Winter meant nightmares about trying to dry and air clothes. It meant expensive vegetables and the pain of seeing Simon go off to school in inadequate clothing.
For the last three years she and Simon had lived in Auckland, and this third winter was promising to be worse than the two previous ones. Only five days ago she’d lost her job as an outworker sewing tracksuits for a factory. It hadn’t brought in much, but the small amount had supplemented the unemployment benefit which was now all they had to live on. Saving money would be impossible. And there was the crushing debt she owed Brett, her next-door neighbour...
And, to cap off the series of disasters, she’d developed a rotten head cold.
She stopped outside the letterbox, looking down at the address on the envelope. You don’t have to send it, a voice reminded her—a cautious, cowardly voice. You can struggle on—nobody dies of starvation in New Zealand.
Her eyes lingered on her hands. Once they had been pampered and smooth, the fingernails polished; now the fingernails were cut straight across and the skin was slightly chapped, marred by calluses from the constant use of scissors. Had she seen them, her mother would have had a fit. Elizabeth Harley had considered it part of her purpose in life to be elegant and well-groomed. She would have thought that Olivia was letting down the side.
But then, Elizabeth had been the indulged only daughter of a rich man, whereas Olivia had no money at all.
A shiver ran down her spine. What she was doing was dangerous, but there was no alternative. Defiantly she pushed the letter into the slot.
Trying to banish the matter to the back of her mind-it was done, she had made the decision and now she’d just have to wait—she set off to pick Simon up from school.
As she came down the street he burst through the gateway like a prisoner released from long incarceration, a too-thin six-year-old in the throes of a growing spurt. Olivia’s eyes lingered on his bony wrists. He’d already outgrown the clothes she’d made for him at the beginning of summer, and although she had shopped carefully the year before at the winter sales, making sure that the two jerseys and the jacket were a size larger than she’d thought necessary, she suspected he was almost too big for them too.
If that letter worked, she thought wearily, she’d no longer need to worry about money to buy the shoes they both needed. If it didn’t work—well, she’d go without, and his would be bought from the op-shop.
The letter had to work.
Banishing the odd little clutch of fear in her stomach, she smiled down at Simon.
‘Hello, Liv,’ he said, incandescently delighted at being freed from school.
‘Hello, young Simon,’ she said, speaking clearly. ‘Have you had a good day?’
A year ago he used to hold her hand down the street, but she knew better than to hold it out now.
‘Mrs Adams sent a note home.’ Although belligerence darkened eyes the same colour and shape as hers, she caught a glimmer of wistfulness before he looked away.
‘Oh, Simon!’
‘I haven’t been naughty,’ he shouted, kicking a stone. ‘It’s about a trip to the beach. I said I couldn’t go but she said I had to take it home anyway.’
Both of them hated those notes—Olivia because it was so rarely that she could afford the promised trip, and Simon because his absence made him an outcast amongst his peers. Even in this poor area most families were better off then they were.
Until she’d begun saving for his ear operation she had always managed to find the money to send him away with the rest of his class. She had explained why he could no longer go, but when you weren’t much over six, and all your friends teased you about staying behind, it was difficult to comprehend the need to save money. Especially as he didn’t really understand that he was going deaf.
‘Hand it over,’ she said.
He did, but before she had a chance to read it asked, ‘Liv, why do we speak different?’
‘Differently,’ she said automatically. ‘From whom?’
‘Well, everyone. I had a fight with Sean Singleton today ’cause he said I was up myself, talking like the Poms. Are we Poms?’
‘No, we’re not English. You speak the way you do because that’s how I talk.’ She didn’t really know what to say. Although New Zealand believed itself to be a classless society, it was untrue. End up with no money and you were automatically relegated to the bottom of the heap. And if you lived on a benefit with a child and no husband you became a solo mother, the subject of smug, middle-class disdain.
Not looking at her, he mumbled, ‘Sean said I was a dummy.’
‘You know that’s not true. As soon as we get your ears fixed you’ll show Sean Singleton that you’re every bit as clever as he is. Until then, darling, try not to fight.’ A glance at his mutinous expression made her ask with a sinking heart, ‘What else happened?’
Children could be so cruel—little animals picking mercilessly on anyone who was the slightest bit different. A sunny-tempered child, Simon had adored school when he first started, but it was an effort to get him there now. His teacher did what she could, but she had a big class and the school was under-resourced.
‘Nothing,’ he muttered. ‘I don’t care about Sean Singleton. I can beat him any time. Aren’t you going to read the note?’
The school was planning an overnight trip to the marine reserve at Leigh, sixty miles up the coast. Unless Drake accepted the responsibility he’d avoided these last seven years there was no way she could take money out of her bank account for a school trip. Not now, when she had no job and little hope of getting one.
Unfortunately she couldn’t tell Simon that; if Drake refused to acknowledge his obligations Simon would be all the more shattered for having had the prospect held out to him.
Olivia slipped the note into her pocket.
Simon’s eyes followed her hand. Angrily he said, ‘I knew it would cost too much.’ He hid his disappointment too well for a child of six. ‘We better go home and fold some papers.’
They spent some hours each week folding a variety of advertising pamphlets which he and Olivia delivered around the district. The money it earned used to pay for the meagre luxuries they couldn’t have afforded otherwise, but from now on it would all go towards necessities.
Olivia’s whole being rose up in hot resentment. It simply wasn’t fair that Simon should be denied most of the things his classmates took for granted, that he should live in a grotty first-floor flat with no garden except an unmown stretch of grass cluttered by a clothesline, three car bodies and a lemon tree that struggled to survive from year to year. It wasn’t fair that he had to wear clothes she made from cheap remnants or hunted for in opportunity shops and end-of-season sales. It wasn’t fair that his life should be so circumscribed, that he should be unable to take advantage of the many things New Zealand’s biggest city offered.
But then, she’d learned that nothing in this life was fair. However, she thought, firming her mouth, she had taken the first steps to redress the balance for Simon.
Back home, she sent him to put his bag away while
