FOR a city with a population approaching a million, Auckland seemed a very, small place. Several times over the years Karen had narrowly missed bumping into people she had once known, only her changed appearance and a glassy stare saving her on at least two occasions from recognition, and she supposed she was lucky that for so long she had avoided detection. Twice in the next week she caught a glimpse of Drew, once in the public library when she was changing her books, and once as she was hurrying down the broad, brick-paved slope of Vulcan Lane where a street theatre was entertaining an appreciative lunchtime crowd. Each time she hurried out of sight as quickly as she could, her heart pounding as though she was in some physical danger. Stupid, she knew, but she couldn't help the panic need to flee from any chance of meeting him again. She tried to tell herself that he wouldn't seek her out again, that the cruel experiment of the kiss signalled a final end to their relationship, but she knew it wasn't so. He would be back, and the hiatus was only a cat-and- mouse ploy to keep her on tenterhooks while he gathered his forces and planned his next move. Drew had never been a man to give up easily.
It was no surprise to see him waiting one evening as she locked up the boutique after work. She was carrying a couple of bolts of material, wrapped in brown paper, which she was taking home to cut out, and he moved over to her and said, 'Let me take that. HI give you a lift home.'
'No thanks,' she said. 'I'm meeting someone.' 'Where?'
'Is that any of your business?'
'I'll carry your parcel and walk with you.'
'I'd hate to take you out of your way,' she said. 'Really, I'm quite capable of carrying my own parcels. I've been doing it for ten years.' 'And whose choice was that?' His inflexion was soft and deadly, and she flinched away from it. He said, 'Let's stop sparring, Karen. You're not meeting anyone, are you? And I'm not just offering you a lift out of the goodness of my heart and because I have time to kill. I've got to see you.'
'You've seen me several times lately. It hasn't done either of us much good, has it?'
'We can't talk with Holly around, and you know it.' 'Where is she now? With your mother?'
'My mother?' He seemed nonplussed. 'My mother died.'
'Shock washed over her. Her eyes dilated, staring at him. 'Died?' 'Soon after you left she had a heart attack, and from then on she was never well. She had another attack that killed her about six months later.'
'But I thought that she ... I thought you would have ... She wasn't old.
Oh, Drew, I'm so sorry! I didn't know anything about it...'
His glance flicked over her coldly. 'No, well, you took good care not to, didn't you? Look, we can't talk here. Come on, let's go to my car.' Still mentally reeling from the unexpected news, she allowed him to take the parcel from her arms and lead her to where his car was parked. He threw the materials on the back seat and said, 'Do you want to go home, or shall we find some neutral territory?'
'What do you mean?'
Impatiently he said, 'It's a bit early, but we could go somewhere for a couple of leisurely drinks, and then dinner.
Neutral ground sounded like a good idea. A nice public bar and restaurant where a civilised discussion couldn't turn into something more physical, and social convention prohibited raised voices.
She said, 'All right, but I don't want to be out very late, I have some work to do.'
He seemed surprised at her acceptance, but quickly hid it and started the engine, asking, 'Any preferences?'
Karen shook her head. 'I'll leave it to you.'
'How remarkably amenable of you,' he murmured.
'If you're going to spend the time sniping at me, perhaps we should call the whole thing off right now,' she retorted.
He swung the car into the stream of traffic. 'I'll try not to. Only I'm afraid it's a little difficult to refrain when you're around.'
'Then I don't understand why you want to be around me.'
He glanced at her and said under his breath, 'Maybe you're not the only one.'
'What?' she asked, wondering if she had heard right.
'Never mind.' A bus thundered past them and nearly clipped the front bumper as it roared into the lane ahead of them, then came to a halt in front of a red light and sat panting and belching puffs of black smoke from its exhaust. Drew swore quietly, and she firmly closed her lips to allow him to concentrate on negotiating the rush- hour traffic.
At this time of the day, the city was noisy and reeked of petrol pollution, and the denizens of the offices and shops were anxious to shake its dust from their feet—or rather, from the tyres of their the low-paid job she managed to obtain in a clothing factory because it brought her a wage that provided the bare necessities of food, clothes and first a hostel bed and then a dingy one-room flat. She had been intimidated by the size, the speed and the impersonality of the city, but had wanted the camouflage of anonymity that it gave her.
She had been only going through the motions of living, enveloped in a shroud of depression that threatened to engulf her. After those first few years of simply gritting her teeth and forcing herself to work, eat, and at least make an attempt at sleep each day, spending her spare time locked in her spartan room giving in to her obsession with planning impossible reunions, she made a conscious decision to pull herself out of the slough and forge some kind of normal life for watching a succession of children throwing bread scraps to the ducks
on the pond, but that was morbid and eventually she stopped going there. She tried visiting some of the city's smaller parks, and the grassy slopes of the dormant volcanoes on which many of the older homes were built, and the waterfront drive which ran for miles summertime paradise, or a ferry trip to the north shore of the harbour where more tree- shaded suburbs and more beaches awaited. Once she took a day trip to Rangitoto and climbed to the summit to eat her lunch overlooking the other islands that lay strewn on the Hauraki Gulf. And later, when she had left the factory for a better job in a high-class clothing shop, she explored the inner city and discovered the cluster of secondhand bookshops in High Street, the delicatessens and vegetarian food shops springing up nightly like mushrooms crammed into spaces between offices and department stores, and the boutiques that were producing overseas fashions within days of their appearing in shows in Paris, London, and New York. She spent numerous Saturday mornings in the multiethnic shopping centre of Ponsonby Road, and among the classy speciality merchants of Parnell Village and Remuera.
Tired of long, lonely evenings, she had enrolled in classes at night school, and taken courses in business management, design and technical drawing. Those had brought her not only new skills, but contact with other people, and she began to form relationships again, not close ones, but easy, non-demanding friendships, and the occasional date.
Brought up in a small town, she had found the metamorphosis to city dweller painful but rewarding. She was at home here now. She knew the places to get a taxi on Friday nights, the streets to avoid after
dark, where to go to listen to good jazz or bad-to-brilliant poetry, which restaurants served the best, though not necessarily the most expensive, food, which series of buses would take the traveller to the furthest of the suburbs, and where to buy fresh bread or a good lunch on a Sunday. Now, of course, she could have afforded to buy a car, but she hadn't bothered. She could use public transport to go anywhere in the city, and she seldom wanted to leave it.
'Do you know this place?' Drew asked her, pulling up opposite a building with a striped awning outside and pot-plants on the window-sills.
'No, I don't.' She had a small circle of friends and a larger number of business acquaintances with whom she sometimes ate out, but this restaurant was new to her— not surprisingly, since restaurants in Auckland had proliferated lately, and many established ones passed from one proprietor to another so quickly that the local gourmet columnists complained of not being able to keep up with their changing fortunes.
'It was recommended to me,' Drew said. 'Shall we try it?'
The atmosphere seemed pleasant, with an unobtrusive decor featuring twenties prints on the wall, and lots of greenery. Karen freshened up in the ladies' room and joined Drew at the bar.
'Is it still gin and tonic?' he asked her.
Karen shook her head. 'I'll have a glass of white wine, please.'
They sat on a curved banquette at a small table, and Karen kept her eyes on her drink, even when she wasn't sipping at it. Drew pushed over a small dish of peanuts, but she shook her head. He picked up his glass and drank, and she covertly watched his hands,
remembering the feel of them, the gentleness and strength of his long fingers. She swallowed, and looked away.
Putting down his glass, he said, 'How long have you had the boutique?'
'Nearly two years, now.'
'Where did you get the money?' 'I have a bank loan.'
'You'd still need to put in quite a bit yourself.'
She raised her eyes. 'That's right, I did.' She had saved all she could from her wages, starting with the factory job and then moving up to assistant and then manager of a Queen Streetclothing store, and had started off in a small way, 'moonlighting' by making exquisite undies for friends of friends and selling to a few boutiques, before she had decided she was ready to open her own, specialising in her unique designs.
He turned his glass, looking down at it, then glanced up and said, 'Did you have help?'
'Not the kind you mean,' she said defiantly. 'It was all done with hard work and a certain amount of sacrifice.'
'And were Holly and I part of the sacrifice?'
She paled and pressed her lips together to stop them trembling. 'I hadn't thought of the boutique or anything like it, then.'
'I'd like to know what you were thinking of. I really would.'
She lifted her glass and took a mouthful of the wine. Fear gripped her throat, making it difficult to force the wine down. 'It's all in the past,' she said wearily. 'Why keep dredging it up?'
'I know it wasn't a perfect marriage,' he said, his voice low, 'and of course it was tough, having to live on a limited budget in a pretty grotty little house. But we had something, Karen. Something that I would have thought was too good to throw away. What made you do it? Without even giving us a chance to work it out together. Make me understand!' He put his hand on the table, palm up, as though asking her to place her trust in it. His eyes willed her to look at him.
Karen gripped her glass and kept her eyes fixed on the pool of clear liquid in the bottom. She knew she must seem unreasonable, but a cold knot of panic fear was growing tighter and tighter inside her. 'I can't explain. You would never understand.'
He leaned towards her. 'How could you do that to us, Karen? How could you do it to Holly?'
She closed her eyes briefly, squeezing them shut. Speaking at random, she said, 'People do it all the time ...'
His hand suddenly slapped the table. Tin not talking about "people"!
I'm talking about us! You and me— and our daughter. What sort of woman can walk out and leave a six-month-old baby, without one word of explanation!'
It was the question she had dreaded, the accusation that she had known was coming and couid not be avoided. She wanted to get \ip and run, away from his probing, his anger, his insistence on explanations. Or alternatively, burst into tears and beg for his forgiveness—and she didn't dare. Because he couldn't be expected to forgive her—no man could.
She had to establish some control over herself, the situation.
Inwardly she fought a short, tearing battle with hysteria. Then, with the utmost control, 'My sort of woman, evidently,' she said flatly. 'I'd like another drink please—do you mind?' Making a tremendous effort, she raised her eyes and looked expressionlessly into his.
For a moment she thought he was going to refuse. He looked more likely to sweep the glasses from the table and do something violent.
But instead he stood up with an impatient exclamation and went back to the bar.
When he returned he put her glass silently in front of her and sat half turned away, sipping at his. She tasted the cool, tart liquid, licked some from her lips, then put the glass down on the table and said softly, 'I'm sorry about your mother, Drew. Truly.'
He didn't reply or respond in any way, and she said, 'What did you do ... about Holly? Who looked after her?'
He threw her a look and sneered. 'Now you're interested?'
She took a hurried sip of her wine. 'I thought your mother would take her. I was sure ... that she'd be all right.'
'Had it all worked out, did you? Pity you didn't think to consult anyone about those rosy plans of yours.'
'I didn't make any plans!' Her voice cracked, and she put a hand to her face for a moment, but quickly regained her composure. 'I just ...
I had to get out, that's all. But I knew that your mother loved Holly and would look after her ..
'You took a hell of a lot for granted, didn't you? A woman with a heart condition isn't in a fit state to care for a small child.'
'Of course not, but I didn't know that she was ill.'
'Nobody did,' he admitted. 'Not until she had the attack. And I told you, that was shortly after you'd ... left.'
Her eyes widened in sudden horror. 'You mean it was then? That's what triggered it?'
Unexpectedly, he shot out his hand to encircle her wrist on the table, holding it in a grip that hurt. 'No. No, it wasn't your fault. You don't need to blame yourself for that, too.'
She noticed the last word, and smiled ironically. 'You think I have plenty to blame myself for, don't you?'
He took away his hand and leaned back. 'I do happen to think so, yes.'
She was motionless, and after a moment he said, 'That's your cue to ask me if I wasn't to blame, too.'
She shook her head slightly, and he frowned and said, watching her, 'What does that mean?'
'Nothing.'
There was another pause, then he said softly, 'I've lain awake at nights, wondering what it was I did, or didn't do ... what I should have done differently. Of course there were difficulties, but we'd talked them through and accepted them. Hadn't we?' He waited for a reply that didn't come, and finally sighed roughly. 'How much of the blame is mine, Karen?'
She sat with both hands holding her glass on the table, her head bent.
'None of it. You weren't to blame, Drew,' she said huskily. 'It was just ... me.' She wished he wouldn't be like this. It was easier when he was angry, and she could fight him. 'I suppose I was imposing on your mother, expecting her to take over.' Only at the time there hadn't
seemed to be any choice. 'I'm sorry, but I thought she would be quite happy to do it. She was such a capable person, and so fond of Holly, even though she never approved of our marriage.'
'She'd accepted it. As you say, she was very fond of her grandchild.' He clenched his fists on the table, and said, 'If you were so unhappy, why didn't you say something? Couldn't you have told me?'
Mutely, she shook her head again.
A waiter approached and said to Drew, 'Your table is ready now, sir.' 'Oh, good,' Karen said brightly and stood up. Drew gave her a grim look as he took her arm and followed the man to a corner table in the restaurant.
He ordered a bottle of wine to go with their meal, but Karen drank only sparingly. She didn't want him loosening her tongue. While they ate there was little conversation, but over their coffee she asked the question that was uppermost in her mind. 'How is Holly?'
'I thought you'd never ask,' he said drily. 'She's OK. Missing her mother, though.'
'That's ridiculous!' Karen said, shocked. Making her voice cold, she added, 'She can't possibly miss what she's never had.'
'I told you she's looking for a mother figure.' 'She hasn't been to the boutique since that supper.' He smiled faintly. 'Missing her?'
Her heart skipped a beat. 'Of course not. How could I, after all this time?'
'You're disappointed she hasn't come back, though.'
'I only commented because you said she's looking for a mother figure. She did say something about coming to see me, that evening, but as She hasn't, she can't be all that desperate, can she? I didn't really expect her to. And I'm not disappointed.'
'I don't believe you.'
'Believe what you like. I can't be responsible for your sentimental fond imaginings.' Attack, they said, was the best form of defence, but she knew that was unfair, and wished that she hadn't said it.
He put down his cup with a small, sharp clash. 'You wouldn't mind, then, if she found someone else to take your place?'
She actually felt a sharp physical pain in her chest, over her heart, as though someone had hit her there, 'I— told you,' she said, 'that I thought your mother would have done that already.'
'No.'
She said. 'It must have been very difficult for you. Did you ... What did you do?'
'About Holly?' She nodded.
'At first, of course, my mother had her—for a few weeks. Then, when she got sick, a neighbour of hers stepped in for a while. When
'At first, of course, my mother had her—for a few weeks. Then, when she got sick, a neighbour of hers stepped in for a while. When