Just Not Mine (32 page)

Josie woke early—well, as much as she’d been asleep—and was downstairs already by the time her mum appeared in the kitchen. Sitting at the table drinking her tea, because it had to be better than lying in bed.

“I thought, big brekkie today,” her mother said, turning on the kettle for her first cup of tea. “Anything Hugh especially likes, that we should make him?”

“I don’t know,” Josie said, “and I don’t think it matters.”

Her mother looked at her, took in the state of her, and
came to pull up a chair at the table. “Why not?”

“Because
…” Josie shrugged helplessly. “Because I think we may be done. I think it’s over already, and I shouldn’t have brought him after all. It was too soon, and he’s … he’s not what I thought.”

“
He’s not, eh,” her mother said. “In what way?”

Josie told her, reluctantly at first,
then picking up speed. What she’d heard, what he’d said, what she’d said, what he’d said in return, the words pouring out, desperate for release.

“He doesn’t want those kids,” she told her mum when she’d finished, “and it’s pretty clear that he isn’t going to want me, either,
now that he knows. Maybe he would have, if I’d waited to tell him, but I
couldn’t
wait, not after what he said, and anyway …” She stopped, having run down at last. “It’s all such a mess,” she tried to explain, “and I can’t believe I’ve got myself into this. I thought I wasn’t on the rebound anymore, but of course I was. I must have been, mustn’t I? I wanted to have somebody, so I made myself believe it was right, and now I’ve stuffed up so badly, Mum, because he’s my neighbor, and I’m going to have to go on living next door to him, and I don’t know if I can. I rushed into it, exactly what I didn’t want to do, and now I have to pay the price.”

“But
what is it,” her mum said slowly, “that you actually know? Here’s what you know, seems to me. That his aunt talked to him, and he was startled, and scared. That you told him you can’t have kids, and he was startled again. Is that about it? Because if it is, I can’t quite make out what he’s done that’s so wrong that you’re ready to give up on him.”

“What?
Mum, come
on.
He’s had a year and a half to accept his responsibilities. A year and a
half.
He’s been living with them for nearly a year, had full charge of them for three months, and he’s
still
trying to run away from them? What am I supposed to think about that? How am I meant to judge that?”

“
So he disappointed you,” her mum said.

“Yeh.” Josie laughed, and the bitterness was back again. “He disappointed me. You could say that.”

“Were you expecting to have a relationship where your man would never disappoint you, then?” her mother asked her. “Where you never disappointed him either, for that matter? Do you imagine that relationship exists somewhere? Do you think that your dad and I have never disappointed each other?”

“Not like this,” Josie said.
“I know it was never like this.”

Now her mother was the one snorting.
“And exactly how do you know that? You know what you see now, what you see from us after more than thirty years together. Do you imagine it was always that way? Do you think there weren’t things we didn’t let you see, because you didn’t need to see them, because they were none of your business? Do you think it was always easy?”

“I—
” Josie didn’t know how to answer.
Yes,
she wanted to say. “But you always loved each other. You were always there for each other, and for us.”

“Were we
? Are you so sure of that? Could you see into our hearts? Do you imagine that there were never times we failed each other? Because I can tell you for sure that there were. Times when I was too focused on you kids to make the time I should have for your dad, give him the attention and the affection he needed. And times he was too focused on the work to notice how I was feeling, what I needed. All of those times. When we didn’t tell each other what was on our minds, didn’t trust each other to listen and work it out and make it better. When we forgot to be lovers, and even sometimes forgot to be friends.”

“But
…” Josie began, even though she didn’t know what she would say.

Her mother went on, though, without waiting for her answer. “Sometimes
a relationship, a marriage is so bad, you have no choice but to leave. There’s nothing to stay for, and the only answer is to walk away, to save yourself, or to save your kids. You know what those times feel like, because you did it yourself not so long ago. You could have tried to fight for it with Derek, tried to salvage it somehow, but you didn’t, you walked away, and I thought that was the right choice, because he wasn’t the right man, and he wasn’t worth fighting for. Is this one of those times, though?”

“I don’t—” Josie said, and wished she could finish a sentence. “I don’t know.
It feels like it.”

“I’ll tell you what I think,” her mother said.
“I think that when you have a good man who’s having a rough time, who’s lost his way? That isn’t when you cut and run. That’s when you get stuck in.”

“But, Mum,” Josie said
desperately. “This is different. Dad never did anything like this. I don’t care what you say. He never wanted to give us up, I know it.”

“
Because it wasn’t anything like the same thing. Not even close. He had a good dad himself, and I wonder if Hugh did. Did he grow up with his dad? He can’t have, can he? What do you think he really knows about how to be a dad?”

“I don’t know,” Josie
said again.

“
You don’t know, because you haven’t asked him, have you? I’ll bet he doesn’t know much. Or at least he didn’t, because it seems to me that he’s learning, and that he’s willing to learn more. And it’s more than that, too. Your dad knew what he was getting into, and having kids was our choice. But were there times all the same when he felt overwhelmed, when he wondered if he could do it, when he even wished he was free to do what he wanted, go wherever he pleased, not have to carry the responsibility for all of us, at least for a while? I’ll bet if you asked him, if he told the truth, the answer would be, of course there were.”

S
he paused a moment, considering. “Let me ask you,” she finally said. “If it had been you. And I know—” She put up a hand to forestall Josie’s protest. “You’re going to tell me what you’d do, knowing what you know now, going through what you’ve been through. You’ve got the wisdom,
now
you do, because you’ve had the pain, and the time to take the pain in, sort through it, see what it all meant. But what if you hadn’t?”

“I don’t understand,” Josie said.
This was nowhere close to what she’d imagined her mum’s reaction being, and she was reeling. “What?”

“You’re an actress,” Arama said. “That’s your job, imagining how people feel, eh. So imagine. Imagine you’ve ju
st had the kind of loss Hugh did. Imagine your dad died. Right now, today. Yeh, that’s right,” she said when she saw Josie flinch. “Hurts even to imagine it, doesn’t it? Hurts me even to say it. Now think that it’s actually
happened.
An accident, no time to prepare for it. And then you don’t just have that to cope with, because the very same day, today, you get the charge of two kids, kids who are your brother and sister, but kids you’ve never lived with, that you barely know. You’re used to living your life, going your way, and, yeh, having a good time, too. And now you’re told you have these kids. Would you be able to turn your life around straight away and take them on—and do it right?”

“Yes
,” Josie said. “I hope so. I hope I would.”

“No,” her mother corrected her. “You wouldn’t. Stop and think. You hated living in Aussie, didn’t like that show, that part much, either. You hated almost everything about it.”

“What—”

“So imagine,” her mother went on, “if that’s what you were told. There you are, your dad gone, and half your money too, I’ll bet. Because if Hugh hasn’t been supporting that whole family
since the minute it happened, I miss my guess, or I don’t know men, and I know men. And now, on top of all that, and the kids too, you’ve got to give up your job that you like so much, your show, all those friends of yours. Got to leave the place that’s home, leave me behind, too, and go to Aussie to be on a show that’s not doing so well, where you don’t know anyone. You’re thinking, maybe it’s temporary. You’re telling yourself that just to get yourself through, even while you’re changing, even while you’re falling in love with those kids. Even while you’re learning to be a mum, whether or not that was your plan. And you’re falling in love with somebody else, too. You’ve met a good man at last, one you can see a future with, and your mind starts making plans whether you like it or not, starts to imagine a life with him. Because that’s happened too, hasn’t it. That’s happened to you.”

“Yes
,” Josie said, because there was no denying it, not to her mum.

“You fall in love,” her mother went on. “And then it’s all ripped away again. A second time. Your temporary change? It just got permanent, and you’re scared. Not because you’re not good enough, not because you don’t care enough. But because you are, and because you do. Because you care too much, and you’
re afraid you don’t have what it takes to do it right. And on top of that, that person you fell in love with? He just told you that because you’re scared, and you’ve been honest enough to say so, he doesn’t want you. He’s not willing to hang around and share that load with you, help you through it. He only wants you if you fit his perfect image of what a woman ought to be. How do you feel now?”

The tears were
there, and she wasn’t sure she could hold them back anymore. “Mum. Stop. Stop.”

“I’m not going to stop,” her mother said. “I’m going to tell you, because you need to hear. What did Hugh tell you, when you told him that you couldn’t have babies? Did he say, well, good riddance, then?”

“No,” she managed to say. “He said …” She took a shuddering breath. “That he didn’t know. What to say. He asked me to wait and give him a chance.”

“And did you give him a chance?”

“No,” Josie whispered. “No.”

“Did you say, ‘I understand it’s hard, and I’m here to listen, the way you listened
to me? I’m here to believe in you? I’m here to support you, to stand up for you the way you stood up for me in front of everyone when my brother said hurtful things and made me cry?’”

Josie’s eyes flew to her mother’s face. “Yeh,” Arama said. “I heard about it. What Rodney said was true for him, I guess, and he’ll have to sort it out, and his dad will be helping him do it, no worries. But it was a load of rubbish, and you know it, because we’re nothing but proud of you. And your man is too, and no
t afraid to stand up and say so, even though Rodney’s right about one thing. That probably isn’t easy for Hugh, not a bit of it, knowing men are looking at you the way they do. And even so, he’s proud of you, and willing to tell anyone so. He’d defend you to the death, I’m sure of it. But how proud are you of him?”

“But he said—
” Josie began.

“He said,” her mother said contemptuously. “He said. Of course he said. He’s not perfect. He’s a
man.
But what has he
done?
I’ll tell you what he’s done. He’s done all that. Supported his family. Moved for them. Done whatever it took to be there for them. And he’ll keep doing it, too, no matter how hard it is, because that’s the kind of man he is. Any man can say pretty things that a woman wants to hear. But a man who
does
the right thing, even when it’s not the easy thing, even when it’s the hardest thing, the last thing he wants to do—that’s a man worth having. That’s a man worth keeping. He may not be your fantasy. He may not be perfect. But he’s a good man. He may not have ridden up on a white horse to sweep you away from all the pain and trouble in your life, and he may be the right man all the same.”

“I don’t—
” Josie said. “I don’t know what to think. “I can’t—”

Arama’s face
softened. “Isn’t that what he said to you?” she asked gently. “That he didn’t know what to think? That he needed time?”

Josie nodded
miserably, and her mother sighed and, at last, pulled her into her arms, let her lay her face against her shoulder so the tears could come.

“You give him time,
” she said, smoothing a hand over Josie’s hair. “You let him sort it out. And, if you’re lucky, he’ll do the same for you. You won’t be perfect, and neither will he. You won’t have the perfect love, or the perfect life. But if you forgive each other, if you love each other, and if you keep on doing it? If you love harder when it’s hardest to do it? You may just be lucky all the same. You may just be happy.”

Hugh
woke to a warm morning, a heavy, humid feeling to the air that heralded the arrival of the remnants of the latest tropical cyclone, supposed to make its sweep through the North Island later that day. Not any heavier than his own state of body and mind, though.

He’d had no choice
the night before but go back to the little caravan, to climb into bed, because there was no place else to go. He couldn’t exactly pack the kids up and steal away in the middle of the night. So instead, he’d lain on his back through the long hours, heard the even breathing of the kids, deep in the blameless sleep of happy fatigue. His own fatigue on waking from the few disturbed hours of rest he’d finally managed, though, was anything but blameless, and nothing like happy.

The kids weren’t happy themselves when they found out they were leaving a day early.

“But
why?”
Amelia demanded again, not even making an attempt at packing. “I was going to ride the horse again today.”

“It’s supp
osed to rain,” Hugh pointed out, grabbing his own things and stuffing them haphazardly into his bag. “You probably couldn’t have ridden anyway. And we need to go back. Josie has … something she needs to do, and so do I, and we need to leave.”

Charlie said nothing, just packed up his
duffel, his face closed in a way that Hugh realized he hadn’t seen for a while now.

He’d wished they
could just creep out, but of course that wasn’t possible. At least Josie wasn’t in the kitchen when he took the kids over for breakfast, and he thought, from the look Arama gave him, that she might know why.

“She’s taking a walk,” she told him. “She went off up the bush track. D’you want to go after her, say goodbye?”

“No,” he said. “She’ll be needing her walk. We’ll see her when we’re back in Devonport.” He hoped. “As long as she’ll be all right getting back,” he realized, and could have smacked his forehead. “Seeing as she doesn’t have her car here.”

“That’s what buses are for,” Arama said. “You go on
and do what you need to do. Give her time to think about things.” Which made it pretty clear.

After he’d got
a quick breakfast down the kids and got the car packed up, he found out for sure. Arama and Tana walked out to see them off, and Hugh said his thank-yous, had the kids say their goodbyes as well.

Arama gave both the kids a cuddle and a kiss, and then, to Hugh’s surprise, pulled him in for his own w
arm hug, squeezed him tight.

“Give her a chance,” she
said, keeping her voice low. “She’s been hurt so much, it’s hard for her to believe. Give her a chance to believe in you.”

“I—” He wasn’t sure how to answer. “I’ll try,” he said, and if that sounded lame, well, he
was
lame. He didn’t think Josie was the one who needed the chance, anyway. How could her mother think so?

Tana reached a hand out, shook Hugh’s. “We’ll hope to see you ag
ain,” he said, his gaze direct.

“Yeh,” Hugh said
. He wanted to ask, and he wanted to leave. “I hope so too.”

Both kids turned to w
ave as they left, kept waving until they had turned from the drive onto the road, and Josie’s parents were no longer visible.

“I wish we could have said goodbye to Josie,” Charlie said.
“I wanted to tell her goodbye. I wanted to tell her about the parrot story we started last night, too. She’d want to know about that. She’d think it was interesting.”

“I
wanted to ride again,” Amelia said. “It’s not fair.”

“Well, maybe you can ride again another time,” Hugh said. “Ma
ybe there’s a camp or something, who knows.”

“Really?” she asked, and for once, she
actually sounded like a twelve-year-old, one who wasn’t sure she had all the answers. “I want to, because I like it better than anything, even better than ballet.”

“Huh.” He tried to think
what to say about that. “I thought it was all about the ballet.”

“It
was,”
she said. “And I
wish …
But Miss Chloe said I’m still not ready for my pointe shoes. She said …”

“What?” Hugh prompted.

“That maybe I won’t be ready,” Amelia said reluctantly. “That maybe ballet isn’t my best thing. She said it’s a good thing to do, and I shouldn’t stop trying, but maybe I should do netball too.”

Hugh shot a look
across at her, and he could see how hard it had been to tell him. “Well, netball’s good,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, netball’s better.” He tried a joke. “I know which one I’d rather come watch you do.”

“I like netball all right,” Amelia said. “But I liked ballet best, if I could do it the right way
, and riding is a bit like ballet. It’s the feeling I want to have, like the horse is moving like I want to move in ballet, except I
can’t.”

“You could do tap
instead of ballet,” Charlie suggested from the back seat. “I think tap would be more fun anyway, and there’s only one kind of shoes.”

“What’s tap?” Hugh asked.

“You
know,” Amelia said. “Tap shoes with metal plates.”

“Ah,” Hugh realized. “Where it makes all the racket.”

“Yeh,” Charlie said, “because your feet are going so fast. You can go in circles, do heaps of moves, and it’s more … jumpy. Amelia wouldn’t have to be floating, like she can’t do.”

“
I can too do it,” Amelia said. “I just can’t do it
enough.
And I don’t like tap.”

“Oh,”
Charlie said. “I thought it would be fun, that was all.”

“
Just because you like tap,” Amelia said, “that doesn’t mean
I
like tap. If people like to do things,
they
should do them. Other people don’t necessarily want to do them.”

“Wait,” Hugh said. “
Charlie likes to do tap?”

“
Yeh,” Amelia said.

“I do not,” Charlie said.

“You
do,”
Amelia insisted. “You do it all the time. I’ve seen you.”

“No I don’t,” Charlie said again. “Boys don’t do dancing.”

“Don’t they?” Hugh asked. “That tap thing—haven’t I seen some fella doing that on TV sometime? Going up and down the stairs, things like that?”

Charlie didn’t answer.
“So you like it?” Hugh prompted. “When do you do it?”

“
While he’s waiting for me to change after class, and they have tap class next,” Amelia said. “He copies.”

“
I
don’t,”
Charlie said again, sounding a little frantic. “Boys don’t
do
dancing. I just … if I’m bored, because I’m
waiting.”

Hugh was
starting to get the picture. “If you want to do tap,” he told Charlie, “if you think it’d be fun, why couldn’t you do it? You wait through Amelia’s class often enough, why couldn’t she wait through yours? I don’t see why a boy couldn’t do it, if he wanted to.”

“Because everybody would
laugh
at me,” Charlie said. “They’d say it was for girls, and that I was …”

“Why sh
ould they?” Hugh asked. “The time I saw it, it looked pretty athletic to me. Looked like some good footwork, like it’d make you a pretty good stepper. Good for rugby, eh. Just like some of the boys do yoga to stay flexible. Somebody could laugh about that too, but if it helps them play better, why not? And if they did laugh at you,” he said with inspiration, “you could show me how, and I could try, and they could laugh at
me.”

“You couldn’t do dance,” Charlie said, and he still sounded doubtful, but Hugh thought he might be smiling a little too.

“Well, no,” Hugh conceded, “probably not. That’d be the point, wouldn’t it? Tell you what. We’ll ask Miss Chloe, you can take a class or two, teach me some moves, and the next picnic we go to, we’ll try it together. Get my mates falling about laughing at me, and all the more impressed with you. It’s all in the comparison, eh.”

“Wou
ldn’t you be embarrassed?” Charlie asked.

“Nah,” Hugh said. “
Nobody thinks I’m graceful now. It’s not like they’d be surprised. Bet we could get Koti James up there tapping, though. I’ll bet he could do it, and there’s nothing a back likes better than showing up the big boys.”

“If kids at my school found out, though,” Charlie said.

“
Then you tell them I tried it, and was rubbish at it,” Hugh said. “That’d stop them, I’ll bet. And they’d like to hear that.”

“That’s gossip,” Amelia pointed out. “That’s talking about you, telling people things about your life.”

“Sometimes,” Hugh said, “gossip’s OK. I’m telling Charlie it’s OK this time.”

“I don’t know if Aunt Cora would want to take me,” was Charlie’s next objection. “She doesn’t like waiting for Amelia already. She c
omplains because the traffic’s bad, and it takes too long.”

“Ah.” No time like the present
. They still had a couple hours to go, and talking about it in the car could be the best. Nobody could go anywhere, and everything that needed to be said could be said. He hoped. If he knew how to say it. “Aunt Cora isn’t going to be here, so that’s not an issue.”

“Yes she is,” Amelia corrected. “She comes back next week.”

“Well, no,” Hugh said. “She doesn’t. She’s marrying that fella, Henry. She’ll tell you herself today, but she rang and told me last night, and that they’re planning to stay in the UK. You’ll visit, and she’ll visit here,” he hurried to say, “but she’s not going to live here anymore.”

“Then what happens to us?” Amelia asked, and Charlie hadn’t said anything at all. Hugh glanced in the mirror, and Charlie’s face had gone white and shuttered
again.

“You stay with me,” Hugh said, and he said it absolutely as firmly as he’d ever said anything in his life.

“But she’s our
guardian,”
Amelia persisted.

“She’s been one of them.
I’ve been the other, and now I’m doing it, and that’s all there is to it, because it’s all sorted. So,” he went on, and tried to lighten it up a little, “I’m afraid your days of fixing dinner and doing the shopping aren’t over after all, because I’m going to need your help. We can get better at it, if we work at it. And if you have problems, things you want to ask Aunt Cora about,” he realized he should add, “you can call her and ask them. Or if you just want to complain about me, because that could happen. If I won’t let you buy ice cream, you can tell her how mean I am, eh.”

“But what about when you’re gone?” Amelia asked. “You still have to play. You still have to leave.”

“We get a nanny for those times,” Hugh said. “Somebody to stay with you. I’ll get onto that straight away. You two can help me with the interviews. We’ll make a list of questions to ask, make sure we get the right one.”

“What if you leave too
, though?” Charlie asked. “What if you get married too? What if you go back to play for the Hurricanes again?”

“It doesn’t matter what happens,” Hugh said, “because I’
m not going anywhere, or if I do, you’re both coming with me. We’re going to work it out.”

“What if
…” Charlie began, then stopped.

“What if what?” Hugh prompted when he didn’t go on.

“What if you die too?” Charlie asked, his voice small. “Then there’s nobody.”

That one threw Hugh, he had to admit. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “I make a plan for that too, I guess, and I tell you what the plan is. I’m pretty healthy, though, and people don’t normally die when they’re young, do they. I could break another bone and need help with the washing-up, get concussion and need help remembering the shopping list, but I’m not likely to die.”

“Mummy and Daddy died,” Charlie said. “They weren’
t old, not
very
old, but they died anyway.”

“We’ll make a plan,” Hugh repeated.
More therapy, maybe,
he decided. With him there too, because he was going to need some help coming up with answers to questions like these. “All I can promise is that I’m here,” he said. “And that I’m not going anywhere. And with the three of us working on it, we’ll make it happen. I’m ready to get stuck in if the two of you are.”