Just for Fun (30 page)

“Nah,” Nic told him. “We’ll get you new posters. So you’ll
have them both places. And,” he told Emma. “If there’s anything, sheets, duvet,
and that, that he wants. All Black stuff. I think you can get that kind of
gear. Since we’ve got a theme going here.”

“Can I, Mum?” Zack asked eagerly.

“Sure,” she smiled down at him. “If Nic says.”

“Right,” Nic decided. “I don’t know what to buy, though.
What would suit him. Maybe you wouldn’t mind buying the furniture, and all the
rest of it. And a carpet too,” he realized, using a toe to flip up the edge of
an Oriental carpet in a delicate pastel paisley pattern. “Because this isn’t
going to work, eh. Just tell me how much it was, and I’ll put it back into your
account.”

“Uh . . .” She stopped. “Sweetie, I need to talk to Nic for
a while,” she decided. “Let’s go get you set up with the TV, just for a few
minutes, OK?”

“I need to tell you,” she said when she and Nic were in the
room again, alone this time. “I can’t, actually. Buy the furniture and
everything, I mean.” She was embarrassed, but it was better to be honest. “I
told you, money’s not my best thing. And a few years ago, I had a pretty big problem.
I spent too much on my credit card, then I had some car trouble, and . . .” she
trailed off. “Anyway, I got it all paid off, finally. Took forever. But I
lowered my credit limit, so I couldn’t do that again. I only have a few
thousand dollars on there, for emergencies. Which happen a lot,” she admitted.
“There isn’t enough to buy all this.” She finished, feeling ashamed as always
when she talked about money, but relieved too. He might as well know the worst.

He didn’t say anything, just pulled his wallet from his back
pocket, selected a credit card and handed it to her. “Right. Use this, then.”

She looked at him in puzzled surprise. “You’re giving me
your card to use? After what I just told you?”

He shrugged. “What did you tell me? That you had a problem,
and you took care of it. And saw to it that it wouldn’t happen again. Why would
that make me not trust you? What am I missing here?”

“I just . . .” She stopped in confusion. Put the card into
her own wallet, snapped her purse closed again. “I’ll only buy stuff for Zack,”
she promised. “And I’ll try to remember to save all the receipts for you.”

“No worries. I’ll see the statement,” he reminded her. “Besides,
that card doesn’t have much of a limit on it itself. If you tried running away
to the Gold Coast for a flash holiday, you wouldn’t get too far. So I’m not
taking much of a risk, after all.”

“But you should tell me,” she said as a new concern occurred
to her. “How much I can spend on it. What
your
limit is.”

“Were you planning on antiques, then? Are there designer
bunk beds I don’t know about?”

“No, of course not. Well, maybe there are. I wouldn’t know. But
there are different options. Normally, I’d try the Op Shops first. Then go to
the outlet stores, if I couldn’t find anything. There’s always a cheaper way.”

“No Op Shops,” he said firmly. “Not saying there’s anything
wrong with that. But you don’t need to do all that, not this time. Just go to
the regular shop.” He gave a frustrated gesture. “Whatever that is. I have no
idea. Claudia did all the rest of this, with the decorator. But go where you
think will be good, buy what he needs, and we’ll be golden.”

“Oh, and come look at this with me,” he remembered, taking
her by the hand. He took her down the stairs and along the hall to the main
guest bedroom. The one, Emma realized with embarrassment, that they’d used two
nights earlier.

“The nights Zack’s here, like I said, I’m thinking I may be
able to talk you into coming too,” Nic told her with a smile. “And that you may
want to sleep in here. Wake up in here, anyway.”

“I will,” she said with relief. “I want to be with you, but
I don’t want Zack to know we’re sleeping together. It’s too . . . complicated,
just now. He has enough to deal with. I was wondering how to do that.”

“Well, this is it, don’t you think? Anyway, this is yours.
It has a bath—but you already know that. Has the right bed, too, in case we
ever need to use that again.”

She looked at the carved posts, and could feel herself
turning red. “Yeah,” she said, her voice sounding constrained in her ears. “A
bath would be nice.”

He smiled. “And the bed? How about that?”

“Nic,” she pleaded. “Quit it. I’m so embarrassed, I can’t
stand it.”

He took her face in his hands and gave her a long kiss.
“Sorry,” he said, though he didn’t look sorry in the least. “You’re right. I’m
teasing. We’ll use my bed. It’s bigger. Just keep this one for special
occasions. That suit you?”

“That does,” she agreed, turning her head to rub her cheek
against his hand. “Special occasions. That works for me.”

“What I really brought you in here to say,” he told her,
releasing her reluctantly, “is that when you’re buying that stuff for Zack, if
you need anything for this room. Sheets, towels, duvet cover, like that. You
should go ahead.”

“But you have those things already,” she objected. “It’s all
done.”

“Yeh.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose ruefully with a
thumb. “Just thought, you know. Colors, and that. They may not suit you.”

She looked at the light-charcoal walls with their
chalk-white trim, the silver-gray duvet cover and white linens. Envisioned the
gray towels in the bath. “Well, I wouldn’t say they’d be my first choice,” she
conceded. “But it’s very elegant. And the color scheme matches the walls. Too
much work to change everything. No point.”

“I want you to be comfortable, that’s all,” he said. “So
you’ll be here as much as possible.”

“It’s fine,” she said. “I’ll focus on Zack’s room. That’s
going to be plenty, no worries.”

“Did my bed come?” Zack asked on Wednesday afternoon, as
he’d asked every day since they’d bought it. Never mind Emma’s explanations of
delivery schedules.

She opened the car door and slung his pack into the back seat,
made sure he was fastened. “Well, you know what?” she told him happily as she climbed
into the driver’s seat and prepared to leave the childcare center carpark. “It
did! Nic texted me that all the furniture was delivered today, and the guys got
everything set up.
And
he invited us to come over and get your room
ready tonight, if you want. So it’ll be all set for you when we go to stay this
weekend. But maybe you’re too tired,” she added seriously. “Maybe you’d rather
wait till Friday.”

“Mummmm,”
Zack wailed, then saw the smile peeping out
of the corner of her mouth and laughed in relief. “Can we really go? Straight away?”

“Almost,” she promised. “We need to stop by the house first
and get the other stuff we bought. And get me changed into some jeans, if I’m
going to be hanging your wallpaper border and crawling around on top of a bunk
bed. Plus you need to eat something, before we go. A quick tea. Beans and
toast, how’s that?”

“OK. But can you drive really, really fast?” Zack pleaded. “Because
I can’t
wait.”

  He was out of the car and running for the door, when they
eventually did get to Nic’s, before Emma even had the boot open. She came up
behind him, loaded down with a bulging bag of bedding, just as Nic opened the
door to find Zack dancing impatiently on the doorstep.

“Hi there. Come to do a bit of redecorating, eh,” he said.
“D’you need to pee?” he asked in alarm, seeing Zack’s wiggly performance.

“Nah,” Zack said indignantly. “I’m just
excited.”

Emma laughed. “You catch on fast, don’t you?” She gave Nic a
quick kiss. “There’s a bunch more stuff in the car,” she told him.

“Got it. Leave that thing there,” he demanded. “I’ll fetch
it all, bring it up. Meantime, go have a look.”

Nic came through the door of the bedroom, dropped his
armload of purchases. “Shit!” he yelped, making it across the room just in time
to catch Emma as she overbalanced and tipped off the seat of Zack’s desk chair,
the wheels rolling out from under her.

“What the hell were you
thinking?”
he asked in
exasperation, setting her down. “Standing on something with wheels? It
rolls,
you know? That’s the bloody idea. Why didn’t you wait for me, ask me to get
a stepstool?”

“I just wanted to start hanging the border,” she said
lamely. “I had the chair shoved up against the wall. I thought it’d be OK.”

“You’re too bloody impulsive. Are you
trying
to get
yourself hurt? You need to think, damn it!”

“Don’t shout at me. It was stupid, OK? I admit it. And I was
scared, when I started to fall. I don’t need you to shout at me.”

“Aw, geez.” He reached for her, gave her a cuddle. She was
trembling a bit, he realized. It really
had
scared her. “Sorry. But you
scared me, too.”

“Anyway,” she said, rallying now, “you haven’t always minded
my impulsivity, have you?”

“Nah,” he said with a smile. “You’re right. I haven’t.”

“You said a
lot
of bad words, Nic,” Zack told him
from his perch on the upper bunk. “Mum says I’m not allowed.”

“You’re not,” Nic said. “Slipped out, that’s all. And I’ll
go get a stepstool, do the rest of this,” he told Emma. “You go put sheets on,
or something. Something
safe.”

“I can do it,” she objected. “I’ve done everything at our
flat, you know. All the painting, hanging everything. I own an electric drill. I
even kill my own spiders. And if you’ll get me the stepstool, I’ll do this too.”

Nic sighed. “Right. You’re competent and strong.
And
clever.
Even though I stand by the stubborn bit. So let me ask this another way. Would
you please
allow
me to hang the wallpaper border, participate in this
decorating exercise?”

“Are you patronizing me?” she asked suspiciously.

“Nah. I’m not. Really not. I still think the rolling-chair
thing wasn’t your best moment. But I’ll acknowledge that you could do it. I’m
asking you to let
me
do it.”

“Would
somebody
please do it?” Zack pleaded. “I
really, really want my All Blacks room.
Please?”

Emma had to laugh. “We’ll do it together,” she told Nic.
“Just yell when you need me to hand you something.”

By the time he had the rest of the border hung, with very
little help needed from her, she had to admit, Emma had both beds neatly made
with their matching All Blacks duvets.

“I still wish we’d got the sheets,” Zack sighed, sitting on
the bottom bunk and bouncing experimentally. “Then I’d have everything.”

“Boy, give you one thing, and you’re a regular conspicuous
consumer, aren’t you?” Emma chided him. “They’re ridiculous. These white ones
have a higher cotton count,
and
they’re a quarter of the price. It’s all
those licensing fees. We spent enough of Nic’s money as it was.”

“Oi,” Nic protested. “Those licensing fees pay my wages, you
know. Looked at another way, you’re just putting a bit more back in the pot for
later, when my agent’s negotiating my next contract. So you could view all this
as an investment, eh,” he said with a wink at Zack.

“Yeh, Mum!” Zack said triumphantly. “It’s a vestment!”

Emma laughed. “You don’t even know what an investment is. And
for the record, that means when you put your money, or you work hard, toward
something that’s going to be earning you money back later on. Like working hard
in school helps you get a good job when you’re big.”

“I don’t need to work hard in school,” Zack protested.
“Because I’m going to be a rugby player when I grow up, like Nic.”

“Hang on,” Nic said. “Even if you
are
a rugby player,
you have to be able to do sums, and read and write, don’t you. Otherwise, how
are you going to count all that lovely lolly you’re getting? Or read your
contract? And besides,” he went on more seriously, “Rugby only lasts so long,
no matter how far you get, and then you have to go do something else. So I’m
afraid it’s going to be homework at that desk, like I said. And not just
looking at those photo books about footy.”

“
Thank
you,” Emma told him. “He has a one-track mind,
that’s the problem. Boys.”

“Not all boys,” Nic protested. “My mind runs on at least two
tracks.” He grinned at her, and she laughed and stuck out her tongue at him,
and he suddenly felt that there was nowhere in the world he’d rather be right
now than here, with the two of them.

“Well, since you’re so smart, and so handy, and have a
stepstool,” Emma said, “maybe you’d like to hang these posters, too. And the
bulletin board, over the desk. Though they’re pretty big,” she said doubtfully,
beginning to lug a large framed image of the All Blacks in mid-haka toward the
wall where she wanted it. “And heavy. Do you have the stuff?”

“Do me a favor,” he said. “What kind of a Kiwi d’you take me
for? Course I do. And stop that. Wait for me to shift them.
Please.
”

He returned in a few minutes with a toolbox and a plastic
case for a serious electric drill. “Right, then. Show me where you’d like them.”

The two of them, working together, had all three items hung
within a few minutes. Emma collected the last of the rubbish, stacked it
outside the door, and they all stood back to admire the room.

“This is a theme bedroom, is what this is,” Nic pronounced.
“Nobody’s going to be walking in here and asking, “So, Zack. What are your
interests?”

“It’s so cool!” Zack said happily. “When can Graham come?
Friday? I want him to see it!”

“It should just be us at first,” Emma told him. “We’ll have
Graham over next time. If it’s OK with Nic,” she said, looking at him.

“Course,” he agreed. “My mate Graham needs a bit of help on
his offloading anyway. Got a wild arm.”