Lecretia's Choice Read online

  ‘Do you want to come in?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said.

  ‘We don’t have to rush anything.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘I really like you. I’m entranced by you.’

  ‘I like you too. I don’t like that you’re a smoker, though. I don’t date smokers.’

  It was true—I had foolishly picked up the habit at university and had yet to shake it.

  ‘I’m flattered that you broke your rules for me,’ I said.

  ‘I’m surprised I broke my rules for you.’

  ‘Come in and have a cup of tea,’ I said.

  She paused. ‘Do you have green tea?’

  I had my doubts.

  ‘I’m sure we do,’ I said.

  We walked to my gate and up the stairs. Above the streetlights, the moon was waxing towards full in the sky above Mount Victoria. Lecretia stayed the night. In the morning, I left her asleep in bed, dressed as quietly as I could, and walked down the road to buy croissants and bacon and flowers. I stood on the deck of my flat, overlooking the city, and smoked a cigarette. I made croissants with bacon and brought them in to Lecretia, along with the flowers, and sat with her as we ate them.

  ‘Thank you for staying,’ I said. ‘I ...’

  She smiled.

  Being with Lecretia felt natural and inevitable, like destiny. I wanted to spend every night of my life with this girl. I was in heaven.

  Lecretia flatted on the other side of town, in Glenmore Street, up in the hills behind Victoria University, where I was doing my writing degree. She lived in a flat with three other early-thirties professionals. After that first night together, our dates frequently ended with us staying at her flat or mine, and the two of us walking together to work in the morning.

  Lecretia’s flat was behind the botanical gardens. I remember walking through those gardens with her, in late winter, the bare branches of the trees gleaming from the rains that swept through every few days. She showed me her favourite spot, which quickly became mine. There was a point where you descended from a hilly, narrow path into the lower part of the garden, and the path would open out into a clearing, where it forked. A single lamppost, ornate and painted black-green, the sort you would see on an affluent boulevard in a European city, marked the fork. In the early morning you could round the corner of the path and come across this lamppost. Its light would still be on, but the effect would be subtle, washed out by the dawn breaking behind it.

  It brought to mind The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, where Lucy finds a lamppost and meets Mr Tumnus, the umbrella-bearing faun. Every time we passed that lamppost, it felt like Lecretia and I were embarking on our own adventure. On those walks we’d talk about our plans for the day, and the things we would do to further the projects and challenges in front of us. And then we’d descend into the city, where we parted ways until the stars started coming out.

  Lecretia invited me over one night for a dinner party to meet her good friend Tim Clarke and his girlfriend, Sam. Tim was a brilliant young lawyer who was a partner at the leading law firm Russell McVeagh. He’d grown up with modest beginnings in Tauranga too. He was an incredibly polite and considerate man and I was enormously impressed by him.

  Not long after, I met Lecretia’s parents at her flat. Larry and Shirley were younger than I’d expected—far younger than my parents—and I learned that Shirley had been barely sixteen when she fell pregnant with Lecretia, and Larry not much older. Shirley had come from a tough background, and was responsible for her siblings from a very young age. When her mother died, at just forty-three, Shirley and her sister Lorraine went to a foster home, where they were much better cared for. She was living there when she met Larry, who came from a much bigger family of five brothers and sisters.

  They hadn’t planned on starting their own family at such an early age, and it could have been a disaster, but Shirley had somehow emerged from her difficult childhood with a vast capacity for love. It may have helped that Larry’s family was stable and close-knit. Shirley was adopted as something of a sister to Larry’s siblings, and the whole family supported them when their first child, Lecretia, was born in 1973.

  Shirley had her daughter’s good looks, and she and Lecretia interacted more like sisters than a parent and child. Shirley was quiet but intelligent. Although she had been a bright student, she’d been forced out of school after getting pregnant. A few years later she had gone back to study and graduated with an accounting degree. She was now a director of a significant Tauranga accountancy firm.

  Larry, on the other hand, I found slightly intimidating. He was bald, with a greying moustache, and had the physique of a man twenty years his junior. He kept fit by running and playing tennis, and would frequently win championships in his age division at regional and national levels. As someone who found sport almost entirely uninteresting, I must have completely confused him. And yet Lecretia had the same attitude to sport as I did, so perhaps he wasn’t all that worried.

  Kat, Lecretia’s sister, was there too. She struck me as a bit of a wild child. She and her boyfriend were flatting in Wellington and threw a lot of parties. She was almost eight years younger than Lecretia, and she loved and looked up to her big sister.

  I didn’t get to meet Lecretia’s younger brother, Jeremy, that night, but he clearly had a lot in common with Larry. Jeremy was a star footballer until a knee injury had forced him to retire. It would be a few more months until I met him.

  The six of us—Lecretia and I, Larry and Shirley, and Kat and her boyfriend—walked from Lecretia’s house to a local bistro, where we had dinner and got to know each other. It was clear that Lecretia was something of a golden child—the daughter who had pushed herself to achieve and had found her way in the world with her parents’ encouragement and support. She had taken on three jobs simultaneously at high school to pay for her education. She had also entered into a dollar-for-dollar saving scheme with her father to pay for her first year of university. Whatever she saved, he would match. The sum she managed to save caused Larry to spit out his coffee in despair when he heard it, and he never made another deal like that with her again. Instead, Lecretia worked all through her university years, washing dishes and waiting on tables, minimising her student loan borrowings.

  After dinner we wandered home. Emboldened by the wine we’d shared, I lit a cigarette.

  ‘He smokes!’ called out Shirley, in shock.

  Not the best way to endear yourself to your girlfriend’s parents.

  As much as Lecretia didn’t like my smoking she didn’t demand that I stop. She did have expectations and standards, however. One night a friend invited me out to her flat-warming. Lecretia was working and couldn’t go.

  ‘But come over and stay afterwards. I’m looking forward to seeing you,’ she told me.

  I went to the flat-warming and ended up drinking too much. Feeling I’d hit my limit, I called a taxi and went home to my flat, without contacting Lecretia at all.

  The next morning I got a call from her. ‘Where were you last night?’

  ‘I’m sorry, babe. I drank too much, so I came home and crashed. I’m so hung-over.’

  ‘Why didn’t you call?’

  ‘I didn’t want to talk to you in the state I was in.’

  ‘I waited up for you.’ She hung up.

  She showed up at my house an hour or two later. We sat on the front porch.

  ‘I’m really disappointed. You don’t seem to care about me.’

  ‘I do, of course I do. I just drank too much, I came home and crashed. That’s it. I was too tired to call.’

  ‘But you knew I was waiting to hear from you.’

  It was our first real fight, and I was to blame. At the time I didn’t quite see how. I’d spent so many years being accountable only to myself. And fights usually signalled the end of a relationship. Once it got to fighting, I assumed there was nowhere else for things to go.

  After several exchanges, with me saying I�
��d done nothing wrong, and Lecretia saying that I’d been selfish and inconsiderate, I said, ‘So are you saying you want to break up with me?’

  She looked shocked. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Why would I want to do that?’

  ‘Well, you’re angry that I didn’t call you. I can’t change that. So do you want to end things?’

  ‘We’re having an argument,’ she said. ‘I’m disappointed in you. I’m telling you why I’m upset. I just want you to listen and understand, and apologise. I don’t want to break up with you.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I should have called you. I was rude not to.’

  ‘Matt, you let me down.’

  My parents had kept a quiet peace throughout their marriage—until they didn’t. Shortly after the fighting started, the marriage ended. Perhaps I thought marriage wasn’t possible when there was disagreement. Perhaps total harmony was the thing I was looking for. But Lecretia taught me that fighting can be constructive and healing. I had wronged her, apologised, and she had forgiven me. We had other fights and disagreements, but I never asked her again if she wanted to end our relationship.

  In October 2003, Lecretia found a new flat in Mount Victoria, a short walk from my place. We spent most nights at her house or mine, and in the morning would walk together along the waterfront, past Te Papa and the Civic Square, on the way to work. It was a wonderful time. I was coming towards the end of my masters year, and was working on my folio for hand-in, when my Canadian flatmate suggested we have a Thanksgiving party, since Thanksgiving occurs in October for Canadians. I invited Lecretia, and her first question was what she could bring.

  I told her not to worry and just to bring herself.

  On the night of the party, I got a text from her. ‘I’m downstairs, can you come and help me?’

  Lecretia was parked two spaces away from our front door. She was standing beside the car. She greeted me with a hug and a kiss.

  ‘Help me with these, please.’

  In the back seat were two enormous platters, piled high with lightly toasted baguette slices, topped with roasted red peppers, basil and feta.

  I took one platter, she took the other, and we climbed the stairs back to the flat. I remember being so proud of this gorgeous woman. That night someone took a photo of us both—the earliest photo of the two of us together. We are in armchairs, leaning over the armrests towards each other to fit into the photograph. I wish I had more photos of Lecretia.

  Chapter 3

  WHEN I FINALLY handed in my writing folio for my masters, Lecretia suggested we go away together. We decided to go to Nelson, a thirty-minute flight from Wellington. Nelson, which is on the South Island, is actually further north than Wellington, on the southern tip of the North Island, and enjoys a much better climate. It is well known for its vibrant arts community.

  We stayed at a bed and breakfast, and drank a bottle of expensive champagne to celebrate the completion of my degree. We took a jet boat ride out from the harbour around the coastline of Abel Tasman National Park, where pristine beaches give way to thick native ferns and trees. We circled Split Apple Rock, a neatly bisected boulder whose halves rest in the bay as though on a chopping board.

  On that trip Lecretia introduced me to her friend and mentor, Sir Geoffrey Palmer, who lived with his wife Margaret in the hills above Nelson. I was very nervous—Geoffrey was a famous politician and a skilled legislative reformer—but I needn’t have worried. Geoffrey was a gracious host and a lively conversationalist. He was curious about me, and my intentions towards Lecretia. He clearly cared about her welfare. After dinner, we wandered back into town. It was a still night. I took a photo of Lecretia and Geoffrey near a waterfront monument. It was a lovely evening. We parted ways and Lecretia and I walked back to our bed and breakfast together.

  ‘He’s impressive,’ I said. ‘I liked him.’

  ‘You were cheeky, asking so many questions. But he liked you, I think.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I can tell.’

  The first year we were together, Lecretia invited me home with her to Tauranga to meet her extended family. She loved these get-togethers. She was the person who always knew whose turn it was to host the Christmas function. It was the sort of thing my family had never had. I wasn’t a huge fan of Christmas—my parents split a week before Christmas when I was thirteen—but for Lecretia, it was the best time of year. It was the time that most reflected her world view: when everyone strove to be selfless, considerate to others, kind. In a way, it was the time of year when other people came closest to her in their own motivations and actions.

  We drove up to Tauranga together a few days before Christmas Eve and stayed at Lecretia’s parents’ home. Once we’d brought our bags into the house, Lecretia flew into activity. She began giving orders in the kitchen, instructed me to decorate the tree, and generally assumed control. But this was merely to prepare for taking things to Auckland, where one of Lecretia’s aunties was hosting the day.

  I got to meet Jeremy, who had come home from Australia, for the first time. He is a physically imposing figure, with the broad chest and thick thighs of an All Black prop, but he is also a gentle soul, so good-humoured and friendly that he is impossible not to like.

  We drove to Auckland on Christmas morning, a three-hour journey. Lecretia and I were crammed together in the back seat of Shirley’s car. We arrived shortly after noon.

  Lecretia’s four aunts adored her, and she adored them. To the eldest, Pat, and her husband, Ron, she was like the daughter they never had, unofficial sister to their three sons. To Angela, she was a treasured niece and role model to her daughters Alex and Meredith. To Soraya, she was close enough in age to be like a little sister. And for Debra, she could do no wrong. Lecretia loved them all equally.

  As it happened, Christmas that year was to be hosted by Debra. Debra lived on Auckland’s North Shore, and we were among the last to arrive, so I was thrown immediately into meeting Lecretia’s extended family. I was welcomed, entertained, plied with alcohol, interrogated, and assessed for suitability all at once. I was terrified, but responded as politely as I could.

  After Christmas, Lecretia and I drove up to the Coromandel Peninsula to spend New Year’s with some friends of hers at a bach near Matapaua Bay. New Zealand summers can be variable but that year the sun shone day in and day out. Lecretia loved summer, and it loved her. Even the harsh New Zealand sunlight wouldn’t burn her, choosing to darken her skin instead. I was blissfully besotted with her. We swam in the surf, and embraced and kissed in the water. We slept in the afternoons. I could make her laugh—I loved her laugh. Her friend Sonya, who we were staying with, commented that I must be good for her, as she’d never seen her laugh as much.

  On New Year’s Eve we were drinking beers at a beach party at a neighbouring bach. At midnight I finished my last cigarette and threw the rest of the packet into a lit brazier. I hadn’t planned to give up, but being with Lecretia, meeting her wonderful family, her kind friends, seeing what a great person she was, I wanted to be a better person. My smoking was stupid. So I gave up that night. I have occasionally smoked the odd cigarette since during a night out, but I’ve never resumed the habit. And Lecretia was delighted with me.

  On the way back to Wellington from the Coromandel, we returned to Tauranga for the marriage of one of Lecretia’s best friends, Hilary. It was the first wedding we attended together. Lecretia was a bridesmaid, and she wore a beautiful red dress for the occasion.

  After dinner Lecretia’s friend Angela took me aside. She was another lawyer, short, blond and fiery, who adored Lecretia and was protective of her. Angela had married a blind man, Ben, a very successful public servant in the education sector.

  ‘It’s so nice to meet you finally,’ said Angela.

  ‘And you,’ I said. ‘I heard you weren’t too keen on me when Lecretia first started seeing me.’

  It was true—Lecretia had told me that Angela had advised her to have her fun but not to get too involv
ed with me, as she thought the age gap was too much for us to surmount.

  ‘I’ve revised my view,’ she said. ‘I’m happy you’re with Lecretia. But you need to treat her well. She likes you a lot. She thinks you’re the one.’

  ‘She thinks I’m the one?’

  ‘Yes.’

  It was a lot to think about. How do you know when you’ve found the person you’re supposed to spend the rest of your life with? My relationship with Lecretia was by far the longest and the most successful I had ever been in, but I hadn’t given much thought to its future. I was still living in the present.

  ‘I’m flattered,’ I said. ‘Why hasn’t she told me that?’

  ‘She doesn’t want to scare you. I’m telling you because you need to decide whether you feel the same way. It wouldn’t be fair to lead her on. She’ll want marriage and kids soon. If you’re not up for that, you should give her the space to find someone who is.’

  The thought of Lecretia marrying someone else and having their children filled me with dread.

  I found Lecretia and whisked her away from the wedding party to the dance floor. I imagined being with this girl forever and growing old with her. I began to warm to the idea that perhaps being with one person wasn’t as frightening as it seemed—that love, though a commitment, was paradoxically a liberation. I smelled her hair and kissed her cheek. Lecretia was the woman for me.

  A few months after arriving back in Wellington, I was pondering my next move. I had finished my masters, and was back at work, without really being clear where my work was leading me. Lecretia was absorbed by her job at Chen Palmer & Partners—we would frequently meet at 7.30 pm or 8 pm after she had finished for the day to have a drink or a meal.

  Later, when I was back at her house, I would look at the photographs on her walls and in frames on her dresser while she got ready for bed. They were scenes from her life in London, or having fun with friends in Egypt or Naples or Cappadocia. I admired her photographs. She had taken many when she was overseas and had compiled two carefully curated albums of her travels. These were shot on film, developed and neatly adhered to cardboard pages and covered with thin, clear plastic. She treasured these albums and delighted in showing me photos of all the countries she’d visited.