Dinner at Rose's

by Danielle Hawkins

  ‘You’re going to want to watch this wild optimism, Jose.’

  ‘I mean – you have to go, and I have to stay here, and it’s nobody’s fault so there are no hard feelings.’ I sat up and looked down at him. ‘And maybe the next time we see each other the . . .’ I paused, searching for the right words, and borrowed a phrase from Aunty Rose, ‘the circumstances will be more auspicious.’

  ‘Maybe.’ He ran a fingertip very lightly down the side of my left breast. ‘You’ve filled out very nicely, by the way.’

  ‘You too,’ I said, and he pulled me down on top of him, and we didn’t talk anymore.

  Chapter 19

  PERCY HAD SHRUNK to the size of a chihuahua and was perched on the kitchen table watching me make a bacon and egg pie. I was trying to be surreptitious about the bacon but I could tell he’d noticed, which made conversation somewhat awkward.

  ‘Put in some of those olives,’ Aunty Rose called from the next room. ‘Graeme likes olives.’

  ‘But Chrissie doesn’t,’ I answered as the oven timer went off.

  It shrilled and shrilled – and after some time I realised it sounded more like the phone. It must be Graeme to say they were running late. There was a creak as Aunty Rose’s bedroom door opened and then the sound of her footsteps hurrying past the Pink Room.

  ‘Hello?’ she said breathlessly.

  By now I had managed to fight my way up to semi-consciousness and realised there was no oven timer, no Percy, no pie and – thank Saint Peter and all the Apostles – no Graeme and Chrissie. I rolled out of bed and stumbled out into the hall.

  Aunty Rose, hairless and swathed in folds of white nightie, had reached the phone. She looked impressively ghoulish in the wavering light of the forty-watt bulb that dangled on a long flex above her head.

  ‘Slow down,’ she ordered. ‘Where are you?’ There was a pause as she listened. ‘Sweet pea, calm down. She’s just here, I’ll put her on – it’s alright, Kim.’ She held out the phone to me, her face creased with concern.

  I took the phone, shivering despite flannelette pyjamas and two pairs of socks. Aunty Rose’s hall couldn’t have been draughtier if it had been designed specifically as a wind tunnel.

  ‘J-Josie,’ Kim wept. ‘Oh, J-Jo, I’m s-sorry, I –’

  I could hardly make out the words – her breath was catching in little hysterical gasps and the music in the background was insanely loud. Some parent was going to be unhappy tomorrow when they discovered that the speakers of their stereo had blown out.

  ‘Kim!’ I roared over the din. ‘It’s alright. Where are you? I’ll come and get you, it’s okay.’

  ‘I – I shouldn’t b-be here, I –’

  She said something else, I think, but at that point a thunderous drum solo broke out. Yep, those speakers were definitely going to be toast.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Just tell me where you are, hon, and I’ll come and get you.’

  ‘J-Jonno brought me,’ she gasped. ‘But he . . . he –’ At that point she lost it entirely and sobbed.

  I always thought I was pretty easygoing, but I was abruptly filled with murderous, blazing fury. I was going to flay that little prick when I caught up with him. ‘Kim! Where are you?’

  There was a brief scuffle at the other end of the line and I had a horrendous vision of Kim being attacked by multiple drunken youths. But then a different voice said, ‘Hey, Jo, it’s Andy here.’

  I sagged with relief. ‘Andy! What on earth is going on?’

  ‘She’s a bit upset,’ said Andy unnecessarily. ‘I don’t think her mum knows she’s here, and she’s had too much to drink.’

  ‘Is she okay?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Well, except that she’s going to throw up any minute – yep. There she goes. Spewing like a maggot.’

  Hopefully all over Jonno’s guitar, which apparently was worth more than my car.

  ‘Can you keep an eye on her until I get there?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Andy cheerfully. ‘I’ll take her home. It’s a bloody awful party.’

  ‘Are you okay to drive?’

  ‘Been on ginger beer all night,’ he said. ‘Here, you’d better tell her I’m not a serial killer.’ Over the background din – by the sound of it someone was now doing shots, spurred on by the crowd – I heard him say kindly, ‘Finished chundering? Talk to Jo again – you’ll be right.’

  ‘Andy’s going to bring you home, okay?’ I shouted. ‘He’ll look after you. He’s a friend of mine.’

  ‘Not home!’ said Kim hysterically. ‘Josie! Not h-home . . .’

  ‘Okay, Kim. Here. Aunty Rose’s.’

  ‘And you c-can’t tell Matt!’

  I was surprised at the panic in her voice. Her brother wasn’t going to be thrilled about this evening’s performance but he’s really not that scary. ‘Okay. Okay, just go with Andy.’

  Aunty Rose, her nightie billowing in the draught, stalked into the kitchen and bent to throw another log into the stove. ‘I suppose we should be thankful that she called,’ she said.

  I made a little trip back down the hall for Aunty Rose’s dressing-gown, the orange hat and a pair of woolly socks. Re-entering the kitchen I passed them over and switched on the kettle. ‘And I think Jonno’s going to be a thing of the past, which can only be good.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  I shook my head. ‘No idea. Probably took her there and then went off with someone else. Poor Kim.’

  Ten minutes later we heard the snarl of Andy’s company car climbing the hill. It woke the dogs from a sound sleep and they began to bark hysterically.

  Aunty Rose pulled the door open and shouted into the frosty darkness, ‘That’s enough!’

  It was a very small and bedraggled Kim who crept into her aunt’s kitchen. She was wearing another knee-length T-shirt over her jeans, her eyes were pink and swollen and the makeup had run so she looked like an unhappy raccoon.

  ‘I’m cold,’ she whispered, sinking onto the chaise longue and resting her head against its velvet back.

  ‘You’ll be better after a cup of tea,’ said Aunty Rose. ‘Would you like one, young man?’

  Andy had paused uncomfortably in the doorway. ‘Um,’ he said, ‘yes, please. Hey, Jo.’

  ‘Hey.’ I went across the room and kissed his cheek, which made him look even more uncomfortable. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Pleasure.’ He looked doubtfully at his hostess in her woolly hat and crimson satin dressing-gown. ‘Look, I should get out of your hair.’

  ‘What hair?’ said Aunty Rose briskly. ‘Sit down – you’re making the place look untidy. Now, Josephine, what did you do with that rather more-ish sticky chocolate thing?’

  At the mention of something sticky and chocolate Kim groaned.

  ‘Serves you right,’ I told her.

  ‘Really, Kim, why anyone would choose to feel nauseous is beyond me,’ Aunty Rose remarked.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered piteously. ‘Aunty Rose, I’m sorry.’

  ‘When I was your age,’ said Aunty Rose, ‘we nursing students used to place intravenous catheters and tape them in before we went out on the ran-tan. And then when we got home we would run in a litre of saline before bed – marvellous hangover prevention.’

  ‘Awesome,’ said Andy.

  ‘It backfired once. The cap came off my catheter and I bled all over someone’s carpet. It looked like the scene of an axe murder.’ She smiled nostalgically, and then looked at her niece, her expression stern. ‘However, even if I had a catheter, I haven’t put one in for twenty years, so you’d better drink a litre of water and take two paracetamol.’

  Kim curled herself into a miserable ball and sobbed gently. Good, I thought, pouring cups of tea, but Andy went and sat beside her.

  ‘Hey,’ he said gently, ‘you’re okay. No-one’s mad at you.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ I said, and received a very reproachful look.

  ‘Don’t listen to Jo,’ said Andy. ‘I�
��ve seen her so drunk she could hardly stand up, teaching people the mamba.’

  That treacherous rat-fink – he couldn’t talk. That was the evening of the gin and chocolate milk, and he had demonstrated his own special interpretation of River-dance, which had ended when he fell over a chair.

  ‘Mambo,’ I corrected him. ‘The mamba being a type of snake.’

  ‘Whatever,’ said Andy. ‘The point is that you do dumb things too.’

  ‘Be that as it may,’ said Aunty Rose, ‘Josephine is neither eighteen years old nor sneaking off to a party without telling her mother where she is.’

  ‘I keep saying I’m sorry,’ Kim muttered.

  ‘Where does your mother think you are?’

  ‘Rachel’s. Are – are you going to tell her?’

  Aunty Rose sighed. ‘I expect not,’ she said. ‘Although I should.’ She accepted her tea. ‘Thank you, Josephine.’

  ‘And please don’t tell Matt.’

  Outside the dogs began their welcome chorus – they were having a busy night. I passed Kim a mug and said, ‘You can tell him yourself.’

  Matt’s ute gave its characteristic unhealthy splutter as it stopped. Kim jumped about a foot and burst into fresh tears, slopping tea over her jeans.

  ‘Asked you not to go to this party, huh?’ I said.

  ‘Y-yes . . .’ The tea wobbled again and Andy sensibly took it out of her hand.

  ‘Oh, Kim,’ sighed Aunty Rose.

  Matt opened the kitchen door and stared at his sister. His hair was rumpled from sleep, his sweatshirt on inside out and his lips folded in a grim line. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him angrier; not even on the terrible day I dropped his new fishing reel and filled its delicate innards with sand.

  ‘You’re alive, then,’ he snapped.

  ‘Matt, I didn’t mean to,’ she whispered.

  ‘You didn’t mean to be at a party you promised me you wouldn’t go to, where you threw up all over Brian Mallard and then pissed off with some random bloke?’

  ‘I’m sorry!’ Kim cried.

  ‘I couldn’t give a flying fuck whether or not you’re sorry!’ He was nearly incandescent with rage. ‘I’ve just been rung by Brian and driven halfway to Orua to be told by that little prick of a boyfriend of yours that you’ve left with some unknown man. You weren’t answering your phone – I was on my way home to see if you were at Mum’s before I called the police. For God’s sake, Kim!’

  Kim hid her face in a sofa cushion and sobbed. Her brother looked at her for a second, turned on his heel and went out of the house, closing the kitchen door behind him with an exaggerated softness that was far more shocking than a slam would have been.

  There was an awed hush in the room, broken only when the engine of Matt’s ancient ute coughed into life.

  Aunty Rose sighed and stood up, abandoning her cup of tea. ‘I’m going back to bed,’ she said. ‘You can sleep in the end room, Kim. The bed’s not made up but there are blankets in the cupboard.’ She nodded to Andy on her way out of the kitchen. ‘Thank you for returning her.’

  I fished in a drawer for Panadol, filled the largest glass I could find with water and carried it to Kim. ‘Come on, stop it. You’ll make yourself sick.’

  From the depths of the cushion came a strangled gulping sound as Kim made a truly heroic effort to pull herself together. I was touched despite myself and added more kindly, ‘He’s mostly mad because you scared him, Kimlet; he’ll have settled down by tomorrow.’

  ‘I –’ Kim gasped. ‘I’m so s-sorry, Josie.’

  ‘We’ve all done it,’ Andy told her, and patted her shoulder awkwardly.

  ‘But Matt n-never tells me what to do, and he asked me specially not to go because the guy whose party it was is a crazy druggie, and I – I did anyway!’ she wailed.

  ‘Well, why did you?’ I asked.

  ‘Jonno said I was a silly little k-kid, and that he really wanted me to go with him.’ She wiped her wet face on one sleeve of the enormous T-shirt and added bitterly, ‘But then I found Megan Nichols giving him a blow job in one of the bedrooms.’

  Andy grinned. ‘Classy.’

  ‘It was not. It was gross.’

  ‘Yep,’ I agreed, handing her the glass and two tablets. ‘Shame you didn’t throw up on him instead of poor old Brian.’

  Chapter 20

  I WAS SEATED behind the front desk at work during Amber’s lunch break on Monday, idly looking through her extensive nail polish collection as I waited for my next appointment to arrive. Had it not been the middle of winter I’d have been tempted to try the Tangerine Dream on my toenails.

  The little bell above the door jingled and I looked up. ‘Hey.’

  ‘Hey,’ said Matt, closing the door behind him.

  ‘Which do you prefer?’ I asked, holding up two little bottles. ‘Pale pink with glitter, or bright pink without?’

  He gave it some thought. ‘Bright pink.’

  ‘Hmm,’ I said. ‘I agree. Although it’s never as nice on your nails as it is in the bottle. What’s up?’

  ‘You told me to come and make an appointment,’ he said. ‘So I am.’

  ‘Good man.’ I dropped the nail polish back into its drawer and swivelled in my seat to look at the computer screen. ‘When is good for you?’

  ‘You haven’t got a slot now?’

  I shook my head. ‘The next person’s due shortly, and the afternoon’s full. Sorry. Tomorrow, maybe – oh, no, you’re taking Aunty Rose to chemo. Wednesday?’

  ‘Afternoon would be better,’ said Matt.

  I scrolled down Wednesday’s appointment list. ‘Two?’

  ‘Okay.’

  I reached for a card to write the time on the back.

  ‘I’ll just lose it,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t forget.’

  ‘Very good,’ I said. ‘Forgiven your sister yet?’

  Matt smiled his slow smile. ‘There was a mince and cheese pie on the tractor seat this morning when I went to feed out,’ he said.

  ‘She feels really, really bad about letting you down,’ I said. Anything more pitiful than Kim at the breakfast table on Sunday morning would have been hard to imagine – tears had trickled steadily down her face and dripped into her Weet-Bix.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And at least she’s not going out with that useless little toe-rag anymore.’

  ‘Rotten little shit,’ said Matt. ‘I’ve never been so close to smashing someone’s nose into his face in my life.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, I did punch him in the stomach.’

  ‘You legend,’ I said admiringly. ‘Hard, I hope.’

  ‘Dropped him,’ he admitted.

  ‘That’s brilliant.’

  ‘I didn’t think you condoned violence, Jose.’

  ‘I make an exception for people who take their underage girlfriends to parties, get them plastered and then vanish into a back bedroom with someone else.’

  Matt looked mildly disgusted for a moment, and then brightened. ‘With any luck that means he wasn’t getting any from my baby sister. She’s far too young for that kind of carry-on.’

  ‘You hypocrite,’ I told him. ‘If I remember rightly – and I’m pretty sure I do – you were doing all kinds of dodgy things when you were Kim’s age.’

  ‘I was not!’

  ‘Well, you were lots dodgier than me.’

  ‘Jose,’ he pointed out, ‘there’d have been nuns dodgier than you were at high school.’

  ‘True,’ I admitted sadly.

  ‘Remember that New Year’s party at Wilson’s where you drank about half a can of Lion Red and fell into the wool press?’

  ‘Was that the party where you spent the whole night with Alicia Beaumont attached to your face? Man, she was annoying.’

  ‘It wasn’t her personality I was interested in,’ he said mildly.

  ‘Is she still around?’ I asked.

  Matt nodded. ‘I see her in town every now and then. She’s r
eally let herself go. And she’s got at least three kids.’

  ‘None of them yours?’

  He merely looked pained.

  ‘That was during your Kurt Cobain phase,’ I reminisced. ‘When you used to lighten your hair with Sun-In and rip holes in your jeans.’

  ‘And Aunty Rose bloody patched them up again and gave me a short back and sides.’

  ‘Did Alicia still put out when you didn’t have sexy sun-bleached hair anymore?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Matt. ‘I was awesome.’

  ‘Mm,’ I agreed, and then realised in horror that I’d said it aloud.

  He smiled widely. ‘Thanks. You’ve gone the same colour as that nail polish.’

  ‘A nice person,’ I said bitterly, ‘would pretend not to notice.’

  ‘Quite likely.’ He went across the waiting room and opened the door. ‘You were fairly awesome yourself, by the way.’

  So it was his fault that my next appointment, when she finally arrived, told me it was probably a dietary imbalance making my cheeks so red and advised me to try chelation therapy.

  AUNTY ROSE GRIPPED the arms of the brocade wing chair in the lounge and pushed herself to her feet. I was wading through the hobbits’ visit to Tom Bombadil in The Lord of the Rings and finding it even more painful than I had remembered, and I looked up to see her catch her breath with a little grunt of pain. ‘What hurts?’ I asked.

  ‘Back,’ she said through her teeth.

  ‘Can I give it a rub for you?’

  She shook her head and straightened fully with an effort. ‘It’s not a muscle problem. It wouldn’t make any difference. I shall feed it a couple of pills.’

  I grimaced in sympathy. ‘Nausea and a bad back seems a bit unfair. High or low spine?’

  ‘Low,’ said Aunty Rose.

  ‘There are a couple of stretches that might help.’

  ‘Physiotherapy is doubtless a noble profession, Josephine, but it’s unlikely to help a growth on a vertebra,’ she said drily. She went slowly out of the room, and I heard the groan and shudder of elderly plumbing as she ran the bath.

  A growth on a vertebra? Holy crap. I let my book slide to the floor, got up and fetched the portable phone from the coffee table. Stu’s phone was either turned off or the battery was flat, and it went straight to voicemail. ‘’Ullo, Stuart ’ere, leave a message and h’I will h’endeavour to get back to you.’ This week, it appeared, he was showcasing his rural Yorkshire accent – which was surprising, considering Stu thinks it would be no loss if the whole of northern Britain fell into a deep hole. I gnawed my bottom lip indecisively for a moment and then dialled Graeme’s mobile number.