Just Not Mine (10 page)

What were they thinking, anyway, having a show like that on at seven o’clock? Weren’t kids watching? It couldn’t be right.

“D’you think she’s pretty? Josie?” That was Charlie.

“Hmm? Yeh. She’s very pretty,”
Hugh said cautiously.

“Then I think you should go on a date with her
,” Charlie decided. “You said you don’t have a girlfriend. She could be your girlfriend.”

“No, she couldn’t
.” Hugh turned down the volume on the TV with reluctance, because this was a conversation he could do without. “She has a partner.”

Charlie considered that. “I don’t think she does. I don’t thin
k she goes on dates.”

“He’s in Aussie, that’s why. She’s visiting him now,” he forced himself to say.
“Sometimes your partner isn’t right there with you, just like I go away when I have a girlfriend, and she stays here. She’s still my girlfriend, even so.”

“
I still think Josie would go on a date with you,” Charlie persisted. “I think she likes you.”

“You don’t do that,” Hugh attempted to explain. “If somebody has a partner, going
on a date with them would be cheating, and it would be wrong. That’s what the show was about,” he realized with relief. Good, an example, because he was damned if he knew how to explain cheating. “Josie’s character was cheating. She was going on a date”—well, a date of sorts—“with the nurse’s partner, the other girl there. That’s what the nurse was so angry about.”

“
Josie wouldn’t really do something like that, though,” Charlie said. “Not if it was wrong.”

“Nah. She wouldn’t,” Hugh assured him. “She wouldn’t cheat.” And neither would he. Unfortunately.

“Then I think you should go on a date with Miss Chloe,” Charlie said after another minute’s thought. “If you can’t go on one with Josie.”

“I can get my own dates,” Hugh protested.

Amelia cast him a jaundiced look. “I don’t think so,” she said.

“I beg your
pardon?”

“Well, you
haven’t been
,”
she said. “People who go on dates get babysitters. They stay out all night, like you did before. You haven’t stayed out all night in ages, and you haven’t got a babysitter, either.”

“
You don’t go out with just anybody,” Hugh attempted to explain. “It’s not that simple. You have to like the look of the person, and she has to like the look of you.”

“Then what?” Charlie asked. “D’you say, ‘Do you want to go on a date with me?’”

“Nah,” Amelia said knowledgeably. “She asks.”

“She does not ask,” Hugh said. “
Not with me.”

“
Holly’s mum says men are scared,” Amelia said. “So the girl has to ask. She has to say, ‘D’you want to get a coffee?’ Like that. Otherwise he’s too scared.”

“I am not scared
,” he said.

“Then why aren’t you going on a date? Holly’s mum goes on a date on Friday all the time,” Amelia saw fit to inform him again. “
Sometimes other nights, too. That’s why Holly watches
Courtney Place.
Because she and her little brother have to have a babysitter, and she likes it. The babysitter, I mean.”

“Like I said,” Hugh tried again. “I have to find somebody I like.”

Amelia looked at him appraisingly. “Maybe if you cut your hair. Miss Chloe would go on a date with you, I think. I heard her and Josie talking about it.”

“You did?” Hugh knew he shouldn’t
ask, but he did anyway. “What did they say?”

“
Josie said Miss Chloe should go out with you,” Amelia said with a shrug. “That’s all.”

“She said this in front of you?”

“Well, I heard.”

“You shouldn’t go around listening to other people’s conversations.” He wasn’t having much success with his life lessons talk
tonight, but he gave it another go. “It’s not polite.”

“Hugh.”
She sighed. “I wasn’t listening on
purpose.
I heard it after class, that’s all.”

“Well, what did Chloe say?” Hugh asked despite himself.

“She said, ‘Mmm, yeh, not too bad. Pretty fit under all that hair.’ That’s why I think you should get a haircut, and then she’d go out with you.”

“And what did Josie say?”
In for a penny, in for a pound, and he wanted to know.

“She said, ‘He’s a bit clueless
, but he’s a pretty decent guy.’” Which was a ringing endorsement if he’d ever heard one.

“Well, cheers for that
.” So much for Josie having any feelings for him, if she were trying to push her friend off on him. All right, maybe he’d done a bit of longing, but it looked like he was the only one.

“So are you going to ask her out?” Amelia persisted. “
Maybe I should tell her you like her, too. I could say that she should invite you to have a coffee, like Holly’s mum says. I could do that after class tomorrow.”

“Don’t do me any favors,” Hugh said. “If I want to go out with Miss Chloe—
if—
I can ask her myself.”

“But get a haircut first,” Amelia ordered.
“That way, maybe she’ll say yes.”

“If I did want to go for a haircut today,” he said at breakfast the next morning, “would I need to get a babysitter? Or would I just take the two of you into Auckland with me?”

He should have checked that out before, he thought guiltily.
He’d texted Vivy last night, had been glad that she’d been able to squeeze him in at the last minute, but he hadn’t even thought about a babysitter. He’d got up this morning, though, pulled on his gear as usual for a run, and hesitated. Was it actually all right to leave the kids? He thought Amelia was old enough, but he wasn’t sure. He should have asked Aunt Cora, or his mum, but it had never occurred to him.

In the end, he’d written a note and gone. And
found himself worrying, which had been annoying. And, of course, had come back to find the house not burnt down, the kids not panicked a bit, calmly eating cereal in front of the TV as usual.

“You’re allowed to leave
,” Amelia pronounced. “For a couple hours. If it’s during the day, and if you check with a neighbor first and tell her that we’re home alone.”

“Or you could come,” Hugh felt impelled to say. “If you wanted.”

She looked him over critically. “I think it’d be boring. But maybe I should come, so I could say how she should cut it.”

“Excuse me? I think between the two of us, we
can manage without you. I’ve been getting my hair cut all by myself for, oh, almost a year now.”

“Well,” she said, unabashed, “you should shave your beard
off, too. Girls don’t like beards.”

He ran his hand over his jaw. “Oh, I don’t know. I think they might.”

She sighed.
“Hugh.
I might know just a
little
more about being a girl than you do.”

“You know about being a twelve-year-old girl, I’ll give you that,” he said. “You don’t know about being a woman.
”

She seemed about to argue that point, too, so he turned to Charlie,
who looked to have tuned out again. “What about you? Want to go with me?”

Charlie looked
up doubtfully through his own shaggy dark hair, and Hugh realized that he should see about getting his cut as well. Where did that happen? Amelia was bound to know.

“Dunno,” his brother said.

“Come on,” Hugh said. “It’ll be good fun. We’ll take the ferry over, get you an ice cream, maybe. Take the rugby ball to the park afterwards and do a bit of kicking, practice your passing too, if you like.” Because Charlie had finished his season playing at 10, and during the few matches Hugh had managed to get to, he’d seen that his brother had some talent. Besides, that was the one thing they had in common. He had the feeling he needed to spend more time with his brother, try to draw him out of his shell a little. So many things to think about. Pity he didn’t know how to do most of them.

Amelia looked at him accusingly. “
I thought you didn’t allow ice cream.”

“That mean you don’t want it?” He’d realized after their latest supermarket visit that he might have been a bit harsh. He’d had the occasional ice block growing up, and it hadn’t hurt him much.

She put her head on one side and considered. “No. I still don’t want to come. I want to go over to June’s early and practice for ballet. You’re picking us up, don’t forget. And don’t forget that you need to bring Charlie, too. You can’t leave him home alone. He’s only eight.”

“Which is why he’s going to Auckland with me. And I’m not forgetting. That’s why it’s on the fridge, so I wo
n’t forget.” That was the whole point of the haircut, after all. That he would be picking them up.

He’d kept the beard, after some reflection, plus a consultation with Vivy that he wasn’t going to be telling Amelia about.

“Nah, nice,”
Vivy had told him. “Give a woman a little mystery, wondering what it’d feel like to … kiss you, if that’s what we’re talking about, and I think it is. Oh, Hugh, my darling, such a pity I’m married. And streets older than you, of course. Next lifetime.” Which had made him laugh, and made him a bit embarrassed, too.

And, when he stayed behind a minute while the girls changed and Charlie waited with his usual quiet patience, fading into the background, Chloe said yes.

She said more than that when they were having coffee the next day, though. He’d started by talking about Amelia, segued, he hoped smoothly, into asking about the school. Asking about her instead of banging on about himself, because that tended to work better, in his experience.

“Must have been quite an undertaking, setting it up,” he said. “How long ago?”

“Four years,” she said.

“Seems to be getting quite successful. You have some other teachers there as well, don’t you?”

“Five.”

“Lots of work, organizing all that, teaching as well.” Geez, he was dull. He wa
s putting himself to sleep here, and her too, judging by the brevity of her responses.

“Yes, it is,” she agreed. “Especially,” she said, looking directly at him out of the brown eyes, “since I have a son.”

“Oh.” Now he wasn’t bored. Was
anyone
single and unencumbered? Apparently not. He struggled to find an answer. “How old is he?”

“Nearly t
wo.”

“So
…” Had she thought this was some sort of parent-teacher conference, then? But the kids had said that she’d talked about him with Josie. He was seriously floundering with reading the signals here. “But not a partner,” he said cautiously. “Or … yes?”

“Or no,” she said, and there was a little smile there, and his signal-reading was back on track. “Not a partner.
Just a child. Like you, I take it?”

“They’re not exactly mine,” he said.

“Oh?” Her dark eyebrows lifted. “Is that temporary?”

“No,” he realized. “Well, temporary i
n that it won’t be forever. New, I guess you’d call it. I’ve only been living with them for eight months or so,” he tried to explain, “and on the road a good half of that or more, and my aunt’s been here, so I haven’t been in this …”