AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It’s a beautiful summer morning,” I reply.
Evie shakes her head. “It must be so weird to have summer in July!”
“You get used to the seasons being reversed,” I tell them. “Christmas in winter wasn’t as strange as I thought, because our cards Down Under tend to feature wintry scenes despite it being in summer. And it makes sense that Easter takes place in spring here, with all the lambs and chicks being born.”
“I guess,” Evie says. “But Halloween in autumn? That’s just weird.”
I smile. I can’t imagine that either Evie or Chrissie would take to living in England. There’s a tendency for Kiwis to think of the English like cousins because so many of us have relatives back in the UK, but the fact is that the two cultures are very different.
Chrissie is thirty-three and, like me, a schoolteacher, although she teaches science at a large secondary school, which is a world away from my position teaching five-year-olds at a tiny Devon primary school. Evie is twenty-seven and a police officer, bossy and no-nonsense. They’re both quite frank and outspoken, and I think they’d struggle with the way most English people are reticent and reserved.
“Where’s Abigail?” I ask, referring to our oldest sister.
“She’s in the South Island with Sean at the moment,” Evie says. “They decided to have a weekend away to celebrate their third wedding anniversary, so she won’t make it tonight.”
“Oh, that’s a shame. Have they taken Robin with them?” Their little boy is eight months old.
“No, they’ve left him with Mum and Dad,” Chrissie replies.
“I can’t wait to see him,” I say longingly. Robin is my first nephew, and I’m desperate for a cuddle.
“Not long now,” Evie says cheerfully. “It’ll be great to see you. We’ve missed you so much.”
“Yeah, me too. It’s going to be such fun. Hey, do you know if Titus is organizing something for Oliver?”
Chrissie shrugs. Evie says, “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. I’ve just got a message from him asking if I’m free for a Zoom call tonight. I assumed it was something to do with the wedding.”
“Are they having a stag do?” Evie asks Chrissie.
“Not as such. Hux says he didn’t want one,” she says. Even though his first name is Oliver, everyone calls him Huxley or Hux, except me. It always feels odd to me, especially as my surname is Huxley too. “He says he’s too respectable,” she adds. Evie and I snort. Chrissie grins. “When we go to Lake Tekapo, the night before the wedding, the guys and the girls are having some kind of separate wine and whisky event. That’s all he wanted, as far as I know. And Mack’s organizing it, so it’s nothing to do with Titus.”
“Hmm.” Now I’m puzzled. “What do you know about him?”
“He’s got a big knob,” Evie says.
My eyebrows shoot up as Chrissie bursts out laughing. “Jesus,” I say. “Evie!”
“What?” she grins. “You asked.”
“I meant, you know, his personality, what he does for a living.”
“Oh… sorry.”
“How do you know how big his knob is, anyway?” Chrissie asks. “I didn’t think you were in the knob business.”
“Claire referred to it once,” Evie says, ignoring the jibe, used to her sister’s teasing about her sexuality. “She’s his ex,” she explains to me. “They were together for a couple of years, but they broke up a while ago. I met her at Huxley’s club one evening. She was absolutely out of her tree, and she told us she called his dick ‘Sir Richard’ because it was so big.”
“Oh my God,” I say, as Chrissie dissolves into giggles. “Now I’m not going to be able to think about anything else while I’m talking to him.”
“I wonder what he wants,” Evie says curiously.
“He works with computers, doesn’t he?” I ask.
“He doesn’t just work with computers,” Chrissie says. “He’s the CEO of NZAI. New Zealand Artificial Intelligence?”
“Oh. Wow.”
