Page 99 of To Hell With It

I thought you wanted me to?

No, I just wondered, that’s all.

Do you want your second challenge?

What is it?

I’ll send you the link.

Why can’t you just tell me?

I’ll send you the link, Pearl.

A short moment later my phone pinged and everything I thought I’d be able to take on crumbled again.

You’re going to Roy’s Peak. You can fly from Rotorua to Wanaka. The flight details are in the link. Postcode for accommodation is here.

* * *

I took a sleeping tablet (I bought one from the pharmacy) and slept the entire flight from Rotorua to Wanaka.

ChapterForty-Nine

Ihad to get a taxi from the airport. It was a people carrier, actually, and I had to share with three other people – a couple that introduced themselves as Rob and Ruth, and a man called Tim.

I couldn’t get Rob and Ruth’s names out of my head. They sounded like some sort of daytime television programme,TheRob and Ruth Show, Wake Up with Rob and Ruth, Today with Rob and Ruth.They talked at me and Tim the entire time, just like TV hosts, except they didn’t ask any questions, and by the time they’d finished I knew their entire life story backwards.

They were having a baby through a surrogate becauseRuth is forty and the risks of twins increase with age. They desperately wanted a sister for their little girl named Emily (what were the chances?) who was eleven and it had to be a sister because they preferredgirlsoverboys.

Tim looked as awkward as I felt, and I could tell he wanted Rob and Ruth to shut up as much as I did. He didn’t give much away, he kept his answers short when interrogated by Rob, but he did say he planned on moving from the North Island to the South Island as soon as possible, which made me wonder why.

Tim appeared older than he probably was. His blonde hair was greying ever so slightly around the edges of his ears, and his stubble covered most of his face, but I could still see the sad lines of his mouth underneath.

To distract myself from the fact I was sharing a car with three complete strangers, I tried to work out what was making Tim so sad. A long-lost lover, perhaps? Or maybe he was a man on the run? Or maybe he was ill and fulfilling his dying wish to live on the South Island? It was like what I did in the graveyard with Una when we read the gravestones and imagined their lives gone by, only Tim was still alive.

By the time we got into Wanaka (and it only took nine minutes), I felt like I’d done a long-haul flight and thanked Jesus that I wouldn’t have to listen to or see Rob and bloody Ruth ever again. I felt sad about Tim though and hoped he found what he was looking for. Or maybe he wasn’t looking for anything. Maybe it was just me looking for something?

Tim was dropped off first – he got out in the town and grunted a goodbye to us, although it might have been to the taxi driver, I couldn’t be sure – and I was left with Rob and Ruth, who it seemed had finally run out of things to talk about, thank God.

As soon as Tim was out of sight, I pulled my sanitiser from my back pocket and covered my hands – usually I would hide it, like a dirty secret (or a clean one in my case) but I didn’t care what Rob and Ruth thought of me, seeing as they didn’t care what anyone else thought of them. They didn’t ask me one question about me and I was glad. When they finally got out, I said a reluctant goodbye and silently hoped their surrogate had twin boys.

A moment later, the taxi pulled into a quiet residential street and stopped outside a bright yellow house with black wooden windows. On the gate was a sign with the words,Irish Eyes Lodge.

* * *

I wondered if Niall had done that deliberately, it couldn’t have been a coincidence with the name. The inside was just as bright as the outside, with an open hallway that let the light bounce off the walls. There were some leaflets spread out on a wooden table and a vase of yellow-white lilies that filled the air with vanilla and honey.

‘Hello.’ A woman with short chestnut hair appeared from out of nowhere. ‘Can I help?’

‘Do you have a room available?’ I asked.

‘We most certainly do, just for you?’ she said cheerfully.

‘Yes.’ I nodded.

‘How long are you here?’

‘I don’t actually know,’ I hesitated. ‘I’m meant to be going up Roy’s Peak, is it far?’

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