Chapter 56
MOMENT OF TRUTH
Bzzz. Bzzz. Bzzz.
Was there any less welcome sound than your phone when you were sleeping the sleep of the just at last? Zane ignored at as long as he could, then rolled over, sat up, grabbed the phone off the nightstand, and looked. Then he swung out of bed.
“Yeh?” he said, running his hand over his face and wishing he felt half-awake.
“Mate,” came the protest from the other bed. Colin Stallworth, his roomie, had rolled in sometime around two and was probably feeling none too flash right now.
Zane shut the bathroom door, dropped the toilet lid, and sat on it. “Skylar?” he said, trying for a cheerfulness he didn’t feel. “Hi.”
“Can you talk?” she asked.
“In the bathroom. Long as I keep it down, I can. What is it? Kids OK?”
“Of course they are. I’m calling to find out if you’re OK.”
He rubbed his face again. “It’s …” He looked at his phone. “Seven. In the morning.”
“I know. But I needed to know. It’s been a long afternoon, and you didn’t text me back. How is he?”
“How is who?” He knew who. He just didn’t want to talk about it.
“Oh, for— Who do you imagine I mean? Tom Smithson! How is he? And how are you? Why didn’t you text me?”
He blinked. Skylar was almost never narky.
Kindness was practically the woman’s middle name.
And today of all days? “I don’t know,” he said, “and I won’t know for a while.
It just happened. He’ll have had surgery by now, or be in the midst of it.
That’s what I know. What was I meant to do, call and weep at you about what I’d done?
You’re teaching, remember? Have much time for personal calls during the day, do you?
And even if I caught him wrong, which I probably did, whether I meant to or not, what good would it do to tell you how I feel about it? ”
“How did you catch him wrong?” she demanded. “We watched it. Everybody watched it. You didn’t do anything wrong!”
“But then, you don’t know, do you? You don’t understand the breakdown.” He knew it was wrong to take it out on her, but seriously? “This is for me to handle, however it turns out. It’s my job, my decisions are mine to live with, and nothing you say is going to help with that.”
“What?” she said, sounding stunned. Why, when it was nothing but the truth?
“That’s as far as you’ll let me in?” He was about to answer that—no doubt saying something he very much shouldn’t have—when her tone shifted.
“Zane. I know you need more than that. I know you feel. I know you hurt. And, no, this isn’t about me.
I don’t care how many mistakes anyone thinks you’ve made, I’m going to love you anyway.
I’m going to support you anyway. All I’m asking is for you to let me do it. ”
“Well, I can’t,” he said. “Not now, I can’t.
” He let out a sigh. It was cold in this bathroom, he was wearing nothing but boxer briefs, and his entire body ached.
He needed Panadol, he needed sleep, and he needed physio.
“I can’t do emotion right now,” he tried to explain.
“I don’t have it. Go to bed. It must be nearly bedtime there, and you get up early.
I’ll ring you later. Once I know something, though you’ll likely hear almost as quickly as I will. Bloody press.”
“Zane,” she said. “Really, I think you—”
“I’m ringing off now,” he said. “Going back to sleep. I love you, but I’m ringing off.” And did it.
Why couldn’t women understand that a man needed time to think through the hard stuff before he could talk about it, not be cornered like that?
That you didn’t go crying to someone else and dumping your problems in their lap before you’d even begun to work out how to cope with them?
Why, when every man throughout history had probably needed the exact same thing?
How old was homo sapiens, three hundred thousand years?
Wasn’t that enough time for women to get it?
He’d ring her later. Wait. She’d be asleep. All right, he’d text her later. A sentence, anyway, that included the word “Sorry,” but didn’t invite her to rummage around in his psyche and examine the weaknesses there.
No. Just no. Not today.
He’d fix it later. He’d fix it tomorrow. Or maybe tonight. Once he was ready.
He swallowed two Panadol, drank an entire glass of water, climbed back into bed, and did his best to forget the whole thing. Especially the part where Smithson had been lying prone on the wet grass, still as death.
Not moving his arms or legs. Not moving anything. Because his neck was broken.
No. Sleep. And maybe it’ll be better.
Oh, God, let it be better.
“You’re doing what?” Granddad blinked at Skylar over his reading glasses from his comfy spot on the recliner.
“I told you. I’m going to London.”
“Why on earth—”
“Granddad. I don’t have time for this. The plane leaves at ten-thirty.”
“Did Mahuta ask you to come?”
“No. But I’m going anyway.”
“You don’t even have a case packed.”
“I’ll be gone three days. I have extra shirts and undies. I have my toothbrush. And I have to leave.”
“You’re leaving your class?”
“Yes, I’m leaving my class!” She looked at her phone, practically dancing with impatience. The driver was four minutes out. She had three minutes for this conversation. “I’ve missed one day in the past, what, two years? And that was for the earthquake!”
“They’ll sack you,” Granddad helpfully pointed out. “Leaving without notice. Without a good reason.”
“They’re not going to sack me. I told the principal that I needed mental health days. That I’d had surgery for an ectopic pregnancy over the holidays, and I was having trouble coping.”
“Unreliable, is how that sounds,” Granddad said.
“It’s not 1950,” she said, knowing that she was snapping. “Work-life balance. Family emergency. I don’t have time for this. If I’m sacked, I’ll get another position, all right? I need you to care for the kids until I’m back. I’ve left a note for them on the kitchen bench, and they know their jobs.”
“Six kids,” Granddad said. “And me a seventy-eight-year-old man. Practically got one foot in the grave.”
“What happened to your new lease on life? Besides, imagine what a hero you’ll be to Maureen when she finds out how you’ve coped.” The driver was one minute away now. “Please, Granddad. I need this.”
“Men don’t like to be pressured,” he said.
“I’m not bloody pressuring him!” If it came out as a shout—well, she was pretty bloody tired of men right now.
“I’m going there to support him! If he needs me.
I’m there about twelve hours, and then I’m leaving.
If he can’t handle that much support, I reckon he can …
can run away and hide his head from all that scary love. ”
“Right,” Granddad said. “If you’re determined to go, go on. Though I still don’t understand what you’re on about. He’ll handle this, or he won’t. If he can’t harden up, there’s not much you can do.”
“I am so tired,” she said, “of that stupid Kiwi male stoicism. He doesn’t have to harden up! Not with me, he doesn’t.”
“If you’re tired of it,” Granddad said, “reckon you shouldn’t have picked an All Black.”
Another glance at her phone. She had to leave right now. “I don’t care. I’ve been cautious all my life, except when I’ve been stupid. I’ve been cautious because I’ve been stupid. Well, I’m tired of second-guessing. If I think it’s right, I’m doing it. And right now, I’m going to London.”
Exactly how long was a thirty-hour flight in Economy class on a Chinese budget airline?
A flight that included a six-hour layover in Guangzhou?
Long, that was how long. Bloody long. Also, the Guangzhou airport’s only exotic feature was that the signs were in Chinese.
Otherwise, it was the same black airport seats, the kind you couldn’t lie across even when you’d been on a plane for twelve hours straight already—in other words, all night long and into the next morning—and had another twelve to go.
You wanted to do this, she reminded herself, shuffling down the jetway and finding her new seat for the flight to London.
Her new middle seat, because that was what you got when you booked about two and a half hours in advance.
The man in the window seat reeked of cigarette smoke.
The woman in the aisle, who had to be his wife, talked to him across Skylar for a good nine of the twelve hours as she passed an endless variety of snacks across to him.
When Skylar’d indicated via sign language that she was happy to switch seats so they’d be together, the woman had unleashed a torrent of speech at her that Skylar was pretty sure meant, What?
I chose this seat, because I booked ahead of time! I’m not sitting in the middle!
Alas, it was a full flight. She stuck her headphones on, watched a movie and then another one, ate some airplane food and then some more airplane food, which tasted like a Chinese version of Every Airplane Meal Everywhere, dozed off and woke up about thirteen separate times, and tried not to feel tired. Or dirty. Or stupid.
Was she still bleary-eyed and muzzy when she’d gone through Customs and was queueing for the Heathrow Express to Paddington?
Yes, she was. She was also proud of herself for finding the Heathrow Express.
And, yes, one’s bum did actually get numb after sitting for that many hours, which is why she stood for the journey.
As for why she took a taxi from Paddington to Zane’s hotel instead of finding the right tube line, that would be because she was, suddenly, out of initiative.
She just wanted to get to the hotel. Once she got there and saw Zane, she’d sort out what to do.
She’d take a shower. She’d have many cups of tea. She’d be fine.