The Mirror Bride

A shiver ran down her spine. What she was doing was dangerous, but there was no alternative. Defiantly she pushed the letter into the slot.

Trying to banish the matter to the back of her mind-it was done, she had made the decision and now she’d just have to wait—she set off to pick Simon up from school.

As she came down the street he burst through the gateway like a prisoner released from long incarceration, a too-thin six-year-old in the throes of a growing spurt. Olivia’s eyes lingered on his bony wrists. He’d already outgrown the clothes she’d made for him at the beginning of summer, and although she had shopped carefully the year before at the winter sales, making sure that the two jerseys and the jacket were a size larger than she’d thought necessary, she suspected he was almost too big for them too.

If that letter worked, she thought wearily, she’d no longer need to worry about money to buy the shoes they both needed. If it didn’t work—well, she’d go without, and his would be bought from the op-shop.

The letter had to work.

Banishing the odd little clutch of fear in her stomach, she smiled down at Simon.

‘Hello, Liv,’ he said, incandescently delighted at being freed from school.

‘Hello, young Simon,’ she said, speaking clearly. ‘Have you had a good day?’

A year ago he used to hold her hand down the street, but she knew better than to hold it out now.

‘Mrs Adams sent a note home.’ Although belligerence darkened eyes the same colour and shape as hers, she caught a glimmer of wistfulness before he looked away.

‘Oh, Simon!’

‘I haven’t been naughty,’ he shouted, kicking a stone. ‘It’s about a trip to the beach. I said I couldn’t go but she said I had to take it home anyway.’

Both of them hated those notes—Olivia because it was so rarely that she could afford the promised trip, and Simon because his absence made him an outcast amongst his peers. Even in this poor area most families were better off then they were.

Until she’d begun saving for his ear operation she had always managed to find the money to send him away with the rest of his class. She had explained why he could no longer go, but when you weren’t much over six, and all your friends teased you about staying behind, it was difficult to comprehend the need to save money. Especially as he didn’t really understand that he was going deaf.

‘Hand it over,’ she said.

He did, but before she had a chance to read it asked, ‘Liv, why do we speak different?’

‘Differently,’ she said automatically. ‘From whom?’

‘Well, everyone. I had a fight with Sean Singleton today ’cause he said I was up myself, talking like the Poms. Are we Poms?’

‘No, we’re not English. You speak the way you do because that’s how I talk.’ She didn’t really know what to say. Although New Zealand believed itself to be a classless society, it was untrue. End up with no money and you were automatically relegated to the bottom of the heap. And if you lived on a benefit with a child and no husband you became a solo mother, the subject of smug, middle-class disdain.

Not looking at her, he mumbled, ‘Sean said I was a dummy.’

‘You know that’s not true. As soon as we get your ears fixed you’ll show Sean Singleton that you’re every bit as clever as he is. Until then, darling, try not to fight.’ A glance at his mutinous expression made her ask with a sinking heart, ‘What else happened?’

Children could be so cruel—little animals picking mercilessly on anyone who was the slightest bit different. A sunny-tempered child, Simon had adored school when he first started, but it was an effort to get him there now. His teacher did what she could, but she had a big class and the school was under-resourced.

‘Nothing,’ he muttered. ‘I don’t care about Sean Singleton. I can beat him any time. Aren’t you going to read the note?’

The school was planning an overnight trip to the marine reserve at Leigh, sixty miles up the coast. Unless Drake accepted the responsibility he’d avoided these last seven years there was no way she could take money out of her bank account for a school trip. Not now, when she had no job and little hope of getting one.

Unfortunately she couldn’t tell Simon that; if Drake refused to acknowledge his obligations Simon would be all the more shattered for having had the prospect held out to him.

Olivia slipped the note into her pocket.

Simon’s eyes followed her hand. Angrily he said, ‘I knew it would cost too much.’ He hid his disappointment too well for a child of six. ‘We better go home and fold some papers.’

They spent some hours each week folding a variety of advertising pamphlets which he and Olivia delivered around the district. The money it earned used to pay for the meagre luxuries they couldn’t have afforded otherwise, but from now on it would all go towards necessities.

Olivia’s whole being rose up in hot resentment. It simply wasn’t fair that Simon should be denied most of the things his classmates took for granted, that he should live in a grotty first-floor flat with no garden except an unmown stretch of grass cluttered by a clothesline, three car bodies and a lemon tree that struggled to survive from year to year. It wasn’t fair that he had to wear clothes she made from cheap remnants or hunted for in opportunity shops and end-of-season sales. It wasn’t fair that his life should be so circumscribed, that he should be unable to take advantage of the many things New Zealand’s biggest city offered.

But then, she’d learned that nothing in this life was fair. However, she thought, firming her mouth, she had taken the first steps to redress the balance for Simon.

Back home, she sent him to put his bag away while she drew a cup of hot water from the tap and squeezed a lemon into it. Sitting down to drink it, she watched him make a sandwich, and winced at the amount of peanut butter he spread on it. She bit back the unguarded protest. Simon wasn’t greedy.

She wanted to take him places, to buy him books and toys to keep his active mind stretched—she yearned to give him some sort of future. Instead, he took their poverty for granted. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she’d been able to claim the child benefits the country provided, but she didn’t dare.

For Simon she would do anything, even sink her pride, because he was all she had.

Olivia pulled a sheet of newspaper across the table. It was about six weeks old, and she’d been lucky to get it. Brett always handed on his newspapers to her, but he very rarely bought them, preferring to get the news from the radio.

Her eyes were drawn to a photograph. Although she had spent too much of the last three days looking at it, her vision wavered, a sudden rush of blood to her head making her close her eyes.

Drake Arundell. A man she had known all her life, yet this man was a stranger.

Blinking swiftly, she forced her eyes open. Her gaze lingered on the hard face, its blunt contours set in an expression of assured authority. The seven years since she had seen him had added an air of maturity to his strong features. Power radiated from him, a power different from the untrammelled sexuality that had cut such a swathe through Springs Flat while he was growing up. Whatever had happened in those seven years had modified and strengthened the young man’s arrogance into a disciplined self-reliance.

The boldly cut mouth was now controlled into a straight, uncompromising line, while level, enigmatic eyes surveyed the world from beneath black brows that winged up at the outer corners to give a saturnine expression to his face.

Those eyes were grey-green; when he was angry the green predominated, so that they became piercing slivers of crystal. Heavy-lidded, with thick, curly black lashes that didn’t mitigate their inherent aloofness, they were astonishing eyes.

A formidable man, Drake Arundell, infinitely tougher and much more dangerous than the reckless, charismatic young man so vividly delineated in her memory. Just over six feet tall, he was in perfect proportion to his height, with a well-made smoothness of movement that satisfied the eye. He’d be—she made some quick calculations—about thirty-two, eight years older than she was.

Of course he’d be married by now. Men with his particular brand of virile masculine magnetism didn’t stay single. And when they flashed across the motor racing scene like a singularly blatant comet, attracting the attention of film stars and models and any number of beautiful women, marriage usually followed. There were probably children too.

At seventeen, Olivia had responded to his heady, aggressive confidence as helplessly as most other women. More fool her, she thought sardonically.

‘Have you got a headache?’ Simon enquired around his peanut butter sandwich. ‘You look funny.’

‘Darling, swallow everything in your mouth before you talk. No, I’m fine.’

He came over to stand beside her. ‘Who’s that?’

‘A man I used to know.’ Had known all her life. ‘He owns hotels and boats and things.’ Her voice sounded quite normal.

Drake Arundell, the news item said, had announced the opening of the Tero ski-field. Three years ago Arundell had returned to New Zealand to buy the almost moribund FunNZ empire, and with a combination of shrewd, resourceful financial ability and an intuitive understanding of the tourism business had not only brought it back to life but expanded, without setting the powerful conservation movement at his throat.

The item went on to mention his spectacular reign as a Formula One driver, when he had been prevented from winning the Drivers’ Championship only by injury. Drake Arundell had dropped out for five years before emerging to carve out an equally fast-moving career in the business world, being one of the first far-sighted enough to see the opportunity for the now world-famous eco-tours.

An unsteady wind blustered against the windows, streaking them with rain. A truck took its time about going by, changing gear with a jarring thump that rattled through Olivia’s head. Shivering, she rubbed her arms to stir the circulation.

Her eyes returned to the photograph. The last time she’d seen him Drake Arundell had been furious, his striking face cold and unyielding, his eyes narrowed and savage beneath their half-closed lids.