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“Maybe. Can you have an orgasm just by eating coleslaw?”
It’s the first time I’ve heard her giggle, and her carefree laugh is the most beautiful sound. I grin and lift my glass. “To our boys,” I say softly.
She lifts her glass. “Our boys,” she whispers, and we both take a sip. Then we continue eating.
I have to admit, it’s quite good, and it’s not long before both our plates are scraped clean. There are still some potatoes and coleslaw left, and so I fetch the bowls over, and we pick from them with forks, until she pushes them away.
“I’m going to explode,” she says with a groan.
“You’re not allowed to be full,” I tell her. I go over to the freezer, open it, and pull out a couple of tubs of Ben & Jerry’s. “Peace, love, and ice cream,” I say. “What flavor? Cookie Dough? Mint Chocolate Cookie? Or Tiramisu?” I waggle my eyebrows at her. She just looks nonplussed, and I say, “Don’t tell me you’ve never had Ben & Jerry’s?”
“Sorry.”
“Jesus. I seem to remember you do like ice cream, though?”
“Yeah…”
I close the freezer and bring all three over to her. After levering off the lids, I peel off the wrappers, then give her a spoon. “Dig in.”
She slides her spoon into the Mint Chocolate Cookie and has a mouthful. “Mmm… Oh holy shit…”
“Yeah. Ecstasy in a tub.” I pull the Cookie Dough one toward me and have a spoonful while I study her.
She takes another tub. “Tiramisu,” she reads. “That’s Italian, isn’t it?” She has a spoonful of the ice cream and sighs. “It’s lovely.”
I have a spoonful as well. “Yeah. It’s supposed to be an aphrodisiac.” Her eyebrows rise, and I add quickly, “that wasn’t why I bought it. But it’s the dessert of lovers, which is what we were.”
She studies her spoon. A touch of red appears on her cheeks.
“We’re inextricably linked now,” I say gently. “Whatever happens in the future, we’ll always be bound together by the babies. You’re very special to me because of that, and I want to know more about you, to understand you, and what’s happened to you. So, although I know it’s going to be difficult for you, I’d like you to tell me about your past.”
The sun is low over the hills behind the house, and the clouds to the east are purple and pink, while the sea is almost the same color as her hair.
She sinks her spoon into the tub. “It’s not easy for me to talk about, not just to you, but to anyone. I’m used to dealing with things on my own. My upbringing was… unusual, shall we say, and nobody has ever understood what I’ve been through. I’m not saying that to be dramatic. It’s the truth, that’s all. It sounds fantastic—and by that I mean unbelievable or incredible. Even I have trouble believing it at times.”
“Start at the beginning. You told me that your dad was married to a woman called Greta.”
“Yeah. She’d been married before and had two girls—my stepsisters, Nancy and Petra. My dad met my mother when he was in Christchurch. He was a paper salesman, and he went down there for a conference. Mum was working in the hotel where the conference was held. She was serving the food, and they got chatting. Eventually, he asked her back to his room. They spent the night together. The following day, he went back to Auckland.”
“So you were conceived after a one-night stand?”
“Ironic, huh? He’d given her his phone number at the hotel so she could text him when she’d finished her shift. When she found out she was pregnant, she called him. He wasn’t happy. In the beginning, he said he didn’t want to have anything to do with her or the baby. But she saw a solicitor, and when I was born, the solicitor made sure that Dad paid child support. He didn’t tell Greta that he’d had an affair, and he paid the child support in secret for twelve years.”
“Did you ever see him?”
“Yes. Once. He came down for another conference, and Mum took me to see him at the hotel. I was… six, I think. I remember them arguing. Mum crying. We left pretty quickly.”
“She never remarried?”
She shakes her head. “She was born in Ireland, and she came here with a Kiwi guy she met in Dublin. They lived together for two years. When they broke up, she stayed because she couldn’t afford the flight back.”
“Couldn’t she ask her parents to help?”
“She was estranged from her father. He was furious when she left, and he refused to talk to her, right to the end. She was resentful of that and refused to tell him she couldn’t afford the flight. She used to tell me about her life over there. Sometimes she’d get wistful, and cry.”
She sighs. “Then, in 2011, the earthquake happened. Mum was working in one of the buildings that collapsed, and apparently she died instantly. I was at school. Our parents were called to come and pick us up, and I remember being there for hours, waiting for Mum. Then the police came.” She swallows. “They took me to stay with a foster family for about a month. They were okay, quite kind. They contacted my dad to tell him about my mum. She had no family here. No close friends. A lawyer was hired to represent me, and she told my father it would be best if I went to live with him.”
She stops talking then, and her eyes glimmer with anger.
