Daphne Clair - Dark Mirror

‘I’m too old for that.’

‘Thirty-four isn’t all that old,’ fifteen-year-old Tansy had assured her endearingly. ‘And anyway, you don’t look it.’

She was thirty-seven now, and this morning she looked every day of it, she was sure. The fine lines at the corners of her eyes and on her forehead were more pronounced than usual, and there were blue shadows beneath her eyes. Even her mouth was pale. She fumbled a lipstick from the bag and used it. If Tansy woke soon, she wouldn’t want to find her mother looking as though she was in need of a hospital bed herself.

She closed the bag and went back to the bed, gazing at the oblivious girl for a few minutes, then going to the window to stare out at the view, what there was of it.

A hum of morning traffic rose from the invisible streets of Auckland. Several floors down she could see people hurrying from a car park to the hospital buildings, some of the women wearing white or green uniforms, most clutching jackets or coats against a wintry breeze, although the sun glinted off the windows of the parked cars. Between a jumble of anonymous tower blocks she glimpsed a few round-headed trees, and in the distance a wedge of blue sea.

She’d take Tansy home, she thought. Home to Northland, away from Auckland and its impersonal big-city atmosphere. Away from men like Kyle Ranburn.

Kyle Ranburn. A name that months before had begun to crop up with disturbing regularity in Tansy’s infrequent letters, her rather more frequent collect calls home. At first Fler had thought he was a fellow student. It was some time before she’d discovered he was on the staff of the university, before she had begun to be uneasy about his influence on her daughter, and Tansy’s obvious dependence on him.

Before she’d realised that her daughter was engaged in a full-blown love-affair with a man who, she became increasingly certain, was probably enjoying having an ardent, inexperienced young girl on a string but who was bound eventually to break her heart.

When Tansy was home for the May holidays, Fler had tried tactfully to voice her concern.

‘I know you think a great deal of this man,’ she said. ‘But he must be a few years older than you. What sort of person is he?’

Apparently he was some kind of demigod, from Tansy’s rapturous description. But it didn’t really tell her much.

When the eulogy appeared to be over she said, keeping her voice light, ‘I expect half of your friends have a crush on him, too, if he’s as wonderful as you say.’

‘You don’t understand,’ Tansy declared impatiently, the age-old pronouncement of youth to a parent. ‘It’s not like that at all. Kyle and I have a...a relationship.’

A relationship? Did she mean—? ‘What kind of relationship?’ she asked.

Mistake. She’d meant it to sound like a matter-of-fact woman-to-woman question. It had come out sharply, almost an accusation, definitely mother-to-possibly-wayward-daughter. ‘Are you going out together?’ she asked more casually.

‘Sometimes. Well, we don’t exactly go out much, you know. I see him in class, of course, and he takes some of the tutorials himself. But Kyle has to be careful. Discreet, you know? He couldn’t let anyone think he’s favouring me. He’s got to think of his position.’

Does he, now? Fler thought grimly. It sounded as though Tansy was quoting him. He didn’t want to be seen with her in public. That was obvious. ‘You know, it’s not exactly ethical for a lecturer to seduce one of his students,’ she said.

‘Kyle hasn’t seduced me!’

Maybe not yet, but Fler would have laid odds it was on his agenda. With the emphasis Tansy had given it, the remark was ambiguous. She asked a blunt question. ‘Are you sleeping with him?’

‘What if I am?’ Tansy flushed, looking boldly at her mother. ‘I’m over the age of consent, so there isn’t a thing you can do about it.’

That gave Fler a nasty little jolt. She said, ‘How serious is this, Tansy?’

‘I love him,’ Tansy said, her eyes wide and defiant.

As gently as she could, Fler said, ‘Darling, are you sure you’re not fooling yourself?’

Tansy had been immediately defensive and angry, and they’d had their first major quarrel in years. It had ended with Tansy in tears, accusing Fler of not wanting to let go of the apron strings, of being jealous of her daughter having a man when she didn’t, of wanting to ruin Tansy’s life as she’d wrecked her own.

Of course Fler had taken it all with a healthy pinch of salt. Tansy was still young and didn’t mean half of what she said in temper. But the accusations were a disturbing echo of her own insecurities. Maybe there was a grain of truth in them. So she’d trodden carefully from then on, wary of alienating Tansy, terribly afraid for her, and holding herself ready to be available for comfort and support when the inevitable break finally came.

Now it had, with stunning force. Never in a million years would she have expected Tansy to attempt suicide. She felt sick with shock. And guilty, too. Because she hadn’t foreseen anything like this, although she’d thought she and Tansy were close.

But mostly, she felt a hot, vengeful rage against the man who had carelessly, cruelly, for some whim or because it fed his masculine ego, brought her lovely, loving daughter to the brink of self-destruction. Quite simply, she wanted to kill him.

‘KYLE?’

Tansy’s voice was scarcely more than a whisper.

Fler instantly crossed to the bed, her anxious eyes on the gold-tipped lashes struggling to open. ‘Tansy...’ She took the slack hand again in hers, smoothed the fine hair away from the clammy forehead. ‘It’s all right, I’m here.’

Tansy’s brow briefly wrinkled. She managed to open her eyes for a moment before they closed heavily. ‘Mummy!’ The old childhood name. ‘Wha’ are you...?’

‘The hospital called me.’ The early morning call, the calm, impersonal voice on the line... ‘Your daughter has been brought into hospital...an overdose...’

‘Where’ Kyle?’ Tansy whispered.

Fler tamped down a fresh spasm of rage. Calmly she said, ‘He had to go. Don’t worry about it now.’

A tear appeared under the closed lashes and ran on to the pillow. Fler said almost fiercely, ‘Don’t cry, darling! Everything’s going to be all right. You’ll see.’

I will kill him, she thought dispassionately. One of these days I damned well will.

* * *

As a serious proposition, the resolution faded overnight. Regretfully, Fler acknowledged that she wasn’t the stuff of which murderers were made. It didn’t stop her from fantasising about doing serious harm to Kyle Ranburn. More realistically, she contemplated laying a complaint with the university authorities, but knew that her own relationship with Tansy might suffer badly from that. And what Tansy needed now was support and rest, not to be unwillingly involved in a vendetta which might well turn public.

It made her heart ache that every time she went into the room she saw the tense expectancy in Tansy’s face turn momentarily to disappointment before she put on a smile for her mother. Neither of them mentioned Kyle Ranburn again, but he was always, Fler was grimly aware, there in spirit, like a spectre at the feast.

The staff told her he hadn’t visited, and although she was sure that it was better for Tansy not to see him again she was furious all over again at his heartlessness. She covertly inspected the card on a basket of flowers that appeared on the bedside locker late on Sunday, but it was from Tansy’s flatmates.

That evening, when they had told her that Tansy would be discharged in the morning, she found him at the ward door when she was on her way out.