Authors: Rosalind James
“Yeh. I’m starved!” Zack said. “Can I have a muffin too?”
“Your mum got a bit stroppy with me last time we did that,”
Nic reminded him. “Better not, not before dinner. I’m invited, remember. Don’t
want her to change her mind, turf me out.”
Zack sighed. “OK. But a marshmallow?”
“Definitely a marshmallow,” Nic agreed.
When they were sitting at a table in the tiny café next to
the Domain, though, he saw that Zack wasn’t quite as interested in his hot
chocolate as usual. Instead, he kept looking up at Nic doubtfully.
“Got something on my face?” Nic asked, wiping his mouth with
a paper serviette. “Or is it something on your mind?”
“D’you think you could lend me some money?” Zack asked him.
“But I’m not sure how much,” he added honestly. “How much does a cricket bat
cost? It doesn’t have to be a flash one. Maybe on Trade Me? Mum gets heaps of
things on Trade Me.”
“Course,” Nic said automatically. “Didn’t realize you didn’t
have one. Why d’you need it, though, this time of year? Thought you were
focusing on the footy, for now. By the time you’re using it, you may not fit it
anymore.”
“In case,” Zack said obscurely.
“In case what?” Nic was bewildered now. “In case somebody
asks you to play cricket this winter? Someone without a bat?”
“Nah. In case I have to protect Mum from a Bad Guy.”
“You been watching those orcs again, eh,” Nic guessed. “They
aren’t real, mate. Your mum’s all right.”
“I’m not a baby,” Zack said impatiently. “I know there
aren’t really orcs. A real Bad Guy. In our flat.”
“There’s not likely to be a Bad Guy in your flat, surely,”
Nic said. “It’s Northcote, not Darfur.”
Zack looked at him blankly. “Huh?”
“I mean,” Nic went on, “you live in a pretty good area. And
I think your mum can keep you both safe. You don’t need to worry about that.”
“But I do,” Zack insisted. “She said she wasn’t, but she was
scared. Because that guy was bad. He was yelling. He said the
f
word. And
I think he hurt her. She has a really big bruise. I saw. And Mum’s not very
big, you know. Not for a grownup, she isn’t.”
“What?” Nic stared at him. “When was this? What happened?”
Zack’s explanation only made him more confused. And worried.
And more and more enraged.
“So will you lend me the money? And help me get it? Or can
you buy me a bat, on Trade Me?” Zack finished. “I don’t know how to do it. And
they don’t let kids anyway. Mum always does it for me. I’ll pay you back, I
promise,” he went on hurriedly. “Only I spent all my money when I bought my
Legos. I don’t know how much bats cost. But if it wasn’t too much?”
“I’ll buy you a bat,” Nic assured him. “But I don’t want you
to worry about this. Because I’m going to get it sorted. No Bad Guy’s going to
hurt your mum again. That’s
my
promise.”
“The other night. What happened?” he asked Emma when he was
sure Zack was in the bath. He was leaning against the kitchen bench following a
simple dinner of lamb chops and green beans, drying with a tea towel as Emma
washed up at the dented stainless steel sink.
“What other night?” she asked in confusion.
He gestured impatiently with his towel. “Don’t try to
pretend. Zack told me. Something about a Bad Guy. Somebody who was in here,
yelling. He was scared. He’s worried about you.”
She plunged her hands into the soapy water again, scrubbed
hard at a plate, dropping her head so her hair fell over her face. “I hoped I’d
convinced him I was all right. Because I was. Nothing happened.”
“Who was it?” he persisted. “And what
did
happen? It
was something, or he wouldn’t have been so worried.”
“It was . . . somebody I dated, Friday night. Somebody from
the office. We came back here. I was thinking . . .” She turned to him at last,
flushing with what seemed oddly like embarrassment. “I wasn’t planning to do
much. I wouldn’t anyway, not with Zack here. He said I led him on. Maybe I did,
saying yes to giving him a cup of tea, letting him in. It was stupid of me, I
know. I
knew
something was off, and I did it anyway. I can’t believe I
got myself into that situation. And Zack too.” She reached for a glass, swished
the scrub brush around, but Nic could see that her hands were trembling. “But I’d
been out with him before. I work with him. I
know
him. At least I
thought I did.”
“Inviting somebody in for a cuppa doesn’t give him any rights.”
He was choking the life out of the tea towel, he realized. Forced himself to
relax his grip. “You invited me, that first night here. I didn’t jump you, and
we have a history. What happened? Where’s this bruise? Show me.”
“He didn’t do it,” Emma protested. “Well, not exactly. It
was me, hitting the coffee table. When I was trying to get away. I fell.”
“Show me,” he commanded again.
She sighed. Pulled off her rubber gloves and laid them
across the sink, then pulled down one shoulder of her sweater. An ugly patch
about seven or eight centimeters across, he judged, on the outer edge of her
shoulder blade, outside the thin ribbon of bra strap. Gone to black and blue
now, three days later. Easy to see how the corner of the table had caught her
there. And how hard she must have hit it.
“If you did it getting away from him, he did it,” he said,
pushing down the rage. She didn’t need to see that. “Who was this?”
He got the story out of her in pieces. “Nothing happened,
though,” she insisted at the end of her recital. “I don’t know why I’m still so
upset.” She rinsed off the last pieces of silverware, handed them to him to
dry.
“You thought he was going to rape you. A pretty good reason
to be upset, seems to me.” He hung the towel over its rack and turned to face
her. “Because it scared the hell out of you, didn’t it?”
She nodded, and he saw the sheen of tears in her eyes, the
tremble of her mouth. “Aw, hell.” He finally allowed himself to put his arms
around her. Felt her soften against his chest, the tears starting. Held her until
she pulled away again, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s just . . . I’ve felt so stupid for
what happened, and for being so scared.”
“You have nothing to feel stupid about, though,” he insisted
in frustration. “Zack’s right, he was a Bad Guy. How the hell were you meant to
know that? And of course you were scared. You had every reason to be. But you
don’t have to be scared anymore. That’s one thing I can fix, at least. Give me
your phone.”
“What?” she asked in confusion.
“Your phone. Your mobile. Let me see it.”
She fetched it from the corner of the bench where she’d set
it earlier, handed it to him in wordless confusion.
“Why don’t you even have a smartphone?” he asked.
“I don’t need it. Or to pay for the data plan. I’m at work all
day, and otherwise I mostly just text. This works fine.”
He sat at the kitchen table as she took a seat opposite him.
He scrolled down, found his contact number. “How the hell d’you do your speed
dials,” he muttered. “Oh. Got it.” He looked up as Zack came back into the
kitchen, in the All Black pajamas again.
“Need to get you some of those in the right size,” he told
the boy as his mother reached out automatically for the rolling-up routine.
“I
like
these,” Zack protested. “They’re my
favorites.”
“I know. And they’d be even better if you fit them. Come
here, mate.” He reached around Zack as the boy came to stand next to him where
he sat at the small round table, felt him easing towards his knee. His heart
melted at the trust in the gesture. He cleared his throat, opened Emma’s phone
again. “D’you know how to do speed dial?”
“Course,” Zack nodded. “Mum has Auntie Lucy on that. She’s
#2. I just hold it down to ring her.”
“OK, then. And d’you know how to do 111?”
“Mum taught me,” Zack said. “I’ve never done it for real,
though. Only pretend. Only if there’s a real emergency, she said. Like a fire.
Or blood.
Bad
blood.”
“That’s probably #1 on here, right?”
“Yeh,” Zack agreed.
“Well, now there’s #9. This button at the bottom. That’s
me.”
“I know which one’s a 9. I know numbers. I’m
six.”
“Right. But now you know, nine’s an
N,
right?
N
for
Nic.”
“OK,” Zack said. “So if I want to ring you, I can do 9.”
“Yeh. And if your Mum’s ever in trouble again,” Nic told him
seriously, pulling him closer. “If anything even worries you. You ring me. Push
the 9. N for Nic. And I’ll come straight away to help.”
“Nic,” Emma protested. “You’ll scare him.”
Zack wasn’t listening to her, though. He twisted around to
look at Nic. “Really? You’d come? Even if it was in the night? Even if you were
asleep?”
“Even if I were asleep,” Nic assured him. “Straight away. I
promise.”
Zack exhaled, shoulders seeming to relax. “OK. But I still
want the bat.”
“What bat?” Emma asked.
“A cricket bat,” Zack informed her. “Just in case.”
“In case what? Oh.” Emma looked from Zack to Nic. “Oh, no.
You don’t need to worry about that, sweetie. I told you.”
“You’ll get the bat,” Nic promised him. “Just in case. But
you don’t need to worry about that bloke. He’s not going to be bothering your
Mum again.”
When they’d got Zack off to bed and were alone together,
though, she objected again. “I appreciated what you said to him. I would’ve
thought it would make it worse, but you’ve clearly eased his mind. But it’s not
realistic, Nic.”
“What isn’t?”
“That Ryan’s not going to bother me again. I work with him,
remember? I could hardly face him today,” she said with a shudder. “I’m doing
his work. And it just makes me sick. He looked at me like I was . . .” She
swallowed. “Dirt. Worse than dirt. And I’m afraid of what he’s going to say.”
“He should be afraid of what
you’re
going to say,”
Nic pointed out.
“At work, though, it’s almost all men. And I know it’s wrong,
but there are plenty of them who’d agree with him. That I was leading him on.
And anyway, what could I say? That he kissed me too hard, and I didn’t like it?
He didn’t actually
do
anything.”
“He did enough,” Nic said grimly. “And it doesn’t sound like
he was planning to stop.”
“There’s nothing I can do, though,” she insisted. “Because
there’s nothing there, really. I have a bruise that he didn’t even put on me. And
a pretty strong dislike of him, which he obviously reciprocates. And that’s all
there is to it. Another thing to get through. When you’re going through Hell,
just keep going. Another one of those.”
He stared at her. “That’s it? That’s your philosophy?”
“Sometimes,” she admitted. “Days like today. It has to be.
Just getting through till I get to something better.”
“Ryan something. Don’t know his last name,” Nic told the
young receptionist. “An engineer. D’you know who I mean? And if he’s still
here?”
She was a bit flustered, he saw, on recognizing him. He gave
her a reassuring grin. “I could use your help here. Ryan?”
“Ryan Aiken,” she smiled back, the flush mounting on her
cheeks. “He hasn’t left yet, I don’t think. Do you want me to ring him?”
“Please. And have him come meet me out here, will you?”
He felt a twinge of impatience as he saw her finally pick up
the receiver and punch in the extension, her eyes moving to his as she spoke
his name. He’d have been here sooner, if he could’ve been. Two days was more
than enough for Emma to deal with this.
“Nic. It’s a pleasure.” The bloke was wasted in engineering,
Nic thought with contempt as Ryan came around the corner and extended his hand.
Should’ve been a salesman.
Nic kept his own arms firmly folded across his chest. The
intimidation pose. Saw Ryan drop his hand uncertainly at the lack of response
to his friendly gesture. “Ryan Aiken,” Nic said, unsmiling. “Come outside a
minute with me.”
“What’s this about? D’you want to chat to us about a house?
Need some foundation work, do you? We could do that. Or anything else you
need,” Ryan said as they rode down in the lift. He was getting nervous at the
continued silence, Nic saw. Good.
Nic led the way out through the historic building’s double
glass doors with their heavy brass hardware, onto the wide Commerce Street
pavement. He ignored the stream of passing foot traffic, forcing pedestrians to
detour around him. Turned at last to face Ryan.
“Emma,” he finally said.
“Emma?” Ryan looked at him blankly. “Emma who?”
“Have you attacked more than one woman named Emma recently?”
“Attacked? Me? Hang on,” Ryan protested. Nic saw his eyes
dart to the doorway. This kind of bully was always a coward in the end, Nic
knew, when it came to someone his own size. His own lips twisted with contempt
and he folded his arms again, to keep himself under restraint as much as to
intimidate the other man.
“Attacked,” he continued levelly. “Friday night. She’s got a
hell of a bruise on her.”
“I didn’t do that,” Ryan objected. “I didn’t touch her that
way. Didn’t do anything but what she was asking for.”
Nic held himself back with an effort. “Because a woman goes
out with you, she’s saying she’ll shag you?”
“If she invites me in, she is.” Ryan was gaining confidence
now. “And dresses like that. Bloody hell, mate. You know how it is.”
“I’m not your mate,” Nic ground out. “Ever hear of consent?”
Ryan flushed, one last bit of bravado. “Come on. Women like
a man with confidence, someone who takes what he wants. They want it too. They
just want us to do the running so they can feel overpowered. So they can say
they weren’t responsible.”
Nic stared at him. “What kind of sick bastard thinks like
that? That’s rape.”
“What’re you?” Ryan sneered. “The White Ribbon ambassador?”