Dinner at Rose's (14 page)

I stiffened. ‘What
are
you talking about?’

‘He cares about you, too,’ she assured me.

‘Oh, stop that,’ I snapped. ‘We’re just friends.’

Mum smiled and kissed my cheek, and only the knowledge that she would twist anything I said into further proof for her little theory kept me quiet.

‘
HOW LONG DO
you reckon you’ll stay with your aunty?’ Andy asked. He leant a shoulder against the doorframe of my cupboard-bedroom and watched with an expression of deepening gloom as I threw clothes into a bag.

‘A couple of weeks? She’s got one more chemo appointment, and then it’ll take a little while for her to stop feeling like crap.’

He grunted in that eloquent way boys do – I’ve met some who could carry on entire conversations without articulating a single word – and dug his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

‘If you pick out a new girlfriend you can spend all your time at her place,’ I suggested. According to my source (i.e. Amber, who was part of the group that spent their Friday nights at the Frisky Possum, Waimanu’s leading – and only – cafe-bar) both Anna Williams and Ngaire Swainson were showing signs of interest in my young flatmate.

‘Yeah, but then you’ve got to talk to them.’ He shook his head as he considered the unreasonable demands of girlfriends. ‘Pretend to be interested in their new haircut, tell them they look skinny – all that crap.’

‘Andy, you’re such a gentleman,’ I said. ‘So sweet and sensitive. It warms my heart, it really does.’

‘Thank you,’ he said, and grinned.

‘I’d have thought that getting your leg over would have made up for having to talk about clothes and hair.’

‘Man, you’re crude,’ said Andy admiringly.

‘Thank you,’ I said in turn.

‘HEY, JOSIE,’ SAID
Kim as I opened Rose’s kitchen door. ‘Need a hand?’

‘No thanks, I’m good.’ I put my bag down and turned to scratch Percy behind the ears. It seemed the least I could do, considering he had got up out of his warm bed in the woodshed to escort me from the car to the house. ‘Hi, Hazel. How was your trip?’

‘Come
in
, Josie dear,’ she said reproachfully. ‘There’s a cold draught blowing onto poor Rose’s feet.’

I closed the door, shutting out a wistful pig, and Aunty Rose looked at me from her seat on the chaise longue with just a flicker of a smile.

‘The trip was good, thank you,’ Hazel went on, ‘although the heat was a little trying. And Nan’s not the easiest of women. Very selfish and demanding.’ Well, maybe. And maybe not.

‘Your room’s all ready, sweet pea,’ said Aunty Rose.

‘Thank you.’ I went across the kitchen to kiss her hello and got a waft of Chanel No. 5. ‘You smell so nice. I wish I had a signature scent.’

‘You do,’ said Kim. ‘That anti-flamme stuff. Sort of pepperminty.’

I grimaced – not really a fragrance redolent of feminine beauty and allure.

‘Your mother called,’ Aunty Rose told me. ‘She had a good flight home, and she says your father and the dog have both put on about a stone in her absence.’

I smiled. They would have, too – Dad and Toby the Jack Russell, when left to their own devices, spent their evenings sitting side by side on the couch and eating chips by the jumbo-sized packet. Dad flicked every second chip up in the air and Toby caught it. ‘Poor things,’ I said. ‘She’ll have them both on skim milk and salad for a month.’ It really was lucky that my father tolerated and even enjoyed being micromanaged. I asked him once how he put up with it and he smiled sweetly and said, ‘I can get my own way if I need to, young Jo, don’t you worry.’

‘It was kind of her to come,’ said Hazel. ‘But perhaps a little exhausting for you, Rosie, to have someone coming for such a long visit when you’re unwell.’ She looked at me sternly, just to make sure I was taking the hint. I looked back with my very best blank expression, and she added, ‘I’m afraid, Josie, that you won’t be able to expect Rose to cook and clean for you while you’re here.’

‘
Mum!
’ Kim protested.

Aunty Rose smiled. ‘That’s right, Josephine,’ she said. ‘I won’t have you just lazing around the place demanding Marmite omelettes. Now, my chickens, I’m going to be a truly awful hostess and totter off to bed.’ She pushed herself to her feet and her sister gave a little breathless shriek of horror.

‘Rosie. Oh,
Rosie
, your
hair
!’ A good handful of silvery strands glinted against the dark green velvet of the chaise longue.

‘Yes, Hazel, it’s falling out,’ Rose said calmly. ‘I shall be as bald as an egg in about a week.’ And she stalked out of the kitchen and down the hall.

Hazel looked after her with the wounded, puzzled expression of a kicked puppy. Then a look of saintly forbearance crossed her face and she looked gravely from Kim to me. ‘Girls,’ she said, ‘Rosie needs all our patience and understanding just now. This nasty chemotherapy is making her feel very low.’

THE WEEKEND PASSED
pleasantly, in a quiet and uneventful sort of way. Aunty Rose managed to sleep quite a lot of the time – when she was up we played Mah-jong at the kitchen table with the country and western station on the radio as background noise and drank multiple cups of tea. Aunty Rose’s kitchen was the homiest place in the world. It had red velvet curtains (only a little bit tatty) at the windows and the walls were painted pink. She had a huge wood stove and about an acre of scrubbed wooden table, sheepskin rugs scattered at random across the floor and the griffon overseeing the lot from his perch on the back of the chaise longue.

‘I really do admire Dolly Parton,’ she remarked, as ‘Jolene’ drew to a close. She was wrapped in her crimson dressing-gown, and had wound her remaining hair into a loose chignon that cunningly disguised the large bald spot at the back where her head pressed against her pillow as she slept. ‘I saw her interviewed on the television a few weeks ago – she looked at the interviewer with a wicked little glint in her eye and told him that it cost a lot of time and money to look as cheap as she does.’

‘Graeme thinks she’s a classless bimbo,’ I said, and shook my head. ‘You’d think that would have set off a few alarm bells, wouldn’t you?’

‘Indeed,’ said Aunty Rose gravely. ‘You had a narrow escape there, my girl.’

I grinned at her. ‘Didn’t I just?’ And it occurred to me for the first time that perhaps I had. Being shafted by my boyfriend
and
my best friend had hurt so horribly that for months I couldn’t bear to think about it (although, unfortunately, I couldn’t think about anything else either, which meant the inside of my head really wasn’t the happiest place). But actually I wasn’t at all sure I’d have wanted to spend the rest of my life with Graeme the Snob. And that had to be a fairly major breakthrough. Not on the scale of Newton and his apple, I know, but still.

‘Hurry up,’ I said. ‘It’s your turn.’

‘Where’s the book?’ Aunty Rose asked. ‘I’m sure I’ve got an Imperial Dragon, or something really exciting.’

‘I’m sure you haven’t.’ The woman cheated like you wouldn’t believe; she was always inventing new combinations of tiles and claiming that they were worth vast numbers of points.

Chapter 13

M
ATT TOOK AUNTY
Rose to her final chemo appointment on Tuesday. They were late home, and Aunty Rose, her face grey, crept straight into bed. Back in the kitchen Matt rubbed his face with his hands. ‘Thank God that’s the last one,’ he said.

‘When are they going to check her again?’ I asked.

‘Two weeks’ time.’

‘And with any luck, that’ll be that.’

‘Yeah. I don’t know why I’m so knackered – I haven’t done anything all day.’

‘Well, hanging out in the oncology ward doesn’t really top my list of fun things to do either,’ I said.

‘It’s somewhere up there with shovelling out the calf sheds,’ he agreed.

‘Or massaging Dallas Taipa’s feet.’

‘Now that would be pretty bloody grim.’

‘His socks . . .’ I said dreamily. ‘They’re sort of crunchy.’

He grinned. ‘You’re really living life on the edge, aren’t you? Dallas’s feet during the day, emptying the spew bowl by night . . .’

‘I expect it’s character building,’ I said. ‘We can feel all noble and superior about what great people we are. That’s always nice.’

‘Well, you can, anyway. All this housework and nursing and feeding that horde of animals – you shouldn’t have to be doing all this, Jo.’

‘I want to,’ I said. ‘I want to help. But if I’m getting a bit carried away and intruding you’ll tell me, won’t you?’

‘Intruding?’ he said. ‘Don’t be an idiot. I thought you were smart enough not to listen to my mother.’ Hazel had yet to do anything even vaguely helpful, as far as I could tell, and had instead taken to making gentle comments about the extra work a house guest was giving poor dear Rosie.

‘But it occurs to me that I might grow up into
my
mother, if nobody tells me to pull my head in.’

‘Your mother’s a legend. But you’re nothing like her.’

‘Gee,’ I said drily as the phone started to ring. ‘Thanks.’

‘Hello?’ Matt said, picking it up. ‘Hang on – she’s just here.’ He handed it over.

‘You never answer your mobile,’ was Graeme’s greeting.

‘No,’ I agreed. ‘There’s no service here so I keep it switched off most of the time.’

‘Which would seem to defeat the purpose of having a mobile,’ he said.

‘What’s up?’ I asked, seeing no point in discussing my mobile phone usage with Graeme.

‘Why didn’t you pay your share of the mortgage on the first?’

‘Didn’t I?’ I asked, taken aback.

‘No, Jo, you didn’t.’ He was using his patient and superior voice, the one that always set my teeth on edge.

‘I’ll look into it tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’

‘It’s not good enough,’ said Graeme. ‘I shouldn’t have to run around checking up on you.’

‘Look, I said I was sorry. It’s on automatic payment – it should have gone through. I’ll check it out.’

‘As soon as possible, please. I’ve had to cover it – I had a call from the bank.’

‘When are you having an open home?’ I asked.

‘Had one on the weekend.’

‘Just last weekend?’

‘No,’ said Graeme testily. ‘The one before.’