I feel bereft.
‘But finding the source should solve the problem,’ I say, my voice wobbling.
‘I think it will,’ says Miriam, with comforting authority. ‘Eventually. It’s a long road.’
‘I need to talk to Stella,’ I say, starting out.
Epilogue
‘What made you start getting it together?’ I ask Stella, weeks and weeks later. We are lying on her bed, watching television, talking. We talk a lot now, about everything — there’s years to make up for.
She is very still, thinking. ‘Thinking I might lose you, too,’ she says. ‘I just suddenly thought, enough is enough. Shape up, Stella. And then I met Paul. Good things do happen.’
I thought about Jem. ‘But it’s so easy to stuff them up,’ I say.
‘I know all about that,’ says Stella.
‘Yes,’ I say, rolling my eyes at her. I still feel mad about Freddy from time to time.
‘You should ring him,’ she says.
‘Who?’
‘Jem.’
‘I couldn’t.’
‘When it was all over between me and Laurie,’ says Stella, grimacing at the memory, ‘Freddy wanted to try again — you know that. I said no way, not because I didn’t want to — I did in a way — but I was too ashamed, too proud. Couldn’t forgive myself.’ She leans on her elbow, looking at me. ‘The point is, you may have made some of my mistakes, but you don’t have to make all of them. If you get me.’
‘I thought I was turning into a feeble version of you in a bad year.’
‘Certainly been a few of those,’ she says. ‘Bad years, that is.’
‘I couldn’t bear it,’ I say, ‘having done the same dumb thing as you. Actually, I couldn’t bear you.’
I can say this sort of thing to her now.
‘I’m sure you’ll never be a complete stranger to that emotion,’ says Stella, very dry. ‘Not being able to bear me.’
We laugh, that thought comfortably far off — tomorrow or the day after, next week, maybe. She still drives me nuts, of course, but we’re closer now, happier together.
‘You’re very different to me, really,’ says my mother. ‘You’re a Virgo.’
‘Christ, Stella.’
‘No, seriously. You’ll do it all better. And quicker. I’m a slow learner. Ring him,’ she says.
I could ring him, I think, feeling weak at the thought.
‘What if he doesn’t want to talk to me?’ I say.
‘Only one way to find out,’ says Stella.
True, I think.
Sanctuary takes place in the early 1990s — when most households still had landlines and social media was more than a decade away. It is set in Christchurch, before the city was irrevocably changed by the 2010–11 earthquakes. Cat’s home is in the riverside suburb of Dallington, where today the quarter-acre sections, footpaths and roads have been reclaimed by nature.
Kate De Goldi writes fiction for all ages. She has been the recipient of the Katherine Mansfield Short Story Award and twice winner of the New Zealand Post Children’s Book of the Year Award. Her novel The 10 PM Question won the Corine International Book Prize in 2011 and has been translated into many languages.
Also by Kate De Goldi
Like You, Really (1994)
Love, Charlie Mike (1997)
Closed, Stranger (1999)
Clubs: A Lolly Leopold Story (2004)
Uncle Jack (2005)
Billy: A Lolly Leopold Story (2006)
The 10 PM Question (2008)
The ACB with Honora Lee (2012)
From the Cutting Room of Barney Kettle (2015)
PENGUIN
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Penguin is an imprint of the Penguin Random House group of companies, whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
First published by Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, 1996
This edition published by Penguin Random House New Zealand, 2018
Text © Kate De Goldi, 1996
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Design by Rachel Clark © Penguin Random House New Zealand
Cover image © Ryan Ladbrook/Shutterstock.com
A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand.
ISBN: 978-0-14-377201-9
THE BEGINNING
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