“It makes perfect sense. It’s saying if you believe something, you need to reconsider, or think again.”
He shoves his phone in his pocket. “Stupid English language.”
“A bad workman always blames his tools.”
“I can’t believe I agreed to this,” he mumbles.
“Neither of us had a choice,” I say tartly. “And to be fair, it’s not our family’s fault that we bumped uglies at the ball.”
“Are you saying my family jewels are ugly?”
I snort. “The male appendage isn’t exactly photogenic, is it?”
“A billion dick pics on the internet would take issue with that.”
I unbuckle my belt as the plane stops. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never received one.”
His eyebrows rise. “No boyfriend has ever sent you a dick pic?”
“Nope. Even though I’ve begged them to.”
That makes him laugh, and he’s still chuckling as we rise from our seats and make our way out of the plane.
“How are we getting to Blackridge?” he asks as we descend the steps. “Uber?”
“Ha!” I shoulder my flight bag, and we set off toward the gate. “You’ll be lucky to get a driver willing to take you up there. No, my friend, we’ll get one to drop us off at Willowmere Farm. That’s where I keep my Land Rover. I’ll drive us to Blackridge.”
“You’ll drive us? Do I need extra insurance?”
“Only if you expect me to parallel park in a space less than thirty feet long.” I glance at him. “I’m joking. I’m a terrific driver, even though I’m only a woman.”
“It’s not the fact that you’re a woman that bothers me. It’s the fact that you can’t walk into a room without knocking something over.”
I can’t argue with that, and I can’t think of anything clever to say either, so we collect our luggage and head out of the terminal.
We get in a taxi to Willowmere, which is a fifteen-minute drive in the opposite direction from Queenstown, in a sheltered valley near the quaint settlement of Arrowtown.
Despite my anxiety about spending time with Caesar, and my constant worry about Little Raspberry, my heart lifts at the thought of heading to Blackridge.
“You like this part of New Zealand, don’t you,” Caesar says.
I hadn’t realized he was watching me. I look out of the window at the silver rivers and low, undulating hills. “I do, as it happens. I’ve actually been thinking about moving here.”
“Oh?”
“Mmm,” I reply, lost in thought. “It’s so peaceful. It would be a lovely place to bring up a baby.”
“You’d like a family?”
He’s just making conversation; he has no idea of the turmoil I’m currently going through. It crosses my mind that if I do have this baby, when he finds out, it’s possible he might count backwards and work out that it must have been conceived before Christmas. But I guess he’d conclude it would be Peter’s. He wouldn’t know that we hadn’t slept together for over a month before we broke up.
I become aware that I’m still staring at him, and so I say, “Er, yeah, eventually.”
He frowns. “Are you feeling okay? Do you need some painkillers?”
“No, no, I’m good, thank you. The fresh country air will be good for my head.”
“That’s what townies usually say before they smell the cowshit.”
