She said politely, 'I don't think we've met. What's your name?'

'Simon Lampton.'

She blinked, laughed. Her gla.s.s twitched in her hand, as if she'd started at a sudden noise. She put her gla.s.s down and looked at him with her strange, potent eyes. He felt pinned, fascinated and exposed. She looked at him coolly and a.s.sessingly for a moment, as if he was some object whose value she was minutely weighing up. He lifted his chin and stared back into the beautiful narrow face.

Her eyes refocused; she was looking beyond him. David Hallwright was approaching. She got out of her chair and he jumped up awkwardly.

She said something he couldn't catch then she went towards Hallwright, and left him standing there.

He moved away, feeling a bad combination of light-headed and overheated, and sat down next to Graeme, falling into an automatic conversation about golf.

Later he walked across the room and saw Roza Hallwright among a group of women.

'A silent auction's always good,' Trish said. 'h.e.l.lo Simon.'

'You're talking about fundraising,' he said. 'Over there the men are talking about golf.'

The women turned to him. He said, 'Do you ever feel these conversations aren't really talk, not in the sense of talking about anything? They're just a way of making friendly sounds. Like a group of animals, making the right noises, so they won't be attacked.'

Someone laughed.

Trish rolled her eyes. 'That's very funny, darling. Actually, no, we're getting a lot done. I'm sure you men are just grunting, though.'

Simon felt irritation with Trish settle on him like a fly. Usually he controlled his feelings without effort, but tonight he was raw, as if Roza Hallwright's cool gaze had stripped a layer off him, and he went on, 'It's strange that no one talks about politics at these evenings.'

'Well, David's just made a long speech about politics, and we're all on the same side here, aren't we. We don't need to be debating. How boring it would be if we did.' Trish patted Simon's arm and turned to Roza Hallwright. 'Please excuse Simon. He's very eccentric.'

Mrs Hallwright turned to Simon. 'What was that word you used?'

'A word. I don't know ...'

'Hyenas,' she said. A look pa.s.sed fleetingly over her face and he was struck by the intensity of it, as if a mask had lifted and he'd seen a real expression, something wild or even desperate but laughing too, and the expression was also familiar, so much so that he stared.

'Hyenas. Charming.' Trish was beginning to get annoyed.

The women started talking about hyenas. 'They're sort of dogs aren't they. What do they do. Pick over dead bodies. Don't they laugh.'

Trish stared at Simon. She said, 'We were talking about a proposal we have for Roza.'

'It's a very good idea,' Roza said to Trish. 'You could ring me.'

Trish looked as if she knew what that meant. She said in a treacly voice, 'You must be looking forward to the election.'

'Oh yes,' Roza said.

'You'll be our first lady.'

Roza smiled. 'If David wins.'

There was a chorus. 'Of course he will. He can't lose.'

Trish said, 'There'll be a lot of responsibility. Won't there. Meeting politicians. Travel. Life will change. No more quiet life at home.'

'Yes, things will change.' For a second Roza Hallwright and Trish looked at each other. Simon watched, fascinated. Trish didn't look away. Red spots had appeared on her cheeks. Roza gave Trish a radiant smile, 'Thank you so much,' she said, and touched Trish's arm. 'You're so full of energy and ideas. It's miraculous.' She turned away, putting a hand to her hair. 'I must look for David.'

Trish stared furiously after her. She took Simon's arm and pulled him back to the table. 'What's wrong with you tonight? Hyenas.' She pushed him into a seat, poured a gla.s.s of wine and sipped it, looking ruffled. 'You see what I mean.' She turned down her mouth at the taste of the wine, looking suddenly old and sour.

'About what?'

'That woman. I don't know how David ...'

Karen joined them. 'They're leaving.'

The Hallwrights were moving slowly towards the door, shaking hands as they went. They were arm in arm, Roza managing to move gracefully in time with Hallwright's limp. Trish hurried over to say goodbye.

'Trish is p.i.s.sed off with me,' Simon said.

Karen sighed. 'Trish is always p.i.s.sed off with you.'

'Really? But I'm so co-operative.'

Karen laughed. They watched the Hallwrights leaving. Simon noticed that Roza was very tall.

Simon and Karen stayed until late and walked out with Trish and Graeme as the last people were leaving. They'd left the car in the underground park and Graeme discovered he'd lost his ticket, so they stood about while he searched his pockets and Trish checked her bag, and by the time they'd found it the car park had emptied out.

They walked down into the concrete bunker, stopping in the stairwell to say goodbye. Two youths pa.s.sed them, dressed in baseball caps and baggy jeans. Simon leaned against the wall and half-closed his eyes while Trish gave Karen some instructions about a lunch date.

There was the sound of running feet. Simon looked over the railing and saw the youths running back up the stairs. They burst onto the landing, crashing into Simon. Karen fell against Graeme; Graeme lurched sideways and tripped on the step.

Trish screamed, 'My bag. Oh, the little s.h.i.ts.'

Simon didn't think. His body did it for him, and he found he was running up the stairs after the boys, one of whom had Trish's handbag tucked in the crook of his arm. He took the steps three at a time, with sudden huge energy and a kind of physical relief, everything pent up in him given something to fix on.

He caught the hem of the boy's shirt and yanked; the boy fell onto his knees and scrambled up again, and then both youths turned and he was facing them on the landing. There was a pause, their panting echoing in the concrete s.p.a.ce.

'Give it back.' He stepped forward. They didn't run.

The taller looked at him, breathing hard. Simon saw the quick calculation in the boy's eyes, and for the second time that night he felt he was being a.s.sessed. The youth glanced up and down the stairs and made a decision. He held up the bag and said, 'Come and get it. Come on. Right here right now.'

Simon hesitated. 'I don't want any trouble. Just give it back.'

This gave them courage. They came forward, repeating softly, 'Come on. Come on.'

He took a step back and nearly went over the edge of the stairs. Instinctively he threw up his arms and the shock that ran through his body made him angry. He lunged forward, grabbed the bag and he and the boy wrestled with it until they both fell on their knees. The other youth kicked Simon in the side of the head. A shower of stars exploded in his eyes, and he heard, from a long way off, the others coming up behind them.

'We've called the police,' Karen shouted up the stairwell.

He still had hold of the bag. He pulled with real fury, and the youth stumbled forward. Simon hit out and had a rush of vindictive pleasure as his fist connected with the boy's head. He punched again, they lurched against the wall, the other youth came at him and Simon kicked out. The boy ducked away, the bag came free. One of them shouted and swiped at Simon and he felt a jolt in his elbow like an electric shock, and a loss of strength in his left side. The boys belted away up the stairs, leaving Simon clutching the bag to his chest as the others reached the landing.

He was looking through showers of silver stars, and everything was suddenly very strange.

Trish was clutching Karen's arm, Graeme's face was puce and he was breathing heavily. Karen was talking into her cellphone.

Trish s.n.a.t.c.hed the bag and rifled through it in a dazed way. 'It's all here. I can't believe it.'

Graeme grinned all over his winded face. His gapped teeth were gruesome. 'Good one, mate. Good on ya.' His chuckle turned into a cough and he bent over, wheezing, hands on his knees, while Trish pounded him on the back.

Karen was talking to the police on the phone. 'I don't know what floor we're on. Trish, what floor are we on?'

'Are you all right?' Trish said.

Simon turned towards her, and the stars in his eyes sprayed out in a beautiful stream, turned in the air, scattered into pinp.r.i.c.ks.

Karen shouted, 'Simon.'

He looked down and saw red streams running off the ends of his fingers. He held up his left hand and a line of blood ran out of his sleeve. The cuff was red and the material of his jacket and shirt sleeve hung in two pieces. He was puzzled and wanted to ask Karen what had happened, but when he turned, the stars in his eyes swirled up and came down like a spangled curtain. Light cascaded around him, like a waterfall. Behind the dreamy swirl, the shapes of people moved and Karen was saying his name.

He thought of Roza Hallwright's tall, slim frame, her cloud of bright hair and the pale eyes in the exquisite, narrow face, and he felt that she was part of the luminous sheen that hung over everything. He toppled sideways and fell on the concrete floor, with the sense that he would find something new and strange and glittering, if only he would let go.

three.

After the dinner, which they'd left early, David took the last flight back to Wellington and Roza was driven home. She greeted Jung Ha, who'd stayed up to keep an eye on the children. She checked their rooms. Isabel - Izzy - Roza's stepdaughter, who was ten, was lying half out of bed, tangled in the sheets, and when Roza moved her the girl sat up and stared at her with glazed eyes, then muttered something and lay down. The boy, Michael, who was thirteen, had fallen asleep over a computer game. Roza looked down at him. He had grown heavy and solid in the last year. She knew he missed his mother: he kept it to himself but it was always there, even after so long. Roza tried to take the computer game but he moved and held onto it, so she left him alone.

She went up to the bedroom and lay for a long time in the dark, watching the clouds cross the moon. The curtains blew gently in the breeze. The room was up on the second floor and she liked to leave the window open. Usually she enjoyed being alone, with no one to interrupt her thoughts, just freedom and silence, and outside the window in the long nights the sky and the moon and the vast rippling dark, but tonight she was anxious and wished David was here to distract her.

She felt as if she'd lain awake most of the night, but at dawn, when the sky was turning red and the light was beginning to angle in through the window, she went into a deep sleep.

In the dream she was walking through the back courtyard of the Catholic church where she used to be taken for Ma.s.s as a child. She saw Father Tapper, with his gla.s.s eye and his white face. He beckoned but she wouldn't follow. He faded, shaking his head, and she turned away and walked into a long corridor in a shopping mall. It was empty and silent and full of bright, white light. The shops had been smashed and abandoned; windows were broken, furniture and planks lay about on the floor. She came to a place where pieces of wood and broken panes blocked the way, and as she began, carefully, to climb over the debris, avoiding the upended shards, she saw that there were insects everywhere - crawling creatures, beetles, scarabs with marvellously vivid bodies in iridescent blues, glittering greens, purples and reds, their carapaces shining in the light. She perched on top of the wreckage and the insects were all over the floor amid the shattered gla.s.s and the wicked points of the broken panes, and she marvelled at the beauty and the brightness and the luminous colours.

Silence, colour, sharpness and clearness, beauty and danger, all still and bright and exquisitely near ...

The alarm clock woke her. A shaft of yellow sunlight fell across the bed. The master bedroom was s.p.a.cious, full of light and decorated in shades of white, cream and beige that gave it an air of bland, designer luxury. She dozed for a moment, trying to preserve the atmosphere of the dream, its vividness fading now in the lemony morning light (those wicked colours and sharp points - had she relished them or had they made her afraid?), then was roused abruptly by the memory of the man she'd spoken to at the dinner the night before. Simon Lampton. Her body had flooded with nerves when he'd told her his name; she was sure she had concealed it, but she remembered the way he'd looked at her so intently, as if trying to read her mind, the way their eyes had locked and she had turned away with effort. Was she imagining it, his interest? No, it must be in her mind; he couldn't have realised how she'd steeled herself to talk and behave naturally. He couldn't know the effect that his name had had on her.

She felt tension fizzing through her body; her skin p.r.i.c.kled. Alarmed to feel so tense, frightened even, she became tenser still. In the shower she turned the water very hot and stood with her head bowed, breathing slowly. She had learned how to fight her storms of nerves; she emerged from the steam calmer but exhausted by the effort, and dressed wearily, padding down to the kitchen, where Jung Ha was sorting through piles of washed school kit.

Jung Ha made coffee and, when the children didn't appear, Roza went upstairs to rouse them. Michael lay on his back in bed, staring at the ceiling and refusing to speak. The room smelled rank and sweaty; it was no longer a child's bedroom but the lair of a remote, uncommunicative young man. It came to her that he no longer smiled.

Roza plaited Izzy's hair and made a quick, bored, conscientious check of her homework. Michael was silent and irritable; Izzy chattered and played with the cat. She was a lean, energetic girl, always talking and thinking up schemes. Her brother looked down at his cereal with a disgusted expression. Outside in the courtyard the light played on the surface of the pool.

Roza put down her cup. 'Jung Ha? What's wrong with this coffee?'

Jung Ha wasn't having it. 'Nothing!'

'It tastes sort of ...'

'Nothing wrong!'

Roza was still tense with the thought of Simon Lampton, her nerves twisted tighter by the bright light, and Michael's scowl. She tipped her cup down the sink and said, 'It's b.l.o.o.d.y awful for some reason.'

Michael said to Roza, 'I need thirty dollars.'

'What for?'

'School stuff.'

He met her eye. She felt the antagonism coming off him.

'What school stuff?' she said.

He shrugged. 'Forget it.'

She said steadily, 'If you need it I'll give it to you, but I want to know what you're going to do with it.'

'I'll get it off Dad.'

'He's in Wellington. As you know. What's it for?'

He muttered, 'It's Dad's money.'

Roza rounded on him. 'David makes most of the money, yes. Is that relevant? I work too. And he and I are ...' She stopped. She'd been going to say 'married.'

She was dismayed. Michael had always shied away from her attempts to mother him, and she'd thought she should give him s.p.a.ce, not crowd him; now he was becoming a force, and she realised they'd never made friends, not properly.

'Forget it,' he said again.

'Do you need the b.l.o.o.d.y money for school or not?'

He faced her, calm and insolent. 'I told you I do.'

She took the money out of her purse and thrust it at him.

'Jeez. Relax,' he said.

She controlled her anger. 'Good bye Mike.'

She hugged Izzy and walked them out to the car. A gardener's truck pulled in, and two men started unloading tools and mowers. Jung Ha got the kids in the car, telling them off in her good-natured, hectoring way, and they drove away to school.

Roza walked along the path towards the pool. It was a bright, hard day with a blue sky, so clear that the creeper on the garden wall shone with points of light. She looked up at the house. She and David had bought three sections and demolished the old weatherboard bungalows on them. The Hallwright house, surrounded by high, creeper-covered walls, faced onto the street and had a view over the suburb to the sea from the back. It was a square, solid concrete mansion, with a grand front door, landscaped gardens, a large swimming pool and several outbuildings. It was only four years old and still had a raw quality. The architect had aimed for something grand and imposing, but its brash newness gave it a slightly fake, arid appearance. There were patches of bare wall where the creeper hadn't yet taken and parts of the garden that were still being landscaped, and looked spa.r.s.e and barren.

They had hired an interior designer, since neither Roza nor David had much interest in choosing furniture, and the result was luxurious, but impersonal. Roza loved the house, its colour-co-ordinated interior, its vast, light s.p.a.ces. It was a barrier against everything that had happened before she met David. It was her security, her retreat, and its ostentation affirmed to her that she was safe, rich and respectable. She was indulgent about its cra.s.s aspects, because these seemed refreshingly innocent. She was done with jaded things.

David just thought the house was cla.s.sy. He was enormously proud of it. It was proof that he had reached the highest pinnacle - he had landed, in his own estimation, at the top. And its grandness and newness, its lack of history represented something, Roza thought, an idea, mostly unspoken, that she and David shared: that they had both made good, had arrived here, after trials and troubles in their former lives.