Читать книгу Tiger Eyes - Robyn Donald - Страница 5

COLLAPSING bonelessly into the chair, Tansy sighed and pulled off her beret, tossing it on to the bed. Her hair sprang out around her narrow face like wildfire. It was, she thought gloomily, about the only thing about her that actually had any life to it. Too much life: completely uncontrollable and far too obvious, she kept it covered as much as possible. It contrasted brashly with the pale, scrawny, unobtrusive rest of her.

Suddenly weary, she got ready for bed, where she lay awake for too long, wondering how Rick was getting on in his self-imposed exile. And exactly what effect his mother’s illness was going to have on his life.

* * *

On her way to Lambton Quay the next morning she tried to ring the camp, but was rebuffed by the very unforthcoming man who answered. He informed her he was the cook and that everyone else was out for the day, and as she opened her mouth, hung up.

‘Damn,’ she muttered, seething with frustration. That was several dollars down the drain. Hastily she rang the university, hoping to be able to talk to Professor Paxton about grants, but he wasn’t there, and wasn’t expected in that day.

Altogether an exercise in futility.

* * *

Just before lunch she watched a limousine pull up outside a very upmarket hotel and disgorge three men. One she recognised as an important industralist, one was a quintessential yes-man, dark-suited and eager, and the third was Leo Dacre. He saw her, but apart from a quizzical lift of his brows gave no sign of recognition.

Ignoring him, she hurried on her way, but the incident dramatised the difference between them. King Cophetua and the beggar maid, she thought ironically. Except that the beggar maid had been beautiful, and the king had fallen in love with her. Young as Tansy had been when she’d read the story, she’d always wondered whether the beggar maid had really enjoyed being queen.

It wasn’t a good day; the weather was still unseasonable so there were few shoppers about, and those who had to brave the wind weren’t wanting to stop and listen. At three-thirty she let herself think wistfully of Auckland summers that started in November and went on sometimes until June.

Remember the sticky, airless humidity, too, she told herself, slipping into a rollicking Caribbean folksong with forced enthusiasm. A few people tossed coins into her guitar case. They were going to be the last; as she finished the song with a flourish she realised that the street was almost empty of people.

Lord, she hoped things picked up. Perhaps she should go north to Auckland. There were more people there. Or Queenstown...there were always tourists visiting the South Island’s lovely lakes and mountains. And where there were holidaymakers, there was a delightfully casual attitude about money.

Unfortunately it cost money to get there. Of course, she could hitch hike.

No, it wasn’t worth the risk.

She packed up and set off, telling herself that the odd sensation under her breastbone was just hunger, not disappointment nor foreboding. The guitar dragged heavily on her arm.

A moment later she decided that she might be psychic after all. A car drew up beside her and Leo Dacre said, ‘Hop in and I’ll take you for a drink somewhere.’

‘I’m on my way home.’ She was astounded at the treacherous warmth spreading through her.

‘Get in,’ he said calmly.

She shook her head.

‘I want to talk about Rick.’ He got out and opened the rear door, holding out his hand for the guitar. ‘Come on, we’ll have afternoon tea and then I’ll take you straight home.’

And even as she wondered why he had such an effect on her, she found herself handing over the instrument and getting in.

‘How long have you been busking?’ he asked as he set the car in motion.

‘Why ask me questions you already know the answers to?’ she retorted.

He sent her a slanted look from unreadable eyes. ‘What exactly do you mean by that?’

Exasperated, she glowered at him. ‘Well, you obviously put a private detective on to Rick. How else would you have found me? And I’ll bet you didn’t just stop at a name; I’m sure there’s a dossier about me somewhere.’

His hard-edged smile applauded her shrewdness. ‘You’re right, of course. Yes, I know you ran away from home and dropped completely out of sight for a year. Why did you run away?’

‘Doesn’t the dossier have it all set out for you?’

He ignored the sharp sarcasm in her question. ‘Your family say you were always difficult to control, which doesn’t match your reputation at school.’

She shrugged. ‘My foster-parents and I didn’t see eye to eye. I don’t blame them; I must have been impossible to live with.’

‘What happened to your own family?’

Tansy was beginning to realise that she was too vulnerable to this man; she needed barriers. And because she didn’t seem to be able to keep behind the ones of her own making, she decided to hand him some. However, she couldn’t resist asking, ‘Didn’t your detective find that out either?’

‘He wasn’t asked to,’ he said. ‘I know you were four when you went to live with the O’Briens, and that you lived in a social welfare institution before that.’

‘My mother was a prostitute, I believe,’ she said deliberately. ‘She didn’t look after me properly, so the welfare took me away and put me into a foster-home.’

She cast a challenging look at him, but to her surprise there was no sign of disgust or surprise in his face.

‘How old were you then?’

‘Eighteen months.’ He might as well, she thought savagely, know the whole story. It had been a shock to Tansy when Pam O’Brien hurled the truth at her during one of their battles just before she’d run away; it would be an even greater jolt to Leo Dacre, brought up with all the advantages of wealth and security. ‘She went off for the weekend with some man. Apparently a friend was supposed to come and pick me up, but she had a better offer so I stayed in the flat until the neighbours got sick of my screaming.’

He swore under his breath. ‘Humanity can be incredibly cruel,’ he said. ‘Did you ever see your mother again?’

‘No.’ Tansy didn’t want him to pity her. ‘She died a couple of years later. I don’t remember her.’

‘If you lived happily with your foster-family until you were fifteen, what happened to change things?’

Beneath her jersey Tansy’s shoulders moved uneasily. ‘We disagreed on the course my future should take,’ she said, not attempting to hide the ironic note in her voice.

‘Some disagreement.’ He waited several seconds, and, when she remained silent, said, ‘So you ran away. How did you survive that first year on the streets?’

Tansy wasn’t surprised his detective hadn’t been able to discover anything about that year. She’d dropped out, living with a woman who’d made it her life’s work to take in runaways and street kids. With a better knowledge of what could have been her future, Tansy never stopped thanking the fates that the tough, big-hearted widow had noticed the skinny, frightened girl at the railway station and taken her home.

Not only that; it was Mrs Tarawera who had lent her a guitar and suggested she busk for a living, organising an assortment of temporary sons and cousins as bodyguards for a couple of weeks to make sure no one stole her money. At Mrs Tarawera’s house Tansy had learned to be streetwise; those same ‘sons’—street kids and runaways—had taught her what to watch for and how to defend herself.

Mrs Tarawera was dead now, but she had left many living memorials in the people she had befriended and fed. Her kindness, and how much it had meant then, was one of the reasons why Tansy had taken in Rick.

And look where that generous impulse had got her, she reminded herself acidly, keeping her eyes on the road ahead as they drove up towards the Lady Norwood Rose Gardens.

‘Surprisingly easily,’ she returned lightly.

‘I admire determination.’ Skilfully, he passed a cyclist clad in yellow and black Lycra shorts who seemed hell-bent on committing suicide beneath their wheels. ‘Almost as much as I admire loyalty.’

She threw him a tolerant glance. So he thought he was going to be able to smooth-talk Rick’s whereabouts out of her. ‘Both are admirable qualities.’

‘When not taken to excess.’

She picked up the gauntlet. ‘Can one take—say, loyalty to excess?’

‘Oh, I think so.’ The car drew to a stop in the car park. As he got out, Tansy opened her door too. He asked, ‘Are you radical in your feminist beliefs?’ closing the door behind her.

She shrugged. ‘Not particularly. If it upsets you to see me get out by myself I’m quite happy to humour you.’

He laughed, the brilliant, enigmatic eyes never leaving her face. ‘I like the sharp teeth and claws,’ he said amiably.

Something tense and forbidden stirred deep inside Tansy. A dart of sensation quivered through her, altering her, changing her in subtle, unnerving ways. Gazing around, she strove to overcome the unbidden weakness.

Rosebushes, although slightly battered by wind and rain, lifted valiant, colourful heads to the sun. Because the gardens were in a basin surrounded by tree-covered hills the scent of the flowers seemed to be concentrated into a ubiquitous, overpowering fragrance. The seductive perfume wound its way into her being, at once soothing and arousing her, so that she felt like a cat with its fur stroked the wrong way, wary and alert and reckless.

‘Do you like roses?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘Scented ones, yes. And the ones that are unusual colours.’

His gaze searched her face. She avoided it by stooping to bury her nose in one particularly rich, deep gold bloom, inhaling the sultry sweetness with pleasure.

‘The bride of a friend of mine had all the roses at her new home dug out and replaced,’ he said inconsequentially.

‘Why?’

He was stroking a crimson bloom with slow, almost erotic gentleness. That strange feeling in Tansy’s inner regions melted some part of her she had never felt before. Straightening up, she looked away, trying hard to ignore the image of the same leisurely caress on her skin.

‘They were unfashionable,’ he said, a sardonic note in his voice making his opinion clear.

Tansy said curiously, ‘I didn’t know there were fashions in flowers.’

‘There are fashions in everything, if you have the time and the money to indulge them,’ he said abruptly. ‘Come on, let’s go. I’m hungry.’

So was Tansy. By the time they sat down inside the kiosk she was remembering far too clearly that she hadn’t taken time off for lunch.

To keep her mind off the man who sat opposite she let her glance wander around. Hothouse scents from the begonia house next door provided a striking contrast with the weather outside. Snatches of conversation, made piquant by their impenetrability, floated by. Tansy’s eyes lingered appreciatively on the gilded, feathery fronds of a palm, the crinkly leaves of the low plants about its base.

Everything seemed brighter, with more impact than usual. Perhaps the scent of the roses had made her slightly drunk?

Leo said idly, ‘Apropos of loyalty; surely it can be qualified by the needs of the person one is being loyal to?’

Tansy ate slowly, pretending to consider his remark. ‘If I was sure I knew what they were, perhaps,’ she finally admitted. ‘I’ve always believed that most people understand their own needs better than anyone else, however affectionate or well-meaning the other person might be.’

Leo’s mouth stretched in what was certainly not meant to be a smile. ‘So you give yourself a good reason for opting out,’ he said smoothly. ‘I suppose it satisfies your conscience, but isn’t it rather cowardly? Suppose you knew that someone was in trouble—would you just leave them to flounder along on their own?’

How much did he know? Tansy’s gaze flicked up to Leo’s face, but it gave nothing away, the regular features set into an inscrutable mask, his eyes like green glass.

Choosing her words carefully, she answered, ‘Rick knows what he’s doing, and that’s good enough for me. Why don’t you leave him to make his own way home? He will, eventually. He loves both you and his mother. Give him a chance.’

‘To find himself?’ His quick scorn and the contempt that followed made her shake inside. ‘As you did? How did you earn your living that first year, Tansy? Prostituting yourself? Stealing? No, I don’t really want to know, but do you want Rick to go through that sort of degradation?’

Mrs Tarawera had saved her from such an existence; when she saw Rick, as young and as frightened as she had been, her reaction had been instinctive.

Opening her mouth to tell Leo that his brother was not on the streets, she realised just in time how close she had come to betraying him. Thinking rapidly, she said, ‘You haven’t much faith in his basic strength of character, have you?’

If her recalcitrance irritated him he didn’t let it show. His handsome face stony and unrevealing, he said evenly, ‘So far he hasn’t given much indication of any character, except a talent for getting into trouble.’

‘Have you any idea why?’

‘Oh, I’ve no doubt it’s for the same reasons you left a perfectly adequate family. Unfocused resentment, a need to—where are you going?’

Tansy was on her feet. She had never come so close to hitting anyone in her life, and she had to get out. With a smile that showed small white teeth, she said sweetly, ‘I don’t have to listen to you rabbiting on about things you know absolutely nothing about. If you’d once climbed down off that pedestal and looked at real people for a change you might have been able to stop Rick before it was too late. Goodbye, Mr Dacre.’

He caught her up before she took two steps, his hand fastening on to her upper arm in a grip that almost numbed her wrist.

‘Let me go,’ she threatened beneath her breath, ‘or I’ll scream for help.’

His smile dazzled, a blatant contrast to the icy calculation that gleamed beneath thick lashes. ‘And if you do,’ he said just as quietly, ‘I’ll tell everyone here that we’re having a lovers’ quarrel.’

Tansy’s mouth turned down. ‘None of them would believe a word of it,’ she said tensely. ‘You and I don’t go together.’

Taunting green eyes travelled slowly from the tawny flames of hers to the too-controlled mouth, and then down the pale length of her throat. Wherever that experienced gaze rested tiny explosions of sensation left colour in their wake, stimulated shivers along her nerves. An odd heaviness settled in the pit of her stomach, a melting combination of heat and hunger.

‘Don’t be silly,’ he said softly, the words overlaid with ridicule. ‘They see a young woman so vital that sparks seem to fly from her, and a man who would give anything to capture that passion for himself.’

The cold, cynical amusement in his tone hurt; it was like a slap in the face. She said clearly, ‘Let me go, or I’ll scream the place down.’

‘Go ahead,’ he said, urging her towards the door. ‘This is the second time you’ve walked away from me. I don’t like it.’

Opening her mouth, Tansy took in a deep breath. To her utter astonishment he swung her around, bent his dark head and kissed her.

His mouth was warm and compelling. Responses rioting into overload, unable to react because it was totally unexpected, Tansy gasped while he kissed her thoroughly and with flair, holding her so closely against his lean body that she could smell the faint but unmistakable tang of male, feel the hard, masculine contours against her.

She sagged, her slight body trembling. Instantly his arms contracted even further.

Through the ringing in her ears she dimly heard laughter and scattered applause, and then she was being picked up and he was carrying her through the door. She lifted weighted eyelids to stare witlessly at austere features emphasised by the taut skin across his cheekbones, an implacable mouth curved into a mocking smile.

When at last he stopped, she sputtered, ‘I’ll kill you,’ scarlet with temper and humiliation and confusion. Furious with him for doing such a thing, she was even more incensed with herself for responding so violently.

He set her on her feet. The amusement had gone from his face, leaving it tough and forceful. ‘Don’t ever dare me again,’ he said calmly.

‘I was not—’ Tansy’s hands clenched into small but serviceable fists.

‘Oh, yes, you were.’ There was a note beneath the cool insolence of his reply that stopped her from erupting into a tantrum. ‘I don’t take kindly to being manipulated.’

With colour still stinging her skin, she stepped back, making a sudden grab at her beret. That unrestrained embrace had knocked it askew, and now the wind levered it the last few centimetres and carried it triumphantly off. Freed at last, her hair sprang out around her head in wild, defiant exuberance.

She seized a couple of handfuls and dragged it back from her face, saying violently, ‘See what you’ve done!’

‘What amazing hair,’ he said in a constricted voice. Two vertical lines appeared between his brows as he scrutinised her. ‘It crackles. Why do you keep it covered all the time?’

‘Because idiots like you feel obliged to comment on it,’ she snapped.

He grinned. ‘It’s hardly Titian red, is it?’

‘No, it’s ginger. Honest, unromantic, down-to-earth ginger. Why are we talking about my hair?’

It came out as a disconcerted wail. His gaze seemed to hold nothing but appreciation; it was as though those moments in the kiosk when he had kissed her had never happened. Except, she thought dazedly, a residue of the sensations his roving eyes and that firm, far too knowledgeable mouth had roused in her still seethed through every cell in her body, potent as cheap wine and just as bad for her.

‘It’s rather difficult not to talk about it the first time you see it uncaged,’ he said, his eyes still fixed on the riotous mass. ‘It appears to have a personality of its own.’

She flared, ‘Don’t you make fun of me.’

‘Tansy,’ he said with such relaxed assurance that she almost believed him, ‘that is the most glorious head of hair I have ever seen. I swear I’m not making fun of you.’

Her astonished eyes searched his face, finding nothing but a bewildering sincerity. The anger and excitement and tension faded, leaving her flat in the aftermath of an adrenalin rush. ‘You’ve got peculiar tastes,’ she grumbled, looking around for her beret.

It was snagged on a rose bush. Jerking it free, Leo said lightly, ‘I should throw the damned thing away. It’s a crime to keep hair like that covered.’

‘Don’t you dare.’ She almost snatched it from his hand, jamming it on to her head with defiant irritation, this time directed at herself. She had no idea what was happening to her, but she had the ominous feeling it was not going to be pleasant, and she wanted nothing more than to get out of there and away, back to her own life.

‘Come on,’ he commanded.

Tansy scowled suspiciously through her lashes.

‘I’ll take you home,’ he explained with the patient tolerance of an uncle for a rather dimwitted niece.

More than anything Tansy would have liked to tell him to go to hell, but she wasn’t in the business of cutting off her nose to spite her face. He had brought her here; he could do the decent thing and take her home.

‘Very well,’ she said ungraciously.

He didn’t speak until he had pulled up outside her flat. Then, when she went to open the car door he said absently, ‘It’s locked. Tansy, listen to me. I can see I’ve handled this all wrong. Will you come to dinner with me tonight and let me explain about Rick, and why I need to know where he is?’

Tension stiffened her jaw. ‘You’ve already done that and it doesn’t make any difference,’ she told him. ‘I can’t help you.’

His mouth compressed, but he said in the same moderate voice, ‘At least listen to me.’

‘All right.’ Her lashes flew up in shock. She didn’t intend to say that! A swift look at his hard, handsome face made her heart give a flip. Dicing with the devil was dangerous business.

‘Good,’ he said immediately, before she could take the words back. He did something on the dashboard and said, ‘The door’s open now. I’ll pick you up at seven.’

‘I’ve changed my mind,’ she said.

He grinned. ‘Tough.’

Tansy’s face sharpened. She looked him straight in his alien’s eyes and said calmly, ‘Don’t threaten me.’

‘I’m not threatening you,’ he said, sounding odiously reasonable. ‘If you haven’t got any suitable clothes, don’t worry. I’ll bring dinner with me.’

Oh, but he was clever. Tiny flakes of apricot heated her cheekbones. Chin jutting, her eyes steady, she said, ‘Don’t bother. I won’t be here.’

‘Then I’ll come in now.’

Although he was smiling, Tansy sensed an unyielding determination to have his own way. He was going to say his piece sooner or later: accepting that, she accepted that it might as well be said on neutral ground.

Not that the kiosk at the rose gardens had inhibited him at all! However, if they went out to dinner he couldn’t let slip the leash of his temper when she still refused to tell him where Rick was.

And although she didn’t dare admit it, he fascinated her. When she was with him she felt more alive than she ever had before.

She said offhandedly, ‘Oh, don’t bother, I’ll go out with you tonight. I can see I’m not going to get any peace until I do. But McDonald’s will be all right. I haven’t any formal clothes.’

His smile was twisted. ‘Wear what you’ve got on now, except for that beret. People won’t be looking at your clothes when they can see your hair.’

She shot him a last, fulminating glare, then got out of the car, slamming the door behind her. Unfortunately, it closed with the kind of solid heaviness that indicated excellent engineering and no damage done. Ignoring his laughter, Tansy stalked up the steps to her flat, her back held so stiffly her shoulders started to ache. Even safely inside she couldn’t relax until the car moved away.

She did have formal clothes, of a sort. When the music department at the university gave recitals of students’ work, each student conducted their own compositions. For those occasions she had assembled as near an approximation of conductors’ clothes as she could find. Several forays through charity shops had yielded an oldish but extremely well-cut dinner-jacket which she wore with a white shirt and tailored trousers.

At half-past six she gritted her teeth and began to dress.

The severe lines of the jacket and the ruffles down the front of the shirt camouflaged slightly too opulent breasts, and her one pair of court shoes added the extra inch and a half she needed to give her some degree of confidence. For a change she didn’t try to tame her hair. If Leo Dacre liked it so much, she thought, pushing a wilful tress back from her oddly flushed cheek, he could see it.

Except for a faint tinge of blusher along her high cheekbones and some gold eyeshadow, her skin and lips were as nature intended them. If she wore lipstick it made her mouth rather pouty and obvious. Her one luxury, the six-weekly dyeing of her pale lashes and brows, meant that her eyes were clearly defined. Fortunately they were large and dark enough to dominate a face that was too thin to be seductive.

Not, she assured herself as she turned away from the small mirror, that she wanted to be seductive. Not in the least. Brisk and businesslike—even formidable—was what she aimed for. Instead she looked short and slight and nondescript, except for her hair, which had enough character for ten people.

On the stroke of seven Leo’s knock sounded on the door, and if she had dressed to please him she would have been rewarded by his candid, unashamed survey, the slow kindle of flame in the green eyes, and the half-smile that tucked up the corners of the wide, mobile mouth.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘You scrub up well, Tansy.’

The open laughter in his tone changed her initial reaction of fury and bleak resentment to a reluctant amusement. Stung because she was so easy to manipulate, she said, ‘So do you.’

In a leather jacket over superbly cut shirt and trousers, he looked relaxed and informal, yet he was marked by an inherent sophistication that made Tansy feel suddenly young and very gauche. She was streetwise, he was worldly; there was an immense gulf between the two. Why that should disturb her she didn’t know.

He opened the car door and held it with a teasing smile that invited her to comment. Tansy didn’t. Once in the car, however, he didn’t immediately start the engine.

Instead, scanning her profile, he said, ‘Why don’t we leave things as they are for the moment? I’d like to eat a meal without worrying in case you get up and storm away, or tip your plate over my head. I have to go back to Auckland the day after tomorrow; shall we go out to dinner tonight and tomorrow night, and after that I’ll talk to you about Ricky?’

Say no, her common sense commanded her. Say no right now and go back inside and take off your pathetic attempts to look sleek and fashionable, and never see him again.

But something more fundamental than common sense prevented her from such drastic action.

Aloud, slowly, because she knew she was being stupid, putting herself in danger, she said, ‘Yes, all right,’ and comforted her sensible self by remembering that he was going away soon.

Besides, she reminded herself with a certain tough practicality that came from years of watching every penny, the free meals were saving her money.

To make things absolutely clear, she said brusquely, ‘I’m only going out with you because you’re paying for my dinner.’

His smile was cold and fleeting. ‘I know,’ he said.

That smile and the dispassionate tone of his voice sent a shiver tiptoeing delicately along her nerves.

He took her to a restaurant Tansy had heard about but never expected to visit. It was very expensive—part club, part café, and entirely fashionable—and she realised immediately that the unwritten dress code stipulated only that clothes be worn with panache. After several minutes she relaxed. She certainly wasn’t the most outrageously dressed woman there by any means. In fact, she was one of the more conventionally garbed.

What she hadn’t expected was the attention. Leo was clearly as well known here as in his native Auckland. After the third expensively dressed couple had stopped at their table, been introduced, and bubbled with enthusiasm and very cultured vowels at seeing him, she looked at him, lean and assured, sexy in a way that undermined her carefully constructed defences, and asked on a light note of provocation, ‘Do you know everyone in New Zealand?’

‘A lot,’ he returned, his tone as casual as hers. ‘I think I’m probably related to most of them. Both my parents came from very large extended families, so I’ve got cousins all over the place. As well, my father was active in public life. And I come to Wellington quite often.’

Which made it surprising that Rick had come here. Unless, of course, he had wanted to be found. More than once he’d admitted that he was very dependent on his brother, so perhaps unconsciously he’d been waiting for Leo to rescue him.

Instead, he’d decided to rescue himself. It had taken courage, and he should have his chance to ‘find himself’, as Leo so sneeringly put it.

‘That’s a very stubborn look,’ Leo said softly.

Tansy’s long lashes quivered. ‘I’m a very stubborn person,’ she returned.

‘But not tonight. Tonight you don’t have to be stubborn. Do you want to dance?’

A sudden deliquescence at the base of her spine warned her that dancing with him wouldn’t be a good idea. ‘Not just now,’ she said. ‘Tell me what it’s like being a barrister.’

He looked surprised. ‘Stimulating,’ he said after a moment’s consideration. ‘Exhausting. It ranges from intense satisfaction to times when the world seems a wholly negative place. I wouldn’t be anything else.’

Apart from her foster-father, whose only aim in working seemed to be the desire to make enough money so that his wife could buy the things she wanted, Tansy had little experience with men. Neither Les O’Brien nor the men she studied with at university were anything like Leo Dacre, who had a compelling magnetism that was unique.

From behind the menu she said, ‘It sounds unsettling.’

‘Don’t you find life like that? Days when you think you can conquer the world, and other days when life puts you neatly back into your insignificant place?’

She was startled. It was difficult to imagine such a self-assured man feeling insignificant. ‘Yes, of course, but I didn’t think you would.’

‘Why not?’ Straight dark brows rose. He smiled at her swift colour and asked, ‘Stereotyping me, Tansy?’

‘I suppose I was,’ she agreed reluctantly.

‘I’m a man, like all other men. If you cut me, I bleed.’

A harsh undertone in his voice made her wince but she returned robustly, ‘You don’t have to convince me.’

‘No?’ He paused, his expression unreadable, then said abruptly, ‘Tell me what you’re doing studying composition in the music department at the university here.’

She shrugged. ‘I think I was born making music. When I was a toddler I sang instead of talking. My foster-parents aren’t at all musical, so it was lucky for me that Pam, my foster-mother, used to clean house for an old lady who lived not far from us. She’d been a music teacher, and I think she missed it.’

She had shown Tansy how to play, and, when she realised how fascinated the child was, had begged to be able to teach her. Pam O’Brien had refused, citing lack of money, so Miss Harding had contacted the social welfare department. Some understanding person there had thought it a wonderful idea and organised the payments.

That had been the beginning of Tansy’s double life. At home she had been the odd one out. At Miss Harding’s she learned to round her vowels, discovered a whole new set of rules to govern her behaviour, listened with tears running down her face to the great composers, been made over for the best of motives into her mentor’s image. But Tansy’s happiness there, her sense of fulfilment, her eagerness to learn and desire to copy her mentor, set up tensions that eventually led to her flight from home.

‘When I had piano lessons,’ she went on, ‘I spent most of my time trying to work out the theory rather than actually play the piano. I knew right from the start that I wanted to write music.’

Although forbidden to, she’d written at night, waiting until her older sister was asleep to work by the light of a torch. Of course, the inevitable happened; she was discovered. Angry with her for her disobedience, Pam had burned six months’ work, so from then on Tansy had become even more secretive, losing herself for hours at a time in the special world she shared with Miss Harding.

Scrawny, intense, prone to temper tantrums and obstinacy, unable to compromise, she had been difficult. Like all creative people, she thought mockingly, she had suffered for her art. And so had her foster-parents. They hadn’t been actively unkind; they had simply not understood her. Part of Pam O’Brien’s resentment was due to the fact that she couldn’t afford such lessons for her own children. It had been with a certain suppressed satisfaction that she had told Tansy one day in her fourteenth year that the old lady was dead.

After that things had gone from tense to impossible.

She and Miss Harding had spoken of her future often, a future in which university loomed large. And she might have been able to go if she’d done well at school. But she hadn’t—apart from high marks in music and maths she had barely scraped through her examinations.

Unfortunately, the understanding case worker had been made redundant, and the new one was inundated with work, and not musical.

It would be, everyone decided, a waste of money for her even to try, just as it was a waste of money to go back to school for the seventh form. So at the end of her sixth-form year her foster-mother had organised a job for her in a supermarket.

Left bereft by Miss Harding’s death, with no one to counsel her, Tansy had run as far and as fast as the pitifully small amount in her savings bank had allowed her, ending up in Wellington because it cost too much to take the ferry across the Cook Strait to the South Island.

Although after that first year she had re-established contact with the O’Briens, she no longer felt like one of them. In fact, she never had. And she certainly didn’t regret leaving; it had been the only thing to do.

‘What sort of music?’ Leo asked.

She shrugged. ‘All sorts,’ she said evasively.

‘The ballad you were singing yesterday?’

‘That was a pastiche,’ she said aggressively. ‘I lumped all the ingredients of a folksong together and came up with that. As you realised.’

‘It sounded good.’

‘Yes, of course it did. What’s the use of singing a song if it doesn’t sound good?’

‘Particularly,’ he said idly, ‘if you want people to pay for the pleasure.’

‘Especially then.’

‘Do you like busking?’

She shrugged. ‘It’s a living.’