Dinner at Rose's (44 page)

Closing Aunty Rose’s bedroom door I went back down the hall, keeping my eyes resolutely away from the end toilet whose leak would surely have increased from dribble to torrent during the night. Then I had a small brainwave and turned back that way.

The leak had indeed overflowed the big stock pot and the end toilet had become a lake. This was depressing, but at least I had a brimming stock pot full of clean water (albeit freezing cold) for washing in. I dipped an end of my towel into it and started scrubbing – it was no hot shower, but it did at least remove a fair number of green smears. Then I went along the hall to the Pink Room, cast a sorrowful eye over the heap of sodden plaster that had fallen from the ceiling onto the foot of my bed, and got dressed.

I lifted the handset of the hall phone without much hope, but there was actually a dial tone and I sagged with relief; I had envisaged having to take my mobile halfway up the hill behind the house in the rain. Right, start at the beginning, Jo – you’re about twenty-five years too old to go back to bed and put your head under the covers – and call Amber.

‘HELLO?’ SAID AMBER
. She was supposed to answer the phone with a sprightly ‘Waimanu Physiotherapy! Hello, this is Amber!’ but she almost never did.

‘Hi, it’s Jo,’ I said, and there was a clatter as she dropped the phone and bellowed, ‘Cheryl! Cheryl, it’s Jo!’

There was a second clatter as the phone was retrieved. ‘Good morning,’ said my employer grimly.

I winced. ‘Cher, I’m really sorry.’

‘How soon can you get here?’ she asked crisply.

‘I can’t.’

There was an ominous pause before she asked, ‘What’s happened?’

‘Aunty Rose died in the night,’ I started.

‘Oh, Jo, I’m sorry.’

‘And Matt’s been in an accident, and he’s in Waikato being sewn up again, and the power’s off, and the roof’s come off the house.’

‘Oh,’ said Cheryl. There was a wail behind her and she snapped, ‘Pick him
up
, Amber!’

‘I’m so sorry. I completely forgot to call.’

‘Damn it,’ she said tiredly. ‘I was going to yell at you, and now I can’t.’

Poor Cheryl – it sucks to be bursting with righteous indignation and then denied your opportunity to vent it. Go ahead, if it makes you feel better.’

‘No, that’s okay. It’s just I’ve been up half the night with Max, and two people have already told me they would rather have seen you.’

I HAD CALLED
the medical centre and Copelands Funeral Services and was on hold to the power company (listening with very little pleasure to Aaron Neville, who my opinion should never have been allowed to sing anywhere but the privacy of his own shower) when Andy arrived back from taking Wade to work.

‘Jo?’ he called. Then he stuck his head round the hall door and grimaced in apology.

‘It’s alright,’ I said. ‘I’m on hold. Are you honestly okay taking the day off?’

‘Yeah, it’s fine. Do you want sugar in your coffee?’ He held up a paper cup with a lid.

‘Andy, I love you. Three, please.’

‘It’s not very warm anymore.’

‘Doesn’t matter.
Thank
you.’ It could have been brewed sometime last week and stored in a gumboot for all I cared.

‘Roof ’s pretty buggered,’ Andy remarked over Aaron Neville’s warbling, coming up the hall with the cup in one hand and a pie in a paper bag in the other. ‘Have you got a tarpaulin?’

I drank about half the lukewarm coffee in one ecstatic gulp, and shook my head. ‘Not that I know of. Who would I ring to come and do something about it?’

‘A builder, I suppose. But I don’t know if anyone’ll come at such short notice.’

‘I thought I’d try crying,’ I said. Close observation of Hazel King had taught me never to underestimate the effect of judiciously applied tears.

‘Might work,’ he said doubtfully. ‘What d’you want me to do?’

I hesitated. Lighting the fire? Sopping up one of the indoor lakes? Getting in today’s new calves? ‘Can you drive a tractor? Or is there anyone we can call to come in and take over the farm work at this time of year?’

Aaron Neville’s wailing stopped abruptly. ‘Waimanu Energy, how can I help you?’ said the bored young man on the other end of the phone, and the dogs began to bark as another car came up the driveway.

‘Hi,’ I said. ‘It’s Jo Donnelly here – we’ve got no power up Puketutu Valley Road – sorry, hang on a second.’ I covered the receiver and hissed, ‘That’ll be the doctor. Could you show him in?’

DR MILNE BENT
for only the briefest of moments over Aunty Rose’s bed before straightening up again. ‘Rigor mortis,’ he said. ‘She died some time ago then.’

‘I found her after three,’ I said nervously. ‘I didn’t want to call you in the middle of the night, and – and then I – we – had to milk . . .’ I was horribly afraid he would detect some sort of foul play and that I would have to show him Aunty Rose’s note, which incidentally I had forgotten about and would have to fish from the depths of the washing machine. And I was by no means as convinced as Rose that he wouldn’t feel the need for a coroner’s inquest.

‘You had to milk?’ he repeated blankly.

‘Matt’s in hospital. He was in an accident last night.’

‘What sort of an accident?’

‘Someone ran into his bike on the driveway,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner.’

‘My dear, it wouldn’t have made the slightest difference. We’ll put the time of death as three am, and that will be close enough.’ He took a step away from the bedside and then paused. ‘Oh, and you’ll have some fairly serious opioids that we’d better not leave lying around the place. I’ll take them away with me.’

I jumped like a startled rabbit, and hastily opened the drawer of the bedside table to hide it. ‘Everything’s in here – this box is empty . . .’ I balled it up with shaking hands as I spoke – it had only been prescribed at the beginning of the week and there should have been four days’ worth remaining. It occurred to me suddenly that Aunty Rose had swallowed more than four days’ worth of pills last night, and that to ensure a decent overdose she must have been saving them up for weeks instead of using them for pain relief.

‘That’s fine, Josie,’ Dr Milne said gently, relieving me of several little bottles. ‘She was a wonderful woman, wasn’t she?’

‘Mm,’ I agreed.

‘She told me more than once how much she appreciated having you here.’

‘Don’t,’ I said shakily, ‘or I’ll weep all over you.’

He looked at me over the tops of his glasses. ‘And why shouldn’t you?’

I gulped. ‘T-too much to do.’

‘I’ll help,’ said Andy from the doorway. ‘I’ll go and feed out now, and then I’ll come back.’

‘Stay on the flat,’ I said worriedly. ‘It’s so wet.’

‘The problem with you,’ Andy told me, ‘is that you don’t believe anyone else can do anything.’

‘Sorry.’

The doctor and I followed him down the hall. ‘Nice boy,’ Dr Milne remarked, watching him cross the gravel.

‘Very,’ I said.

‘Would you like me to call the undertakers?’

‘I already have,’ I said. ‘They’re coming at eleven.’

‘Very good. Now, Tim Reynolds is the man you want for that roof. Tell him you need him today, and if he argues you let me know and I’ll sort him.’

I nodded. ‘Thank you so much.’

‘Pleasure, my dear.’ He reached out and tweaked the end of my nose as if I were a little girl again. ‘My goodness, you’re a carbon copy of your mother. I always thought she showed very poor taste in preferring your father to me.’

Chapter 39

I
T WAS NEARLY
four o’clock when I found a park high up in the Waikato Hospital parking building. According to Kim’s latest text message I needed ward twelve, general surgical, where Matt had been transferred from intensive care at lunchtime. This was encouraging news, and I was further encouraged by finding the right ward without getting lost even once.

I paused at the desk, and a nurse in her forties with the look of a woman whose day was
not
going well glanced up. ‘Yes?’

‘I’m looking for Matthew King.’

‘Right down the end.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, but she had already turned away and picked up the phone.

I made my way down the corridor, dodging several abandoned wheelchairs, a cleaning trolley and a man in fluffy socks and a hospital gown who was pushing his drip pole in front of him as he shuffled along. The end room had four beds, all occupied, and a bank of big windows along the far wall. In the furthest bed, with his eyes closed and looking heartrendingly pale and battered, was Matt.

I expect I would have clung to his hand and sobbed – which, let’s face it, is more than anyone should have to put up with on top of liver lacerations and broken ribs – if I could have only got near him. But Hazel was in a chair at his right hand and a small piteous Cilla in a chair at his left, while a third woman, whom I didn’t recognise, arranged a bunch of orange gerberas on a table at the foot of the bed.

‘Josie!’ said Kim from the hallway behind me. She put a cardboard tray of disposable coffee cups down on the seat of a handy wheelchair and threw her arms around me.

I hugged her back tightly. ‘Hey, Kimlet.’

‘You’ve had a
horrible
day,’ she said into my shoulder.

‘So have you,’ I pointed out.

‘Yeah.’

‘But hey,’ I said. ‘Matt’s alive.’

Kim sighed and detached herself. ‘True. And I suppose we’d probably have missed him a little bit.’

‘We’d better not tell him that; he’ll get all uppity.’ And we smiled shakily at one another.

‘It’s awful,’ said Kim suddenly. ‘I keep forgetting about Aunty Rose.’

‘I reckon she understands,’ I said. My confidence in the whole notion of life after death is a trifle wobbly – ‘Because I really want it to be true’ seems such a weak argument for the existence of heaven – but the idea of Aunty Rose being gone entirely was frankly ridiculous. ‘She’d be disgusted if we just collapsed in a heap instead of getting on with things.’

‘Mm,’ said Kim, her gaze wandering thoughtfully towards her mother. She turned and picked up her tray of coffee again. ‘Come on.’

She led the way across the room and plonked the tray on the wheeled table at the foot of the bed, digging in her jeans pocket for coins. ‘Two dollars forty,’ she said, handing it to the unknown woman.