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‘All that travelling and performing can’t have left much time for bringing up a child.’
‘Miss Adams had a nanny and tutors and music teachers from when she was a baby ’til she went to boarding school,’ supplied Petra eagerly.
‘Accelerated learning?’ murmured Scott, and Anya gave an involuntary laugh.
‘Not in my case. My parents realised pretty quickly that I was never going to set the world on fire with my genius.’
‘Did you want to?’
She shook her head. ‘No. No…funnily enough I never did. I was shy, and often sick when we were travelling. All the fuss and emotional drama that my parents created wherever they went made me happy to be left in the background. I was glad not to be trotted out to show off my budding accomplishments. The only thing I was any good at was reading, but, as I was telling Petra, if you love books then the world is your oyster.’
‘I used to read with a torch under the blankets,’ said Scott, and Anya slipped him a surprised smile of fellow-feeling.
‘My nannies always used to search my bed before they turned the lights out.’
‘You had more than one?’
‘Only one at a time. But, as I said, we moved about a lot, and my mother was always very…particular about personal staff. They had to have the right vibes. She always seemed to be in the throes of hiring or firing someone.’
‘But you didn’t bring a nanny whenever you came here?’ said Petra, waving at the house.
‘No, my aunt and uncle looked after me.’
‘And Cousin Kate…’ murmured Scott in a neutral voice that made her give him a wary look.
‘Cousin Kate soon worked out that I thought it was great fun to do the farm chores that she hated,’ she said lightly.
‘Don’t tell me…she had you whitewashing the picket fence.’ Scott surprised her with a rich chuckle, adding to his mystified daughter, ‘If you want to know what we’re talking about, I suggest you try reading some Mark Twain.’ He finished off the apple and tossed the core in the same direction that Petra had chosen, but to a considerably greater distance.
Anya watched with a poignant sense of wistful yearning as he and his daughter talked, fascinated by the mixture of boldness and tentativeness on both sides, the hunger and hesitation that tangled their lines of communication.
A little while later, encouraged by Scott’s relaxed responses into further reminiscences about life on the farm and how, a few years after her aunt and uncle’s death, she had been happy to come back to boarding school in Auckland while Kate had remained with her parents in New York to continue her intensive music studies, Anya suddenly realised that she had just been the victim of a very subtle form of cross-examination.
‘I’m sorry, you shouldn’t have let me run on like that,’ she said, reaching for a taste from the drink bottle, her dry throat telling her she had been doing far too much talking and too little listening.
‘So you and your cousin were sort of born to the wrong set of parents, and then you swapped lives, except that you never got to live at Riverview again until now,’ Petra worked out.
‘You obviously had a far greater sentimental attachment to the farm than Kate,’ said Scott quietly. ‘It must have been quite a wrench when she sold it, but at least you knew she still owned The Pines up until five years ago.’ He sat up to face her with a smooth tightening of his internal muscles, draping one long arm over a bent knee, his other leg still outstretched. ‘Did you ever consider the possibility of buying the house yourself when she told you she was putting it on the market?’ He watched her grey eyes skate away from his and performed one of the intuitive leaps that made him such a formidable lawyer. ‘Or didn’t she tell you until after the deed was done?’
Anya shrugged, her finger tracing one of the dark red flowers at the hem of her dress where it was drawn taut across her knees. ‘It wasn’t as if I could have afforded to pay what she was asking, she knew that—’
‘But she was family.’ Petra hit the nail on the head. ‘Wouldn’t she have sold it to you on the cheap or something, if you’d told her you wanted it?’
‘It would have saved her several thousand in real estate fees for a start,’ commented Scott. ‘Did you ever ask her to give you first refusal, or hold the mortgage for you, Anya?’
‘It was her inheritance from her parents. I couldn’t expect her to forfeit that. At the time she sold she was facing a hefty bill for back taxes; she needed the money up front—’
‘You offered what you could, but it wasn’t enough,’ he guessed shrewdly. ‘Wouldn’t your parents help you out? They must be loaded.’
‘The lifestyle they lead is also extremely expensive to maintain. I’ve been self-supporting since I left school and I like it that way. Of course they’ve paid for trips for me to visit them, and are generous with gifts, but my parents and I inhabit completely separate lives. Anyway, regardless of how much money they have, it’s appallingly bad manners to treat one’s parents as if they’re a bank—’ She missed the flash of discomfort on Petra’s face, preoccupied as she was with Scott’s infuriating expression of knowing sympathy.
‘So you asked, but the folks turned you down.’
‘Will you stop trying to turn me into Little Orphan
Annie?’ she said in exasperation, stiffening at the slight hint of sympathy. ‘They would have given me the money towards an apartment in the city, but I didn’t want that. I’m perfectly happy in the house that I’ve got! The Pines would have been way too big for me, and I never could have afforded the renovations it obviously needed on top of everything else—’
‘So you don’t resent me for owning it?’
