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
