Chapter Six
Linc
“Good evening.” I walk into the apartment, smiling at Elora as she closes the door behind me. “Wow, something smells nice.”
“Must be me,” she says, and gives me an impish smile back.
I bend and kiss her cheek, because it’s what I’d do to any friend if I was invited around for dinner, but Elora blushes, her English-rose complexion turning an attractive pink. Wow, she looks different tonight. Her hair hangs loose down her back like a field of golden wheat. She’s wearing a blue summer dress that crosses over her breasts before falling to her knees in soft folds. She’s absolutely stunning.
I take off my shoes as she locks the front door and puts the chain across, and then she says, “Come in. Hallie and Zoe will be out in a minute.”
I hold the wine and chocolate up, and her eyes light up as she sees they’re After Eight Mints. “Oh my God, Linc! My favorite!”
“I took a chance,” I say, because she used to love them when she was a girl. “Do you still leave the paper wrappers in the box?”
“All the time,” she says with a laugh, taking them over and placing them on the breakfast bar.
I follow her into the living room, then stand and stare in surprise. “Holy shit.”
She glanced around. “What?”
“I didn’t realize the Wellington Library had been burgled.”
“Ha ha. I happen to like books.”
“I’d never have guessed.” There are books and magazines everywhere. Like, absolutely everywhere —all neatly stacked in piles—around the sofa and chairs, in front of the windows, by the breakfast bar, and jammed in the two big bookcases. I’ve never seen so many books in one place, bar the British Library.
I pick one up: The Human Bone Manual .
“That’s a goodie,” she says.
“I know—I happen to own this one.”
“What about this?” She passes me Anatomical Oddities .
“No, haven’t read that.”
“It’s terrific. You can find out all about your arachnoid mater.”
“In that case I’ll definitely have to read it.”
She laughs. “It is very good.”
“And what’s this?” I go over to the table by the window. A big box sits in one corner, and the surface of the table is covered with tiny bones, as well as small brushes and pots of water. I pick up a notebook and flick through it. It’s full of drawings and neat handwriting of the cleaned and identified bones.
“You found a snipe?” I ask, gesturing at the drawing.
“Yes!” She looks delighted at the question. “It’s here.” She opens a couple of boxes, then extracts the skull of a bird with an incredibly long beak. “Amazing, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. I bet it could scratch its foot without bending down.”
“I know, the beak is amazing. The species was probably extirpated by Pacific rats introduced by Māori. Or possibly feral cats. Hard to say.”
I put the skull down and smile at her. “Some things don’t change.”
She grins, leading the way out to the kitchen. “Dad’s still got the boxes of finds we used to bring back from the forest.”
Atticus Bell is a big believer in the healing power of the Great Outdoors. He called the ‘treatment’—for want of a better name—that he carried out at Greenfield with disaffected youths ‘adventure therapy’, which basically involved him and other adults taking groups of kids out into the mountains. It was done under the pretext of teaching us survival skills and keeping us fit, although now, as an adult, I can see it was also about team building, and encouraging us to talk around the campfires late into the evening. Joel and Fraser often came with us on these trips, and even Elora occasionally, usually when her mother, Clemmie, was one of the adults taking part.
Elora would spend most of her time finding animal bones, rocks, crystals, and unusual plants in the forest, and she inevitably returned with pockets full of finds that she would then spend hours identifying and drawing.
She goes over to the slow cooker, takes off the lid, and gives what’s inside a stir. “It’s all ready,” she says, “as soon as the boys turn up.”
On cue, there’s a knock at the door, and she walks across, peers through the peephole, then takes off the chain, unlocks it, and opens it. “Late, as usual,” she says as both Joel and Fraser walk in.
“It’s one minute to seven,” Joel states indignantly.
“An archaeologist is never late, nor is he early,” Fraser replies.
“He arrives precisely when he means to,” I say, finishing off the sentence he stole from The Fellowship of the Ring , and he laughs and comes over to exchange a bearhug. I do the same with Joel, feeling a swell of pleasure at being with them all again.
“Hey, guys.” Zoe comes out of one of the bedrooms, followed by Hallie.
“Hello,” Hallie says.
Fraser frowns at her. “Are you okay?”
She stops, looking startled, and then her brows draw together, and she presses her fingers to her mouth.
“Fraser,” Zoe scolds, exasperated.
“I just asked if she was okay.”
“She’s broken up with Ian,” Zoe says.
“Ah, Hallie!” Joel goes up to her and gives her a hug.
Hallie waves a hand as he moves back. “I’ll be all right.”
“She caught him with another woman,” Zoe says.
“Fucking idiot.” Fraser glares. “You want me to go and sort him out?”
That makes all the girls laugh, and Joel grins.
“What?” Fraser says indignantly. “I’m serious.”
“Of course you are, Fraser dear,” Elora says, walking over to the door. “That’s what we love about you.”
I watch her unlock the door and lock it again. Then she slides the chain off, examines it, and slides it back on again. She goes through the whole routine four times until, finally satisfied, she leaves it and walks through to the kitchen. None of the others comment on what she’s done, so she’s obviously not acting in an unusual way.
Hmm.
“What you need is a drink,” Zoe states to Hallie. Zoe looks at the bottle I brought and whistles. “Wow, what’s this?”
“I wasn’t sure whether to bring red or white,” I admit. “So I brought a Rosé.”
“The Shed?” she says, reading the label. “That must have cost you fifty bucks.”
Joel meets my eyes, his lips curving up. He knows it was a lot more than that.
“I wanted to bring something nice,” I say. I take the bottle from her and unscrew the top. I pour some into one of the glasses on the counter and slide it over to her.
She sips it, and her eyes light up. “Mmm. Yeah, I like that.”
I top up her glass. “Hallie?”
“Please.”
I pour her a glass, then say, “Lora?”
“No thanks,” she says, bringing the slow cooker over to the breakfast bar.
“Elora doesn’t drink,” Zoe states.
I lift my eyebrows. “No?”
Elora shakes her head and lifts the lid of the pot. “You go ahead,” she states, glancing at me. “I don’t mind other people drinking.”
“Nah, I’m good.” I help myself to a Sprite Zero from the side. “I can be hilarious and obnoxious without alcohol.”
She giggles and starts ladling the chili from the pot over the tortilla chips.
Fraser has a glass of the Rosé while Joel opens a beer, and then Elora tells us to help ourselves to one of the dishes and the toppings. I choose a dish, scoop up some of the chili onto a chip, and eat it.
Then I have a fit of coughing. “Jesus Christ.”
The others all start laughing. “You probably should have warned him,” Zoe says, spooning sour cream over her chili.
“That’s so fucking hot!” My voice is little more than a squeak.
“Oh Linc,” Elora says innocently, “be careful. The chili’s quite spicy.”
“Fuck me. Anyone got a fire extinguisher?”
“Wuss.” She winks at me, topping her chili with avocado, cheese, sour cream, and holy shit, more fresh chilis.
I pick up my dish and follow the others into the living room. Joel and Zoe take the armchairs, Hallie sits in the corner of the sofa, and Fraser sits next to her. I sit at the other end. Zoe switches on the fairy lights that are strung around the room and puts some music on her phone. The air smells of citrus from the candles mixed with the spicy scent of the chili, which isn’t an unpleasant mixture. They’ve opened the windows, and the summer breeze brings a welcome coolness to the warmth of the room.
Elora comes in and starts dragging over a beanbag, but I gesture to her. “We can squeeze up.”
“There’s not enough room for four on there.”
“Course there is.”
Fraser and I shift a few inches more apart. It means that he’s squeezing Hallie into the corner, but I have a feeling she’s not going to be disappointed about that.
Elora comes over and lowers down elegantly. She’s right, there isn’t really room for four, and we’re shoulder to shoulder, pressed up against one another.
“I should move,” she says.
“Good luck with that. You’ll need a shoehorn to get you out of there.”
She glances up at me. “How’s the chili?”
“Blistering.”
“Too much?”
“It’s terrific. It has taken a layer of skin off the top of my mouth, though.”
Zoe snorts. “I thought you’d have been used to it, living in the UK for so long. Don’t they like their curries and stuff hotter over there?”
“Yeah, but there’s hot and then there’s volcanic.”
They all laugh. “Are you living in London?” Joel asks.
“Yeah, I’m renting a flat in Camden. I’m not there much, though. I travel a lot.”
“Do you live on your own?” Zoe asks.
I nod, scooping up a heap of sour cream with the next mouthful of chili to try and cool it off.
“No girlfriend?” Zoe persists.
“No, not at the moment.”
“But there has been, I presume?”
“Zoe,” Elora scolds.
“I’m just making conversation,” she protests.
Suddenly, I don’t want to say. Not because of Sophia, but because I can feel how Elora has stiffened next to me. I don’t want to lie, though, because I’m sure she’ll be able to tell.
In the end, I opt for the truth, pared down so it hopefully won’t upset her. “I lived with a girl in Germany for a while, but she didn’t want to move when I left, which was fair enough, so we broke up.”
“What was her name?” Elora asks.
“Sophia,” I say reluctantly.
She nods, concentrating on her chili.
I look up and catch Joel’s eye. A slight frown draws his brows together. He and Fraser still seem very protective of their sister. There’s a story here, running beneath the surface like a riptide, which explains Elora’s vulnerability and obvious anxiety. Something happened while I was away.
And I’m determined to get to the bottom of it before the night’s out.
*
Elora
I feel a little queasy. It’s only now that I realize Linc was probably right, and he didn’t go out with girls while he was at Greenfield. There were girls at the school, and some of them were part of our friend group, but I don’t remember him being paired with any of them. At the time, I never had to be jealous. Now, though, it makes my stomach flip to think of him with someone else.
But what did I expect? He’s a gorgeous, healthy young man; he would never have been single while we were apart.
“So, Linc, you used to go to Greenfield, right?” Hallie asks him.
He nods. “I was a troubled teenager.”
“For that read total miscreant,” Joel says.
“He was,” I confirm. “He used to smuggle cigarettes and alcohol into the dorms.”
He gives a short laugh. “That was only in the early days.” He has another bite of chili and coughs. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
Glad my father’s not here to listen to his language, I gesture at the pot of sour cream on the coffee table. “Help yourself to more if you need to cool it down.”
Still coughing, he leans forward and spoons some more onto the chili. His shirt sleeve stretches across his back and clings to his biceps as he does so, and my gaze snags on his taut, muscular body. I’m finding it difficult to tear my gaze away from him.
“Do you have fond memories of being there?” Hallie asks.
He leans back. “Oh yeah, I loved it, eventually. Atticus was very strict, and that was tough in the beginning. I was an angry young man, and I was determined to punish him and the other teachers for thinking they knew what was best for me. I spent those first few weeks like Steve McQueen in The Great Escape , longing for freedom. And then one day, I realized I was looking forward to the next trek into the mountains, the next rugby match, the next lesson. These guys helped.” He gestures around the room, at me, Joel, and Fraser. “And I made a lot of friends there.”
“I’m still in touch with Henry West,” Joel says, referring to one of the guys who started around the same time as Linc. “He’d like to catch up with you while you’re here, if you have the time.”
“Yeah, I’d like that. He was one of the good guys,” Linc replies.
“Henry runs his own company now making devices to help people walk again,” I tell him and the girls.
“He was always going to do something amazing,” Linc says. “He was a whizz on the computer. I made them crash, and he fixed them for me.”
He stretches out his long legs in the faded jeans, crossing them at the ankles. I’ve never been into feet before, but his are bare and oddly attractive, clean and with neatly tended nails. His hands are the same, light-brown, large and strong, with short, neat nails. My gaze falls on the Futhark runes that snake up the inside of his forearm. Immortality. I wonder whether part of the reason he chose that word is because so much of his life has seemed impermanent—from his life with his birth family, to his time with us, to the way he’s moved around so much since he was eighteen. Maybe his tattoos are like roots anchoring him in time. Stamps in his passport. Each one reminds him of a moment in his journey through life that he has enjoyed and cherishes.
Does he have something that reminds him of Sophia? I wonder what she was like. And Mona, who he slept with when he first got to Cairo? I looked it up—Mona is a popular Egyptian girls’ name. Was she Egyptian then? I picture her like Cleopatra, with long, dark hair and makeup like Zoe’s. Was he terribly in love with her? Did she break his heart?
“Lora?”
I blink and realize everyone’s looking at me. Linc’s smiling—he must have asked me a question. “Huh?” I say. “Sorry?”
“Penny for them,” he asks.
I blush.
He notices, and I wait for him to tease me about it, but instead he smoothly changes the subject. “Zoe asked if I had any stories to tell about you all, and I asked you if you remembered the day Fraser fell in the river.”
I grin. “Yeah. The school had a government inspection,” I explain. “Fraser was… twenty?” My brother nods. “He was at uni,” I continue, “but he came home to help Dad get ready for it. Dad asked him if he’d show the inspectors around the grounds. Fraser decided it would be best if he looked smart and wore a suit. Then, when he was taking them over the bridge to the tennis courts, he missed his footing and fell in.”
Hallie and Zoe giggle. Fraser rolls his eyes. “I’m glad my misfortune amuses you.”
“It really does,” Hallie says.
“There are plenty more stories where that came from,” Linc says.
“Okay,” Fraser replies, “let’s talk about the number of broken bones you had over the four years you were at Greenfield.”
“Two,” Linc says.
“Four,” I correct. “The same arm, twice, then the other arm, then a finger.”
“I won’t ask what you were doing to break that,” Zoe says.
“I should have been so lucky,” Linc states. “Joel stood on it.”
We all laugh, and Joel lifts an eyebrow. “You shouldn’t have left it on the ground.”
“I didn’t leave it anywhere—it was attached to my hand.”
“You were quite accident prone,” I comment. “But that’s probably because you were a bit of a thrill seeker.”
“Still am,” he replies. “I’ve jumped out of a plane.”
“You have not,” I say disbelievingly.
“Like a pro,” Linc says, and winks at me. “Who’s your daddy?”
“Australopithecus afarensis,” I quip.
Joel snorts, the other three burst out laughing, and Linc grins. “Smartass. Yeah, I’ve been skiing and snowboarding. Whitewater rafting. Cage diving in Oz. Rock climbing in the Peak District. You name it.”
“Why?” Zoe asks, baffled.
He shrugs. “Makes me feel alive.”
“He’s certifiable,” I tell her.
“You’re all Kiwis,” he says, “don’t tell me you haven’t bungee jumped.”
“No,” we all say together, and then laugh.
“Actually I lie,” Joel says, “I did do the Auckland Sky Jump off the Sky Tower.”
Linc looks at Fraser. “What about you? Jumped off anywhere high?”
“Nope,” Fraser says. “Feet firmly on the floor, I’m afraid, and no interest in doing anything to change that.”
Linc makes chicken noises. “Absolutely,” Fraser says, “I have a poultry amount of courage.” We all groan at the pun.
“You don’t want to know where he puts the stuffing,” Joel says.
“I’m partial to a bit of sage and onion,” Hallie replies. Fraser lifts an eyebrow at her, and she giggles. I think the wine is going to her head.
Linc grins, then looks at me. “What about you? No bungee jumping?” I shake my head.
“Scared?” he teases.
“I just haven’t really gotten around to it. My dad would never have let me do anything like that when I was at home, and I’ve been too busy since I left.”
“We’ll have to see what we can do about that,” he says.
“I don’t think I’d have the courage to do anything risky.”
“Courage isn’t not being scared,” he says. “It’s doing something in spite of being scared. The courage comes afterward.”
I hadn’t thought of it like that. “Hmm.”
“Tell us more stories about Fraser and Joel doing stupid things,” Zoe says, crunching on a tortilla chip.
Linc pretends to think. “So many to choose from.”
“I’ve got one,” Joel states. “I’ll say one word—bats.”
“Ah, fuck,” Linc says.
Joel grins. “Dad was trying to teach us orienteering. There was a group of us—Fraser, were you there?”
“Yep.”
“And Henry, and a couple of others. Dad took us into the forest and blindfolded us, told us to count to a hundred, then disappeared. We had maps and compasses, and we had to find our way home.”
“Fraser was in charge of the compass,” Linc tells us.
“Fatal,” Fraser says.
“And I had the map,” Linc continues. “We tried to identify where we were, then started walking. And we came to a river, where there shouldn’t have been one.”
“Did Fraser fall in?” Hallie wants to know.
“Not that time,” Fraser says. “But they did take the compass away from me.”
“His sense of direction is useless,” Joel says. “So I took over. We walked for, like, hours…”
The guys start laughing at the memory. “It was getting dark,” Linc says, “and eventually we realized we’d probably have to stay the night in the forest.”
“We were at the edge of the mountains,” Joel says, “and we found a cave…”
“I volunteered to go in first,” Linc states, “because I was the bravest…”
“What we didn’t know was that it was inhabited by a colony of bats,” Joel continues.
“You’ve never heard a young man’s voice scream in such a high pitch,” Fraser says.
“They attacked me!” Linc protests. “I swear they brushed my hair.”
“He came running out like his arse was on fire,” Joel says. “So we all screamed too and legged it into the forest.”
“We didn’t stop running until we reached Christchurch,” Fraser says, and we all laugh.
“I remember that night,” I say. “Dad had to go and find you all. He brought you home in the van, and Mum and I made you all beans on toast.”
Linc chuckles. “Best part of the day.”
“What was Elora like back then?” Zoe wants to know.
He smiles. “She was only ten when I arrived at the school,” he says. “She was a skinny little thing with glasses and braids.”
“Ugly as,” I say. I hated the way I was back then.
Joel and Fraser both frown. They don’t like me saying things like that.
Linc’s eyes are alight with memories, though. “You were cute as a button,” he states.
“I was precocious and sanctimonious,” I reply. “And I’m not saying that to encourage compliments. I know what the others thought about me.”
“You’re wrong,” Linc says. “You were the smartest kid at the school—we all knew that, so maybe that’s why others teased you. But that day, when we lay under the table and looked at the atlas—it was the first time anyone had talked about New Zealand like that to me.” He looks at Zoe and Hallie, who are watching him with a kind of wonder as he draws the curtain back on our relationship. “She told me all about Milford Sound, and how Māori had followed these treacherous pounamu trails through the mountain ranges, and the deadly avalanches they had to navigate. It’s true—I was prepared to scoff, but as she spoke, she fascinated me. I started coming up to the house every evening after that, and at the weekends, when it was raining. We’d go through the atlas, memorizing the strange names of all the rivers and valleys.”
“There are a lot of dirty ones,” I say. “Like Climax Peak.”
“Hooker Valley,” Joel says.
“Clit Route,” Zoe says, and giggles.
“I’m partial to Bald Knob,” Linc says, and grins as we all laugh.
Zoe asks Fraser and Joel something about Greenfield, and they begin telling her about the school and how our parents felt they could best serve God by helping young people who needed a place where they felt safe and that gave them a structured life with lots of outdoor activities.
But Linc looks at me and says quietly, “You were never ugly.”
I study the seam of his shirt sleeve, not sure what to say to that.
“You were cute as a button then,” he repeats. “But you’re beautiful now.” He puts his arm around my shoulders and pulls me toward him so he can kiss the top of my head.
I blush, but nobody else seems to notice. He releases me and lowers his arm again but shifts an inch closer to me so we’re touching.
I don’t move away.