Starlight Peninsula (10 page)

‘I’ve been wondering about balance,’ Eloise said.

Klaudia positioned herself in her seat, holding a coffee mug in both hands.

Eloise considered, then decided against mentioning the rat she’d seen during the last session. ‘Balance. How do we know I’m not sitting here editing out the truth? How do we know, either of us, that what I’m saying isn’t a load of subjective invention? Delusion?’

Klaudia had a smile that turned her mouth up at the corners like the Joker. She had an especially fairytale quality today, her eyes large, bright and intensely blue. Eloise thought of lost children, wicked stepmothers. Dark forests. Snow.

‘Balance. Big question.’

Would it be rude to mention the rat? Would the rat seem to represent something Klaudia hadn’t been privy to, and therefore a kind of assertion on Eloise’s part, a piece of one-upmanship: You weren’t anticipating
that
, were you? You didn’t see
that
coming. Eloise considered this while saying, ‘Also, I have the slight concern that since I’ve been seeing you I’ve got more mad, not less.’

‘Ah.’

‘Well, perhaps not more mad. But my life seems to have got more chaotic.’

The rat was in league with Klaudia. The rat was part of her repertoire. It emerged and showed itself to the patient, and then Klaudia measured the reaction. After the session, the therapist and her colleague, the rat, conferred. Eloise thought this while saying, ‘Talking about my mother, for example. It seems, potentially, a recipe for disaster. The only way I get on with my mother is by not thinking about her too hard.’

It was quite difficult to say all this. And Klaudia, it had to be said, was being disconcertingly tight-lipped today. Eloise, whose headache was so bad she felt like screaming, selected a tissue from the box on the desk and wiped her brow.
Honestly, Klaudia, let me know what you think. Jump in whenever you feel like it
.

She went on, ‘Now I’ve talked to you, I notice everything my mother says. I don’t skate over things. I’ve become too aware. It’s going to lead to fights, is all I’m saying.’

‘You mention balance.’

‘Oh yes. Two issues.’ (Was it terribly hot in here?) ‘Balance, and the fact that raking up family problems might lead to fights. Perhaps,’ Eloise tried a smile, winced and thought better of it, ‘perhaps there’s a lot to be said for the good old-fashioned stiff upper lip. Everyone bent into their dysfunctional shapes and the ship moving along just fine. Whereas if you start unpicking the family dynamic, you undo the winning formula that keeps the ship, er, afloat …’

‘I notice you looking at the garden. Is it too cold with the French doors open?’

‘Too cold? No. I … sometimes there’s an old woman out there.’

‘Yes, she is the gardener.’

There was a pause. Eloise said, ‘I just wonder about the wisdom of opening this can of worms.’

Klaudia smiled. ‘The can of worms — horrible expression — the can of worms was already partly open, don’t you think?’

Eloise shifted in her seat, embarrassed to have used a horrible expression.

She said, ‘Perhaps one should just force the lid back on.’

‘Better to let those worms out!’

‘Oh God,’ Eloise said. How would Klaudia interpret it if she crossed the floor and threw up all over the patio?

Klaudia’s voice softened. ‘It can be painful, I know. And sometimes, through therapy, you will find you are raising things with your family that may in the past have been kept usefully taboo. If you kick a holy cow, you can ruffle a few feathers!’

A short silence. Eloise frowned.

Trying to sound normal and even upbeat, she said, ‘I’m wondering if I should get a puppy.’

‘Ah. They are a lot of work. You have a full-time job?’

‘That’s the problem. Maybe I couldn’t look after it properly. But I’m so …’ She stared at the desk with mad intensity. ‘I’m living alone, and I’m having trouble sleeping at night.’

‘You have been using the sleeping pills?’

‘I want a guard dog.’ It came out like a demand.

‘I see. But of course if you got a puppy, it wouldn’t guard for about a year.’

Eloise stared, baffled by this piece of wisdom. It hadn’t occurred to her — puppies don’t start work straight away. Should she take up
Carina’s offer of Silvio? Noisome Silvio … But what would
he
do all day while she was at work, apart from shit on the floor and gnaw the stairs. She would have to borrow the Sparkler to see to him, and she went to school most days, presumably. Think of the mess. Trashing the place would certainly annoy Sean and Lady Cheryl.

Klaudia had swivelled a photo on her desk. Eloise looked at the picture: a large brown dog with a noble head and soulful eyes.

‘I am a dog-owner myself, so I know a bit about them. The alternative for you would be some human company, wouldn’t it?’

A hot sigh rose in Eloise’s chest. ‘Well, I thought maybe a hobby, involving a club. There’s a book club on the peninsula with some nice women. Or yoga or zumba, or whatever. And there’s a man. A neighbour, who’s friendly.’

‘We have to keep building those bridges.’

‘Yes. Bridges.’ Like Giles, she thought. The bridge builder.

‘Tell me about this man.’

‘Nick? He owns properties. He’s sort of good-looking, athletic. A nice manner, not rough. There was a fire, near my property, he helped put it out.’

‘A fire?’ Klaudia raised her eyebrows. ‘The one you started?’

‘Yes.’

Out there in the garden, the wind flipped the silvery fern leaves and shivered the colourful heads of the flowers. She saw a line of rats performing a song-and-dance routine on the bricks. Little top hats and sticks and  tails.

‘I’m glad to hear he’s a nice man. Puts out fires.’ Klaudia smiled.

But had they actually answered the question about balance? Eloise gathered her strength and said, ‘What I mentioned before. Balance. How do we know everything I tell you isn’t so subjective that it’s giving you a false picture? What if I tell you my mother makes comments that seem designed to attack, but in fact she’s not doing that, and I’m just deluded and paranoid?’

‘You don’t seem so paranoid to me. But think of this as a conversation. An exploration. I’m not the judge. I’m the mirror. In a way, you are having a conversation with yourself. When you talk about the past, you have a strong reaction. It can be helpful to focus on the Now. Things that happened in the past are gone, but their effect still reaches you, like light travelling from a dead star.’

‘The past is a dead star,’ Eloise repeated.

‘Yes. Its light still crossing the universe.’

Klaudia sat up straight. Glancing at the clock, she tapped her notepad with her pen. ‘We talked before about the past, how your current situation has brought it flooding back to you. Certain things for you have been unresolved. The mementos you mentioned, belonging to Arthur. You felt they were significant. Have you explored your feelings about those?’

A conversation with the self. A memory: the image of her face swinging back in front of her in the bathroom mirror. Her eyes wide and black …

Eloise wondered if she were perhaps slightly frightened of Klaudia. They were talking so intimately, but Eloise didn’t know who she was. She kept talking to Nick, and she didn’t know who
he
was either. Perhaps this was what happened when you went mad: eventually everyone was a stranger. You went on talking and in the end you were surrounded by faces you didn’t know.

She heard herself: evasive. Avoiding the question. ‘That’s a beautiful dog, Klaudia. What a glossy brown coat. Is it some kind of rare breed …?’

She drove away from Klaudia’s office, windows wound up and the air-conditioning roaring. Instead of heading straight back, she parked at the Herne Bay shops and went to a café.

Over a calming trim flat white, she mentally replayed the conversation with Klaudia. The past was a dead star, its light still reaching her.
Was therapy making her saner? This was unclear.

Deep breaths. Right. All serene. She rang Sean’s cell phone.

A woman answered, ‘Sean Rodd’s office.’ It was that awful little bitch, his secretary, Voodoo.

‘It’s Eloise. Let me speak to Sean.’

Voodoo tried to fob her off and then made her wait. Eloise remained composed.

Sean came on the line. She said, ‘Right. It’s me. Please thank your secretary for making me wait. I suppose she’s just had to get up off the floor. Off the … off the desk. Whatever.’

‘What? Who?’

‘Your secretary. With the tiny neck and the big round eyes. Voodoo.’

‘Oh,’ Sean said.

‘Anyway. I have a question, okay?’

‘Okay, sure. Shoot.’

‘Shoot. Shoot. You would say that, wouldn’t you.’

‘Eloise, I have to go to a meeting.’

‘Right. A meeting. You know what,
fuck
your meeting.’

Silence.

‘Okay, Sean. I just want to say one thing.’

‘Yes?’

‘
Fuck
you
and
your meeting.’

‘Right. Is that it?’

‘No. Actually. What I want to know is have you been in the house?’

‘In the house? No.’

‘In our house. In our ex-marital home. Have you been sneaking in?’

‘No. I wouldn’t dare after last time.’

‘Very funny. You haven’t, not once? It’s important. Do you promise you haven’t been back when I was out?’

‘I swear, Eloise. I haven’t been back since you threw the whole kitchen at me.’

For a moment, Eloise couldn’t decide how she felt about this. ‘I think someone’s been in the house.’

‘What, broken in?’

‘Just, got in. Things were moved around. I left the door unlocked and stayed at Carina’s and when I got home it was deadlocked.’

‘The cleaner. Amigo.’

‘No, it wasn’t his day.’

‘Was the alarm on?’

‘No. I never bother. I’ll start using it.’

‘Well, you should. Are you all right?’

‘Of course I’m all right. What’s it to you? What do you care?’

‘All right. Jesus.’

‘Where are you and Barbie holed up? In some student flat?’

‘Actually, Danni has her own house.’ His tone was aggrieved, and faintly proud.

Eloise’s whole body filled with nausea and pain. And yet it was easier if he was hateable. She sighed, sounding like Silvio at his most weary and long-suffering, and said, ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting me out soon. Of the house. The sale.’

‘Eloise, don’t cry.’

‘I’m not crying.’

‘Yes, we have to sell soon. We’ll make a lot. Values have really gone up. Starlight Peninsula was a dump when we bought there, compared to now. Now it’s hot. I don’t mind talking, but I’ve got to go. The Hallwrights have flown in from the South of France. They’ll be here in a minute. The whole team’s working around the clock, we’re doing a due diligence. Eloise? I promise, I haven’t been near the house.’

The waitress said, ‘Can I clear that for you? Are you okay?’

‘Fine, thanks.’ Eloise pressed the heel of her hand to her cheek, nodding: yes she would like another flat white. And if you could throw in a slug of rum. Or horse tranquiliser. Or cyanide.

Sean was still on the line so she said numbly, ‘What are you doing for the Hallwrights? Taking over Sony?’

‘I can’t tell you. It’s a big deal, that’s all.’

‘Perhaps you could rename Auckland, now Wellington’s called Soonworld. What’s Auckland going to be: The Idiot’s Village?’

‘Actually the village idiot characters were edited out by Hollywood. As offensive to the differently able. Eloise, I …’

‘What?’

‘Sometimes I wish …’

‘What?’

‘I miss …’

She waited.

‘The thing is, Danni …’

‘Good
bye
.’ She slammed down the phone, only it was an iPhone, and there was a distressing crack as it hit the table. Around the café, heads turned.

Stare all you like. Whatever.

Sean. Sitting in his high-rise office at Jaeger’s. Jaeger’s: Auckland’s oldest and richest law firm, advisors to the Hallwrights, and the Hallwright group of companies. She’d stood there in that office many times. Waiting for him on a cold clear day with a roaring wind, everything harsh and full of white noise and Sean coming in as she stood looking at the harbour and the bridge and the yachts and saying, Let’s get married.

His specialty was intellectual property and entertainment law, which was why he was running round after the Hallwrights. Jaeger’s was a big commercial firm with a lucrative sideline; they acted for TV stars, film directors, for the country’s only famous pop star. She’d met Sean after Arthur had died, when he’d come to ask whether she had any copies of a screenplay Arthur had apparently written for a film-director client of his. Later, he came to the set of
Roysmith
. He was accompanying a Jaeger’s client, a rich Chinese businessman who was
being interviewed and wanted to be seen sweeping around town with a team of suits. On first meeting them the businessman had whipped out photos of himself with Prime Minister Jack Dance: connected, see. Sean asked her out to lunch in front of Scott, who’d immediately (warmly, richly, melodramatically) urged her to accept.

Now, outside, the sun made a burning cross on a shop front opposite, filling the window with glare. There was a tall, dark-haired man walking past, in front of the glass. She stood up and looked after him, but he’d disappeared.

Eloise sat down and opened her diary.

One: Silvio just for a few nights? Discuss with Carina.

Two: Nick? Cook him dinner? Invite to pub?

Three: A hobby.

Four: A flatmate?

Five: Who is Mereana?

‘Get the email on strike action?’

‘Oh yeah.’

‘Jack Anthony’s not happy about getting zapped in the toilet. Personally I’m going to use the pub across the road.’

‘I haven’t had a shock for a while.’

‘Like a rat in a maze, you’ve learned what to avoid.’

‘Everyone looks so tentative, so unrelaxed. Scared to touch.’

‘All ginger.’

‘Tip-toeing around.’

‘Maybe it’s a management tactic.’

‘Or a big science experiment.’

Selena walked past, talking on her cell phone. ‘And then I did this 
amazing course. I was blown away by it. It’s about finding your inner awesomeness.’

Scott rolled his eyes.

They were watching film of Kurt Hartmann. The tycoon on his throne, with his smile, his wicked little teeth. Another one with a fairytale quality.

‘Put simply,’ Hartmann said, ‘I am a citizen of this country. The security forces of the GCSB, who do not have jurisdiction over citizens, spied on me illegally. Prime Minister Dance is in charge of the security services. How can he say he didn’t know?’

Scott paused the clip. ‘Bradley Kirk keeps saying he’s got proof that Dance knew about the spying, but he’s not coming up with anything.’

He pushed play. Hartmann, who was strikingly articulate when he got going, began talking about the US Government’s application to extradite him, which he’d been fighting since the police raid on his house.

In the room beyond, there was a cry of pain.

Scott nudged her and said, ‘Selena holds the record for the number of times shocked. It proves to me—’

‘How does the Prime Minister justify any of this?’ Hartmann said.
Chustify any off ziss
.

‘—It proves once and for all how thick she is.’

‘Hey, Selena’s not thick. She’s got inner awesomeness.’

Hartmann went on, ‘I am a businessman. I owned a large, popular file-sharing website. That is all. To this day, I don’t know what was stored in it. I have done nothing wrong.’

‘See, I always knew Selena was the dumbest rat in the maze,’ Scott whispered.

They edited in a clip of Jack Dance at his weekly press briefing, dismissing Hartmann’s claims that he knew about illegal spying. His tone was contemptuous. ‘Mr Hartmann is simply trying to avoid extradition.
I had no idea he was being spied on. That was an operational matter.’

‘Satan’s looking a bit haggard.’

Dance had recently developed a new crease down the side of his face, and dark loops under his eyes.

‘All the gossip’s about Ed Miles making his move. Backed by the Hallwright faction. I wouldn’t underestimate Satan, though. He’ll be looking to push back.’

‘How’s he going to do that?’

Jack Dance was a right-wing hardliner. His handicap was the perception that he was aloof. Miles, who was now Justice Minister under Dance, was centrist, populist, and had recently been working on his friendly ‘down-to-earth’ persona. Dance’s smoothness made people wary, but there was something about Miles that made you uneasy too: those noticing, calculating eyes. Neither had the charm of the ridiculously popular Sir David Hallwright, whose sunny goofiness, during his reign, had concealed layers of cunning and guile.

When Hallwright was in power, Scott used to reckon the real political brain was his wife, Roza Hallwright, who, while her husband was in office, spent her time writing children’s books. ‘Hallwright’s lady,’ Scott once mused to Eloise. ‘What a brain. What a
mind
.’

Opinions were divided on this. Eloise wasn’t sure what she thought. Carina, who disapproved of the Hallwrights, called them a
folie à deux
, which didn’t seem quite right to Eloise.

And Demelza said, ‘There’s only one political brain in that pair, and it’s him.’

Eloise now thought of Sean, holed up at Jaeger’s with Sir and Lady Hallwright and their due diligence. There was a slight confusion in her mind about Roza Hallwright. The TV series and movies,
Soon and Starfish
and
Soon and the Friends
, which had been described as post-post-modern, contained jokes for adults as well as children, and featured Mrs Hallwright and her son Johnnie as characters; they were
the creators of
Soon and the Friends
, who continually argued over plot in a slapstick mother-and-son power struggle. When Mrs Hallwright was mentioned, Eloise saw her cartoon — Mrs H as rendered by some witty Hollywood geek: bendy, curvaceous, faintly menacing. Her son Johnnie’s cartoon image was reminiscent of one of the Sparkler’s early favourites, SpongeBob SquarePants. ‘Johnnie’ was a brick-like figure with freckles, tiny legs, big sandals and billowing shorts.

Eloise didn’t have an opinion about which Hallwright was the brains, but she did sometimes wonder what the Soon hype said about the country. Wellington airport, these days, was so tricked out in
Soon
merchandising it looked like a theme park. It wouldn’t have been a surprise to hear that New Zealand schoolchildren believed they were born in Soonworld. That they were citizens of the Land of Soon …

She went on watching Kurt Hartmann, who had revealed, at this point in the tape, that he had political ambitions. He wished to help anyone who wanted to get rid of Jack Dance. This had much to do with the fact that Dance wanted to get rid of
him
, by sending him to an American jail.

‘I have considered starting my own political movement,’ he said.
Moofmint
. His tiny, avid eyes gleamed behind his tinted glasses. With his brutal jowls, wide mouth and pointy teeth, he’d been described as ‘Bond villain’, but Eloise thought he looked like the Ort Cloud in the
Soon
stories, a giant, gaseous character who sometimes landed, shimmering and pulsating, in Soon Valley. Hartmann was a creature massive yet somehow dainty, his pinky finger fussily crooked as he sipped his mineral water, reached anxiously for his hand sanitiser. He looked scandalised by the low level of debate (who were these agonising simpletons, these Luddites, who didn’t understand his brave new megaworld?), yet at the same time he played the teenager: scoffer of lollies, game addict, gangsta.

Now, in the dark room, Scott made one of his noises: a cross
between grunt and sigh. It signified deep thought. He was known for being a deep thinker, a real journalist, who hadn’t succumbed to the network’s pressure on content. At
Roysmith
they did real stories, not fluff. Scott made his noise again. Eloise looked at her watch.

Scott leaned over and whispered, ‘What do you think of this suit? Too much?’

Eloise said automatically, ‘It’s gorgeous. Lovely lining. When it sort of falls open. That mint green and pink combo — is it paisley?’

‘It’s a lightweight weave Ronald sourced from Italy.’

‘Right.’ She was gearing up to make an excuse.

‘I hope I don’t look like a stockbroker.’

‘Oh God, no.’

‘I don’t want to look shallow. Like Mike Hawkens, say.’

‘Everyone knows you’re deep. Into the arts and, um, literature. A reader. A thinker.’

‘Thanks, Eloise. You and Sean must come over some time. As James K Baxter once said—’

‘I’ve got this appointment. I’d better go now or I’ll miss it.’

He flourished his hand. ‘Go.
Fly
.’

There was a loud click and a shriek from the hall outside.

‘Ouch,’ Scott said, pitilessly.

She left the building and hurried through town. She was walking on the right-hand side of the road, and there was a bus stop twenty metres ahead. A car passed the bus stop, slowed and braked next to her, and a girl opened the car door and called back towards the stop, ‘Want a ride?’

Eloise thought: The girl in the bus stop is crying.

The bus stop was a walled shelter and she couldn’t see who was inside it until she reached it. Sure enough, it was a girl, and her face was contorted, and smeared with tears.

Eloise walked on. She didn’t believe in ESP, or star signs, or
fortune tellers or God. So how did a thing like that happen? How did information fly in, out of the blue? Perhaps something in the manner of the girl who’d called from the car had suggested it: that she was calling out to another girl, and that the girl was crying. Perhaps it showed that Eloise wasn’t going nuts. That she could still read the world accurately, at least some of the time.

The police station loomed ahead of her, like a giant block upended on the hill. It was a brutal and unlovely building, all flat concrete surfaces, grimly functional. You reached the front office by way of a pebble-dash walkway. From across the road, the rectangular windows looked as small as arrow slits. What a dump.

Eloise had visited this dump before, having been driven there on the day Arthur died. She had spent hours in a CIB office high above the city, watching a neon sign on the horizon, while the murder squad milled and bustled outside the door. At that time, Arthur was the subject of serious CIB interest: the white boards, the diagrams, the hurrying detectives. And then his death had been downgraded, relegated, the squad moving on to new mysteries. He was no longer a homicide; he wasn’t suspicious or even unexplained. He was just an accident.

Yesterday’s fish-and-chip paper, she thought. Old news. Life goes on. Best not to dwell. Her phone rang. Absent-mindedly, Eloise answered.

‘Ooh hello. It’s your mother. I know you’re at work, but I just wanted you to know your father’s having tests with the specialist.’

‘What specialist?’

‘The one he’s been recommended. I understand he’s wonderful.’

‘What’s he a specialist of?’

‘Of? Goodness me, I don’t know. The internal organs, I imagine.’

‘Any hint which organ? Organs?’

‘Listen to you. Which organ. Which organs. The organs he’s having the twinges in.’

‘Mum, I’m actually in the middle of the road.’

‘The middle of the road? What are you up to?’

‘I’ve got an appointment.’

‘Are you under the doctor, too?’

‘I’ll have to ring you back.’

Eloise reached the top of the pebble-dash ramp. A piece of paper taped to the smeared glass of the front door read:
Doors broken. Buzz and WAIT.

She buzzed. Waited. After a few minutes a heavily tattooed couple with a toddler came up the ramp and buzzed, and resignedly waited. They were joined by a youth with a shaven head, who buzzed and waited and then, with a look of amazed affront, as if this really was the last straw, began kicking the door and shouting. A policeman appeared and opened up.

Eloise avoided the altercation between the youth and four officers, and went to the desk. Directed to a waiting area, she sat. A buzzer sounded, a door opened, and Detective Marie Da Silva appeared.

She hadn’t changed. Wiry white-blonde hair sticking up on top of her head, short at the top and long at the back: an eighties hair style. A straight, freckly nose on an angular face. Strong features, defined cheekbones. Eloise thought: leonine. That pale hair and the feline face, and the unusual eyes. You noticed her eyes immediately. One was blue and one was brown, and they made you feel just slightly disorientated. You started focusing on one or the other, because both at the same time seemed wrong.

‘Hi,’ Da Silva said with a sharp glance, and put out her hand. She looked extremely alert, also impatient, as if she had little spare time. She was wearing khaki pants, boots and a short jacket.

They rode up four floors in silence, in the scarred lift. Eloise followed her along a corridor and into an office. Da Silva pointed to a seat, and Eloise sat, while the detective shifted books and files on the desk, and drew out a cardboard file.

‘So. Eloise Hay. How are you?’

‘Fine.’

‘What can I do for you?’

‘I wanted to talk to you about Arthur. Arthur Weeks.’

‘I remember.’

‘You interviewed me. He was my …’

Da Silva opened the file. ‘Arthur Weeks. Died after falling from a retaining wall on the side of Mt Eden. He was your partner, you and he had been living together, half in his flat, half in yours. Detective O’Kelly and I interviewed you, let’s see, here and here.’ She sifted through pieces of paper, reading.

‘They said he was drugged with pills when he fell.’

Da Silva lifted a page. ‘Fractured skull. Spinal injury. Tests showed levels of …’

What was she doing? Eloise stood up. ‘Actually, I think I should go.’

Da Silva paused, her gaze steady.

‘I don’t know what I was thinking, really. Just a whim.’

‘A whim.’ Da Silva looked amused, then her smile dropped and she said, ‘Perhaps you’d better sit down and explain yourself.’

Silence.

‘Since you’re here,’ Da Silva added.

Eloise looked at the door, hesitated.

‘Otherwise I’ll just go on wondering why you came,’ Da Silva said.

Another silence.

‘Oh, all right.’ She sat down.

Finally Eloise said, ‘It’s just that I never asked anything. I didn’t ask questions.’

Da Silva folded her arms and leaned back, considering her. ‘That was our job.’

‘But I don’t believe it, that he fell off the wall because of pills. Arthur wasn’t like that, he was never stoned.’

‘He was a barrel of energy,’ Da Silva said softly.

Eloise stared. ‘You remember.’

Da Silva smiled.

‘I can’t believe you remember I said that. I meant ball. Ball of energy. I got it wrong. I got everything wrong.’

Da Silva’s eyes were fixed on her. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I was so … I was so ashamed.’

‘Ashamed?’

‘It’s hard to explain.’

‘Is there something you want to tell me?’

‘What? No.’

‘Something about Arthur?’

‘No. I mean ashamed because I felt that Arthur and I were both in such trouble.’

‘Both in trouble? But Arthur was dead.’

‘I know. But I couldn’t grasp it. I felt as if Arthur and I were both in terrible trouble. I was out of my mind.’

Da Silva waited, then said, ‘Why have you come here today? What’s happened?’

‘There’s something I want to know.’

Another silence, then the detective said, ‘Okay, sure. Just let me do one thing.’