CHAPTER 34
“Mum, this is Jen, my fiancée”

We had had to make all sorts of allowances for the extreme time difference, staying up past midnight, and god knows what time it was in Christchurch, but there was Mrs Meads on screen, and she seemed to be smiling.

“Hiya Jen! Call me Raewyn, eh?”

The River and the Stone
Chapter 1: Session One — The Gathering of Currents
The waiting room of Dr. Vance’s office was quiet, save for the low, continuous hum of a white-noise machine near the baseboards. On the deep leather couch, eighteen-year-old Leo sat with his ankles locked in a wide, rigid figure-four stance—his right ankle resting square over his left knee. His right thumb came up automatically, the edge of his thumbnail digging into the dry cuticle as his left heel tapped a rapid, impatient beat against the carpet.

Part 15 The Shiny New Penny

Monday morning arrived on time and so did Sam to take me to the studio. Odette went in Tonys’ Porsche and Tanya went with Steve, via his place so he could get a change of clothes. It looked like the penthouse had gone from housing one tenant to now looking after five, at least.

At the studio we had a cast meeting to talk about the direction that the show would go next. We ended up with a good set of scenes that would take us beyond the halfway point, and we would think about the further plot lines then.

CHAPTER 33
Ange and I looked at each other, clearly weighing up the conversation that evening in Nice, and then I answered for both of us.

“Neither, woman”

“Yet! Admit it!”

Ange sighed, theatrically.

“You getting paid as a matchmaker or something?”

John was currently waist-deep in a cardboard box filled with crocheted doilies and yellowed newspapers from the seventies. The attic of his grandmother's house smelled like old cedar and dormant dust, a cramped space where the roof slanted low, forcing him to hunch his shoulders. He had spent the better part of the morning moving stacks of magazines and sorting through porcelain figurines that looked like they belonged in a museum of things nobody actually wanted.