Just for Fun (3 page)

“He was very scary,” Nic agreed solemnly. “This is an
awesome set, though.”

“Yeh,” Zack breathed. “I can’t wait till I get it. Graham
says he’ll help me put it together. But I want to do it myself. I think I can.”

“I’m sure you can. And good on ya for saving up. Not easy.”

“Yeh, nah,” Zack sighed. “It’s not. Because I always want
lollies, too. But I’m saving,” he repeated firmly. “Till I have enough. Because
I want it more than anything.”

Emma poked her head in the door. “Bedtime,” she told Zack.
“Come brush your teeth and go to the toilet, please. And say goodnight to Nic.”

Zack got up from the floor obediently. Looked at Nic, shy
again now. “Night,” he said softly.

Nic stood himself, rested a hand briefly on the top of
Zack’s head. “Night, mate. And we’ll make a plan once I’m back from Safa for
that kicking lesson. I promise.”

N
ic was standing
in the kitchen when Emma returned from putting Zack to bed. He’d been turning
the canisters on the bench to examine them, but turned at the sound of her
step. “You did these, eh.”

“Yeah. That one’s Zack.”

“Got that.” Each of the porcelain containers was painted as
a castle tower, each tiny brick outlined neatly, the whole surrounded by sky
and varying landscapes, as if each tower were being viewed from a different
perspective. In the smallest, the tea container, a younger Zack seemed to be communing
with a tui who sat on the ledge, its white throat feathers clearly visible
against the glossy black, head tilted inquiringly, as a lizard crept around a
vine on the other side of the window.

“Painted him in a jersey, I see,” Nic commented.

Emma had to smile a bit in spite of her tension. Thinking
about her son always did that to her. “He insisted. I said it wasn’t very
authentic. No All Blacks in medieval Europe, I said. But then, no castles in
New Zealand either. So the whole thing’s silly, really.”

“Who are the others?” he asked.

“My dad.” Emma touched the flour container, the bespectacled
scribe gazing abstractly into the distance, scroll and quill pen in hand. “And
my mum.” On the sugar canister and clearly the castle’s chatelaine, wimple
framing a stern face, looking out over rolling green fields dotted with cows as
if counting them.

“And my sister and me,” she finished, touching the coffee
container with two young girls peering out of their window, arms around each
other.

“No prince,” he remarked. “No maiden in the tower, either.”

“Yeah. Well. I’ve kind of given up on the prince thing.”

He looked at her searchingly. “Time for you to tell me about
that.”

“Right.” She pulled the manila folder from where she’d
stashed it on top of the fridge and sat down at the table, waved him to a
chair, her tension, briefly dispelled, returning in full force.  She considered
moving to the more comfortable lounge, then dismissed the idea. It was
disconcerting enough being in here with him, oddly intimate. She needed to keep
this as businesslike as possible.

“You say you told me. But you didn’t,” he said. “I think
you’d better start at the beginning, and explain.” His face was closed again,
the brief moment of softness over.

She rested a palm on the closed folder. Spoke through a
throat that tightened as she remembered. “You were going to ring me, if you
recall. I waited. And waited. I couldn’t believe it. I thought something had
happened. Then I saw a story online, about the team. And I realized that something
had
happened. And what it was turned out to be pretty simple. You left,
and you forgot me.”

Nic shifted in his seat. “I was going to,” he said lamely.
“But there was so much to do, at first. And then time had gone by, and I felt
bad, didn’t know what to say. Then . . .” He shrugged helplessly. “I got caught
up. And when I did think about it, I told myself you’d moved on, too.”

Emma laughed, feeling the bitterness rise in her, a familiar
tide. “Yeah. I moved on, all right. At least, my body did.”

“But why didn’t you get in touch?” he asked in exasperation.
“Once you knew you were pregnant? And how the hell did it happen, anyway? You
told me you were on the Pill, or I’d’ve been more careful.”

“I forgot a couple,” she admitted, flushing. “I wasn’t too
good at that kind of thing back then. And with everything that happened that
week . . . I forgot, all right? I thought it wouldn’t matter. Wishful thinking,
it turned out.”

“Anyway. When it did happen, once I knew, I tried to tell
you. Over and over.” She opened the folder at last and handed him a small stack
of paper. The top sheet, he saw, was a copy of an email, addressed to the Bath
team’s publicist, asking the woman to have Nic get in touch with her urgently
“on a personal matter.”

“Please tell him it’s important, or I wouldn’t be contacting
him,” he read. “Because of what happened in Fiji.”

He looked up at her. “She didn’t answer?”

“Look at the next sheet,” Emma told him.

“Unfortunately, I can’t help you with this,” he read. “I’m
sure you can see that the players have the right to their privacy, and if they
choose not to share their personal contact information with others, that is
their decision to make.”

“She never even told me,” Nic protested.

“So I sent a letter,” Emma went on, ignoring him. She nodded
to the stack he held. “You can read it.”

He shifted the papers, found a covering note to the same woman,
asking her to forward the enclosed letter. It was dated, he saw, two months
after he’d left for England.

Nic,

I’ve figured out that our time together didn’t matter to
you after all. I guess you were just talking. But I need you to know that I’m
pregnant. And I could really use your help. Please write to me, or email me, or
something.

Emma

Her contact information was all there, he saw. He looked up
at her again. “I never saw this.”

Emma looked at him searchingly. “I don’t know if that’s true
or not,” she said slowly. “I don’t know what to believe. I rang, after that.
Several times. Left messages. When I finally got that woman to talk to me, she
told me she was sorry, but she couldn’t help me. I asked her if she’d given you
the letter, and she just said, sorry. As if she’d told you, and you’d said . .
.”

She took a breath, went on. “I thought she might be
sympathetic, being a woman, you know. But I guess not. It sounded like she’d
heard it all before.”

Nic handed back the stack of paper. “Why didn’t you get a
lawyer?” he demanded. “Somebody who wouldn’t have given up till he’d bloody
well tracked me down?”

“I asked,” she told him, clearly on the defensive now. “And
they told me, if you were working overseas, it wasn’t possible to pursue you
for maintenance. There was no point, if you wouldn’t cooperate. The laws don’t
. . . don’t extend.”

“What about when I came back, then?” he asked. “Zack couldn’t
even have been two then. And he’s six now. Why didn’t you try again then?”

“I did,” she said, her voice heavy with remembered defeat
and anger. “I did. I didn’t kid myself that you wanted anything to do with him.
But I sure could have used some help. So I tried again.”

“And? I wasn’t overseas then. So what happened?”

“Same thing,” she shrugged. “Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Protecting
your privacy, they said. One guy even told me, ‘Do you know how many women I
hear this from? That a player is their kid’s mystery dad? Sorry, love, can’t
help you. Find somebody else to pin this on.’ I’ll never forget that one. He
made me feel like a whore.”

Nic winced. “What about a lawyer, then? Why didn’t you try
harder?”

No softness at all in the blue eyes that looked steadily
back at him. “I walked into the lawyer’s office and told him my story. And he
said, ‘OK, you’re telling me your baby’s dad is an All Black now? And you want
to get him to take a paternity test? Did you ever have an acknowledged
relationship with him? Have a flat together? Anyone who knew you were his
girlfriend? No? You slept together for a week, overseas? The courts are going
to think that’s awfully convenient. No judge in En Zed is going to order a
paternity test on the basis of that. It’s going to look like harassment of a
sportsman, plain and simple. Not worth my time to pursue, and not worth your
money to hire me. Save it for the kid.’”

“I still remember, you see.” She pulled out a piece of
notebook paper, creased where it had been folded again and again. The last item
in the folder. “I wrote down what he said. It seemed so final. My last try.”

He stared down at the yellow lined paper, her neat writing
filling the sheet. “I never knew,” he said slowly. “You have to believe me, I
never knew. Or I would’ve helped.”

“It doesn’t matter now, does it? It’s all in the past. But
when you say I didn’t try . . . I tried, Nic. Over and over. Do you think I
wanted Zack not to have anything?” she asked fiercely, her eyes bright with
unshed tears. “I’ve done the best I can. But it kills me. He knows what we
can’t afford. He tries not to ask. But it kills me when he does ask, and I have
to say no. And his feet grow, and he grows, and . . .”

She stopped, took a deep breath. “So, yeah. You left. And
you left me holding the bag. And I’m still holding it.”

“So what do we do?” Nic asked after a long silence. “Now?”

“What do you mean, what do we do? I do what I’ve always
done. Raise my son.”

“Are you working, though?” He wasn’t sure what to ask, what
to say.

“Of course I’m working. What do you think?”

“Doing . . . the art? Something with that?”

She laughed, a quick sound, the bitterness coming through
again. “Not exactly. I’m a CAD operator at Morrow & Associates. The
engineers.”

“OK. Uh . . . I guess we need a DNA test, right? And a court
order?”

“Why?”

“Because I’m his
dad.
And I want him to know it, and
to do what’s right.”

“No,” she said immediately. “No. You’re not telling him. Not
now.”

“I have a right, Emma,” he insisted. “A right to support him,
and to be there. To have him with me.”

“A right you haven’t exercised for more than six years,” she
flashed back.

“Because I didn’t
know.
And now I do. A DNA test.
Means all three of us need to be tested, I reckon. And then we go to court.
I’ll do it whether you cooperate or not,” he threatened, his tone flat, eyes
intense. “Better to do it this way. I won’t tell him now, if you really think
better not. But I want to get to know him, and for him to know me. And to pay
what’s right, so he doesn’t have to live here.” His quick glance took in the
scarred tabletop, the faded old lino.

“This is Northcote,” she said angrily. “He’s going to a Tier
9 primary school. I’m spending half my salary for this place that you’re
looking at as if . . . as if you’re seeing a cockroach.”

He moved his hand impatiently as if he were literally
brushing her objection aside. “We can do this the easy way. Or we can do it the
hard way. I don’t want to get into a custody battle with you. I don’t want to
make Zack’s life harder, or yours either. But I’ll do that, if I have to. If
you make me.”

She leaned back, face going pale. “You wouldn’t do that.”

“I don’t want to,” he said, shame overcoming the anger.
“Come on, Emma. We’ll do the DNA testing. I’ll find out what I have to do to
establish . . . establish paternity, I guess it is. And then we’ll go from
there.”

 “But you won’t tell Zack,” she said, searching his face.
“When it’s time, it needs to come from me.”

“What does he think now?”

“I told him that his dad had to go away. He’s young. He
hasn’t asked more than that yet. I hadn’t decided what to say when he did start
asking the tough questions.”

“Now you don’t have to decide,” he said firmly. “I won’t
tell him, for now. But I want to get started with this. I’ll be in Cape Town
this week, back quite late Sunday night. I could come Monday after school, my
day off. Take him out and do a bit of practice.”

“School holidays, still,” Emma said slowly. “A couple hours.
That’s it.”

“And the DNA test,” he reminded her. “I’m off with the squad
tomorrow. Bugger. We can do it next week, though. I’ll set it up.”

“I work all day,” she protested. “I can’t just take off.”

“After five,” he suggested. “I’ll have training as well.
I’ll let you know.”

“All right,” she said reluctantly. “But, Nic. Don’t start
this unless you’re sure. He’s not something you can . . . try out, and see if
you like it or not. If you get involved, you have to mean it. Kids aren’t
temporary. They’re forever. We’ve got along without you so far, and we can keep
doing it.”

“I’m committing to it,” he promised. “I already did, or I
wouldn’t be here now.”

No warmth, only stern resolution in the face that looked up
at his own. “If you desert him now, Nic. If you decide it doesn’t fit into your
image, or your lifestyle, or something. If you let him down, I’ll make you
sorry. I’ll find a way, and I’ll do it.”

“What d’you take me for?” he asked, flushing with anger.

“I take you for somebody who’s got a pretty sweet deal right
now. A lot going for him. And who may not want to risk jeopardizing it.”

He got up abruptly. “No point in this. I’ll text you about
the DNA testing, and about Monday. The footy. You can tell me where and when to
collect Zack.”

“Fine.” She got up too, walked him to the front door. He
heard it close behind him as he jogged up the concrete steps and left the two
of them behind.

N
ic eased himself
into the low-slung car in one quick movement and slammed the door. He took the
turns automatically that would lead him back to the opulent house in Narrow
Neck. His new house, that he’d been so proud of until tonight. So different
from the dodgy little flat he’d just left. Emma’s flat.