.
‘Hey, thanks for not telling anyone about Rob holding you up,’ I said, smiling back.
‘How do you know I didn’t?’ he asked.
‘Well, I don’t, but if you’d told anyone from around here I’d have heard by now.’
‘Do you and your brother always know when the other one’s in trouble?’
I made a face. ‘Sometimes. Sort of. It’s pretty hit and miss.’
‘And you’d rather not talk about it,’ he said.
‘No, it’s just – you sound like such a prat if you go around telling people you have a mysterious psychic link to your twin.’
Jed laughed. ‘This track goes to Stony Bay, doesn’t it?’ he asked.
I nodded. ‘It’s about three-quarters of an hour’s walk from here, up over the headland. Or you can go around the rocks at low tide.’
He looked at his watch, then at me. ‘Heaps of time before dark. Feel like a walk to Stony Bay?’
‘Sure,’ I said, pleased and flattered. (It occurred to me that I’d have been less pleased and flattered if he’d been less good-looking – but only fleetingly, since I prefer to pretend I’m not that shallow.)
The path led up and over a ridge through waist-high gorse and long grass, and then turned downhill through a little grove of nikau palms. ‘This hillside was only fenced off about five years ago,’ I said, assuming the role of tour guide. ‘It was always grazed before that – Gary Austin used to chuck thirty steers out here for the winter and round up the ones that hadn’t fallen into the sea in spring.’
‘Did many fall into the sea?’
‘Only one, actually, as far as I remember. I tend to exaggerate; it pays not to believe anything I say.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ said Jed.
‘How’s the new job going?’ I asked.
‘Really good.’
‘Monty’s nice, isn’t he?’
‘Very nice,’ he said – and then added cautiously, ‘not the most organised bloke in the world.’
‘No,’ I said, smiling.
‘How long have you had the café?’
‘Nearly two years.’
‘Monty was saying the place was in pretty bad shape when you girls bought it. You must have done a lot of work on it.’
‘We did,’ I said. ‘But luckily Rob was trying hard to impress Anna just then, so we had an excellent source of free labour.’
‘They’re engaged, aren’t they?’
‘Yes. They’re getting married in March.’
‘Good on them,’ he said.
‘Where were you before you moved here?’ I asked.
‘Thames,’ said Jed. ‘Look, dolphins!’ And he pointed out to sea, where in the distance a patch of apricot sky was alive with wheeling gulls, harrying a school of little fish from the air while the dolphins and bigger fish harried them from below.
* * *
The tide was on its way out when we got to Stony Bay, a narrow, grey-pebbled cleft in the headland. With the sun down behind the hills it was a dark and rather forbidding place, and we didn’t linger. We came back around the shore in the fading light, jumping from rock to rock, moving quickly and not talking much.
Jed, twenty metres ahead of me, stopped at the mouth of a cave in the cliff face to let me catch up. ‘Cosy-looking spot,’ he said, peering in. It was pitch-dark inside, and the steady drip of water echoed hollowly off the wet stone walls.
‘If you wade into that cave for about ten metres and then dive under a ledge, you come out on the other side of these rocks, at the end of the surf beach.’
‘You might,’ he said, looking at the cave with distaste. ‘I don’t do small dark spaces.’
‘It’s pretty cool diving under the rocks, though.’
‘I’d rather – what’s something really bad?’
‘Red-hot needles in your eyes?’ I suggested. ‘Bamboo slivers under your fingernails?’
‘Going to Mariah Carey concerts . . . yeah, that type of thing.’
‘I thought mechanics spent most of their time lurking in pits underneath cars.’
‘If I’m in a pit, it’s lit up like the sun,’ he said firmly.
* * *
It was seven thirty when we reached the north end of the surf beach and the car park was empty, apart from a battered white van with tinted windows.
‘Can I give you a lift home?’ he asked, starting up the wooden steps that led from the beach to the car park.
‘Is this your van?’ I asked, surprised. It was a particularly seedy-looking vehicle – the kind whose owner has tight black jeans and tattooed knuckles, and supplements his income by liberating things off the backs of trucks.
‘This van is an example of Japanese engineering at its finest.’ Pulling a set of keys out of his pocket he wrestled briefly and unsuccessfully with the passenger-side lock, while I maintained a tactful silence.
‘Be quiet, or you can walk,’ he said.
‘I didn’t say a word!’
‘I could hear you thinking.’ He went around to the driver’s door, opened it and leant across to unlock the passenger side.
‘Thank you,’ I said, climbing in. There was a bare single foam mattress with an orange, floral-patterned cover in the back, along with a sleeping bag and pillow, a battered paperback copy of The Power of One, a big blue chilly bin and a gas camping stove in a box.
‘Mint, isn’t it?’ said Jed.
‘Charming. Absolutely charming. I love what you’ve done with it.’
‘Really impresses the ladies.’
‘I bet,’ I said.
‘It’s only temporary,’ he said, starting the van. ‘I’m moving into a place on Green Street at the end of the week. I’m just waiting for the guy who’s in there now to move out.’
‘Coles’ sleep-out?’ I asked.
‘That’s the one.’
‘That’ll be cosy.’ I knew that sleep-out well – Toby Coles was friends with Rob at high school – and it was a tiny place: one room, with the toilet and shower in a lean-to cupboard outside the door.
‘Less cosy than this,’ said Jed. He sighed. ‘I’m not actually a bum. I do have a house.’
‘In Thames?’
‘Mm. My ex lives in it.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said uncomfortably.
We drove up the hill in silence, and he pulled up in front of the dark café. ‘Do you want to come in and have some tea?’ I asked, imagining him crouching over his camping stove, reconstituting instant pasta sachets.
He hesitated for a moment, and then smiled at me and shook his head. ‘No, I’ve got a few phone calls to make,’ he said. ‘But thanks for the offer.’
I smiled back. ‘You’re welcome. Thanks for the walk.’
‘Night, Lia.’
‘Night,’ I said.