Daphne Clair - Dark Mirror

She stopped abruptly there. Until she said it, she hadn’t realised herself that it was a fear that had been lurking at the back of her mind.

She appeared to have stunned him, too. He stared at her for a second, then gave a harsh bark of laughter. ‘If she is, she’d better not try to lay that at my door!’

Fler felt a hot thundering of pure fury in her head. But before it could explode into action, he’d pushed himself out of the booth and stood up. Looking down at her, he said, ‘I don’t think I’ve got through to you any more than I could to your daughter. But if you want a bit of advice, here it is. Because I’m just about at the end of my patience with her. Get her off my back !’

Watching his rapid progress to the door, Fler barely restrained herself from hurling her untouched cup of coffee after him.

TANSY hadn’t objected to Fler’s plan to take her home. She didn’t want to face her flatmates yet, she said shamefacedly. Would her mother go over there and pack up some of her clothes?

It was only two weeks to the August holidays. Maybe missing that fortnight wouldn’t be too disastrous. If she didn’t go back to university after the holidays, though, she’d have no chance of passing her first-year exams.

They’d have over a month to decide, Fler thought, looking through drawers in the flat and folding undies, shirts, jeans into a bag. She hesitated over the photograph of Tansy with her father and Fler, and decided to leave it.

‘Need any help?’ One of the flatmates peeked round the door. They’d been helpful, embarrassed, subdued when Fler arrived. And anxious about Tansy. That had warmed her, their genuine concern and shock at what had nearly happened. So different, she thought, from Kyle Ranburn’s patent self-interest. ‘We had no idea!’ they’d told her, stricken at their own lack of awareness. ‘Why did she want to do that?’

Fler hadn’t told them why, respecting Tansy’s agonised plea, ‘Don’t tell them! I feel such a fool.’

Fler smiled at the girl. ‘I think I’ve found everything she’s likely to need.’

‘Don’t forget her diary.’

Diary? Tansy had never kept a diary before. Fler looked about, and the girl came into the room and plucked a thick, hard-covered volume with a small gilt lock on it from among the books on a shelf over the bed. ‘I think she’d want it. She nearly went spare once when she thought she’d lost it. We finally found it down the back of the sofa. She’d been writing it up in front of the TV. Forgot to take it back to her room. She must have been tired.’

‘Thank you.’ Fler tucked the book down into the front of the bag. ‘Do you know where she keeps the key?’

The girl shook her head. ‘Secret. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s got it on a chain around her neck.’

There had been no chain around Tansy’s neck. When she got to the hospital she’d been wearing her watch, a pair of panties and a night-shirt under the blanket that Kyle Ranburn had wrapped about her before bundling her into his car. ‘I’ll find it,’ Fler said.

‘Good luck, then.’

It wasn’t in the musical box on the dressing-table, nor on any of the cluttered shelves. Knowing her daughter’s habits, she eventually found the tiny brass key hanging on a nail inside the wardrobe. About to place it safely in her handbag, she paused, looking at the diary that it fitted. No , she said to herself firmly. Being Tansy’s mother didn’t give her the right to violate her privacy.

* * *

By the time the Toyota breasted the Brynderwyn hills and began the long descent towards the township of Waipu and the long stretch of road running by the sea at Ruakaka, Tansy was beginning to lose some of her extreme pallor.

They’d been travelling for over an hour and a half and she’d scarcely spoken two words, but now she stirred in her seat and said, ‘It seems ages since I was home.’

It had been a weekend two months ago. Fler said, ‘It seems a long time to me, too.’

In the blue distance the jagged uneven peaks of Manaia rose from the glitter of the sea. According to Maori legend the tall, commanding rocks standing stark against the sky at the summit were the petrified figures of the chief Manaia and his family. Lower and closer, the striped towers of the oil refinery at Marsden Point stood near the shore, an equally impressive modern echo.

Fler didn’t stop at Whangarei, the small northern city cradled between bush-covered hills and a tranquil harbour, but continued north along the Tutukaka Coast road that wound through softly folded farmlands latticed with stone walls, and sometimes narrowed between stands of trees or to accommodate a short bridge over a shallow stream.

Then they were down near the sea again, driving alongside a sandy stretch of coastline, climbing once more before turning down the twisting road that led to Manaaki, the big old house overlooking the sea at Hurumoana. Glancing at Tansy, Fler was sure that the girl looked more relaxed already, her eyes brighter and her shoulders less hunched.

‘Nearly home,’ Fler said.

Oh, God, she prayed, let her be all right. Please let everything be all right.

* * *

Fortunately the guest house had few visitors at this time of the year. Most of the rooms were empty, and in the neighbouring bay the motor camp with its rows of cabins was almost deserted. The sea thundered into the gap between the rocks below the house, pulling at long strings of brown seaweed that looked like dark hair streaming in the water, and turning over the fine pebbly shingle below the crescent of white sand on the tiny enclosed beach. A salty winter wind flattened the manuka growing at the edge of the cliffs and set the brittle sword-leaved flax rattling and bending before it.

Tansy settled into her old room and spent the first few days listlessly sitting on the window seat facing the garden, gazing out through the glass, an unread book or her open diary in her lap. Sometimes she pulled on a jacket and went down the cliff path to the beach, scuffing among the small grey pebbles and broken shells along the strip of sand and then sitting on the rocks to watch the foam-flecked water hurtle by.

Fler would stand at the lounge window, her heart thudding, until Tansy got up and slowly made her way over the rocks to the sand again, to climb the path to the house.

‘Don’t you worry, she’s not going to throw herself in the sea.’ Rae Topia put a comforting brown hand on Fler’s shoulder. She was the only full-time staff member that Fler kept on through the winter months, and over five years she’d become a friend as well as an employee.

Fler turned from her contemplation of the rocks and the raging water. Tansy was on her way up now, hidden by the steep drop of the cliff. ‘I can’t help worrying.’

Rae’s brown eyes were sympathetic, her comfortable figure somehow reassuring in its motherly bulk. ‘She’ll come right. You wait.’

Within a few weeks it seemed that Rae’s prediction was coming true. Tansy’s appetite improved, her cheeks began to fill out a little and take on their normal soft-rose colour, and she even laughed sometimes. One night she came into Fler’s room before her mother turned out the light, sat on the bed and said, ‘Mum, I’m sorry I worried you like that. It was a dumb thing to do.’

‘Yes, it was,’ Fler told her frankly. ‘Honestly, sweetheart, no man is worth it, believe me!’

Tansy shook her head. ‘I s’pose not,’ she said, looking down. ‘I promise I’ll never, ever do that again. But...I don’t know how I can live without him!’

Fler’s heart sank. She opened her arms, and Tansy threw herself into them and sobbed her heart out.