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Since the house didn’t have a lock-up garage her Toyota was parked under the small carport in the driveway and as they approached it Kalera’s steps slowed. Now she saw why Duncan had been so anxious to wait outside while she was busy getting ready—her rear tyre was flat! Inwardly steaming, she walked silently around the back of the car and discovered that both rear tyres were flat, thus rendering the spare tyre in the boot useless.
‘Bad luck.’ Duncan crouched down to take a closer look. ‘Do you think you might have driven over some nails?’
Kalera looked down at the taut white backside presented to her vision and was very tempted to plant her dainty foot against the straining seam and give a hefty shove.
‘Do I look that stupid?’ She boiled over. ‘I’ll tell you what I think! I think that you need a good psychiatrist to cure your Napoleon complex, that’s what! I think you’re a selfish, egotistical swine who’d murder his own mother to get his own way!’
She took a step forward as Duncan rose to his feet and tried to speak, jabbing him in the chest with her finger in staccato rhythm with her accusing words. ‘How dare you think you can get away with a cheap trick like this? I’m sick of your pathetic games of one-upmanship and sordid attempts at manipulation. And this—this juvenile behaviour is just the last straw—’
‘Uh, Mrs Martin? Kalera?’ Interrupted in mid-flow, Kalera swung around to see her neighbour from two doors down urging her angelic-faced eight-year-old twin sons up the driveway towards them.
‘Sorry to interrupt,’ the woman said awkwardly, her gaze swinging from Kalera’s red face to Duncan’s annoyed one, and then to the car behind them. She sighed. ‘But then I guess you might be able to figure out why we’ve come…Go on Jeremy—Shane.’ She urged the twins in front of her and gave them a sharp nudge when they remained silent.
Mystified, Kalera pinned on a limp smile. Her genuine affection for children had put her on easy terms with most of those in the neighbourhood, and these two were no exception.
‘What is it, guys?’
‘We’re sorry for letting down your car tyres, Mrs Martin!’ the pink-cheeked cherubs chirped in unison, and Kalera’s jaw fell open.
‘They were just imitating something they’d seen on television; they didn’t really appreciate that they were doing something very naughty,’ their mother said hastily, misinterpreting Kalera’s glassy-eyed stare. ‘They were up at the crack of dawn this morning playing cops and robbers in the front yard and I was so pleased they were letting my husband and I sleep in that I didn’t think to check what they were doing. Not that I imagined they’d get up to anything like this! And I’m afraid it wasn’t just you—they let down tyres all the way up the street. When they told me I was just floored!’
‘Boys will be boys,’ murmured Duncan, when it seemed that Kalera was going to remain embarrassingly speechless.
‘Since I have two more under five that doesn’t exactly reassure me,’ said the woman wryly, relaxing under his sympathetic smile. ‘I’m awfully sorry. We can’t afford to pay for a garage to come and fix all the cars but Don has gone out to hire an air cylinder and he’ll reinflate all the tyres to the proper pressure as soon as he can…’
When the trio had trooped on towards their next confession, Duncan turned to Kalera with an ironic tilt of his black brows.
‘You were saying…?’
‘Well, the way you’ve been carrying on lately you can’t blame me for thinking it might have been you,’ she said sulkily.
‘You were right on the money about it being juvenile behaviour,’ he responded, with a graciousness that made her feel even more surly when she recalled her volley of accusations.
She squared her shoulders and said grudgingly, ‘I suppose you want an apology.’
‘It does rather seem like the day for them,’ he said cheerfully. ‘But, don’t worry—you’ll have plenty of time to compose one on the way.’
‘The way?’
He indicated his beloved McLaren, slunk at the kerb. ‘It looks like I’ll have to give you that lift after all, doesn’t it? You mustn’t disappoint your parents by not turnin
g up for lunch!’
Since Kalera had been disappointing her parents all her life, first as a colicky baby whose failure to thrive on breast-feeding had deprived Silver Donovan of the full satisfaction of her ‘earth-mother’ phase, then as a shy child, introspective teenager and stubbornly conservative adult, she was used to fending off their fond fantasies that she would one day ‘get in touch with herself’ and strike out on some bold, creative endeavour that would utilise her hitherto totally dormant artistic talents.
Therefore it was extremely disconcerting to find herself showered with approval for turning up with Duncan in tow—or, rather, towed by Duncan.
‘Crystal Dreams?’ Duncan murmured, his eyes widening as he pulled up outside her parents’ address and read off the swirling letters painted in bright purple along the sagging overhead verandah of the dilapidated wooden building. He double-checked the crooked number above the open door of the shop, sandwiched between a seedy-looking antique store and a vegetarian restaurant, with a retro clothing store displaying a Paisley shirt and red bell-bottoms and a hairdresser’s taking up the rest of the small area of strip shopping.
‘This is your parents’ place?’ Unlike Stephen’s reaction on his first—and last—visit, Duncan’s shock held no hint of aversion. Bright with intrigued interest, his eyes rose to the faded upper storey, where a curtain blew out of an open window hung with crystal mobiles, and a profusion of pot plants and wind-chimes joined drying washing on a tiny balcony. His gaze returned to study the artistically arranged crystals, gemstone jewellery displayed cheek-by-jowl in the crammed shop window with Rastafarian beads, homeopathic remedies, New Age books and posters about upcoming Druid festivals, clairvoyants, tarot and psychic readings and gypsy fairs. ‘They own the shop—and live here, too?’
‘Thanks for the lift,’ Kalera said, squirming out of the scooped seat, vainly hoping her lack of answer would deter his curiosity. ‘My parents’ll drop me home—’
Duncan was already out of the car and halfway across the footpath. ‘Your parents are into alternative lifestyles?’ He leaned up to the window, peering intently into the chaotic interior, his breath misting the glass. ‘Groovy!’
Wild horses wouldn’t have stopped him venturing inside to explore the cluttered shelves and stampeding elephants wouldn’t have chased him out when Kalera’s parents swarmed out from the back room uttering cries of surprised welcome, her mother tall and tanned, her long hair bouncing down her back in a single fat braid and her father stocky and thickly bearded, with a grey-streaked ponytail almost as long as his wife’s.
‘Sunny! I should have known you’d turn up today—my stars predicted that someone closely related to me would make a special journey on my behalf!’ Silver crowed, her long crinkle-cotton dress fluttering as she flung her thin arms out to greet her daughter with a breath-shattering squeeze, her rows of jangling bangles snagging on the silky knit of Kalera’s top.
