Chapter 6 #2
Never mind. She’d manage. They’d manage.
They always had. But then there were—well, times like this.
“Sorry, I can tell you want to go, but I can’t afford any of it,” she’d told Granddad when he’d mentioned the rugby plan, wishing that her voice didn’t sound so bleak, that her throat didn’t feel so tight.
“The cheapest tickets must be over thirty dollars apiece. We’d need at least two rooms in the motel, too, and meals.
All the kids need new shoes and new jackets, they’ve grown so much.
George absolutely refuses to wear Olive’s old one, even though it’s blue.
It may look a bit less like a boy’s jacket than it possibly might, but honestly.
He’s six! You could go by yourself, though, if you like.
Or we could have a pizza night here at home, maybe play some board games. That’s always a good icebreaker.”
Her granddad had waited through all of that, then said, “This will be my shout,” in a rather grand manner. “All of it. The tickets, the hot dogs and chips and fizzy drinks, the motel rooms. Of which we will indeed be getting two. One for you, and one for the kids.”
Skylar had stared at him, then raised her hands to the sky. “I can’t even— I have so many questions. First, how can you afford it? Second: where are you planning to sleep?”
“Ah,” Geoffrey said mysteriously, laying his finger alongside his nose. “That’d be telling.”
“You’re taking your lady friend to the rugby?
Probably in the rain? This is her dream date?
Don’t women normally want to go to the …
the art museum? Or Hamilton Gardens, maybe, for a lovely wander round and a stop at the cafe, if it has to be Hamilton.
Though why it would have to be Hamilton, I can’t imagine.
What’s in Hamilton that you can’t find in Auckland, other than a two-hour drive in traffic? ”
“You’re sounding too much older than your years,” Granddad said. “Where’s your positivity? Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“I must have mislaid it. You’re not the first to have noticed.”
“Well, you’d better find it again,” he said, “because you’re missing out on life.
We’re going to splash out just this once, because Maureen and I have decided that it’s time for the families to meet.
Casually, you know, and where nobody has to make a fuss with cooking and that.
Where better than the rugby? We’ll have a relaxed brekkie the next day—no worries, that’s in the budget, too—and a leisurely drive home, and you may even find you’ve had a bit of a holiday. ”
“And putting the kids in a separate room?” she asked.
“Whose idea was that? I can’t imagine the motel owner will be best pleased.
Imagine the chaos.” Who knew what Finlay would lead his siblings into, left to his own devices?
Probably stage a reenactment of some true-crime story for the horrified adults to discover.
Which was funny, so she had to laugh, didn’t she?
Even though, of course, that would be reprehensible.
“Connecting rooms,” her granddad said. “I made sure of it. And as Maureen has great-grandkids of her own, we thought—why not? It’ll be a treat for all of them, make them feel independent, like an adventure. You can even bring the board games if you like.”
“The kids’ parents are coming along also, you mean? It really is a family meetup, then. Are you moving a bit fast, though, introducing whanau so soon, getting—well, serious—this quickly?”
Her granddad scoffed. “How long do you imagine I have to move this thing along? Maureen’s not going to be interested in caring for me after my stroke, or once prostate cancer takes away my vital functions. Not unless I have her well and truly hooked first, anyway.”
“Your vital … functions.” She had to laugh. “What a shocking conversation we’re having. All right, if it will make you happy. And if you’re sure you can afford it. It would be fun to have a night out.”
“There you are,” he said. “Fun for both of us. I’ve got a new lease on life these past months.
I’ve felt like quite a young man at times, to tell you the truth.
Full of beans. Your Gran’s been gone for six years, and I …
well, I’ve got lonely, haven’t I? Had a bad year or two there at the start, and when you needed me, I jumped at the chance to come and help.
And now I need something more. You need something more, as we’re on the topic.
Time to shake the dust off our boots and live a little. ”
Her heart softened. How could it not? “I’m glad,” she said, “really. But you aren’t planning on moving out, are you?” Her stomach gave a bit of a lurch at that. “Of course you can if that’s what you need, and I’ll manage somehow, but—”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” her granddad said, which wasn’t exactly a “no,” was it? How would she manage if he left? Finlay wouldn’t be old enough to care for the others, legally or otherwise, until he was fourteen, and that was three years away!
She wanted to put her head between her knees and breathe, but forced herself to think rationally.
She’d manage somehow, the same way she’d done all along.
The kids could come to her classroom after school.
Before school, too, for that matter. Wasn’t it fortunate that she was a teacher?
She’d be home during the school holidays, which meant she wouldn’t even need to find a carer.
Her granddad might still be willing to do some emergency care if somebody was ill, or so she devoutly hoped.
She’d just have to take the kids with her to do the shopping and all, the way she had when they were small, and they could help her more around the house, which they should be doing anyway.
It wouldn’t all have to be on her, and families that pulled together stayed together.
Who knew? They might even grow closer. This could be bonding, couldn’t it?
Not that the kids would see it that way at first, so she’d have to put a smile on her face and sell it. She could do that.
She was going to have to find a way to do more holidays, too, if she were going to convince the kids that all this was a positive development. She should be doing that anyway. Why hadn’t she? A spot of depression, possibly. Well past time to pull up her socks and get on with things.
A stay in a holiday park, maybe? They could get a room at a lodge, or a wee cabin—on a beach, possibly even in the Coromandel, her favorite place—and experience the kind of sun- and sand-filled days she’d enjoyed in her childhood.
The kids would make friends, would climb on the playground and swim in the sea and collect shells on the beach.
They’d all eat the simplest meals possible and come back tired and relaxed.
Never mind that at this moment, it all sounded like too much planning and too much work.
That just showed you how much she needed to do it.
What would a holiday like that cost? Still less than a hundred dollars a night, surely, for a one-room cabin with shared bath and kitchen.
That was entirely doable for a week, wasn’t it, if they economized?
They could be saving money on food, for one thing.
More kumara and carrots and spinach, fewer tomatoes and cucumber and avocados.
Tinned tuna and salmon, and more dried beans, too, and no gourmet meat pies, no matter how long a day she’d had or how much she loved them.
Firmness of purpose, that was the idea. Consider this—with a new diet and her weights routine, she might even fit into her bikini by summer, and be willing to be seen in it on that holiday.
There was no reason she had to buy any new clothes for herself for a year or two, either.
If she wasn’t fashionable, or if, unimaginably, she went down a size or two under that new plan and her jeans weren’t tight anymore—well, loose jeans were in, right?
Jess had said so. And who would care what she wore anyway?
Her pupils certainly didn’t. They mostly liked it when her clothes were bright or the colors were pretty, and she had that covered.
So that was a plan. Fitness goals, which would make her feel not quite so …
stuck, and family goals, and the caravan park in, say, December.
If they went on the twentieth, as soon as school was out, they could stay six nights and come home on Boxing Day, when everything would get busier and the prices would go higher.
They’d have their Christmas on the beach, with sausages and veg cooked on the barbecue.
How lovely would that be? She wouldn’t even have to put up a tent!
Which was good, because try as she might, she’d never developed into a very handy person.
She’d begin researching the whole thing tonight and present the new program to the kids after their rugby outing, when everyone would be in a good mood. They’d set family goals together, make a plan for how to afford it. Everyone needed goals, and something to look forward to.
About that handiness, too, the Kiwi DIY gene that had skipped her over somehow.
She should get her granddad to teach her, just in case.
She could learn to fix the dripping faucet herself, and patch the GIB board when somebody—usually somebody named Finlay—played rugby in the house with a friend despite every prohibition, and something or other—it was always a total mystery, somehow—went straight through the wall.
She wasn’t a pessimistic person. She wasn’t a worried person. She was a fun person! A spontaneous person! She always had been, anyway, and she could be again. And her granddad absolutely, positively deserved his happiness.
That was what she’d thought last week, and it was what she thought tonight, inching along in the southbound traffic with the windscreen wipers going as George offered the first mention of his need for the toilet, which would be followed by a second mention in about three minutes that he really needed the toilet.
She was putting a smile on her face right now, and when they got to the rugby, she’d meet her granddad’s new love interest and her whanau and welcome all of them into their lives.
Easy-peasy. What could possibly go wrong?
She thought that for another hour. Until the moment when they squeezed their way into their row, which was not out in the open but under the roof, and had to have cost a good eighty dollars per seat—how had her granddad possibly managed?
—and were greeted by the new girlfriend, whose name was Maureen. And Maureen’s grandchildren.
Of whom there were three. Scarlett, Duncan, and Georgia. Georgia of the rats. Georgia from her class.
Zane Mahuta’s kids.
Well, bugger.