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“I was in trouble a lot at school. I’d been suspended three times for smoking weed, and then I fell in with a bad crowd, and got into trouble with the police. I had to attend a meeting with the school board who were going to decide whether to expel me. Grandpa died when I was twelve, so Grandma had to take me on her own. She was terrified, so our school counselor asked if there were any teachers I got on with who might attend with us. Well, I hardly ever went to school, but I did like my computer teacher, and he agreed to come.”
Rangi’s eyes are wide—I’ve never told him about this. “What did he say?”
“He stood up for me—the first time in my life anyone had done that. He said I was a good kid at heart and just needed positive role models and the opportunity to shine. He suggested they put in an application to a residential specialist school he knew of called Greenfield, and they agreed. It was the best thing he could have done. It turned my life around.”
“What was it like?”
“It’s up near Hanmer Springs, close to the mountains. It was run by a few people, but I mostly dealt with a deacon called Atticus.”
“It was a church school?”
“No, but he believed that if we give boys strong guidance and positive role models, they’ll grow up to be good men. He believed in developing kids’ self-belief and sense of worth, and concentrating on their wellbeing through these creative, recreational, and social programs. I thought it was either going to be a military-style camp or some religious school that I knew I’d hate. But it wasn’t anything like that. We went on something called adventure therapy, like a wilderness program in the mountains. We had team-building exercises, and a lot of group therapy. It sounds like bullshit, I know. We didn’t—don’t—talk in our family, and Atticus said that men should be encouraged to talk about their feelings, and our fears, hopes, and dreams.”
“You liked it there?”
“Yeah, I loved it. Atticus had a knack of helping kids discover what they were good at. When he found out I loved computers, he asked the guy who taught our IT lessons to give me extra tuition in the evenings. I just took to it and flourished. I stayed until I was eighteen, and then they encouraged me to go to university. Nobody in my family had ever gone before, and of course we had no money, but they showed me how to apply for grants and loans, and explained that I’d have to work in the evenings. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to pay all the loans back. But I studied all day and worked in a bar every evening, all the way through uni. And I met Alex and the others, and… well, you know the rest.”
“And that’s why Dad resents you?”
I nod. “I hadn’t accounted for Tall Poppy Syndrome.”
“Huh, yeah,” he says.
In New Zealand and Australia, it’s the name given to a tendency to criticize and resent those people who are successful, and it hit my family big time. Both my siblings are jealous that I had the opportunity to better myself. It doesn’t matter that I’ve worked incredibly hard to get where I am. They see it as pure luck, and even though I’ve offered to share my success with them and help them financially, both of them have refused, saying they don’t want charity, and don’t need my help.
My brother, Philip, is especially resentful. Older than me by four years, he has four children, all by different women, and he struggles to support them with the money he earns from his job driving delivery trucks around the South Island. I want to help, but you can’t force people to accept money or advice, so even though it grieves me to see him and his kids living on the edge of poverty, there’s not much I can do about it.
I do try to help Rangi where I can. We have to be careful, because if Philip discovers I’ve bought Rangi anything or given him money, he hits the roof, and Rangi’s the one who pays the price for his father’s temper. But, unknown to my siblings, I’ve opened trust funds for all my nieces and nephews for when they come of age, so I’m hopeful that Rangi will at least have some money to set himself up with whatever he wants to do once he turns eighteen.
And he’ll certainly need it if Ellie decides to keep the baby.
“Come on,” I say, “eat up, and we’ll go and get the pregnancy tests.”
Rangi sighs and tucks into his sandwich. “I wish I could have gone to somewhere like Greenfield.”
I finish my coffee, watching as he mops up some ketchup with the toast. It’s not the first time I’ve had that thought. I broached the subject with Philip once, but he soon shot me down in flames, saying his boy was doing fine and didn’t need some specialist school giving him ideas above his station. But Rangi reminds me of me at that age—he has a smart brain, but he’s caught in a never-ending cycle where he feels he has few positive options, coming from an area of high unemployment, high crime, poverty, poor health, and a less-than-great education. I’d hoped I’d be a good role model for him, but Philip is determined that Rangi won’t follow in my footsteps, and as the boy isn’t mine, there’s not much I can do, until Rangi comes of age, anyway.
This might be a turning point, though. Philip’s going to be furious that Rangi has knocked a girl up, and it might be the one thing that convinces him that Rangi might make better life choices if he went away.
First things first, though. We need to work out whether Ellie is pregnant, and if she is, what she’s going to do about it. Then we can start making decisions about their future.
As we leave the café and go out into the bright sunlight, I think about that young girl, whose whole future now rests on whether a line appears in a box on the test. I doubt that her parents are rolling in it. It’s possible that they might agree to look after the baby while Ellie goes to university and finds a career, but I very much doubt that’s going to happen.
As we walk down to the pharmacy, I think of Juliette, who did everything ‘right’—she’s smart and resourceful, she found a boyfriend with a successful job and stuck by him, she went to university and got herself a great job, and she’s done exceptionally well for herself. And yet she’s still unhappy. Life is always a struggle, but having a baby at such a young age will make it so much harder for Ellie, and not much fun for Rangi either.
The light’s too bright and it’s making my head ache. Relieved when we get to the pharmacy, I steer Rangi over to the right aisle, buy him two pregnancy tests and several packs of condoms.
“You pee on the stick and a line shows in that box if you’re pregnant,” I tell him.
“I pee on the stick?”
I think my head is going to explode. “No, I meant…” I sigh. “She does,” I say as patiently as I can, telling myself that you’re not born knowing these things. Was I ever that clueless, though? “Now fuck off and get it done. Call me when you have a result.”
We have a final bearhug and I watch him go, then turn and head toward the car park. The last thing I feel like doing is working. Was Cam there when Juliette went home? Has she spoken to him yet? What decision has she made? My heart begins racing, and my mouth goes dry. Please God, don’t let her have gone back to him. Don’t let me get so close, and then make me lose her again.
Chapter Eight
Juliette
