Chapter 21
Ada
The pub is a tiny bluestone leftover from colonial settler days. Its car park’s jam-packed, considering it’s barely eleven in the morning. But then it’s a Friday, and a bunch of tradies have probably knocked off early to get blasted, as living above Stabbies has shown they’re wont to do.
I park at the edge of the unsealed gravel next to a massive Dodge RAM.
I’m craving a drink almost as much as nicotine, but as soon as I enter the pub, I know I shouldn’t have come here.
At least two dozen men in hi-vis are sitting around the mismatched wooden tables.
Silence falls as they, and the Viking-looking redhead bartender, all turn to look at me.
Some seem curious, but most faces are unfriendly and more than a few are familiar.
I look away before I can come up with any names.
Sweat breaks out in my armpits. There’s a woodfire burning in the corner and the whole place is uncomfortably warm.
Claustrophobic. But I doubt that’s why I’m sweating. I need to leave.
I force a wide smile but before I can giggle and say ‘Oops, this isn’t Sephora!
’ I spot the cigarette machine. Craving rises in me like a tide and battles with my common sense.
As usual, craving wins. I make a beeline for the machine, male eyes scraping across my face and body as I walk.
I’m extra-glad for my thick pants and heavy jacket as I bend to select Pall Malls.
I search for the card-tapping bit and can’t find it anywhere.
“Need cash,” an old bloke grunts, his voice echoing around the painfully quiet room. There’s no music playing. Why is there no music playing? Sweating harder than ever, I head for the bar where the Viking redhead studies me like I’m listeria.
“Can I please get some cash out?” I ask.
“Have to buy a drink to do that.”
I’m sure I’ve never met him but his thick beard and dark eyes remind me of Thrasher. Maybe a cousin? A brother? I have no intention of sticking around to find out.
I slide my card across the bar. “Half shot of Maker’s and fifty bucks, please?”
The Viking takes my Visa without a word, and I slip into the nearby bathroom before anyone else can talk to me.
I pee and check myself in the mirror. I look normal, which is weird because my hair should be white and standing on end.
I shouldn’t have come here so soon after leaving Thrasher’s farm.
I shouldn’t have come at all. I especially shouldn’t have stayed. Not for cigarettes. Not for anything.
“It’s fine,” I tell myself in the mirror. “We’ll be gone in two seconds.”
My reflection disagrees. She doesn’t think it’ll be that easy, and the bitch is probably right.
I grip the knuckledusters in my side pocket then release them.
What am I going to do with bright purple knuckledusters?
Hit someone? The last person I hit was Jenny Wallis, and she still nearly got the better of me.
I can’t punch one, let alone a dozen grown men, and not be instantly killed in retaliation.
My limbs go stiff, terror locking me into place as it so often does when I overestimate my abilities.
I force myself to move, to shove open the grotty bathroom door and walk back to the bar.
My drink, cash and card are all waiting for me on the counter. The Viking smirks as I approach. “So, you’re Ada, huh?”
He knows my name. He obviously saw it on my bank card, and now he, and everyone in this pub, knows who I am.
“It’s actually pronounced ‘Adolf,’” I say, shooting the whiskey. “Cheers.”
I grab the cash and return to the cigarette machine.
Maybe I’m imagining it, but this place seems to have grown even smaller and warmer.
The walls closing in. The air putrefying around me.
I punch the Pall Mall button and shove the fifty-dollar note into the slot.
The seconds it takes for the packet to drop and the change to collect in the coin chute feel like an eternity.
I snatch both and head for the door at top speed.
I don’t care how insane or suspicious I look, I need to fucking leave.
But just as my reflection predicted, it’s not that easy.
A ruddy-faced, bearded dude steps in front of me.
“You were just up at the farm, weren’t ya, Ada?”
Like with Xavier’s demands for me to stop running away, the smartest parts of me know nothing good will come from engaging with this man. I smile apologetically as I duck around him and through the door. It’s mercifully cold outside, and I’m almost at Cece’s car, when I hear the guy. “Ada?”
I half-turn and wave. “In a hurry, sorry.”
“Hang on, you need a light, don’t you?”
I didn’t realise I was unwrapping my cigarettes until he said it, or that I’ve got no way of consuming them without portable fire. The fact that this man, whoever he is, seems to know that brings me to a stop.
“Light?” the guy repeats, walking toward me.
“Um, yeah. That’d be good.”
He pulls a small orange Bic from his navy workman pants.
He’s enormous. Taller than Jake. Taller than the surrounding trees, it feels like.
And I’m small and impossibly female. An idiot on a self-imposed muck-raking quest with plastic knuckledusters in her pocket.
I want to run, but I know this man would chase me, and then I’d be fucked.
I take a step toward him and accept the lighter. “Thanks.”
“No worries.” He gestures at my Pall Malls. “Bum one off ya?”
I don’t have much of a choice. I offer him a cigarette, stick one between my lips and light up. It tastes disgusting. I swallow the cough clawing its way up my throat. Choking in front of this guy would be like displaying my neck to a slavering wolf.
My head spins, and the rush of nicotine combined with the whiskey blooming in my stomach loans me a little strength. I hold out the lighter. “Thanks.”
“Keep it.” He pulls out a second one and sparks his own cigarette, studying me over the smoke. “You were just up at the farm.”
It’s not a question, but I smile as if it might be. “I dunno. Was I?”
He doesn’t smile back. “You wanna watch yourself.”
“I do. I’m extremely watchable.”
“You got a smart mouth on you, ay?”
I tilt my cigarette upward and pray it burns fast. “So I’ve been told.”
He takes a step closer, and I fight the urge to retreat. “Do we know each other?”
His eyes narrow. “Shannon. Strom.”
My heart rate spikes. Shannon Strom. The first guy to ever ask me if I’d gone to band camp as a lay-up for a wank joke.
I was in his homeroom two years in a row, but I wouldn’t have clocked him in a million years.
He’s put on weight, and that, and his blotchy face and beard, make him look at least ten years older than Cece and Jake.
“Oh yeah,” I say. “We went to school together.”
“Yup. You were JGH’s missus, yeah?”
My stomach knots. Were. I feel the shield I didn’t know I was holding be yanked from my hands—the bulwark of Jake’s reputation.
What am I supposed to say now? ‘Nah, Shan, me and Jake are still heaps in love. Please don’t beat me to death and toss my corpse in a shallow grave, or he’ll be, like, so sad? ’
I settle for drawing on my Pall Mall. “I was. How ’bout those All Blacks, huh?”
A cold smile settles on Shannon’s face. “Not surprised he ditched you. He can do better.”
I flick my ash. He clearly wants a reaction, and he’s not getting one.
Shannon leans in a little closer. “I think I remember you from back at school. Wog retard from Aussie, yeah? Played the flute?”
I keep my expression blank. My insides boil with rage, but I’ve been called a lot worse by a lot better, and he’s still not getting a reaction from me.
“Oh come on,” Shannon says in that sing-songy lilt men use when they’re baiting you. “Don’t get all pissy.”
I blow a lungful of smoke directly in his face. “Thing is, Ram-Rooter, I’ve searched the inner recesses of my heart, and I don’t have anything to say to you.”
His upper lip curls. “Then I think you should leave.”
“Great show.”
“Huh?”
“I’m already going.” I drop my cigarette and grind it out under my boot. I’d usually pick up the stub, but the environment’s gonna have to take a hit on this one. “Have a great day.”
I feel him watching me as I climb into Cece’s car. I refuse to look back. I don’t glance at him in the rearview mirror. I don’t flip him off as I drive past. My hands are shaking so hard I’m scared I’m going to clip one of the many utes and vans lining the car park.
Whatever just happened, Shannon Strom knows I was at the farm. I didn’t imagine the tension in that pub, and I didn’t imagine that fucked up conversation. Things are getting weird. Although ‘scary’ might be the accurate descriptor.
I crank up the aircon, type Nikau Palms Hotel into Google Maps and put my phone into Cece’s holster.
I wish I’d recorded Shannon’s little confrontation.
I’ll have to start doing that every time I’m in public from now on.
But if that shitshow proved anything, it’s that I’m on the right track.
With any luck, Betty’s already digging into my conversation with Grace, and this’ll all be over soon.
And when it is, when Thrasher and his goons are banged up, and Thompson Farms is in the toilet, I’m leaving this town for good.
I’ll go straight from Pukekohe to the Auckland airport and never come back.
I light another cigarette with Shannon’s orange Bic, crank down the window and smoke.
It’s a dog move, ripping cigs in your mate’s car, but I’ll pay to have it cleaned, and hopefully Cece will understand.
After all, it’s not every day you get threatened by two former classmates.
I’ll need a new lighter, though. Just looking at Shannon’s sends imaginary spiders tippy-tapping across my skin.
Jake. I want to talk to Jake. I’d give all the vapes and tequila in the world to have his voice in my ear, his arms around my body, his strength at my back.