she said in her warm voice. ‘How about a weekend away?’

They booked a motel and we met in Rotorua. It was clear we were not to discuss the dissociation or my abject apology. The kids played on the swings in the grassy courtyard. I brought out the business plan. Costs and income and projections.

‘I’d like to borrow five thousand dollars,’ I said. I heard Max grunt. He would not meet my eye.

Mavis’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh,’ she said.

‘I know it’s a lot to ask. And I know I have no business experience, but there’s a gap in the market.’

They were not risk takers, but they agreed to think about it. Max opened a beer and went to sit by the swings to watch the girls.

‘There’s a Valentines near here,’ Mavis said. ‘All you can eat for one price.’

‘That sounds great,’ I said.

A few weeks later they had agreed to the loan. It came with a lawyer’s letter and a repayment schedule. I signed right away and went looking for a downtown location. I made a long list of every interesting magazine in the library and took down publishers’ details. I made a deal with a local distributor and within a couple months the store opened just off Vulcan Lane.

The reality was not as exciting as the set-up. I sat behind my counter and plotted marketing strategies. I strung blow-up sex dolls in the window and hung a washing line of magazines over their parts. I balanced fishbowls on plinths with a goldfish in each. It took a while, but soon I was paying back the loan and making a small living. And meeting people as I grew into my life in Auckland.

Six years on from my mother’s death, I’d almost put aside the search for my family when at last a letter came from Spain. From my mother’s husband. He told me about their lives, about my sisters’ schools and their sporting successes. He said how excited my mother had been to meet me. How disturbed she had become after my birth. ‘They bound her afterwards,’ he said.

I imagined the surge of her milk, her body primed for motherhood, every nerve ending alive for her baby. I could see the stern matron pulling the bindings tight. And I could feel the ache in her breasts, her hope receding like the tide. ‘She always considered herself to be your mother,’ he said at the end. ‘Always.’

I decided to go out that night. A neighbour would sit with the girls. A couple of women who’d come into the store had invited me to the bar at Hotel DeBrett, and I walked in and met a man.

23

Spooky action at a distance

I was early, sitting at the bar nursing a chardonnay, when he pulled up a stool.

‘Have I seen you somewhere before?’ he asked.

With the insight of that first moment, I felt his distance. There was detachment in the line of his mouth. He pressed my fingers instead of shaking my hand. I knew right away.

I would go with him.

‘Who are you?’ I asked.

‘I’m the all-weather man,’ he said.

It was a good line. It made me laugh. I thought only of sunshine and beaches. As if his presence banished all storms. When he smiled, his eyes seemed to track me, to glean the right emotion so he could imitate it. By the time my friends arrived, we were a couple.

After, when I thought about that moment, I knew I felt safe with him, the distance cemented between us. In his world, you stood by decisions, outran them or faced them down. He was so sure of everything. I lay down in his pragmatism and certitude. And I got up refreshed, the knot in my heart loosened.

Later J let it slip that he’d sat in the café across from my store and watched me. He was working nearby on a television show and he’d followed me. It made me feel special, chosen in the way adopted people are always told they are.

He began to stay with us when he was in Auckland. He could be fun and the girls enjoyed having someone else around. Single mothering was intense and he offered a respite. He paid for basic things, food and clothing, and helped with the rent.

‘We need a bigger house,’ he said one morning. He’d joined me in the sun on the front porch.

‘This is my refuge,’ I said. The idea of leaving Clarence Street was unthinkable.

‘How about we take a trip to Sydney?’

The girls went to their father for the school holidays and we went to Australia. J held my hand as the plane took off. We wandered through a downtown mall with gilded arches and designer clothing. We stopped in front of a jewellery store and he led me inside.

‘I thought we could get married,’ he said as we bent over a glass case of rings. It was more a decree than a proposal. I don’t remember agreeing. But I loved the ring. It was my first piece of jewellery.

We married in a registry office a few months later, the girls dressed in blue. I gave him a weather house I’d found in an antique shop. A hygrometer. A woman in a bonnet popped out when it was sunny. Her other half, the rainy man, remained inside, his brolly at the ready. It seemed like the perfect gift for a man for all weather.

J insisted on a bigger house and he wanted me to sell the shop. It was not making enough money. On the last morning at Clarence Street, I sat on the porch and cried. With the store gone, I was back to looking for work. Auckland City Council advertised for an event coordinator for Pasifika. The new, multicultural festival would be the largest of its kind in the world. They hired me. One thousand performers on five stages in a park in the middle of summer. The festival ran like a dream. The stress was more

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