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‘All right.’ Karl’s hand tightened. ‘But first you have to listen to me. Please—it’s important. To me—to you…and to him.’
That stayed her. She looked at him with sad eyes that made his tanned skin pale under the reddening contusions.
‘I know…I’m despicable,’ he said jerkily. ‘He was right not to trust me. Katy and I—that would have been a bust anyway. It was like, you know, an ego trip for me. I got off on having her treat me like I was some kind of subversive hero. As much of a big shot as her brother.’ He spoke in sharp, staccato bursts, pushing the confession out. ‘But I wasn’t, and he knew that. All he had to do was goad me into overplaying my hand and he knew I’d crash and burn. I was bitter over that, and you know how good I am about carrying a grudge—I even refused to come to your wedding.
‘I was glad when you disappeared, and seeing him go crazy trying to find you—especially when he didn’t believe that I didn’t know where you were—well, that was like payback time!’ In spite of his contrition, there was a gleam of remembered spite in the brown eyes. ‘Then later, when that postcard you sent caught up with me, well, I guess I enjoyed the idea of secretly putting one over on him. And I could see you were so happy here, so I convinced myself that not saying anything was for the best…only that was self-serving, too, because of the money—’
‘Oh, God, Karl, did he tell you about that?” she choked out. ‘How I stole from him?’
‘No, you didn’t—’
‘I just found the case of money up in the cupboard.’
‘It was me. I took it. You called me to come and see you that day. Flint was in Wellington for a two-day auction and you were upset, talking about how unhappy you were and how you wanted to get away somewhere and think for a few days. I told you I was going to Sydney on a selling trip that night and you said you’d come along, so I booked an extra ticket from your bedroom phone while you threw some things in a bag.
‘You were so distracted you were packing all sorts of silly stuff and then, when you got a bundle of junk out of the safe with your passport, you just left it wide open. I saw the money there and thought serves the bastard right! So I shovelled the lot into one of your bags before I left. You were supposed to meet me later at the airport, but you never showed up and I just thought you’d calmed down and changed your mind…until Ryan rang my motel in Sydney wanting to know if I’d heard from you.’
Ryan was right. With no emotional awareness of what Karl was telling her, Nina felt she was hearing the plot of a soap opera—a particularly bad soap opera. She did, however, have a vivid memory of getting out of a taxi stopped at a red traffic light on downtown Auckland’s waterfront road and being pursued by the angry driver for the fare as she walked towards the big sign for harbour ferries to Waiheke and Shearwater Islands.
As soon as she’d seen it, she’d known the sign was an omen. Sydney had suddenly seemed too far away. Everything had seemed remote except the certain knowledge that, if she could only get to Shearwater, see Puriri Bay again, then whatever was wrong with her life would be put right again.
‘But the money…Why didn’t you at least make sure it got back to him instead of letting him believe—’
‘How could I, without implicating myself? And anyway, I couldn’t because it wasn’t all there,’ he admitted sullenly, his words slightly muffled by the rag. ‘Didn’t you ever wonder where I got the backing to buy into this surf-wear thing?’ He read the expression on her face and shrugged.
‘Yeah, well, I suppose you would have thought that, but I’m out of the weed business for good. No, I nosed that money out the first time I came over here. I used to pick it up in instalments, like from my own private bank, whenever I came over to see you. I’m sorry, Nina. God! I know it seems I was just using this whole situation for my own ends, but there was a lot more to it than that. I really figured I owed it to you not to let you be found until you showed signs you wanted to be found.
‘And I’ve totally cleaned up my act now. I’m not even drinking booze and I haven’t touched any of that money for months. I’ve got a chance to make something of my life and I don’t want to stuff it up by having this hanging over me. At least Flint knows now that it was me. And I’ve told him I can pay it back to him in instalments—I’m really working hard and sales are booming. Don’t look like that. I’ll pay him back—all of it—I promise.’
