Page 2 of Hidden Gem
Shasa was at work, but she’d promised to check in with Tanya.
Marnie dropped her phone on the passenger seat. Tanya would be fine, but what about her? As she turned the key in the ignition, pain shot through her fingers. Panic fluttered around her stomach like a deranged moth searching for light. This is why she had to get on the road and just drive.
Three hours later, she stared at the motorway stretching ahead of her. The long drive had rendered her bottom numb, but her mind remained restless. Her phone buzzed to life on the front seat. She glanced at it, deciding it was time for a break. Spotting a rest stop ahead, she pulled over.
Stretching her aching fingers, she picked up the phone. Tom. As she read the text, her breath caught in her throat.
Cancel everything, Mum!!! You’re my plus one for a gala at the Beehive! This Saturday, 8pm. They chose my painting!!! Please tell me you can make it. Tanya said you’re driving this way.
Marnie stared at the words, her chest swelling. She didn’t notice her tears until one fell on the screen, blurring the words. Her 20-year-old son’s artwork had been chosen among hundreds to be displayed at an event in the parliament building, known by locals as the Beehive.
This Saturday? The timing couldn’t be worse. Technically, the cabin she’d booked was only an hour’s drive from Wellington, and the Beehive. She was driving in the right direction, but for the wrong reason. She’d planned to hole up in the cabin in her sweatpants for a week to work on her next book. She could hardly wait to light up the fireplace and curl up on what, based on the photos, looked like a very comfortable couch. She wasn’t prepared for a gala. She wasn’t even prepared for an upmarket mall.
Marnie stared at the rain-soaked vista of grass and powerlines along the main road. She’d already passed the higher ground of Tongariro National Park. No more mountain tops in the horizon, only endless, rain-beaten grass dotted by large trees, with cows grazing in the distance. The late summer mugginess had shifted to autumn’s constant wind and rain. Unseasonably cold, they said. Miserable. It suited her mood.
The swelling and pain in her fingers each morning wasn’t just the result of too much keyboard time. She’d been diagnosed with early onset arthritis, and she was only 39. Her doctor had reassured her it was treatable, and she was lucky to get diagnosed early, but so far, the drugs hadn’t made any difference to the constant pain and swelling in her fingers, elbows and ankles. She felt jealous of the ladies in her writing group dealing with the far more common and more easily manageable osteoarthritis. If it had to happen, why couldn’t she get that in her sixties like everyone else? Why did she have to get the rare, aggressive disease? And why this early?
Since the divorce, she’d wasted five years hibernating, gathering courage to join the dating scene. With relatively smooth skin, she looked younger than her years. She had a bit of extra padding, but nothing truly drooped yet. She’d been on a diet, planning to reinvent herself. Once she worked up the courage, she’d wear something a bit more eye-catching, and put herself out there. She’d even joined the gym and done whatever Sergei, her ex-army Serbian trainer with a wonderful talent for barking orders, told her to do, surprising herself by sticking to the routine for months.
Now she had a rather nice waistline and a thigh gap – if she wore special tights and stuck her bum out, which probably didn’t count as a true thigh gap. Why did a grown woman need such a thing anyway? To let flies through without circling your bottom? Either way, toning her thighs felt like a waste of time. How could she keep up her exercise routine with aching joints? She wasn’t a masochist. If the pain forced her to permanently curl up under a blanket, she’d lose all the progress.
Marnie sighed, trying to shake off the dark thoughts. Nobody could avoid aging, but she didn’t want to do this alone. You were meant to find your soulmate in your vital youth, right? Like the way she’d been when she’d found Steve – two rosy-cheeked high school students. If only that had worked out.
Marnie dropped the phone in her lap and massaged her aching fingers, trying to warm them up. She tilted her hands in the cool daylight. Did they look swollen? Was it getting worse? She’d stopped at a pharmacy on the way and picked up her prescription and a pile of supplements the lovely pharmacist had recommended. Anti-aging. Anti-something-else. Despite the recurring waves of desperation, she wasn’t giving up. Not yet.
Shasa, her best friend was six years younger, still high on the new love she’d found with Mac, happily planning a wedding. Marnie was her maid of honour. She planned to tell everyone about her diagnosis later, when she’d had a chance to digest the news. There was no need to spread the anti-joy just yet. Shasa deserved another week of happy wedding preparations without worrying about whether her maid-of-honour could stand in heels.
Marnie sank into the driver’s seat, tucking her unruly curls behind her ears. They’d dried on the way, fluffing into a soft cloud around her face, like a clown who’d missed a haircut. The phone slipped between her thighs, and she fished it out, staring at the text.
She had to reply to Tom. His lovely gesture reminded her of the big-hearted boy he’d been all those years ago, sharing his lunchbox with schoolmates, sometimes to the point that he came home hungry. Sweet and handsome, he could have his pick of potential dates, but he wanted to take his mother. Marnie shook her head in disbelief, re-reading the message. If she said no, he’d be free to ask someone else, someone his own age who looked good in a cocktail dress and could hold a champagne glass without joint paint.
But before she could form her reply, her phone pinged again.
I know you’ll be worried about what to wear, so I booked a stylist. It’s all paid for, including the clothes. Non-refundable. So, get here by 10am Saturday. I’m counting on you.
Tom had done well with commissions lately, but how could he afford this? How much did a stylist cost?
Marnie took a deep breath and considered her options. It was Friday. She could go to the cabin, stay for one night, then make her way to Wellington on Saturday morning. Maybe she could do this. Tom only needed her for one night. She’d get dolled up, bound with whale-bone corsets or whatever they needed to do to make her presentable, and the next day she’d return to her remote cabin for almost a week of uninterrupted hiding, just as she’d planned.
This was such a big deal for Tom. She had to put her troubles aside and enjoy it. Which meant she had to make some arrangements. Step one – book a hotel room in the city for Saturday night. She couldn’t drive back to the cabin in the middle of the night, possibly tipsy. Step two– comfortable shoes. Maybe the stylist Tom had found could help her with that.
The idea of being dressed up by someone else made her stomach lurch but she fixed her mind on the positive. This could be her last hurrah, her one glamorous night before she shifted her focus on getting well. A tiny flicker of excitement entered her mind, like a pinprick of light that gradually grew brighter. She’d find a way forward and enjoy what she could.
Marnie wiped another tear off her phone screen and typed,
So proud of you!!! I’m on my way.
