LITMIR.BIZ

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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.

      * * *

      When Tansy said she was going to return to Auckland and her studies after the holiday, Fler was torn between fear and relief. The thought of Tansy dropping out of university was dismaying, but going back meant she’d be within Kyle Ranburn’s orbit again. Was Tansy ready for that? His name hadn’t been mentioned between them since that night she’d cried in her mother’s arms.

      But even if Tansy was still carrying a torch, he’d made it brutally clear that he was no longer interested. If he ever had been.

      He’d said it was all one-sided on Tansy’s part. Yet he’d admitted to taking her out ‘a couple of times’. That was probably downplaying it. So it hadn’t all been on Tansy’s side at the beginning. Not for the first time, Fler felt a swift rush of impotent anger with the man who’d carelessly, selfishly almost ruined her daughter’s life. Tansy, brought up in the north where life was slower and kinder and less sophisticated than in Auckland, must have been a pushover for an unscrupulous older man.

      The night before Tansy was to leave again, Fler resisted the temptation to persuade her to stay or to extract impossible promises to phone every day, to let her mother know immediately of the slightest problem, to look after herself and please not pine after a worthless man who didn’t want her anyway.

      Instead, as they leaned side by side on the wide rail of the veranda, both dressed in jeans and woollens after a walk on the windblown beach, she looked out at the sunlight dying on the sea and said, ‘Let me know if you need me, darling. You know I’ll always come.’

      Tansy turned and gave her a hug. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

      Fler thought that was all she was going to say, but she leaned back against the rail and, with her head bent, said almost inaudibly, ‘You think I’m an idiot, don’t you?’

      ‘Of course not!’

      ‘Well, I s’pose I am,’ Tansy muttered. ‘But...you don’t understand what it’s like!’

      Fler debated inwardly for a second. ‘I have been in love, you know,’ she said mildly.

      ‘Not like this!’

      The intensity of the statement startled Fler. But she supposed at eighteen she’d been equally intense, and just as convinced that no one else had ever felt as deeply as she did. Banishing a natural impatience at the arrogance of youth, she said, ‘I suppose everyone’s experience of love is unique. Especially first love.’

      ‘Was Daddy your first love?’

      ‘Well...yes.’ The couple of crushes she’d had in early puberty didn’t count.

      ‘And you’ve never looked at anyone else since you broke up with him, have you?’

      There hadn’t been that many for her to look at, Fler thought, apart from the fact that she’d been rather soured on men and relationships after the divorce. She certainly hadn’t been looking for a new mate. ‘Not really,’ she agreed cautiously.

      Tansy moved again, turning with a hand on the post at the top of the steps, gazing at the first bright cold stars appearing between streaky winter clouds. ‘Do you remember the first time you and Daddy kissed?’ she asked dreamily.

      ‘Yes, I do.’ Her own voice softened. It was one of her better memories. Rick had been her only lover. She hadn’t been aware then that not only was she not the first for him, but she wasn’t to be the last, either. That kiss had melted her bones, brought her budding womanhood into full flower, made her aware of the power and pleasure of sex. Rick had been no novice, and he’d enjoyed teaching her.

      Tansy said, ‘I thought I’d die, the first time Kyle kissed me. I really thought...I’d die, it was so...wonderful.’ She shivered—Fler saw it even under the bulky woollen sweater—and then wrapped her arms about herself. ‘He was so gentle with me, always,’ she murmured. ‘Then and...and later. Of course, he knew I was a virgin, that’s why.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘Men can tell, can’t they? If they’re...you know, experienced. I think it sort of frightened him, almost. Wasn’t that sweet? I told him he didn’t have to worry about it. It’s not really a problem, these days.’

      Fler firmly clamped her teeth together until her jaw ached. Her mouth felt dry. Her mind was filled with murder. ‘Did he—’ her voice sounded hoarse ‘—hurt you?’

      ‘No.’ Tansy turned round to face her, but in the dusky gloom cast by the shadow of the veranda her face was just a pale blur. ‘Have I shocked you?’

      ‘I’m not shocked.’ A lie. She felt as though someone had punched her in the stomach. ‘I’ve always said, there’s nothing you can’t tell me, Tansy. If you want to.’ She took a deep, quick breath and asked, ‘Darling, you’re not pregnant, are you?’

      For a moment she almost thought she’d shocked Tansy. There was a silence, finally broken by a blessed, normal, youthful, astonished laugh, like the old Tansy who’d had not a care in the world. ‘Oh, Mum!’ she said, giving Fler another quick hug. ‘Is that what you’ve been worrying about? No, I’m not. Definitely. And there’s no danger, I promise. I do know how to take care of myself.’

      Fler bit back a retort. She didn’t want to start sounding old and fussy and change Tansy’s confiding mood.

      But apparently the confidences were over, anyway. Tansy shivered again, with cold this time, and said, ‘Let’s go in. I need an early night.’

      * * *

      ‘I’ll have to get down to Auckland more often,’ Fler said, sharing a cup of tea in the big kitchen with Rae after putting Tansy on the bus in Whangarei. ‘I’m so afraid for her. It’s going to take her some time to get over that wretched man. Maybe I should have moved when she started at university. Bought a place in Auckland so she could live at home. She’s so young to be on her own.’

      ‘You went over all that last year,’ Rae reminded her. ‘What happened to letting her find her feet, spreading her wings, leaving the nest, et cetera?’

      Fler laughed. ‘Did I really inflict all those clichés on you?’

      Rae patted her hand. ‘You were right when you said those things. Sure she’ll make mistakes, and get her heart broken once or twice. And of course you’ll cry for her. But we can’t keep our kids from being hurt forever. Like when they were little and learning to walk, we didn’t hold their hands every minute, just picked them up when they fell over and gave them a kiss.’

      ‘Yes.’ Fler smiled. Rae was right. She’d made the decision not to move for just those reasons. Being a solo mother with an only child, she’d been aware of the danger of stifling Tansy’s independence. She had to learn to let go, yet be there when she was needed. It was a difficult balancing act.

      ‘By the way,’ Rae told her,

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