Du Rose latest novel – Chapter 1

“Oh, this is heaven.” Hana Du Rose lay back in her deckchair and tugged her sunglasses over her eyes. 

“Heaven.” A little girl with bouncing dark curls skipped over the wooden deck with a knitted brown horse dangling from her right hand. “Heaven.” She repeated the word on a loop, fondling the new sound with her lips and tongue and liking it. 

“Clever girl, Edin,” Hana murmured. She breathed out a heavy sigh and turned her face towards the sun’s loving rays, soaking up the heat with satisfaction. “I needed this. Five minutes’ peace.” 

Steel railings protected the child from the yawning precipice beyond the house, the distant shoreline of Port Waikato giving a hint of black sand. Edin skipped up and down the steps to the deck, muttering to the toy horse in her hand. 

Hana’s mobile phone trilled from the pocket of her shorts and she grumbled as she tugged it free. “Yeah,” she answered, recognising the caller’s identity from their image on the screen. “What’s up?”

“Nothing, my angel.” Her mother-in-law’s voice rang through the speaker and Edin stopped. She tottered towards Hana and held out her hand. 

“Nonie!” Her rosebud lips turned upwards into a beatific smile. “Talk a Nonie now.”

Hana held up her index finger to ask her to wait, grunting as Edin clambered onto her knee. The wooden supports of the deckchair groaned beneath the extra weight. “Edin wants to speak to you, Leslie.” She hissed as the child’s elbow dug into her ribs as she wriggled into position. 

“Edin peak a Nonie?” Her eyes widened and she bounced her head up and down to indicate her refusal to take no for an answer.

“One minute.” Hana wrapped her arm around the child and set the phone on the other knee. “No!” she warned as Edin lurched for it. 

“Would you like me to fetch the others from school?” Leslie’s cheerfulness crossed the distance between the hotel and the mountain with ease, her willingness to help easing a knot in Hana’s shoulders. 

“Oh, yes please!” she gushed. “I just sat down about two minutes ago. “Macky is finally asleep, so I’m trying to keep Edin outside to give him some recovery time.”

“Ah, bless my wee mokopuna,” Leslie cooed, using the Māori word for grandchild. They shared no DNA, but she’d adopted Hana’s brood without question, anyway. “How is he today?”

“Tired.” Hana dodged sideways as Edin stretched up a tentative hand and tried to snatch her sunglasses. “But his hearing is even better than last time. Phoenix dropped her cereal bowl on the kitchen floor this morning and he jumped into Logan’s arms like he thought the world had ended.”

“That’s a great sign.” Leslie grunted in the background as she heaved her overweight body down the stairs from her apartment. Hana heard the muted strains of a vacuum cleaner as the hotel staff readied the rooms for the next wave of conference guests. 

“It is a good sign,” she admitted, “not that I enjoyed cleaning up all the smashed crockery, mulched cereal and tears.”

“You’re a good girl,” Leslie soothed. “I don’t know many other wāhine who’d take on other people’s children like you do. Did Logan drive up to Auckland to attend her appeal?”

“No.” Hana cringed and eyed the wriggling child in her arms. “Can we not speak about somebody’s mother with them listening? She’s already confused.”

“Mama?” Edin pushed her forehead against Hana’s lips. “Mama, tiss.” 

Hana kissed the faint line left over from her tumble the previous week. The child healed fast but enjoyed the attention, especially from Hana’s older children. She sighed. Besides Mac, only one of the older children belonged to her. Leslie’s comment about other people’s children related to four of her eight offspring. 

Thinking of grafted families reminded her of the two adult children from her first marriage. “I meant to call Izzie this afternoon.” She peered at the phone screen and tutted. “She’ll have started work by now.”

“Did that wee one just call you, Mama?” Leslie’s voice rose on the final word. 

Hana cringed. “I don’t know how to stop her. She uses my name for a while and then when she’s around the other children, it just pops out.”

“You’re doing the best you can, kōtiro,” Leslie affirmed. “Her real ma can’t complain when you’re feeding and clothing her tāmanine for free.”

“She can and will,” Hana sighed. “I hate visiting the prison, but Logan refuses.”

Leslie’s snort shook the phone with the explosive vibration and Hana caught it as it slipped sideways off her knee. Not wanting Leslie’s opinion on Edin’s birth mother, she held the phone up to the child’s mouth, so she could regale the old woman with her burbled language. 

Hana leaned back against the striped fabric of the deckchair and observed her latest family member. Edin chatted to Leslie with complete words interspersed in nonsensical sentences. With another prison visit looming on the horizon, Hana’s chest tightened and a chill rolled over her despite the bright sunshine. “Thanks for getting the children,” she called during a momentary break in Edin’s involved storytelling. “I’ll see you in a couple of hours.” She bounced her knees and the little girl released a high giggle. “We’ll make dinner. You can stay if you’d like to?”

As Leslie killed the call, Edin bowed low over the phone screen and placed a dribbling kiss against the glass. Hana waited until she looked away to wipe it on her shorts. “What shall we make for dinner?” she asked and Edin squeezed one eye closed in concentration. She lifted the finger and thumb of her left hand and pressed them together as though making a beak. The knitted horse dangled from beneath her armpit, its ratty tail trailing flecks of cut grass and biscuit crumbs. Edin pursed her lips and jabbed at a point in mid air. Hana frowned with concentration, trying to understand her words. 

“Macaroni? Spaghetti bolognaise? Shepherd’s pie?” She listed off the limited choices, not wanting the drama and mess of pizza or a stir fry. 

“No, no.” Edin closed her eyes and her body convulsed as she tightened every muscle and gritted her teeth. She released her fists and breathed out in a whoosh as though the effort of searching for the word had exhausted her. “Heaven,” she said, her eyes bright and her grey irises dancing. “Heaven. Nonie.”

Hana wrinkled her nose and observed the child on her knee. “I’m not sure Uncle Logan would find those two concepts synonymous. How about I make macaroni cheese and we’ll just call it Heaven?”

“Yep.” Edin’s huge nod almost rocked her off Hana’s knee. 

“Fantastic.” She held out her arms and the child snuggled against her chest. Her head rose and fell with the movement of Hana’s breathing. The sun caressed their exposed skin, kissing Edin’s and attacking Hana’s porcelain tones. 

“Nonie!” Edin sat up in a rush as Hana’s phone rang. 

Roused from a gentle snooze, Hana jerked awake and the device crashed onto the deck. 

“Oh, no! Nonie!” Edin clambered from the chair and chased after the phone. Her bare toes caught the edge of the case as she bent and it skittered further across the deck. “Oh, no!” she cried, sounding like Phoenix through an uncanny twist of DNA. Her chubby fingers caught up the device and clasped it against the flowery pattern of her frock. “Heaven!” she shouted at the ringing screen. “Heaven.”

“Here, baby.” Hana held out her hand and Edin thumped the phone into her outstretched palm and stepped back. 

She stared at the unrecognised number with a frown. “Hello?” Hana activated the call and pressed the device to her ear. Eden stood in front of her, observant and alert. “Yes, this is Hana Du Rose,” she replied to the questioner. Her complexion paled, a waxen hue fading the blush of the sun on her cheeks. “What do you mean, he’s missing?” Her tone sharpened and she sat up straight, despite the sloping angle of the deckchair. Her peripheral vision blurred as she struggled to absorb the words spilling from the phone and into her ear. “He’s missing.” She dug the knuckles of her left fist into her eyes and clattered the sunglasses. They fell to the ground and Edin swooped to claim them. Hana’s heart thudded in her chest and she gave a fleeting thought to the pace maker buried beneath her left collar bone.

“Look, Mama.” Edin grinned from behind the sun glasses. She’d perched them on the end of her nose and given herself the appearance of a bug with enormous eyes. 

The call ended and Hana dipped forward in the chair, shoving her head between her knees to discourage the pounding in her ear drums. “No,” she hissed, her throat strangling the word. “Please, no.”