Here, Now

A Mirror, Mirror & The Missing Fanfiction

Part Ⅲ

~2012~

Wellington, New Zealand

Jo had nothing to feel guilty about – she knew this.

So why did the look on Gavin's face when he said, "You're getting married?" make her feel like a horrible creep? Like this was the third act reveal in a movie and the plot was about someone who'd been lying to her best friend and now the masquerade was shattered into a thousand, thousand pieces?

She hadn't lied to him – she hadn't.

True, she hadn't told him about Michael, but her romantic life was none of his business; he was twelve. He was bloody twelve. It didn't matter he was Nick – or that stupid Tama was obviously right and he had developed a bit of a crush on her – because he was goddamn twelve.

Even if she'd wanted to tell him, how exactly did one broach such a subject with a literal child who was more interested in funny rocks, video games, and in picking his bogeys when he thought she wasn't looking?

She'd been perfectly nice to him since that first day – she'd made sure he wasn't unhappy here, hadn't she? Even though sometimes just looking at Gavin Danes across the breakfast table hurt so much she could hardly stand it. She'd never let it show. For his sake. Because she cared. Shouldn't that be enough?

Christ. She was thirty-one years old; she was goddamn allowed to have a life, a fiancé in Sydney, a diamond ring being resized in a jeweller's shop in Kaiwharawhara...

But those damn blue Romanov eyes of his gave her a long, reproachful stare, because she hadn't told him she was engaged, and suddenly she was utterly miserable and riddled with guilt.

It was a bit like the feeling she'd had when she first saw him walk through the door, when she'd come down the stairs and he was there and she was a sad, sorry giant; only worse, somehow.

Maybe it could have been bearable if, confronted with her impending marriage, he'd run up the stairs and slammed his bedroom door like a normal kid. But no, he followed her into the lounge and just kept looking at her. Like he wanted her to tell him this was all a big misunderstanding or, if it wasn't, she repented it now and was going to call the whole thing off. When he finally stopped looking at her – stopped pathetically waiting for a miracle – he turned sulky. He sat on the sofa on the other side of Mia, arms folded across his chest, slouched and glowering bitterly at a random spot on the carpet.

Mia noticed his behaviour but tried, for Jo's sake – seeing her friend was uncomfortable – to act like she didn't and keep up cheerful, normal conversation. Most of this conversation wasn't about Sydney or Michael, but he came up again after a bit – Mia didn't remember if Jo ever told her how they'd met.

Jo tossed back her head and laughed affectedly. "Oh, well, actually, believe it or not, we met outside of a Pizza Hut. Our cars got in a nasty bingle, ya know how it is with the bloody backed-up traffic in Sydney, and so, anyway, we had to exchange insurance details. We kept in touch after that. And after it got sorted, he asked if he could take me to dinner."

Gavin lifted his head and grumbled, "Wow, great love stories of our time."

Jo froze, mid-expression, mouth hanging open. The tone, the words, would mean nothing to Mia, who had no memory of that timeline, but Gavin's comment – and the tone he said it in – reminded her so much of Jade Coigley she didn't know what to do.

The truth was, for a while now, she couldn't think who Gavin reminded her of when he was being bratty. She'd told herself it didn't really matter, since he wasn't bratty around her – or her parents – very often. Yet every once in a while... Every now and again... For some reason... Or for no reason at all... Well. She hadn't been able to place it before; it'd been like an irritating itch she couldn't quite scratch but one that usually went away on its own after a while.

Losing Jade in the time shuffle wasn't something Jo'd spent much time crying over. Or any, really. She'd cried for Nicholas, of course, but there had been nothing shy of open rejoicing – loads of cheers and high fives exchanged between herself and Tama – when time changing made Leonie (formerly Leonie Coigley, chairwoman of the Board) a chronically single cleaner who had never married or had a daughter, erasing Jade completely from their reality.

Maybe she was being punished for her happiness then with guilt and anger now.

And she was really angry, perhaps irrationally so, but Nick – Gavin – wasn't supposed to be like that.

"Know what, Gavin?" Snapping her hanging mouth shut, she jackknifed forward to glare past Mia over at him. "If you haven't got anything nice to say, maybe don't say anything at all. Yeah?"

"It's a free country." He was pretty sure it was, anyway. "I can say anything I want."

She clenched her jaw. "Not in my parents' house you can't."

He shoved himself up from the sofa laboriously, his hurt eyes still fixed on her. "Whatever, Jo."

In a quiet aside, Mia whispered, "He calls you Jo? I know your olds aren't very formal, usually, but surely Miss Tiegan would be more appropriate."

Gavin heard her. His upper lip curled spitefully. "What's the point?" he sneered. "She's going to be Mrs. Pizza Hut Guy." Maybe, he snapped, he should just get a headstart calling her that.

"I mean, it's not like he works at the Pizza Hut," murmured Mia.

Jo seethed. "That does it," she snarled. "Go." She jabbed her finger towards the doorway. "Leave. I've had enough. Go to your room until Mum calls you for dinner."

This was the first time Jo had talked to him like she was a disappointed adult and he was an out-of-control kid. One of the reasons he'd fallen in love with her was because she treated him differently from anybody else. This felt like a huge betrayal, almost as bad as her marrying some dim-sighted loser who caused pileups outside of pizza chains. She couldn't mean it – any of it. Jo wasn't supposed to be like that.

"You heard me – go."

He stomped out, kicking at a potted plant on his way.

Jo saw. "Gavin Danes, for Christ's sake, so help me, if you start a bleed in your foot over this, I am not ditching my guest to take you to A&E!"

"Fine, just leave me to die, then – my parents will probably throw a party! Nobody cares about me! Everyone always gets mad at me!"

And, watching him go, seeing the tears welling up in his eyes right before he turned and fled, Jo felt horrible in spite of everything. She covered her face with her hands and groaned. Why was this happening to her? Had being glad Jade was gone – back when she was just a teenager – really been bad enough for karma to come after her with this much vengeance? Or had she done something horrible in a past life she didn't remember?

In his room, flushed face pressed deep into a pillow, Gavin silently vowed he was never going to speak – or so much as look at – Jo again. All he had to do was keep his head down for a few weeks until she went back to Australia and her precious Michael. And he kept that resolve for a grand total of five minutes. He made a magnificent show of not immediately turning around, the way he wanted to, when she knocked on his door and sheepishly asked if she could come in, but the minute she rasped, "Look, mate, I'm sorry – I shouldn't have talked to you like that, much less played the heavy caregiver and sent you to your room; can you forgive me?" he spun around at the waist, nodding vigorously, hardly caring if she saw the tear tracks on his face.

She was what he'd thought she was. She was different. Normal grownups didn't admit they were wrong or say sorry after you embarrassed them in front of their friends.

He muttered he guessed he was sorry, too, about being rude in front of Mia.

"You had a shock," Jo allowed, trying to take Tama's advice and show some pity, still not feeling like she was doing the best job of it. "I see now I could have said something before. Didn't think to." Because you're not even old enough to shave or drive or drink beer. "But I could've said."

"Do you love him?"

"What?"

"Do you love him?"

It was a simple enough question, but it was one Jo found very difficult to answer with Nick's sad eyes staring out of her from this child's face. "Yes," she said, flatly as well as too quickly.

"Why?"

She forced a snort. "Whatddya mean why?"

"Why do you love him?"

"I do, that's enough, isn't it?"

"Not really."

"You don't get it," she sighed; "you're just a kid."

"I won't always be a kid, you know – I'll grow up, just like everyone else does."

"Not if you go around kicking flowerpots." She glanced down as she eased onto the edge of the bed near where his sock-foot dangled. "How's the foot?"

"Fine."

"Hey. You're not lying to me, are you?" He'd confessed to her once that he kept his bleeds secret from his parents for hours sometimes. Usually because he was mad, but also when he was bored. "You would tell me if–"

"I don't lie to you."

"We're still best mates, Gavin." She smiled, a touch shakily. "It's still you and me. Friends, no matter what."

"Friends." He glanced away, dejected. "Super."

"Jo, dinner!" Andrew called, bringing a bowl of pasta to the table.

Gavin and Catherine were already in their usual chairs, but Jo's was conspicuously empty.

She came in a couple minutes later, the cordless phone from the hall near the stairs cradled between her shoulder and ear. "If you think I'm going to have this stupid argument over again, I'm bloody well not – okay? Michael, you're pissed. Sleep it off and call me in the morning. And not on the landline! Because, dumbo, I don't want to hear anything else you're going to regret saying. You're only going to take it back tomorrow anyway. Right? No? Well, too bad. I'm hanging up now. M'dad's got dinner on." She pressed the hang up button so that it made a long beeeeeeeeeeepppppppppp and then pushed the antenna down hurriedly. "Sorry 'bout that." Plopping down into her chair and pushing it in with a series of loud floor squeaks, "Pasta looks great, Dad. You outdid yourself tonight."

Gavin watched her so intently he didn't notice Ms. Guthrie offering him a bread roll until the plate had already migrated past his elbow (his silence taken for refusal) and towards Andrew's side of the table. Whatever. He didn't care about rolls. Jo's downcast eyes were rimmed with red. That jerk made her cry. She was trying to hide it, obviously, but only a grade-A moron could have believed her feigned perkiness was real.

Gnashing his teeth, wondering how someone lucky enough to be marrying Jo could be so awful, he didn't even think of smiling back when Jo's overbright stare fell on him.

Undeterred, she sucked in a snuffly breath and tried, "And what did you do today, Gavin? Anything good?"

He shrugged one shoulder.

"Well, I had a good day." She rose up from her seat and awkwardly leaned over Andrew's arm to take a bread roll. "I–"

"Didn't sound like it," Gavin grumbled.

Jo froze in place like a kangaroo in the headlights. It was as if she were an actor in a skit, trying to get through the scene without any mistakes, and someone had – deliberately – gone off script just to trip her up.

"Darling," Catherine interjected, seeing her daughter still standing hunched over the table, "there's no need to get up. Sit down again. We'll pass the bread-plate back that way."

She didn't seem to hear. Her head – and only her head – turned, looking at Gavin. "What?"

"I said it didn't sound like you had a good day."

Her chin shook. She sank back, but instead of falling into her seat, she kicked it to make room to get away. "Hey, sorry, but I'm suddenly not very hungry."

Catherine sighed. She looked disapprovingly at Gavin as Jo left but didn't say anything. Andrew stopped eating and stared off into the middle distance. His fork plonked beside his plate.

"Is he always mean to her like that?" Gavin demanded, his fists clenching underneath the table.

Ms. Guthrie did shake her head, only it wasn't a gesture that meant – he realized, heart sinking – no. It was a gesture that only said it wasn't an appropriate subject. It wasn't a denial. She'd shaken her head almost the same way when he'd entered the wrong classroom at Hampton Shelly, where some older kids were learning about sex and reproduction, and – after being quickly hurried out – asked her what the picture on the projector had been of.

That head shake said, "You're too young," not "No, you got this wrong – Michael's cool, we swear it, he's not mean to Jo."

After dinner was cleared up – most of the food still tellingly on their plates – he went upstairs and, instead of going to his own room, poked his head into Jo's. She was lying in bed, facing away from the door. She wasn't in pajamas and the comforter wasn't turned down.

"Jo?"

"I just want to be by myself right now, okay, mate?" Her voice was soft and croaky. "I'm not mad at you."

"I'll kill him, if you say he's mean to you." And he meant it, Gavin realized, as soon as the words were out of his mouth. He felt totally willing to hijack a plane to Australia and kill the jerk for Jo's sake.

She turned on her pillow. "He's not mean, Gavin. We're just having a stupid fight. They happen."

"Yeah," he snorted, "when you're dating someone who's mean."

Drawing her knees to her chest, scrunched in a fetal position that made her look much younger, Jo buried her face – which was still notably puffy – in the pillow again and mumbled, "Mind your own business. Please?"

Maybe it was the please that did it. Or maybe she looked so pitiful Gavin couldn't stand to be in there any longer. Either way, he left her, but where he'd just been jealous before, he felt real hatred then.

Gavin's parents weren't really religious, and he couldn't remember the last time they'd bothered making him go to church on a Sunday – it must have been before he started having problems in school and causing problems with his friends and that took up all their energy – yet he prayed, kneeling beside his bed with his hands pressed together, a position he probably recollected subconsciously from a Precious Moments figurine his mom used to collect, every single night for the rest of his stay in New Zealand.

He prayed Jo – or else that idiot she was with – would call off the engagement.

It was bad enough she was marrying anyone, when he wanted to marry her when he was old enough. Bad enough she couldn't just wait for him. But if she really had to get married, to someone who was already old enough now, then why wasn't Tama her boyfriend after all?

At least he wouldn't make her cry, Gavin didn't think.

Jo had enough tact, after she picked up The Ring from Kaiwharawhara, not to openly show it to Gavin.

Not that it mattered.

He saw it anyway.

He saw her showing Mia, who'd come back especially for a look at it, then frowned, said she guessed the diamond was nice enough, certainly it was big enough, but... "Didn't you want a square cut, Jo?"

"What? When did I say that?" Jo asked her, blinking too rapidly.

"I'm sure you mentioned it, years ago, when we were in school." She was pink from hairline to chin and biting her lip. "Yeah, I remember when now. It was right after Jesse and I first got together. Someone wrote Mrs. Handon on my notebook as a joke, and everyone started teasing us, saying how we were gonna get married someday – you said you wanted a square diamond when you got married."

"Oh, well, now you are Mrs. Handon," she laughed, waving it off. "Funny how everything works out, isn't it?"

"Michael could have gotten you a square cut." Mia still seemed disappointed. "I thought he had."

"Come on, Mia, when I said that, I was barely fourteen – I thought I was gonna marry, I dunno, a prince or something." She'd gulped and her tummy had done a somersault when she'd noticed Gavin watching them as she said that. "Or at least, like, Brad Pitt." It was her last hope at being flippant, and she silently prayed it stuck. "Brad would have been bonzer."

"Brad would have bought you a square diamond," Mia sighed.

"I'm sure he would have," Jo'd agreed, giving her friend a nudge and jokey smile, finally lowering her hand. It had begun to shake, and her arm felt numb from her wrist to her elbow, being held out so long.

He saw it the time Tama came back, not having returned to Hahei just yet, and was sitting with Gavin and Andrew on the sofa eating popcorn (well, they were eating popcorn, Andrew had fallen asleep) and Jo passed them, tripping over her snoring dad's outstretched legs as she squeezed by, FaceTiming her jackass fiancé.

The Ring was perfectly visible, because she was holding it up to the phone. "I told you I have it on. I'm wearing it right now."

"Yeah, well, it was expensive, Josie."

Gavin had wanted to throw up in his mouth. Josie? Despite technically being another abbreviation for Josephine, the nickname didn't remotely suit Jo Tiegan. This just struck him as further proof the jerk didn't know the first thing about her.

"I lost it one time! God! It was a mistake, okay? I made one. Get over it. I don't know what you want me to do – if I get it sized any smaller, the damn thing will cut off my circulation and my finger's gonna be bloody purple in all our wedding pictures."

Michael's pixelated image said something Gavin didn't hear.

Jo sucked her teeth. "Right. Good on ya, you caught me. I want to take it off so I can sneak around and meet men." Her voice dripped with sarcasm. "Like these?" With a furious swivel, she'd gone and angled the phone over her shoulder at the sofa, revealing Gavin, her dad, and Tama. "Because these are the only guys I've seen since I got here."

Gavin was prepubescent with shiny, butter-stained lips; Andrew was her literal dad with his reading glasses sliding off the bridge of his nose and a line of drool dangling from one corner of his open mouth; and Tama – despite being the only visibly eligible male in the group – looked like he was too mature for such asinine drama.

"Mind leaving me out of this?" he protested. Then, resigned, rolling his eyes, "Yeah, hi, Michael. Good to see you again. Glad to see the third-degree sunburn cleared up."

Of course, to Gavin, it didn't matter whether Jo was holding up her hand showing The Ring at all. He still saw it every time she wore it. It was like a winking magnet drawing his eyes. He had a reoccurring fantasy of taking it off her hand and dropping it down the garbage disposal.

The noise it would make as it went down would be glorious, he thought.

So, he almost couldn't believe it one morning when – waiting outside the bathroom for his turn – he heard the next best thing:

Jo's raised voice going, "Get stuffed, Michael! I've had it!" And a beautiful plonk! Gavin just knew had to be The Ring. Then a wonderful flush. "Yeah, I did really just do that. Because you're being a dickhead, that's why."

Gavin pumped a fist in the air. Yes!

"Fuck!" shouted Jo, storming out and slamming the bathroom door behind her before subsequently turning white and nearly dropping the phone, seeing Gavin there grinning. "Oh no. You didn't hear that, okay?" Her screwed-up face was drained and pleading.

"Hear what?" he said through his smile.

"Thanks heaps." And she reached out and patted his cheek before fast-walking to the landing and making her way down the stairs two at a time.

Gavin stood there a moment longer, delighted and overcome, one hand lifted to the cheek she'd touched. He hadn't known a person could be this happy. If he'd known such intense happiness was possible, he might have been a better kid all throughout his short life.

The thing about being intensely happy, however, also means – if that which has given you hope is suddenly taken away – you can be intensely sad or angry or miserable as well.

Gavin found out the hard way, walking into the kitchen where Jo and Andrew were chopping up vegetables while Ms. Guthrie graded a dozen or so papers at the table.

There was nothing misery-inducing about the scene itself, except for the fact Jo looked decidedly miserable.

Ms. Guthrie took a sip from a wineglass beside the red pen she'd just uncapped and Jo turned to address her. "I don't know what I'm gonna do, Mum. I called Michael back and told him I didn't really flush the ring. Said it was just something I faked to make him stop picking on me. But he'll know when I go home without it on my hand, won't he?" She groaned. "I'm stuffed."

Andrew popped a raw carrot slice into his mouth and crunched down on it before resuming dicing. "Lying won't help anybody, Jo. The only way out is complete honesty. I know it's tough, sweetheart, but you gotta go on and tell him the truth. If he loves you, he'll forgive you."

"Your dad's right, love."

"You don't get it. Either of you. He'll be spewing. He took a loan from his brother – you know, the one who's always showing him up? The one who thinks he's hot shit because he punched a 'roo in the face to save his girlfriend's chihuahua? I told you about him before, remember? Anyway, Michael asked him for help to pay for it." She brought a hand to her brow. "Ugh, I can just hear his mother now. Joey, Joey, Joey, whyya gotta make my baby's life so difficult? Joey, honey, why can't ya be more like his last girlfriend? She was on a magazine cover, you know, and the only thing she ever flushed down the toilet were her mega jumbo tampons... Ehmagawd, I knew I shouldn't have let my poor baby propose to some bogan with a boy-cut who has the same name as a character on Dawson's Creek..."

Ms. Guthrie sucked in her lips. She didn't want to smile at Jo's distress, but she'd met Michael's mother a couple times, and from what she remembered of their less than easy interactions, her daughter's anguished impression wasn't too far off.

"Well, at least," Catherine offered, "it wasn't a family heirloom."

"No, the ring wasn't," Jo said. "But if this wedding does go forward, guess who's stuck wearing his gran's hideous dress? Especially after this."

"That bad?"

"It has a matching headdress that attaches to the veil." Jo used the side of a knife to slide a pile of diced celery off the cutting-board. "There are wilting feathers and satin pleats involved. It's a bloody monstrosity. I think his gran was pissed when she married his grandpa. Either that or deeply, deeply psychologically disturbed. But – hey – I guess I kind of deserve it, now I've sent his ring on a one-way ride to the Hampton Shelly septic tank."

Gavin – who'd been listening by the back door, shoebox in hand – couldn't contain himself a second longer. His voice was hurt and accusatory as he cried, "You're still marrying him!" She couldn't! She couldn't do that! Not after she told him off and flushed the ring! It was over! It had to be! "After... After..." It wasn't fair!

Jo closed her eyes, inhaling deeply. Then she opened them to see Gavin's searing blue ones glaring daggers, gone darker in hue at what he clearly saw as a major betrayal.

"We didn't break up," she said lamely, quavering under the unending pressure of seeing her Nicholas looking out through this little boy's reddened face. "I never said we broke up. I told you we fight sometimes. I got mad and did something really stupid. That's all it was." You're too young for me. Please try to understand. "We're adults, me and Michael, and we made a promise to one another. We owe it to one another to work it out."

Gavin dropped his shoebox on the floor, letting string and pebbles fall out, and fled the kitchen muttering how he was sick to death of grownups who thought they knew everything but really were just dumb and hoped they all spontaneously combusted.

"Gavin!" Ms. Guthrie called after him. On top of everything else, he hadn't taken off his sneakers and was leaving a trail of mud across the floor. "Gavin Danes, you don't–"

But Jo shook her head. She handed her dad the knife and looked over her shoulder guiltily. "It's my fault, Mum. Just like everything else. Whatever I do to try and help just makes it worse. This is because of me. Don't put this on him. Let me fix it."

Upstairs, Gavin was bouncing a Superball off his open door. There was the loud bonk, bonk, bonk of rubber on wood. He gave Jo a half-glance, caught the ball in his open palm as it ricocheted off the door, then bounced it again.

"Maybe we ought to talk."

"About what?" Bonk!

"I know I'm at least part to blame here, Gavin – really, I do." Jo wrung her hands. "Tama did say I should... Well. Go easy, I guess, on you. Maybe I haven't been. I've said stuff in front of you I should have kept to myself or said in a more private setting."

Bonk! "Right – because it's stuff a dumb kid like me can't understand?"

"I never said you were dumb." Her voice cracked. "You're one of the smartest people I know. And you've got a great sense of humour and absolutely killer eyes. You're incredible, I hope you know that. But... You're a twelve-year-old boy, Gavin."

Bonk! "Don't marry him."

Jo stuck out her hand and caught the rubber ball before it could hit the door for the umpteenth time. "Look at me. Please?"

He shook his head.

"Listen. Can't you at least try? For me? It's not easy now. No one's saying it's gotta be. But... If you care about me as much as you obviously think you do, then you're gonna find it in your heart to be happy for me someday – I know it."

"Happy you're marrying some jerk who talks like" – and here Gavin began to pitch his voice to something meant to approximate a vague Sydney accent but which actually sounded more like a bad impression of the late Steve Irwin on helium crossed with just a touch of his own cousin, Queen Elizabeth Ⅱ – "G'day, mate, I'ave no pehsonaaaaliiiity. Yeah, I'm thrilled. About to do cartwheels."

It wasn't what he said, so much as that his voice sounded, between the too-high pitch and the exaggerated, elongated syllables, frustratingly like Jade Coigley's when she used to mock Jo's accent (and sometimes her mum's, too).

She couldn't deal with this crap today. "Hang on. That's how I talk," she snapped.

Gavin's forehead wrinkled. "W-w-what?"

"That's how I talk. Forget Michael. He is an idiot. My idiot, yeah, but still an idiot. And I know he's not exactly your favourite person in the world, so I'll let it go. Give you that one. Only, now you're making fun of me."

"I wasn't–"

Narrowing her eyes, she rasped out, "I have been nothing but nice to you since you came here! If I've made mistakes – said too much, said too little – I still thought about your feelings every goddamn day in this house. I stuck up for you. I pushed for you to get more freedom, to do more things, because all I wanted was to see you happy." Sniffling, "But it isn't like you deserved it. You're a sorry, spoiled little blighter who goes around bullying people when he doesn't get what he wants."

"Jo, that's not fair – I didn't mean it!"

She didn't act as if she heard. "Know what? I totally get why your parents sent you almost nine thousand miles away from them! I didn't at first, but now it makes perfect sense."

His face crumpled, huge tears leaking from the corners of his scrunching eyes, and Jo felt like a sick creep. How could she have said that? She'd come up here to make peace and she'd yelled such a horrible thing at him! He was a little boy. Little boys had tantrums. Little boys had silly crushes and sullen spells. Little boys got into trouble and didn't think about the consequences.

Just like little girls did.

Was he really that much worse than she'd been to her mum growing up?

If he wasn't Nick, if his glowing translucent signet ring from another timeline wasn't even now dangling from a chain between her breasts concealed underneath her jumper, she knew she'd have been gentler with him.

Hell, if she was as over Nick as she'd spent the last seventeen years telling herself she was, she'd have been gentler.

"Gavin–"

He pushed past her, nudging her aside, plainly still choking on his tears as he made his way to the stairs and stamped down them.

Catherine hung up the phone. "It's bad news, I'm afraid. None of kids he talks to in class have seen him."

Jo felt her throat close; she gulped to keep air going down it. "The hell was I thinking?"

"If I'd known he wasn't just going to the treehouse out back," Andrew sighed, "I would have stopped him at the door."

Jo nodded. That was the first place she'd checked, actually, when nine p.m. rolled around and he hadn't come back inside. She knew he liked it in there, and it was an ideal place for any upset child to go.

"I don't know who else to ring." Catherine flipped through a battered address book, ready to admit defeat.

"Time to get the cops out looking for him, I guess," Andrew said at last.

Jo folded her arms and shivered even though the kitchen wasn't cold. "If he really has run away..." She felt her chest clench. "It's my fault."

Catherine reached for her.

Jo shifted away before she made contact. "He's a haemophiliac! He could be bleeding out somewhere, dying. Or he could be trapped in a hole or a rubbish heap with a swollen joint, unable to get up. He could be in a car with a stranger, bruises spreading across his whole body. And all because Cowbag Tiegan couldn't censor herself for five seconds."

The doorbell chimed and even the dog, stationed in front of the fridge frantically scratching at one ear like it was going out of style, jumped.

"If this is him and this was some sort of joke..." Jo muttered, dashing at her eyes with the back of her wrist.

It was him, but he wasn't alone. He'd been dragged by the ear straight up the steps to their porch by Leonie, the ageing school cleaner; he was covered head to toe in a mucky sludge that smelled like the wrong end of a dunny. Chunky brownish pieces of who even knew what were falling off the sides of his sneakers and flaking from where they'd been caked to his trouser legs.

"Ow – stop tugging at my ear," he whined. "I bruise easily!"

"I believe," sniffed Leonie, "this little cockie is staying with you?"

"Thank goodness," breathed Catherine, pressing a hand to her chest.

"Phew! I think we better spray the poor kid down before he comes in here." Andrew stepped out, scanning the dark porch for the hose he used to water the plants.

"I found him mucking about the septic tank," Leonie told them. "Whatever prank the young hooligan was attempting, he refuses to say."

Jo didn't say anything either, she just stared – a little coldly, now her fear was subsided – at the bedraggled and soiled but not particularly repentant Gavin Danes, wondering if this – her fault or not – was completely necessary.

She'd thought he was dying. She thought she'd as good as killed him. And he just turns up like this?

Filthy and smug.

Leonie made several temperamental suggestions for punishing Gavin, which Catherine humoured dully before thanking her for finding him and wishing her goodnight.

"Chin up and turn this way, mate," Andrew said, holding up the now running hose. "Get you cleaned off in a tick."

Gavin was sopping wet, squelching loudly as he walked through the vestibule and into the house, but at least he didn't reek of rancid poo quite as bad as he had moments before.

He could make his way to the shower now.

Jo paced the hallway and landing, going up and down the stairs, while he showered, still thinking what to say to him, listening to the squeak of the water in the pipes turning on and off and the hum of the hot water unit. She'd almost decided to say nothing, to go to her bedroom, when he came out towelling off his wet hair, wearing one of her dad's old terrycloth bathrobes, which was about four sizes too big for him.

He reached his free hand into the pocket of the robe and pulled something out, clenched in his fist.

Jo took a step toward the outstretched, white-knuckled fist. "Look. Just because I'm glad you're okay doesn't mean I'm not still furious with you. You scared the hell out of me."

He turned it over and slowly opened his fingers.

There in his palm lay her engagement ring with the round brilliant cut diamond – the one she'd flushed down the toilet.