his crooked inward smile, the huge black irises. There he was. She peeled the corner tabs from the page and lifted the photograph out leaving the page empty, dotted with residual glue. Abruptly, the hallway went silent – the television switched off – and she put the portfolio down, tucked the stolen photograph into the folds of her skirt and quick-stepped from the room.
Rainclouds enveloped the hills, promising the lightning storms of deep summer evenings. Dot was bunching up sheets from the washing line when Hank stumbled into the garden, gasping, a hand glued to his side.
‘You look like a stabbing victim about to utter your last words,’ she said.
‘I like your friend Dennis,’ he said when he’d recovered his breath, sweat still budding from his skin. ‘I dropped in on him. He’s very grand.’
‘I don’t know if he’d describe us as friends. He’s our landlord. I do his garden.’
‘But he came here for dinner.’
‘He’s lonely.’
‘So be his friend.’ He cocked his head and smiled at her. ‘You’d be welcome company, I’m sure.’
God, was she blushing? Hank reached for the corners of a king-size sheet and together they shook it out and folded it, coming together as though in an Elizabethan dance. Dance lessons – when was that? Early girlhood in America, prehistory – and she raised her heels stepping forward, sank her feet down slowly in their house slippers into the dewy grass and bent as far as her knees would allow into a curtsey. In the trees the birds were raucous.
‘You know what I’d really like to do here?’ Hank said. ‘Go scuba diving.’
She twiddled through the wire basket for the warm wooden pegs. Like a box of dolls. ‘Hank, has Ruth talked much about our family?’
He nodded. ‘Oh sure, that whole thing about your father. Not for a while now.’
‘What thing do you mean? The accident?’
‘Ah . . . no. I feel weird I said anything. It’s nothing.’
‘OK.’ Together they looked into the shrouded hills. ‘You know I think I would like a photo taken. If that’s all right?’ She wondered whether he’d looked in his vandalised portfolio. If he would say anything. How she would respond.
‘Hold still –’ He turned to face her, removed something from her collarbone. ‘Bit of grass. Let’s see your hands?’
She looked away as he examined them, traced his fingers over the calluses and pragmatic fingernails, her heart banging. Nerves all over her body hummed. Hank took a step closer, eyes full of evening light, his body smelling sharply from the run, and it was ridiculous how much he reminded her of another time, and she said, ‘I have to go inside.’
The dive centres up north had either closed for the season or were fully booked. Hank and Ruth announced a plan to head south for whale watching, ‘while they still could’. They were going to drive and take the ferry, and even Andrew snorting and saying, ‘Overrated,’ couldn’t dampen their enthusiasm. The screenwriter friend would join them, a last fling before the baby came. Dorothy promised to call in on his wife. ‘It’s gone so quickly,’ she said, ‘your visit.’
‘We’ll be back.’ Her sister smiled. ‘I’ve got to see your kids.’
On the day before the departure, Ruth and Dorothy dropped Hank at the screenwriter’s house for a swim and drove on to the sculpture park. An elevated wooden path extended between rimu and kauri trees. They passed a set of human figures that stood in a large half-shell, like a giant conch. Away from the sun, the air was cool and moist.
In silence they walked slowly down the side of the hill, abstract red shapes and bronze beasts rising from the first layer of bush, resembling deer or giant birds, not so much modelled as gestured at. Dot thought of the sweat welling on Hank’s skin, in the hollow of his throat. The unseasonal cold ached in her joints and she didn’t mind that Ruth seemed to be passing through the experience too quickly, ignoring the atmosphere, consigning it to recollection, doing the sculptures.
‘Incredible,’ Ruth said when they were out in the sun again, crossing an immaculate lawn towards the road. ‘So what, those are someone’s private collection? Is there any information, is there a shop?’
‘Over there,’ said Dorothy, pointing to the building that housed a gift shop and café. She had wanted to – what, to keep something of her sister but now Ruth was leaving and she was once again glossy, so controlled, and since the mention of the