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The Girl Below(20)

By:Bianca Zander


Alana’s friends—Chris, Mike, and Steve—materialized in identical navy blue suits and one second after they were introduced to me, I forgot which of them was which. The one who made Alana blush I guessed was the bloke from work she fancied, but that didn’t tell me his name, and soon I was left to entertain the other two when she and her beau drifted away. Of the two left behind, one was taller and heavier, with a wider chin, but both had cropped brown hair, clear skin, and pale eyes—clean, good-looking blokes, the kind you took home to mother, if you had one.

Next to them I felt like a backpacker who’d been dragged off the street and charitably given a beer, but they seemed to find me fascinating, and raised their eyebrows in amused surprise at everything I said, no matter how inane. It took me a while to realize they were partly laughing at my accent, an odd combination of deep Kiwi and West London posh that flummoxed almost everyone. Partly laughing at me, but not wholly. The taller one soon announced that he’d been to New Zealand and had “totally fallen in love with the place”—a line I’d heard before from a dozen English kids on their gap year. Because I didn’t know them, and it was easier, I played along with the version of New Zealand they had in their minds and found myself banging on like a tour guide about black-water rafting, tandem skydiving, nude bungee jumping, and a host of other extreme activities I had never participated in. I didn’t tell them I preferred bars to beaches, that I had never been to the South Island, except for a night in Christchurch, or that my experience of the beautiful, unspoiled landscape was that in a nanosecond it could switch to empty and oppressive—a Gothic cathedral without a congregation. At other times, the cities seemed so new they were barely there.

On one of my last mornings in Auckland, I had gotten up early and gone for a drive before the sun came up. It was a Sunday, and the streets near where I lived were still asleep, bathed in weak gray light, everything hazy, undefined. As I drove it looked to me as though all the buildings and cars were slowly fading out, and I remember thinking the time had come to depart from this place, that if I didn’t leave, I’d fade out too.

Someone bumped me from behind and spilled beer down my top, and I realized Alana’s colleagues were smiling at me in a keen way, undeterred by my sudden silence and oblivious to the gap between what I had been saying earlier and what I had been thinking.

“You should come with us,” one of them was saying. “Steve’s got a massive tent—big enough to sleep twelve people—and last year we got a wicked campsite near the main stage.”

“Yeah, mate, I’m still deaf,” said the other one, laughing. He pointed to my empty glass. “Fancy a refill?”

“Sure,” I said, and he went to the bar, leaving me alone with his friend, who was the shorter of the two. An awkward silence followed while I tried to think what to say.

“Reckon you’ll stay in London once the summer’s over?” he said.

“That was the plan,” I said. “I don’t have a return ticket.”

“Brilliant,” he said. “So you’ll be able to come to Glastonbury with us then?”

I hesitated, not wanting to tell him that I couldn’t afford to go, even if I wanted to.

“Go on,” he said. “It’ll be such a laugh.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

I hadn’t seen Alana for what was beginning to seem like hours, and I looked around the bar for her, at the same time checking out who else was there. Fewer suits; more art school types; and one or two who looked like they were in bands, or wanted to be. My eye caught on a guy who looked Icelandic—pointed elfin features, blond hair—and just as I thought he was about to turn and look in my direction, someone passed in front of him and he vanished.

“If you like, I can get you a ticket when I get mine. It’s cheaper if you get in early.” His smile was too expectant, like he wanted me to do more than just go to Glastonbury with him, and when I registered his eagerness and what he was trying to communicate, something changed in me, a switch flipped, and I took an involuntary step away from him, as though repelled. “Thanks, but I’m not sure if I can go.”

“Where’s Chris got to with our beers?” he said, his face falling briefly before becoming jovial once more. “He must be getting them from a pub down the road.”

I laughed, but it didn’t quite come off sincerely. So the other one was Chris, and he must be Steve or Mike. He was still smiling at me, a big warm-hearted smile, and the longer he grinned, the more I started to feel like a cat with its hackles up, getting ready to swipe or bolt. “Excuse me,” I said, trying to hide the fact that he was the cause of my violent reaction. “But I need to go to the bathroom.”