Chapter 13
Bright sunshine promised a hot and sultry day, the New Zealand climate keeping its dishonourable intentions to itself. Hana cleaned her house before heading to the mall at Chartwell on foot to waste a lonely Saturday amongst busy shoppers.
As her walk progressed, bright azure skies blinked under cloud cover and the day degenerated into awkward showers and an unpleasant gusting wind. Hana arrived buffeted and blown, her umbrella inside out and her jacket soaked. Not excited about the forty-minute walk home, she ordered coffee and sat down to watch the world go by. It gave her a peculiar feeling of detachment for a woman who’d once felt too busy, watching other parents ushering along whingeing children while she sat alone. Hana recognised the despondent slump of the mothers’ shoulders as they hauled their youngsters past tempting sweet kiosks and she remembered the never-ending slog of provision and worry. She watched the mother-daughter-duos browsing in clothing shops and emerging with carrier bags wearing the shopaholics’ satisfied look of contentment. Husbands hung around outside shops ready to collect the variety of bags, freeing up their women to proceed into the next glitzy store and repeat the process. The men looked bored with denting their wallets in a credit crunching weekend ritual.
Hana sipped her latte and regretted the anticipated aerobic workout, which became less attractive as she listened to the rain slam into the mall roof.
“Can I join you?” Before she could answer, Logan Du Rose slid into the seat opposite, clutching a metal rod with the laminated number forty-three clipped to the top. He saw her near empty cup and strode off to order her another. “Got you a latte,” he smiled as he seated himself again. “I don’t want to sit here on my own.”
He pulled a cane sugar sachet from the cute pottery dish on the table and fiddled with it, trapping the contents up one end. Hana watched with casual interest, waiting for the inevitable moment when the wrapper split and the sugar spilled everywhere. When it happened, she smirked and looked away. She glanced back as Logan finished collecting the granules in his palm and tipped them into an empty cup on the next table. He made a snuffing sound. “You knew that would happen, didn’t you?”
Hana smiled and nodded. “My son loved doing that. They always rip.”
Logan wrinkled his nose and flipped his fringe out of his eyes with a shallow movement. A sullen teenage girl interrupted his possible retort by arriving with their drinks. She slapped the order on the wobbly table, unconcerned by the amount of coffee residing in the saucer. She snatched the numbered spindle from the table and returned to the counter.
“Millennials are such fun, aren’t they?” Logan mused with sarcasm.
Hana thought back to her days at university when she spent the summer working in the Belle Vue Hotel on the sea front. It seemed like hard work for unattractive money. On a trip back to Aberystwyth on holiday with Vik and the children many years after they left the university, Hana stared in the familiar windows.
‘Come on, let’s eat there,’ Vik urged, but as she gazed into the sunny bar, she felt the click of time moving on.
‘Nobody will remember me!’ she scoffed. ‘I was just a pregnant student from years ago. They’ll pretend and it will feel hollow.’ Hana blanched as she thought of the stares and finger pointing, both in class and at work.
“Fancy getting pregnant in your first year,” the gossips whispered. “She just made life harder for herself.”
“Hana?” A light touch on her hand made her jump and her drink slopped. Logan mopped up the mess with a serviette one-handed, but kept hold of her fingers with the other. She shucked off the stressful memories and forced herself back to the present, liking the warm hand over hers far too much. Hana extracted her fingers and smiled at Logan, her heart thudding and her mind whispering permission to enjoy the simple pleasures. A woman in her late thirties walked by and stared at Logan, undressing him with her eyes. She smiled at him with unspoken invitation and he ignored her.
Hana’s voice wobbled as she tried to wish away the pretty brunette as she lingered by the confectionary stand, ogling Logan without shame. “I worked in a bar in my first year at uni. One busy Saturday, I tripped up a step coming into the dining room and emptied a full bowl of tomato soup over a man wearing a cream safari suit. The hotel paid for his dry cleaning and the owner blamed me.” Hana blanched, remembering why she’d tripped, her swollen stomach obscuring the step in those last few weeks. “It’s a stupid story,” she stammered. “Ignore me.”
Logan asked polite questions, teasing information from Hana like easing the knots from a tangled necklace. “So,” he said, his voice quiet. “You married young and worked in a bar. What did your husband do?”
Hana went quiet for a minute as the memories flooded back. “Engineering degree. He worked at the local supermarket between classes.” She smiled. “He was so lazy with his uniform and only used to iron the front of his shirt, claiming his overalls hid the rest. This one time, they made him take the overall off to collect trolleys outside and he looked like someone dragged him through a hedge backwards.”
Hearing Logan clear his throat, Hana looked up feeling embarrassed and disloyal. Why did this man ask questions when he didn’t want the answers? Logan’s sparkling grey eyes fixed on her face with a look of curious longing. Vik died eight years earlier but still Hana couldn’t throw off the ill-placed sense of guilt for enjoying Logan’s nearness. Her slender, sun kissed hand strayed to the space over her heart and Hana bit her lip. Silence hung over them like a shroud and Logan’s nervousness returned. “Wanna go for a walk?” he asked, peering out from under his long lashes, the trace of a stammer showing itself.
Deciding Vik’s spirit couldn’t deny her friendship, Hana walked around the mall with Logan until he headed off to the hardware store for a particular type of bolt. Hana moseyed around the card racks before moving onto the bookstore next door. The rack of politically incorrect cards caught her eye and Hana opened a few out of curiosity. Some were genuinely funny and she snorted and giggled to herself. One depicted a little girl with her nose screwed up and a disgusted look on her face. Inside it read, ‘Monica couldn’t stand her own farts–Happy birthday’
It was deliciously funny, but not appropriate for Mabel at church. Fate chose that moment for Logan to appear behind her and read the caption over her shoulder. Hana felt his closeness and the heat from his body as he leaned over and her heart fluttered in betrayal. Feeling chastened, Hana put it back in the rack and forced the smirk from her lips.
Logan shrugged at the caption and grabbed another one from the stack. “I like this one better,” he grinned. “I sent it to my sister in Auckland.” He put it back, adding, “She didn’t find it funny.”
The cover sported a black-and-white photo of a nineteen fifties couple and the inside was unrepeatable but hilarious. “Schoolboy humour,” Hana remarked sanctimoniously with a twinkle in her eye. She sauntered towards the nice flowery cards with dull poems about friendship.
“Boring,” Logan remarked as she flounced away.
Hana picked a card with red poppies in a field scene and paid for it. Logan followed her into the mall and she experienced a flicker of irrational pleasure at his desire to stick with her. “It sounds terrible outside,” she said, turning to him with a frown. She used a cloth band from her wrist to tie her hair back into a loose ponytail, readying herself for the long walk home. “These late-summer storms blow up from nowhere, don’t they?”
The atrocious rain hammered on the mall’s tin roof above them as if to reinforce her point. Hana looked upwards, seeing only the underside of the second level as she tucked her hair inside her jacket collar and inspected the ratty umbrella.
“I dunno. The weather forecast predicted it. Let me give you a lift?” Logan added, “Please.”
Hana wavered for a moment before accepting, wondering how his little Triumph managed in the wet without a hood. Her heart pounded in her chest with abandon, refusing to still at the proximity of the stunning
male. A taxi might have saved her heart failure.
They left the mall, staying under cover as far as possible until the extended parking spaces further away. The day looked grey and dirty, the rain deluging in sheets. “Wait here, I’ll fetch the car,” Logan insisted, running into the rain and shielding his dark hair with his jacket.
Minutes later, a maroon Toyota Hilux halted next to her and the driver beckoned Hana. At first, she stared in confusion, expecting the Triumph. When Logan lowered the rain-spattered window and called to her, Hana jumped in surprise and hauled herself onto the side rail, slipping into the passenger seat with wet trainers. “Sorry,” she said, feeling foolish.
Logan gave her a quick smile and slid into the bunching traffic as a car horn expressed another motorist’s irritation at his halting of the flow. The fuming snake of cars and exhaust fumes remained static and the windows misted up from their wet clothes. Noise from the air blower made conversation redundant. The busy mall shifted traffic through the exits with painful slowness. At the junction with Hukanui Road, Logan half turned to Hana. “Would you like to see my place?” He chewed on the inside of his cheek, betraying fear mingled with hope.
Hana panicked. She didn’t want to return to her deserted house, but dreaded the awkwardness of relying on Logan for a lift home if she needed to escape. The idea pushed a sense of powerlessness into her mind and left her unable to decide. A honk from behind panicked Hana into a choice as Logan waited at the junction, his patience appearing endless. “Yes. Please.” She heard the words emerge from her lips and blinked in surprise at the dreadful risks loneliness forced her to take.
Logan waited in the left lane while an impatient driver made rude gestures from his vehicle next to them. Hana watched Logan’s blank expression from the side, his jaw set into a hard line as he turned his head to meet the driver’s gaze. The man looked away with such rapidity, Hana wished she’d seen whatever he did. With no more eye contact, the man turned right and blasted away down the road.
“Everyone’s got the same idea.” Logan took a gap in the traffic and moved onto the main road, travelling with caution through the torrents and into the northern end of town. His diesel engine chugged along without issue, splashing through the deep puddles on its massive wheels without reluctance.
Misgivings flooded into Hana’s heart. She didn’t know Logan Du Rose well enough to visit his home, especially without telling someone first. Easing her mobile phone from her jacket pocket, she held it away from Logan and peered at the screen, seeing the low battery sign blinking feebly up at her. Driving for fifteen minutes through heavy traffic, Logan headed north towards Gordonton and open country. As Hana summoned up enough courage to at least request an address, Logan indicated left and pulled into a rutted track off the main road. The post box stood to attention, a re-purposed red paint pot with a slit cut in its metal lid. It looked as though it had seen better days. The rutted road went on for endless minutes and the vehicle bumped and smacked over pools and puddles that might have shaken a lesser car to bits.
“How old are you?” Hana blurted, with unexpected force as her subconscious worked to dispel any notion of romance with Logan Du Rose. Her cheeks pinked with instant embarrassment.
Logan’s lips quirked upwards. “Old enough to drive a car.”
“You can drive at fifteen!” Hana remarked, sounding like an irritated teenager.
“Older than that,” Logan smirked, his eyes narrowing with mischief and his top teeth grazing his lower lip.
Hana turned to face the window, humiliation making her emerald eyes flash. Strong fingers settled over her right hand and she glanced across to meet Logan’s earnest gaze. “I’m thirty-nine, Hana. I’ve got all my own teeth and am financially solvent. I’m jilted and single, too perfectionist for my own good and not keen on feet. What else do you need to know?”
Hana looked down at his brown fingers entwined around her porcelain skin. White scars criss-crossed them as though he’d put his hand through a broken window more than once. Her thumb smoothed over one of the soft ridges, her mind in turmoil. She exhaled slowly. Five years’ difference seemed too much. “I’m a grandmother,” she said and Logan snorted.
“Congratulations,” he answered. He withdrew his hand, leaving Hana’s fingers feeling the lack of warmth. The jolting stopped as the road culminated in a large open gateway and they crunched onto a gravel drive and up to a colonial villa, nestled amongst native Nikau palms. The exterior wooden panels of the building looked white enough for recent renovation, whilst the roof displayed its original green corrugated metal. A period veranda and decorative wooden mouldings wrapped around the structure like an embrace. Despite the sheet rain, the house oozed class and pride.
Logan strode round and opened the passenger door, offering his hand to help Hana climb onto the slippery runner. She accepted his help, gripping Logan’s hand and praying she didn’t hit the floor face first in front of him. Hana felt a familiar flicker run through her body like the essence of a low voltage current. If Logan perceived it he didn’t react, sheltering her under his jacket as they ran up the front steps and onto a wide porch.
Hana shook water droplets from her ponytail as Logan pushed open the unlocked front door. “Welcome to the mad house,” he said, driving her panic levels higher. Deciding that if he turned out to be a serial killer she’d be better off comfortable, Hana removed her shoes and added them to a surprisingly large pile by the door. Stepping onto the stripped rimu boards which graced the entrance hall, she looked up at a stunning chandelier which fitted the period of the house. The smell of frying bacon assaulted her nostrils and drew an embarrassing growl from her stomach.
Logan walked straight ahead and into the kitchen and Hana heard him begin a discussion with someone inside. She delayed, hearing a female voice and feeling awkward. Looking around for somewhere to hang her wet jacket, she settled on the banister rail. It brought back memories of her childhood and her family hanging their coats on the bannister in England. Hana remembered bringing the whole collection down on her head and having to hang each one up again. Sometimes her brother would loosen them on purpose to get her into trouble. Her mother hated the practice. Despite her inability to hear or speak with any clarity, Judith McIntyre would sign with frantic fingers that it made their modest Lincolnshire vicarage look untidy.
“Hey, come through.” Logan returned for her and took her right hand, tugging her away from the stairs. Hana pattered into the kitchen in her socks, nervousness robbing her of confidence.
“Hana!” A radiant Henrietta Dawlish greeted her whilst snipping up rashers of bacon into a frying pan. “Darling, how wonderful to see you again,” she cooed, as Hana gulped air like a dying fish.
Moments later, Peter North burst in from outside, brandishing a dirty pumpkin as though it was a trophy and dripping rainwater onto the rimu floor. “Got one!” he cried.
Henrietta chortled with encouragement and bustled over, brandishing a tea towel which she used to mop North’s brow. She relieved him of his prize and took it over to the sink while he removed his shoes and coat. “Hana, welcome to our humble bachelor pad,” North smiled. Spying the subtle stiffening of Henrietta’s back, he added, “Some of us won’t be bachelors for long apart from Logan; he will.”
“Thanks!” Logan retorted, the insult driven hard into his heart. He narrowed his eyes and mouthed something in Pete’s direction which looked like a threat. The skinny man’s eyes widened and he dashed to Henrietta’s ample side. Once in the safety of her voluptuous vicinity, his nerve returned and he offered Logan a rude finger gesture.
Hana’s curiosity burned, desperate to ask about their living arrangements but squashing the impulse. A clothes airer in the corner bore a limp rugby shirt alongside a nasty pair of purple Y-fronts. The red trainers on the floor next to it looked a replica of those worn by the German student teacher.
“Hey Hana!” cried Boris Lomax. Tall and carrot orange haired, the boys called him ‘Red’ and loved
his no-nonsense style of teaching. A total lush, he sent female hearts thumping in the staffroom and already burned a few bridges since the previous September. He wrapped long arms around Hana and planted a kiss on her cheek. It appeared like a chaste maneuver until his fingers strayed below the small of her back. Hana pulled away and glanced at Logan, gratified to recognise a flash of jealousy in his grey eyes.
The open plan kitchen encompassed a dining table and sofas. A 1900s bay window surveyed the garden through rain-streaked, misted glass. “Would you like to look around?” Logan offered. “I’ll pour you a drink first.”
Hana nodded with enthusiasm, keen to escape Boris’ wandering hands and Pete’s sycophantical behaviour around Henrietta. Logan poured a generous glass of red wine and pressed it into her hand. Then he led her out of the kitchen and back into the lobby. “I think it’s 1900s,” he said, looking up at the high ceiling. “But I’m not completely sure.”
“It is.” Hana nodded. “Perhaps earlier but not much.” She pointed out the decorative plaster moldings of the ceiling rose and characteristic coving. “I can’t believe you live with Pete.” Her lips twisted into a smile around her wine glass. “Good luck with that. He drives me mad after eight hours a day and he’s asleep for most of that.”
Logan licked his lips and grinned. “Yeah,” he replied. “But beggars can’t be choosers.”
“You don’t strike me as someone who has to beg for anything.” The unfiltered words slipped from her lips having bypassed her brain and Hana cringed at her own rudeness. She swallowed a large gulp of wine and concentrated on the striking autumn colours of the paintwork.
Logan’s instant smile raised the tantalising dimple and the healing scar beneath his right eye crinkled, giving him a roguish look. He left Hana to her discomfort and concentrated on showing her the house. Aged tongue and groove decorated each room to shoulder height, original rimu restored with love and expertise. The antique furniture intrigued Hana, not least because the tenants fitted better into the beer-and-Formica category. Three roomy bedrooms showed signs of male occupation. North’s room looked like his desk at work, full of crap with pieces missing, aesthetically chaotic. It proved impossible to see where his unmade bed ended and the clothes on the floor began. Boris owned little and lived out of an open suitcase, clothing crawling from its cavernous mouth like escapees from tee shirt hell. Logan’s room surprise her. Always dressed in immaculate designer clothing, Logan’s placing of an ironing board in the corner looked in vogue with his room. Nothing appeared out of kilter, furniture aligned and nothing out on show. In contrast to his, North’s room looked positively burgled.
The fourth bedroom smelled of female deodorant and one of Henrietta’s voluminous dresses peeked out from an overnight case on the bedside table. Logan wrinkled his nose. “I haven’t seen Pete this in love with a chick since my sister made him pee his pants.”
Hana’s eyes widened in horror and Logan laughed. “She’s five years older than us and very scary.” He reached out and ran a hand down her upper arm, leaning closer to explain. “Pete loves women who boss him around.” His fingers felt strong and forceful and Hana swallowed down a heady mixture of wine and desire. Oblivious, Logan jerked his head towards the bed. “He thinks she’ll sleep with him but I know she won’t.”
“How do you know?” Hana’s voice sounded husky.
Logan winked at her. “She told me. This girl’s after a wedding ring.”
Hana choked on her next mouthful, shaking as she struggled to seat the wine glass on a hall table and almost knocked it over. Logan pulled her close and patted her back with gentle strokes, waiting until she’d caught her breath. Then she embarrassed herself by snorting with laughter. “That won’t happen,” she choked. “Are we talking about the same man?”
Logan nodded and his smile looked rueful. “Yeah. I told her she’s dreaming. I’ll be married before he is.”
The words sent an arrow of pain into Hana’s heart and her eyes darted around looking for a ready escape. Her brain sent a bucket of cruel rebukes to cool her foolish romantic notions. She shivered and closed her eyes against her own stupidity, rosebud lips pursing to prevent further calamity.
“You’re cold.” From a dresser drawer revealing neatly rolled garments, Logan pulled out a sweater and offered it to her.
Hana hesitated and then accepted it, using it as a diversion. Logan’s fingers brushed hers, making the awfulness worse. “Thank you.” She pulled it on over her tee shirt and wondered how to extract herself from the house and the sense of having lost out yet again in life. Logan’s sweater smelled of lavender fabric softener and outdoors. Hana lifted a sleeve to her nose and inhaled the comforting scent. He reached behind her and teased a long red tress from inside the collar, the curl bouncing against his touch. His hands contacted the back of her neck and Hana’s eyes flared wide in embarrassment at the pleasure his touch invoked. Logan straightened out the lock of hair with care and smoothed it down her back with gentle fingers, stroking out the static. Hana gulped and moved away, breaking the connection with an act of will.
The tour of the house included the bathroom, living room and laundry and Hana revelled in the beauty of the restoration. “It’s amazing!” she exclaimed, pressing her hands together and smiling at Logan. “I love period houses. I’ve always wanted to buy an old place like this and give it back its dignity.” She spun in a circle beneath the ceiling rose in the lounge, peering up at the detail in the molding. Even folded over twice, Logan’s sweater sleeves still sneaked over her palms and forced her to hold them at bay with curled fingers. “Who owns this?” she asked in hushed reverence. “Not Pete. He can’t afford to pay his tuck shop bill from last year.”
She hadn’t expected Logan’s answer. “Angus.”
It rushed back to her like a river reclaiming its flood plain, the awful afternoon following Vik’s funeral. Angus supped wine and gave in to a lonely, soul sucking grief. ‘I can’t face it,’ he wept. ‘Iris renovated it for us to retire in. It was our dream home. This is my punishment.’
Angus never qualified how he believed Iris’ cancer to be his punishment but he vacated the house a year after her death. He bought a two-bedroom unit in a residential park, happy to woo lonely widows with his wit and charm whilst closing his front door on them at night.
“This is the house,” Hana whispered, sadness washing over her. “Iris’ house.”
The mess of North’s bedroom seemed more offensive for the lack of sensitivity it displayed in the abandonment of order there. Hana’s chest tightened to the point of painfulness and her wine glass tilted sideways in her hand. Iris and Vik sat together at the staff Christmas dinner, never knowing it would be the last for both of them. Hana contemplated the void at her feet and the ugliness of what threatened to suck her back in. She sighed and closed her eyes against the questions she still carried and which Vik would never answer; not this side of heaven.
Logan watched as the emotions flicked across Hana’s face, poorly masked in her confusion. Her green eyes filled with pain and her guard dropped for long enough for him to see the turmoil hidden inside.
Realising too late, Hana forced a smile onto her lips and buried the feelings back in Pandora’s Box. “Thanks for showing me around,” she said, her tone clipped and professional. “I should probably go home.”
Logan reached for her, one hand confiscating the lilting wine glass and the other closing around her wrist. “Tell me?” he asked, a hint of pleading beneath the surface. Time whipped past him as he lost seconds of opportunity, days, weeks, years and decades. He let go of her wrist and touched her cheek, soft fingers caressing and coasting over her flushed skin. Hana’s eyelids fluttered closed as she remembered how good it felt to be touched.
Noises from the kitchen forced her back into reality and Hana jumped away from Logan. He watched the roiling conflict in her expression as he released his hold on her wrist. “Don’t run away. Stay for dinner,” he invited, struggling to lighten the
mood. He jerked the wine glass towards the kitchen sounds. “Henrietta does the meanest pumpkin and bacon soup and she cooks for a small army.” He stood in front of Hana, his body rigid as he blocked her exit. Fear enlarged his pupils until his eyes looked black and Hana inwardly questioned her importance to him.
“Why do you care?” she whispered and his fear worked its way back behind a convincing mask.
Logan shrugged and gritted his teeth, calling her bluff. “I’ll take you home if that’s what you want.”
Hana’s eyes darted towards the doorway and then back to Logan’s face. She swallowed and shook her head, relenting. His eyelashes fluttered and he rested a hand on her shoulder as though afraid if he let go she might flee. Hana’s body felt rigid, expecting grief like a silent shadow to sneak up on her, biting her when she least anticipated it and reminding her she was half of a pair, less than whole.
Dinner as promised, tasted superb. The pumpkin soup was exquisitely cooked as only New Zealanders know how, despite the noble attempts of others to better it. Henrietta’s catering skills had much to do with it. North seemed besotted with her, oblivious to the veiled snorts of laughter his flatmates suppressed when she referred to him as ‘Peteepoos’ and ‘Glove Puppet.’
Boris raised his eyebrows in such a look of intrigue when Henrietta asked ‘Glove Puppet’ for the salt, Hana dropped her spoon into the soup. A glob ricocheted onto Logan’s chin and her eyes widened in horror. He wrinkled his nose with indignation and wiped it off, but she saw the amusement in his face and masked her giggle as a cough.
Henrietta set dessert on the table with such a flourish, it wibbled and wobbled and almost plunged off the platter. The pink blancmange resembled its creator and the realisation set Hana giggling again.
“That looks exceptionally pink and vobbly,” Boris concluded and Hana struggled not to explode. She buried her face into her favourite handkerchief with a long and pretentious sniffle which bought her time to recover and wipe the tears of laughter away. She pitied the little kiwi birds, hand stitched around the edges of the hanky for their part in her subterfuge.
Achieving a degree of sanity, Hana pulled the handkerchief away from her face and glanced sideways at Logan. She found his gaze fixed on the object in her fingers and his olive skin paled to a sickly hue. His irises darkened as he peered at the marching kiwis around the edge of the cloth and his fingers twitched as though he wanted to reach out and take it. Hana balled it into her hand like a possessive child, stuffing it into her jeans pocket and hauling the sweater down over it. When she stole a glance at Logan, she saw he’d stopped eating, laying his spoon alongside the pink mess and staring at his plate.
Silence shrouded them both as dinner conversation centred around which beer Peter North liked best although the topic died at a withering look from Henrietta. “No, Peteepoos,” she complained, her eyes rounding with hurt. “You promised you’d only drink wine from now on; like a real connoisseur!”
Boris wiggled his eyebrows at Hana and she winced in return, Henrietta’s choke hold on Pete making her heart heavy with remembered misery.
After the final clatter of spoons and satisfied sighs from appetites sated, the mood around the rimu dining table became laced with sadness and a finality which left Hana confused. Logan cleared away the bowls and cutlery while Boris loaded the dishwasher and ran water into the sunken Belfast sink. Unsure what to do, Hana sat at the table, embarrassed when Henrietta took North’s hand in her large paw and began a private, hushed conversation. Writhing in discomfort, Hana excused herself and went to help the men. She stuck close to Logan and they worked to restore the kitchen back to order. Soon the dishwasher hummed in the corner, making hungry sloshing sounds as it gulped water from the tank beneath the front lawn.
Logan made coffee and led Hana into the living room overlooking the darkening driveway. A daffodil farm in the paddocks beyond showed ploughed furrows awaiting new bulbs. Boris went to his room with the intention of Skyping his brother. As New Zealand sunk into Saturday night, Dieter in Germany had his Saturday morning lie-in destroyed.
“Pete’s dreaded her leaving,” Logan explained. “Henrietta toured the Waikato advertising her college but her next port of call is Hastings.” He tapped a nervous beat against his jeans and fidgeted long fingers covered in healed scars. Hana tried to count the myriad white lines but couldn’t.
She felt the roughness of Logan’s jeans through her trousers and resisted the urge to touch his thigh, chiding herself for her inappropriate forwardness. The derisive voice in her head ridiculed her and drove her further inside herself.
Logan didn’t broach the subject of her marriage and Hana felt grateful. But he talked about his own life and former fiancé. “I guess she was the girl-next-door. We ended up in the same course at uni and got jobs at Auckland North Shore Grammar, me in the English faculty and her in physical education.” Logan became quiet and subdued. “It’s for the best,” he admitted.
Hana looked at him in confusion. “How?” She sounded doubtful. “How can being jilted at the altar ever be for the best? It’s cruel and wicked.” Her jaw set in a harsh line and her lips turned downwards. “It’s betrayal and the worst way to treat anyone you’ve claimed to love.”
Logan shook his head, his dark fringe bouncing in the movement from his eyelashes. “No, trust me. I’m glad.” His voice sounded tight but his expression contradicted it with a look of peace.
Hana felt lost for words but Pete spared her the dilemma of answering by pushing his face around the lounge door. “Henrietta’s leaving,” he announced like a butler.
The housemates lined the steps in a scene from Victorian England. Pete fetched Henrietta’s carriage from the shed, a little white Suzuki Swift emblazoned with the logo of her college. She squeezed and kissed each member of the assembled group with genuine fondness and then poured herself into the driver’s seat with difficulty, trapping her dress in the door twice before starting the engine. North’s shoulders slumped as she bumped and shook along the dreadful track to the main road. She beeped her horn in the distance as she turned right and her lights moved out of sight.
North resembled a broken man within seconds. He fortified himself against the light drizzle and declared, “I’m going for a run.”
Hana’s brow knitted in concern. “But there’re no streetlights and visibility is non-existent. You’ll get squashed!”
“Sokay,” Boris reassured her, touching her shoulder. “He go tavern viz friend, Foggy. He only jog a few metres. See da lights on left through trees. Henriettas not know he go for beers.” Boris punctuated his words with a fist in the air. Then he climbed onto the porch steps, calling over his broad shoulder, “I Skype my sister in Berlin and Mutter in Gutersloh now.”
North made a show of tying his trainers extra tight and set off along the drive. Logan snorted. “You should’ve asked Henrietta for a lift. Want me to text her?”
“No!” Pete’s eyes grew round with the threatened betrayal. “Don’t!”
Logan shook his head. “He won’t be back before work on Monday morning now.”
“Yes I will!” Pete hollered back in temper.
Hana caught sight of her trainers snuggled on the rimu boards next to Logan’s cowboy boots. They looked comfy and she decided it was an appropriate time to leave. She grabbed her coat from the newel post of the banister and slipped on her trainers. Logan seemed saddened as they ventured off the veranda and back into the Hilux. He drove her to town but kept turning towards her as though wishing to say something. Hana saw the light of courage fail him and assuming it would be a polite brush off, didn’t ask.
Passing the tavern in Gordonton, Hana watched as a sweaty, pink-faced Peter North ordered something from the barman.