place, if you like. It’s central, and it’s free.”
“It’s also terrible,” I told him. “Don’t take her up on it. It’s a home for the Mole People.”
“You keep saying that,” Daisy said, “but it has two windows now, remember?”
“No worries,” Luke said, sounding as relaxed and amused as Luke Armstrong was ever going to sound. “We’ve got a place.”
“See you Saturday, then,” I said. “I’ll check with the others and get a tee time. Back to you soon.”
51
Standoff
Gray
That was all good. And then Friday was a nightmare.
To begin with, Robbie, that lead carpenter of mine, got into a stoush with his boys, and three of them downed tools and walked off the job. Two hours later, I’d switched them to the dormitory buildings and got some fellas from over there to work on the music studio. I had a serious chat with Robbie and kept my temper, but it took every bit of effort I had to do it. I’d missed my lunch, though, and the sun was bright, and by two o’clock, I was vomiting behind the ute with Xena whining anxiously from the back seat.
When I walked around the truck again, my hand on the metal to keep my balance, I found that I’d run out of migraine tablets. That second one I’d taken in Wanaka had been the last, and I hadn’t replaced it from my stash in the bedside table.
I leaned over, my hands on my knees, and tried to focus. And my mobile rang. The driver of the concrete mixer, fifteen minutes out. Twenty meters away, the two new carpenters were looking at me, their body language tentative. Hovering, like they had a question.
I rang Mum.
She said, “Oh, love, I’m sorry. I’m getting passport photos taken with the girls. Forty minutes, though, and I’ll be back home and back to you again.”
I couldn’t wait forty minutes. Not possible. The sickness was rising again like an evil tide. I barely got off the phone before I was retching again, and my dark glasses were no match for the sun that was slicing all the way to my brain.
I rang Daisy.
She answered on the second ring. Not sounding sleepy, even though she had to be. Her first words were, “Gray? All right?”
“Yeh,” I said. “No. I need some … extra migraine tablets. Uh … bedside table. Uh … can’t remember the name, sorry.” I was blanking. Zoning out. I refocused with an almighty effort.
“I’ll find them,” she said. “Coming now. Fifteen minutes. Give me the address.”
“Sorry,” I said. “You’re sleeping.”
“Don’t be stupid,” she said, and despite the pain and the nausea, I almost smiled. And then I put one careful foot in front of the other and went over to meet the concrete mixer.
Daisy
It took me a while to find Gray. First, I had to explain who I was and why I was here. Then I had to get a hard hat, and have somebody show me how to adjust it so it didn’t cover my entire head. Eventually, though, we caught up with Gray. Not on the bed in the first-aid station where he belonged. Standing to one side of an enormous, dirty-white concrete mixer making a noise loud enough to raise the dead, shouting to somebody over the din.
I touched his arm, and he turned to me, frowning. His skin had a grayish tinge to it, and lines of strain stood out on his forehead and cheeks. I held up the packet of medication, and he shouted some more at whoever it was, took the packet, punched out a tablet, swallowed it dry, and nodded at me. In dismissal.
I asked him, leaning in and shouting so he could hear me, “Did you eat?”
“No,” he said. “Never mind.”
I held up the bag I’d packed and the paper cup I’d brought. “Sandwich,” I yelled. “Also coffee.” Strong and black and plenty of it.
He made no move to take it from me. He waved a hand instead and said, “No, thanks. Go back home.”
“No,” I said. “You need to eat.”
He stared at me. “Daisy. Go home. I don’t have time for this.”
“I’m putting it in the truck,” I told him. “Where is it?”
Somebody else yelled something at him, and he took a few steps toward him and yelled back. I saw the stagger, the dragging of his leg, his attempt to correct it, and I was hustling forward again, tugging at his sleeve.
This time, when he turned to me, he looked angry. “Go home,” he said. “I’m fine.”