Part 6 (1/2)

Once they've disappeared around the corner, hospital noises begin to blur in my inner ear. Sleep deprivation, I suppose, and the unreality of disaster. Squeaks of trolley wheels, murmuring of voices, shoes softly thudding on lino; all m.u.f.fled in white cloud.

Missed an opportunity there.

'No. Yes. No. I don't know what to do.'

You can't sweep this one under the carpet.

'You don't really exist, you know. You're just an embodiment of my conscience.'

This has gone too far, Martha!

'Mum, I'm desperate. If I make the wrong decision my family will be obliterated. How about a bit of unconditional love?'

I hear her sniff. Honestly, I swear she sniffs. All those years being dead hasn't sweetened the bitter tang of her.

'Okay,' I concede. 'Perhaps not unconditional love. But do you think you could manage forgiveness, after all this time?'

Finn may die, she retorts. Who will you be forgiving then, Martha Norris?

She has a point.

Seven.

That was a long, long journey.

Twenty-four hours in a metal cylinder with Finn and Charlie, and anyone would need to lie on a psychiatrist's couch. I'm sure the four hundred or so other pa.s.sengers all suffer from post-traumatic stress to this day. They probably have recurrent flashbacks of cabin-fevered fiends-one blond and cherubic, the other dark and diabolical-pelting up and down the aisle, upsetting the trolleys and howling like tortured banshees just when everyone had finally put on their eye masks and nodded off.

Mercifully, jetlag has somewhat blurred the memory. Also faded, like dreams, are the August days we spent in Auckland, struggling to stay awake during the day and sleep through the upside-down nights. We'd left our beloved English summer, hay bales in the rain, and landed slap-bang in the middle of Antipodean winter. We stocked up on warm clothes, opened bank accounts and bought a people carrier from a car shark. It all seemed fresh and hazy at the same time, like a bracing swim on a hangover. After four days as tourists in the City of Sails we headed for Hawke's Bay.

I often think our new life began in a single moment, as we crossed the Napier-Taupo hills. Kit had taken over the wheel and was having a wonderful time on the hairpin bends, slamming the gear stick across and making very childish rally-car noises. I'm surprised n.o.body was carsick. We'd considered filling up with fuel as we left the lakeside town of Taupo but decided to press on. Since then we hadn't pa.s.sed a single petrol station. Indeed the hills seemed uninhabited, save for isolated dwellings with paint-peeling porches and murderous-looking hounds. I expected tumbleweed. You could almost hear the strumming of the banjo. The only human beings we saw were the drivers of monstrous logging trucks whose brakes hissed like man-eating pressure cookers.

'You wouldn't want to break down out here,' remarked Kit blithely. I leaned past him to check the fuel gauge. It didn't look too healthy.

For miles the road wound through New Zealand's native bush: subtropical rainforest complete with giant ferns, creepers and cabbage trees that looked like palms. Every bend brought another sharp-intake-of-breath view of raw-boned mountains and white waterfalls. These weren't quiet English hills. They were angular and rock-strewn, like a Chinese painting; jagged peaks and drifting swathes of cloud.

'It's the jungle,' murmured Finn, clutching Buccaneer Bob to his cheek and stroking his left ear. 'Jungle bells, jungle bells, jungle all the way.'

'Are there snakes?' Charlie's voice was m.u.f.fled by Blue Blanket.

'No snakes!' yelled Kit gleefully.

'Does Bagheera live here?' The twins had watched The Jungle Book on the plane.

'There he is!' squealed Finn, pointing into the shadows. 'Bagheera- I seed him looking at me from out of a tree.'

Soon after that, all three children were asleep. It was night-time in Bedfords.h.i.+re. The boys lolled in their booster seats, soft legs dangling, baby jaws slack. Sacha was holding Finn's hand. The locket Ivan had given her- the one with both their photographs inside-was tangled around her hair. She never took it off.

Gradually, native bush gave way to forestry and farmland. As we crossed the last summit, Kit swerved onto a verge and cut the engine. In the sudden silence, he and I stepped out and stood leaning against the bonnet.

Above and around us rolled an immense pine forest, but the valley ahead opened its arms as though welcoming us to the coast. In the distance lay the Pacific, glittering in a mist of opal light, beckoning all the way to Chile. On the coast, as unexpectedly lovely as a mirage, we glimpsed a little city.

'Must be Napier,' I said, squinting at the map. 'Hastings is beyond, but I don't think we can see it from here.'

From our height, distance and state of jetlag Napier seemed a Greek village. White houses jumbled up the slope of a hill that rose straight out of the sea, like the sh.e.l.l of a giant turtle.

'We've made it,' said Kit. 'This is home.'

We based ourselves in a motel and tried to hit the ground running. Napier was a small city-about fifty thousand people-with a Mediterranean climate, a thriving port and Pacific beaches. That much we knew from the guidebook. What we hadn't expected was its picture-postcard beauty. Flattened by a catastrophic earthquake in 1931, it had risen phoenix-like from the ashes. The result was an art-deco town with wedding-cake buildings and a seafront boardwalk. On our first morning we had breakfast in a cafe by the marina. We sat out on a wooden deck in the winter sun, gazing across the clinking masts of yachts to snow-capped hills. I couldn't quite believe it was real.

An affable estate agent called Allan, who knew we'd brought sterling and sensed an obscenely large commission, devoted himself to showing us what he called 'lifestyle blocks'. Allan looked about sixty, with hair that swirled into a s.h.i.+ning chocolate peak like a walnut whip. I think he had the wrong idea about us at first, and we hated everything he showed us. Modern monstrosities they were, on over-manicured subdivisions; not at all what we'd expected of this enterprising, militantly nuclear-free country. This was the land of the All Blacks and the Rainbow Warrior; this was Mordor and Rivendell. We weren't ready for electric garage doors and ludicrously phallic gateposts. Anyway, they cost too much; the exchange rate had been hopeless. We rejected them all, but Allan had the patience of Job.

'Impress your friends!' he crowed, throwing open the doors to yet another stone-grey kitchen. We trooped in, making awed noises about the view-which, incidentally, was stunning: orchards, basking in golden suns.h.i.+ne. Then Kit and I exchanged despairing glances.

'Not your cup of tea, is it?' Allan looked baffled. 'Homes of this calibre at this price rarely come on the market, you know. The discerning buyer-'

'Look, Allan,' said Kit, holding up his hands. 'It's still more than we can afford. And anyway, I couldn't live in a house that's designed purely to impress. This place is just a monument to somebody's ego.'

'Kit!' squeaked Sacha, rolling her eyes. 'You are so embarra.s.sing.'

'We don't have any friends to impress,' I explained sheepishly. 'Not within twelve thousand miles, anyway. C'mon, Allan. Isn't there anything a bit . . . I don't know . . . older? Less, um, tidy?'

Kit pointed out of the window. 'Like that, over the valley-see? Bit small, that one, but you get the idea. Those old weatherboard things.'

'Ah. Yes. You're looking at the traditional New Zealand construction method,' said Allan, following Kit's gaze towards a white wooden cottage wreathed in foliage. I bet there was a rocking chair on the front porch.

'They're lovely,' I said.

'They're a pain in the backside. Millstone around your necks. You have to paint them every five years or the wood rots away. They're draughty. Dark. No indooraoutdoor flow.'

'They're still lovely,' I insisted. 'Find me one of those.'

'Sorry.' Sacha smiled up at Allan from the floor, where she was tickling Charlie's tummy. 'Sorry to waste your time. My family are idiots.'

Allan twinkled at her and rubbed his chin. 'Okay,' he mused. 'I'm thinking . . . you need at least four bedrooms, ideally more, bit of land, some kind of s.p.a.ce for Kit's painting . . . and you'll be working north of Napier, Martha?'

'That's right. Capeview Lodge.'

'D'you mind living in the Wop-wops?'

'The where?'

'The Bundu,' said Allan, helpfully. 'The back of beyond.'

Finn had been watching the estate agent with goggle-eyed interest. If he stood very straight, the tip of his sticking-up hair was on a level with the man's waistband. 'Will I ever talk like him?' he asked, jabbing a thumb.

'No, silly.' Charlie leaned down from Sacha's lap, spinning a d.i.n.ky car across acres of concrete floor. 'We'll nevereverever sound like them. They talk in baby language.'