He pointed the remote at the TV. 'No.'

'Are you sure?'

He sighed. 'I'll never be ruined. Even if I was ruined I wouldn't be for long.'

'How rea.s.suring.' She couldn't make herself sound like she cared. She'd never been interested in money. But he would say that was because she'd always had it.

'The house,' she said vaguely. 'I would miss the house.'

'No one can touch the house.'

It was five o'clock in the morning. Roza had woken with a headache and David hadn't slept much at all; his eyes were deep and dark, underscored with shadows. He got up and put on a dressing gown.

'You look thin,' she said.

'Stress.'

He bowed his head, tying the belt of the robe, and she looked at his face. From that angle his nose seemed to curve down over the mouth and she had a second of surprise, almost revulsion. He looked cruel. When he raised his head she saw the hard keen eyes, and the bad feeling left her. She'd never tell him so, but she loved the part of him that was hurt and ashamed, the part he hid, always struggling against himself, trying to rise above his poor past. He had thin shoulders, a limp, was left-handed, wrote awkwardly, was an indifferent speller. He struggled with utensils designed for the right-handed world. When he used a pen he hunched over the page like a kid. These details were part of the balance sheet; on the other side the height, the pink and gold of his complexion and fair hair, the hardness and unstoppable drive. He never gave out personal detail, apart from the bare, official line: grew up talented and poor, got rich. He had needed media coaching for interviews because he was, by nature, secretive to the point of mania. He was wary with Roza too, but she knew how deeply he felt. It was all in the eyes. When they argued he could fix her with a look that silenced her; sometimes it was black, hating rage, other times it was wounded, cornered, like an animal looking for escape, and she would be brought up short, appalled. He was a force, he was rich and successful, he unnerved her - and he touched her heart. There was a completeness to this. If he'd been all force and power, she might have loved him less. She wondered what it would be like to be his enemy.

He said, 'You want some tea?'

'Can't you come back to bed?'

She reached out, caught the end of his robe and towed him nearer. He was still watching TV, the remote in his hand. She had a sudden need to register something - her goodwill. Since the campaign had started he'd been distant and preoccupied, had spent his time surrounded by his people, guarded by his a.s.sistant Dianne and others, and hadn't spent much time at home. She yanked the robe, pulling him down on the bed, and put her arm around his waist. A cellphone buzzed on the chest of drawers and he jumped up to answer it.

Roza flopped down on the bed and imagined being pregnant. The thought of lying back and letting it happen was sensual, pleasing. David finished his call, lay down beside her and started stroking her back, her neck, her thighs. He was still watching TV. She had the sense that he was strong but also light; there was a kind of fury about him, something steely; he was awkward in life but graceful in bed. If I get pregnant, she thought, I won't want to drink, because I'll feel too sick. The memory came to her. A long time ago, herself on her knees on the bathroom floor, arms around the toilet bowl. The self wrung out, the self a poor ghost, but the lump in the centre of her that was not Roza, that was something else, a different self.

Give me back what I've lost, she thought. And then: but you can never do that.

The driver came to collect David. Roza was in her robe downstairs, drinking coffee. The kids sat at the table eating cereal, Jung Ha standing over them, hurrying them along. Mike glowered; Izzy skipped over to David and put her arms around his neck. Roza watched. David leaned down to Mike and gripped his arm.

'Bye mate.'

Mike said, 'Can I have some money.'

David said, 'Yeah. No. What for?'

'Books.'

'I've got no cash, mate. Roza'll have some. I've gotta run.' He punched Mike lightly on the arm.

Dianne walked in and Roza gave her a cold look. Get out of my kitchen, she thought.

'h.e.l.lo kids,' Dianne said. She was wearing a trim black suit, and her hair was tied back in a bouncy ponytail. She was carrying one of David's bags.

Roza thought, f.u.c.k off. Go and get in the car. Then she thought, But I can't have it all my own way. I'm not following him around the country, so he's got to have someone to help him. She wished she wasn't wearing her robe. And no make-up.

'Ready?' Dianne said brightly to David.

Roza laughed at herself, and felt a twinge of nausea, remembering David's face against hers earlier, his thin arms holding her. She felt a stab of love, jealousy, regret and then irritation at Mike, who'd turned cold eyes on her and was about to make his usual surly request for money. She was sorry for him - it must be natural to hate your stepmother - but she was tired of dealing with his aggro. You could tell, from the odd photo around the place, that he resembled his mother: he was short, slightly flat-faced, well fed, powerfully built. Roza disliked the thought of Becky, the one who'd rallied and helped and pitched in, who had been, by all accounts, so sensible and nice. David never talked about her. She had tried to get him to, but he wouldn't. He kept Roza out. But who was she to complain? She and David both had their secret pasts; the kids were the only evidence of his.

David kissed her cheek. As they were going out the door, Dianne gave Roza a perky little glance over her shoulder. For a hot moment Roza seriously wondered whether there was some way she could get Dianne fired.

Mike said, 'Roza.'

She sighed and turned, then reached for her wallet without looking at him, knowing this would show contempt. She checked and saw a flicker of hurt in his expression, sudden vulnerability, awkwardness. She touched his shoulder and he ducked away.

'How much you want?' she said, and he grinned.

'Twenny.'

She gave it to him, studying his sore, pimply cheeks and chapped lips, the adolescent anguish in his eyes. He was growing so fast his clothes always looked too small and his wrists stuck out of his cuffs. All her distaste evaporated. Poor boy.

She went to the front window and looked out. David and Dianne were standing by the car; he said something in her ear, opened the door and ushered her in, his hand against the small of her back.

Roza walked quickly back to the kitchen. The kids and Jung Ha clattered out and both cars left at once.

A shaft of winter sun made a patch on the floor. The dog wandered by outside, snuffling in the hedge. The fridge whirred and clicked and from somewhere there was the whine of a saw.

Roza stood in the kitchen and panicked. She needed to catch onto a solid object, but everything was loose, flailing. She wanted a drink. She thought, I can't do this, can't face things, unless I drink. She felt she might be pregnant. But she was filled with terror at the thought. But she wanted to be. Trying to calm herself, she ate a slice of bread, then drank gla.s.s after gla.s.s of water. Just one drink, was what she used to think, I'll just have a gla.s.s of wine, to steady my nerves. But it was never just one.

Was this a panic attack? I can't do any of this unless I drink. Am drinking. I can't go on without a drink. Unless. She raised her head. She needed to ring her sponsor. But she needed a drink just to face her sponsor. She whispered the non-drinking mantra, but it chimed in her head like sinister baby-talk. The words ran through her mind, I can't do this without a drink. Unless. Unless I confront what made me drink.

Shakily, she went upstairs, dressed and walked down to the car. Conscience the gardener was crossing the yard holding a heavy pot plant on his shoulder, his head turned to one side. His earm.u.f.fs were slung around his neck; his jeans sagged nearly off his narrow behind. She smiled nervously, but he wasn't looking at her.

'Hi,' she said, the word bursting out of her. She was shaking. He hitched his burden higher and raised his chin in greeting.

Swiping the hedge and b.u.mping over the concrete kerb, she drove out.

She turned into a side street, pulling in behind a line of parked cars. David had had a tint put on the windscreens of the two cars they used in Auckland. 'Surely that's not necessary,' she'd protested, joking that it made her feel like a gangster, but she was grateful now that she was hidden behind dark, almost opaque gla.s.s. A Pink Floyd song came on the radio; she heard the words 'comfortably numb' and had rush of euphoric sadness, her eyes burning, then shook her head and frowned, chastising herself for self-pity, melodrama.

Simon Lampton walked out of the house and stood next to his car, eyeing two girls who'd followed him out, one tall, one short, deep in a furious argument. Roza sank slightly lower in her seat, watching as Simon gestured at the girls, telling them to stop bickering and to hurry up. Just before he got in the car he turned his face up to the rain, letting the light drizzle fall on his face, rolling his eyes in exasperation. He backed down the drive and out into the street. Roza pulled out and followed.

He dropped them at their private girls' school. The tall one waved to the car; the short one fiddled dreamily with her bag as they walked in through the school gates. When Roza got out and stood on the pavement in the light rain everything felt unreal, as if she were separated from her nerves. She began to walk towards Simon's car, but veered away, worried that he'd have seen her in his rear-view mirror. She ducked in the school gate, out of sight. The tall girl had gone but the younger girl was there beside a rock garden, trying to fix a strap on her bag. The sky darkened and the garden plants glowed an unnatural green in the dimming light. It was going to pour. The first fat drops came down and the girl looked up briefly, lifting her knee to bolster up the heavy bag, and dropped a plastic drink bottle.

Roza picked up the bottle and held it out. She had stopped breathing. Her heart was banging in her chest.

The girl said, 'Thanks', pushed back her hair and went on fiddling with the strap. Roza didn't move. She wondered whether Simon had driven off yet. She wanted to stop this, to back out the gate and drive to work. If she walked away now everything would be fine.

The rain came down abruptly, hissing onto the asphalt. Roza and the girl made for the same spot - steps in front of a locked door, sheltered by a porch roof. There was a long squeak of bus brakes out on the road, and a group of girls ran screaming and giggling through the gates, holding textbooks over their heads. The rain roared on the porch roof and began to spout down off a broken pipe. The girl held her hand under the cascade and watched it exploding off her fingers.

'Do you have to get inside?' Roza said.

The girl looked at her. 'Pardon?'

Roza cleared her throat. 'Don't you have to get off to cla.s.s?'

'Yeah, I've got ten minutes.'

'I was just ...' Roza tried to think of an explanation. What was she doing? Panicking, panicking. 'I was just looking for the school office,' she said at last. The rain roared louder.

'It's down that path.' The girl pointed.

Roza jammed her fists in her jacket pockets. 'What cla.s.s are you in?' She studied the contours of the girl's face, her large eyes and thin cheeks.

'Year ten.'

Roza wanted to touch her. She put her hand over her mouth and turned away, and tears gushed out hot over her cheeks. She tried to control her shaking shoulders. If she could put her arms around the girl and hold her tight - that would stop the panic; that would fill the gap that had opened up in her mind, but she kept her face turned away, and tried to regain control. Her face was wet with rain; the girl would never know she'd been crying. She steadied herself and forced her mouth into a smile.

'It's easing off.' Her voice sounded normal enough. She breathed deeply.

They stood side by side, looking at the garden. The colours were intense; it was lush and green. A gust of warm wind blew in under the porch and the girl frowned. 'Ugh. Hate the rain.'

'It's much better. You could run to your cla.s.s now.' Roza held her mouth in the false smile and felt herself responding to it. Could you force yourself to cheer up just by plastering on a grin? Yes, pretending could make things real.

She became aware the girl was staring.

The girl said, 'Are you all right?'

'Of course.' Roza held her hand out to the rain.

'You want me to show you where the office is?'

'Oh. No. Yes. Thanks.'

The rain thinned out, and they walked towards the path the girl had pointed out, winding between neat bark gardens. Roza glanced out at the street. Simon would have gone. She would drive to work and no one would ever know. Taking a long, deep breath, she caught the girl recklessly by the arm. 'Listen, you nip off to cla.s.s now. I'll find my way. Thanks for your help.' She hesitated. 'Do I know your parents, by the way? You look familiar. What's your name?'

'Elke Lampton.'

'Well, nice to meet you, Elke.' There was a silence and she couldn't let go.

Elke began to wriggle, confused.

Roza said, 's.h.i.t.'

'Are you ...' Elke was alarmed.

Roza let go, walked back up the path and sat down on a wooden seat. Elke followed.

Roza said, 'Sorry.' She stood up. 'Thanks for your help. You get to cla.s.s.'

The girl walked away, turning once to look back.

Roza waited until she was out of sight, then hurried out the gate and back to her car.

She rang work telling them she was sick, and wouldn't be coming in. She needed to go to an AA meeting, and went to a cafe to wait, trying to keep her mind neutral. When she'd pa.s.sed what seemed like an age in this numb state she drove back across town. The AA meeting was already in progress, a small group sitting around on plastic chairs.

A man was speaking. He had red hair and a boiled face, his words sounded like gibberish and she couldn't concentrate on what he was saying. He was expensively dressed, and he kept playing with a heavy watch on his wrist. Roza stared at the watch and became aware of a smell in the room; it conjured up a whole world for her in the strange way that smells trigger powerful memories. It was the smell of breath. Roza put her hand to her mouth. Long ago, she had been so sick that the smell of food on a person's breath had been enough to make her throw up. She had only ever felt like that once before. The odour intensified, and she felt she was going to vomit. She leaned forward and tried to focus on the orange carpet, but the woman next to her smelled garlicky and the room reeked of coffee, and Roza began to gag. The man with the boiled face paused as Roza jumped up and ran out of the room.

In the toilets she washed her face. She looked at herself in the mirror, at her white face and huge, spooked eyes, knowing what she'd wanted to do in there before nausea had sent her running: she'd wanted to tell her story, to confess. But she didn't dare. Meetings were supposed to be confidential, but you couldn't be sure, not when you were married to David Hallwright. She needed to ring her sponsor, but instead she walked out of the building into the park and sat down on a bench. She bowed her head, and there in her mind was the girl holding out her hand as the warm rain exploded on her palm, the girl frowning and saying, 'Ugh. Hate the rain.' The girl with Roza's eyes, Roza's hands.

She had just turned sixteen when her and Myron's baby was born, the little girl that someone else had named. She said the name to herself. Elke. A woman had adopted her and named her, and then, Roza had discovered later, the woman had died. Later, as she'd also found out, the Lamptons had fostered her, then adopted her, and there she was, standing against the rain, holding her hand out as the rain splashed off her palm.

Roza had dreamed many times that the girl had asked: 'Why did you give me away?' She would try to explain, but her mouth would not work and her legs froze as she tried to follow, and the image of the child would fade away. Roza had not wanted to have the baby, but her mother had prevailed. By the time they'd finished arguing about h.e.l.l and d.a.m.nation, and all the other threats her mother could unload, it was too late for an abortion. With cold determination, Roza's mother had rented a house in Hamilton, and moved herself and Roza down there before the pregnancy began to show. The baby was born at Waikato Hospital. Myron Jannides had gone to live in Perth with his mother. His mother had spoken of a new life for her and Myron - she meant a life away from Roza.

Roza gave the child up for adoption. She was weakened and distressed by the pregnancy and birth, and by her mother's badgering. And she didn't want her mother to take over the baby. She knew this now: it was partly to save the child from her grandmother that she'd given her away. Roza had realised, much later, that there had been something wrong with her mother, that you could even have called her mentally ill. She was hysterical, obsessive, aggressive, cold - and excessively prudish. But all that was meaningless now.

The thirst came on so strongly that Roza drew air in between her teeth. She craved the numbness that booze gave her, the break from herself. She'd started drinking after giving the baby away. If you do something so wrong, so unnatural, it's hard to face the day to day. She knew now how wrong and unnatural adoption was. She shouldn't have been persuaded to have the child, but once she'd had it, she should have kept it. That was her mistake. The baby had been undersized and premature when she was born, as if she'd known she was unwanted, and had not properly thrived, and Roza, a tall and fit teenager, had borne no scars from the birth, not even a single stretchmark to give away the fact that she'd been pregnant. It was a quick, uncomplicated delivery, and the baby, a tiny, uncanny-looking creature, had been rushed away from her to an incubator to be fed on formula through a tube, minimally handled, artificially warmed, wired up to monitors.

She'd meant to tell David, but she hadn't had the courage at first, and then, as time had gone on, it had seemed that if she told him now, he would find it strange and shocking that she had kept something so fundamental from him. She'd had the sense that secrets grow when they are untold; that they become still more secret, more unsayable. And her fearful instinct had been that the stress of telling might send her back to drinking. Roza bowed her shoulders as the rain fell. She had looked into the girl's eyes for the first time, and she was crushed with grief.

David wouldn't care that she'd had a baby at sixteen and would be upset that she'd never told him about it, but the real sticking point would be admitting to him that she'd given the child away. He would say, 'Why did you need to do that? In this day and age. There's no shame in having a baby when you're young and unmarried, we're past all that nonsense.' He would be shocked; he loved his own children so much, and she wouldn't be able to make him understand how it had been, and the relief that Roza had felt (yes, admit it, relief) when they'd said, 'It will be all right. We've found someone suitable to adopt', and she had pa.s.sed the incubator for the last time; the child lying in there behind gla.s.s, separate, already remote, her tiny face turned away.

Roza went on crying until she felt very light and distant from her surroundings. She made a decision, and with it came relief. She would go and see her old friend Tamara. She walked to her car. Visiting Tamara. She would be lulled, rescued, doomed.

She shouldn't have gone looking for Elke. Having signed her rights away she wasn't supposed to look until the girl was twenty. But her new-found sobriety had given her confidence and once she'd started she couldn't stop looking. It was before she'd met David - she mightn't have done it after she'd met him. She had wavered, been indecisive; she'd given up the idea for a while, but then had gone to a private investigator who operated an office out of his house in St Heliers. She didn't hear from him for a long time, but then he'd rung her up and asked her to come and see him. When he gave her the information about Elke she'd asked, 'But how did you find out?' and he'd answered, 'I have my contacts.'

So she'd found out where Elke was, and the names of the people she was with, and for a long time it was enough. She hadn't wanted to know any more. And then David had gone into politics, and now, at last, she'd come face to face with Simon and Karen Lampton, the people who owned her child.

Even then, she'd thought she could deal with it. She and David would have a baby together. Life would go on ...

She parked outside Tamara's big villa. There was no one home, so she sat down to wait on a wooden bench on the veranda. The vision of Elke returned and the tears came again. The rain cleared and the sun cast a watery glow over the garden, making delicate rainbows across a swing and slide on the lawn.

The gate opened and Tamara marched up the driveway, wearing tight Lycra pants and a running shirt and carrying weights in her hands, her head down, pumping her thin arms against the weights. She had headphones on, and an iPod clipped to her top. She didn't look up until she reached the steps, and when she saw Roza she let out a predictable, Tamara-style scream.

Roza sat beside the swimming pool while Tamara made a big thing of her stretches and exercises performed up against the verandah rail. 'If I don't warm down I go stiff, darling,' she said, finishing with one leg hiked up against the wall of the pool house, dabbing her forehead with a towel and grunting lightly. Her hair was dyed blonde, her nails were long and manicured and her fingers were heavy with expensive rings. She was tall and slender, with a sharp nose, blue eyes and smooth, creamy brown skin.

She and Roza had been at school together. Tamara had come out from England when she was five, the only child of a boozy, chain-smoking solo mother who had pa.s.sed on her recipe for success: it was all about snaring a wealthy man. Mrs Porter had taken up real estate and laid her persona on thick: she was the working-cla.s.s slapper with a heart of gold, a goer, a laugh, her dyed blonde hair done up in a beehive. After hours she usually had a long-ashed f.a.g in one hand and a gla.s.s of bubbly in the other; her house was a stew of smoke and hilarity, booze and vulgarity, and Roza had gone there to escape the strained, frigid atmosphere at home. She'd sometimes been bored by Tamara, and in exasperated moments had found her limited, but she'd had more fun with her than with any other friend. They used to laugh until they made themselves dizzy.

Tamara reached for a heavy lighter and lit a cigarette. She had scored: her husband was rich. Tam lunched, shopped, travelled in grand style, dressed her children in designer clothes, drove a black Mercedes the size of a tank, all with a kind of mordant triumph, and when her husband wasn't around, which was often, she smoked and drank and took drugs, and laughed about it all.

Roza said, 'Can I have one?'

Tamara slid over the cigarette packet. She said, 'So what's wrong? Is he having an affair? Or are you?'

'He might be having one, with his a.s.sistant.' Roza described Dianne, her tight black suits, her bouncy pony-tail. Tamara listened with gruesome enjoyment. Roza was playing a part. She couldn't tell Tamara anything real, so she slipped back into the kind of talk Tamara liked: all men were b.a.s.t.a.r.ds to be exploited, women had to live on their wits; the spoils were ease and comfort and money. It was rubbish and she disliked it; it was a kind of slumming, and she knew why her friendship with Tamara hadn't survived their growing up. Things that were a laugh when you were young and unserious became squalid when you were old. Roza wouldn't have dreamed of going after a man for his money. Tamara hadn't changed. But she was kind and affectionate. When she'd discovered Roza on her verandah she'd hugged her and dragged her inside, asking her what was the matter. 'Oh, I'm all f.u.c.ked up,' Roza had said, smiling and wiping her eyes, grateful for the warmth.

Roza felt a small rush from the cigarette. She was dizzy for a moment. Tamara looked at her, her head on one side. Her eye looked bright and flat, like a bird's.

Tamara might have had her suspicions about Roza's problems, but she was unscrupulous, and she loved company. She was never happier than when people were sinning around her. Roza knew she hadn't really come to Tam for friendship. She had come to get high. She knew her old friend so well; she was counting on her to offer something. It was wrong and she ought to leave now. Tamara probably guessed why Roza had come; she would offer something in the hope that it would revive their old bond, or maybe even to punish Roza for abandoning her. Tamara had sometimes hinted that Roza looked down on her. She might not altogether mind the spectacle of sn.o.bby, silver-spoon Roza Danielewicz cut down to size. Their friendship was so ancient they were like siblings, bound together by love, resentment, old hurts.

Roza smoked, snagged by sudden urgent need. Her mouth was dry. Tamara was watching her, possibly enjoying the moment, holding out on her. Roza felt a p.r.i.c.kle of antagonism, then shame. Pretending to revive a friendship when you wanted something; it was contemptible. Tears came to her eyes.

'I've missed you,' she said, and meant it, but a moment later she knew it wasn't true. She hadn't missed Tamara; she'd turned her back on her with relief. What she meant to say was, 'I'm sorry. I shouldn't have come.'

Tamara sighed and inspected the end of her cigarette. 'Who'd have thought. You're practically the wife of the prime minister.'

Roza grinned. 'I know. Isn't it weird.'