“A new-to-me one, that is. Once I have a license. Oh, well, can’t be helped. Lucky our new apartment is walking distance to everything. Turn left at Jetty Street, by Vogel Street Kitchen, then left again on Princes Street. You see how central we are?”
They were that. They weren’t exactly in the posh part of town, though. At the moment, we were passing the Salvation Army, with a car-hire place just ahead. I asked, “Where do you work?”
“Otago General,” she said. “Not too far up the road. Also walking distance. We’re zoned for Otago Girls, too, which is brilliant.”
“Wait,” Fruitful said. “The high school is for girls?”
“Yes,” Daisy said. “Park anywhere here, Gray. All for girls.”
“I don’t want to go to a girls’ school, though,” Fruitful said. “That’s the whole point, that we get to be different here.”
“You’ll be different enough,” Daisy said. “You’ll see. And here we are. New home. It doesn’t look like Dorian’s here yet, but he’s coming any minute. He can’t stay, but he couldn’t wait to see you both again.”
She sounded too cheerful to me. I asked, “Where, exactly?”
“Just there. The green building across the road.”
“The boarded-up one?”
“No. How would we live in a boarded-up building? In the other green one next to it. Above the used bookshop, although our flat’s at the back.” She was already climbing out, and so were Fruitful and Obedience. The dog, of course, wanted to, but I still had no lead for her. I was going to have to buy one. Like it or not, the dog was mine.
I climbed out myself and asked, “Mind if I come up for a minute, use the toilet?”
The girls looked as if I’d suggested performing a human sacrifice to bless their new flat. I said, “What, don’t men use the toilet at Mount Zion?”
Neither of them would answer that, not even Fruitful, so Daisy said, “They’re separate. Men and women.”
Why was I not surprised. “Oh,” I said. “So does this mean I use the gutter, or what? Could get me arrested, of course, so …”
“No,” Daisy said. “Of course. Come up.”
It wasn’t actually an emergency. I just wanted to see, and also to write down my phone number for her. It had occurred to me, driving here, that it was the only way I was going to see her again, or to check on the girls. Although the absent Dorian would be there, and he presumably had a phone.
Wait, though. Dorian couldn’t stay? Why not? Had Daisy even asked him to? I was willing to bet the answer was “no.”
Why the hell not, though? Did she have to do everything herself?
I told the dog, “Stay,” thought that I was going to have to stop on my way to the house for supplies for her and that it was going to make me even later back to work, and dismissed it. You did what you had to do.
I crossed the street with Daisy and the girls, letting Daisy support Fruitful, since I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be allowed to carry her this time, not in public view. How was she going to get crutches, though? How was she going to get around on that ankle? The girls garnered a couple of glances from passersby for the shapeless brown dresses, which looked like nothing so much as potato sacks without the aprons to provide some semblance of shape, plus the severely coiled mounds of hair, the lack of makeup, and the truly hideous white trainers. You’d have to go out of your way to find shoes that ugly. They were enormous.
I asked Daisy, “What about your own work?”
“I have today off,” she said. “Two days in a row. Back to work tomorrow afternoon. We’ll have to go around to the end of the street, as the buildings are attached. The entrance is around the back, and—”
She stopped like a cartoon character who’d hit a wall.
“Wait,” she said. “Oh, no.”
I said, “No keys? I wondered.”
She stared at me. “You wondered? You wondered? Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I thought you’d have sussed that out, as tight as your jeans are. Nothing in your pockets, that’s clear. I assumed you’d be meeting the landlord.”
“How could I do that?” Her arm was waving a bit. “When I don’t have my phone or know his number?”
“You’ll know where he lives, though. We could go there. Find him.”
“I don’t know where he lives. I just moved in two weeks ago.”