Free Freeing Grace by Charity Norman Page A

telephone.’
    ‘Not a lot.’ I tried the wine. It was fantastic. ‘Mum gets a bit emotional. I had to hang up on her one time because she wouldn’t stop crying and it wasn’t much of a conversation.’
    ‘Why was she crying?’
    ‘She hadn’t heard from me for a while. Thought I’d been blown up by a terrorist or something. Silly woman.’
    ‘Your poor mother!’ Lucy was shocked. ‘You should be ashamed, Jake.’
    I was. Poor Mum. She was paying for his crimes. Three minutes later, I’d phoned her back.
    Perry was watching me. ‘When were you last home?’
    ‘I don’t go back.’
    ‘What, not once in . . . ?’
    ‘Seventeen years. I tell a lie: I went over when Gran turned ninety. The drums were beating and the whole family had to front up in their best bibs and tuckers. I stayed five days and it was as though I’d never been away.’
    ‘That’s lovely,’ said Lucy.
    ‘Not very.’ I felt my jaw clenching. ‘My old man was still a bastard.’
    She laughed as though I was joking, but I wasn’t. I have a picture of Dad in my head, and I take it everywhere with me, and I always will. He’s frothing with rage, marching down to the kennels, with me hanging off his arm and trying to drag him back, and my feet swinging clear off the ground.
    I hate my father. I’d like to kill him.
    ‘Safe over there, though,’ persisted Perry. ‘No one wants to make war on New Zealand, holy or otherwise.’
    I put down my glass. ‘Perry, you don’t want to be that safe. A cuddly hamster in a cage is safe. No cats to eat it, plenty of grub, nice wheel to run around on. He’ll probably live to be about a hundred in hamster years. Doesn’t make his life fulfilling. He doesn’t wake up every morning tingling with zest for the new day.’
    Perry’s face had gone blank. I’d offended him, but I couldn’t see how. Lucy lightly touched his hand.
    ‘He doesn’t mean it, Dad. Jake secretly longs to go home.’
    I snorted, and Perry topped up our glasses. ‘You come from the South Island?’
    ‘Yep. The back blocks, under the mountains.’
    ‘I gather it’s very beautiful there.’
    ‘Yeah, it’s beautiful all right. When you’re mustering sheep and you ride up the hillside just on dawn, it’s pretty magical. Just the calls of the native birds. You don’t want to come down again, ever.’
    ‘Will you take me up there, Jake?’ asked Lucy, half-seriously.
    I grinned at her, helping myself to the salt. ‘Then it hits you just how bloody still and silent it is, and you gallop away and hop on the first plane out.’
    ‘When did you leave home?’ asked Perry. He’d got up, and was messing about with a pudding in the oven.
    ‘Left the farm at seventeen, headed off to uni. Jesse—my older brother—moved into the shepherd’s cottage and became Dad’s partner. He’s the most eligible bachelor for miles around, but it doesn’t get him anywhere because every girl with two legs and half a brain left long ago.’
    ‘I never knew you had a brother.’ Lucy was staring at me.
    ‘We’re not close,’ I said. ‘We were as little kids, but we went in different directions. Chalk and cheese. There’s too much of my dad in old Jesse.’
    ‘Do try the peas, I grew them myself,’ urged Perry. ‘And what do you intend to do now? Lucy tells me you find yourself a free man, unexpectedly.’
    ‘Well.’ I took a spoonful of his peas, glad to change the subject. ‘I never intended to stay in London. I was twenty-three and planned on working my way around the world. But my temporary job at Stanton’s turned into a permanent one, and the bonuses started rolling in. I just didn’t have the balls to turn down all that cash. I sold my soul.’
    ‘The good old days,’ Lucy remarked sourly. ‘Before the bonus became an endangered species.’
    ‘So I stayed,’ I said. ‘And stayed, and stayed. Until it was nearly too late.’
    ‘Too late?’
    ‘Nearly. I’ve had a narrow escape, really, because I almost got stuck