

The Tragedy of Euan and Kate

By

Mark Macpherson

Copyright 2013 Mark Macpherson

Smashwords Edition

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##  Contents

Prologue

Part 1

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Part 2

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Part 3

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Epilogue

Flawed Gods Sample

Composite Gods Sample

##  Prologue

Her name is a beautifully proportioned stream of syllables, it's perfect. I don't remember ever speaking her full name out loud and once I was in love with her, I held the sequence of sounds that is her name in too much reverence to utter them. I simply called her Kate.

##  Part 1

##  Chapter 1

Euan arrived breathless before the front door of his friend's house. Liam's wife opened the door in response to frantic knocking.

'Hmm,' she said. Her hand remained on the door handle as she blocked the entrance. 'You've taken your time.' She moved aside to allow Euan into the hallway. She shut the door slowly and turned to face the anxious young man.

'Have they been here long?' he asked.

She slowly announced, 'They haven't arrived yet.'

She smiled as a shudder of relief passed though Euan's body. She brushed her dead-straight dark hair away from her thin face and pointed Euan into the house with a little dance of her fingers as if she was sweeping him before her. She followed him into the lounge. Euan fussed as he tried to decide where to sit. His choice would determine where he was when he greeted Clare for the first time. Liam's wife watched his indecision like she was an older sister, mostly benevolent but who would also enjoy the sport of his embarrassment.

Euan was a plain looking New Zealander. He was not ugly but he was a young man who could be called handsome on the rare occasions he dressed well and a buoyant mood hijacked his features. He had asked his friend Liam to arrange a dinner so he could meet Clare, a long haired blonde from upstate New York, studying in New Zealand on a scholarship.

Euan had delayed arriving too early at Liam's house by distracting himself with busy but meaningless work. He had been too successful and had forgotten about the dinner until he was late.

Euan's whole body fidgeted anxiously as he stood in the lounge room. All he could think of was his impending embarrassment before Clare and the other invited guests.

'You haven't met this girl yet, have you?' Liam's wife asked.

'No.' Euan did not look at her, his eyes flicked from an armchair to a couch to the hard backed chair next to a writing table. Two of the options would declare that he was waiting expectantly and the dinner had been arranged; the other that he had been surprised by the guests and would, reluctantly, accept an invitation to stay. He did not know which was better, to be thought of as decisive and calculating or a casualty of circumstance.

'Liam said she's an exchange student, only here for a year or two,' she said. 'I guess a long term relationship is not uppermost in your mind?'

She smiled sarcastically.

Euan gave up deciding on a place to sit and his body slumped with disappointment at his indecisiveness. He looked at Liam's wife.

'I hope there aren't expectations about all this,' he said. Euan ignored the insinuation of only a sexual interest in Clare.

'You don't want an audience? It's the price you pay if you don't want the pressure of just the two of you,' she said.

'As long as you and Liam don't act like an audience,' Euan said. 'And expect a good performance.'

His nervousness made him combative.

Liam's wife watched him shuffle nervously in the middle of the room.

'Just be normal, that's all,' she said.

Euan heard compassion in her advice.

'I'll go and tell Liam you're here,' she said.

She left.

Liam and his wife's rented house was cramped and dingy. Their furniture was made of dark wood with stern patterned, old fashioned coverings. Euan was reminded of childhood visits to his grandmother's home. Liam's windows were covered in heavy curtains, like the stifling ones at his grandmother's, that could close out a midsummer day, turning beach weather into midnight.

Euan waited. Waves of anxiety rippled through his body. When the doorbell sounded Liam put his head in through the opened door.

'Time to be impressive. You ready?' Liam asked.

Euan's face creased. Liam laughed as he left.

Euan thought of possible gambits. He decided they were all inadequate and by elimination he was left with a standing, silent and stationary strategy. At least, he thought, he would not destroy the evening in the first minute. He frowned at his feet and paced half a step in one direction and then the other.

People spend their lives dreaming and planning their great moments but prefer as the time draws close to defer until their plans are better prepared. Euan regretted asking Liam to organize a dinner to meet Clare as he heard voices in the hallway. He knew, with no doubt, that he would look stupid.

Three guests entered the room. They were preceded by Liam like they were prospective purchasers led by a real estate agent. Euan was the embarrassed owner who had not had time to flee. He lifted his face as the group entered the room and was genuinely startled by their presence as if he never really expected that moment to arrive.

'Here he is,' Liam said with a flourish. 'The waiting physicist.'

Liam laughed. He enjoyed the sport of Euan's discomfort.

Euan was introduced to the guests. The other two were a couple. Euan had already met Hamish, a big-boned, large-nosed postgraduate geology student and he had seen Kate on campus but she had not noticed Euan. Clare's greeting was initially distracted. She had not been warned that there would be a potential partner for her and she was annoyed with Hamish and Kate. However, she absolved Euan of blame when she registered his shock. She thought he was as surprised as she was.

Euan's first, close-up impression of Clare was physical, overwhelming and involuntary. She had pinned her long hair back, on one side only, with a silver and aqua-blue clip. It was subtle and beautiful. With one visual movement her blue eyes and blond hair were joined. She smiled at Euan with genuine joy as if they shared a common difficulty.

Euan thought vagina.

##  Chapter 2

'Yes, as I said, I have a scholarship to do a Masters but then I have to go back home again,' Clare said to Euan.

Euan had been flustered by his unexpected, and unwanted, vision and had not listened as Clare had been introduced. He had asked a question to which Clare had already provided the answer. Liam touched Euan on the back as if in commiseration at his failure with Clare at the outset of the evening. However, Euan's distraction matched Clare's, for different reasons, and his initial nervousness endeared him to her.

'Yes,' Clare added. 'Going home will be sad, because I've made good friends already but, I miss my family. Still, that's not for a while. Not until I pass, that is. Maybe the end of next year.'

'She'll pass,' Hamish interrupted. He eyed Euan and Liam as if to challenge them to disagree. 'I'll make sure of that. She's got a great subject for her thesis and her supervisor doesn't muck around. She'll be finished before she knows it.' He sounded assertive and confident in Clare's defense.

Clare was, also, studying geology.

'I don't know about that,' Clare said quietly, with diffidence.

Clare half-smiled at Hamish's quick defense and looked down at Euan's feet to hide her embarrassment. She watched them shuffle nervously, as if they were trying to dodge her gaze. She smiled as if his feet were an entertainment. She decided that she liked him.

'Why don't you all sit down?' Liam's wife said when she came into the room and had been introduced. The group had not moved from the middle of the lounge room. 'Liam will get you something to drink and I'll go back and check on dinner.'

'Do you need help?' Clare asked.

'No, but thanks for asking,' Liam's wife said and looked pointedly at Euan, as if any offer of assistance should have come from him.

Euan was quick to sit on the wooden chair next to the writing table, he did not want to sit next to Clare, not yet. He preferred to keep a safe distance. His vision had unsettled him. Liam gossiped with Hamish about the University, and the two women and Euan listened until Liam's wife reentered the lounge room. She scowled when she noticed Liam had done nothing about drinks.

'All right then,' she sighed as she accepted domestic responsibility for the evening. 'We can just start dinner if you like,' she said.

Clare and Euan sat opposite each other at the dining table. Clare became comfortable with Euan the longer she talked and Euan became comfortable with Clare the longer he listened. He had dismissed his sexual image and was eager to hear her stories of American family and college life. He thought she was perfect but he realized she was no Beatrice. That settled him and lightened his mood. He was young enough that his goal remained a relationship with the perfect, idealized woman. However, meeting that woman would be too daunting outside dreams. He thought of Clare's insignificant faults and that put him at ease.

That April day had been warm, a remembrance of summer. It takes one last cold-front of Antarctic air, usually in April, to completely extinguish the memory of summer. During the meal the windows rattled as the wind came out of nowhere. Branches brushed against the outside of the house. It started raining heavily. The last vestige of summer was shrugged off as winter began. The last warm day was over and the days of cold winds, bare branches and snow on the mountains settled into place.

The conversation was overrun by the sound of bad weather. Euan smiled, reveling in being sheltered and secure inside the dining room like he was surviving an outside hostility.

'That must be the change,' Liam's wife said.

'Where do you go skiing?' Clare asked Euan.

He told her he had never been.

Clare was surprised, she wondered how someone so close to such a treasure, as the New Zealand ski-fields, had reached adulthood without skiing. She construed Euan's disinclination as a sign of seriousness, which she positively added to his diffidence. She decided that she had a new goal, to change Euan into the man she wanted. He was close, she thought, although she knew little about him. What was required was a little loosening up and some exposure to activities she assumed he would enjoy.

'The University has its own lodge, right on the mountain,' Clare said. 'Kate has told me how good it is. I can't wait until there's snow. The three of us have booked every Wednesday and Thursday from the last week in May.' She paused as an actor does. 'Why don't you come with us? When there's enough snow.'

Euan did not know where her sudden request came from. He assumed she wasn't asking for immediate sex, and that a larger group of people would be involved and that she was simply being friendly. However, he thought, she had asked and he could not for the life of him see how that was not positive.

Euan, for the first time, cut into the chicken dish Liam's wife had prepared as Clare made her surprising request. The meal was cooked in a ginger sauce and Euan thought, fleetingly, of the ginger plants that grew outside his rented home. He lived in a one-room apartment that was underneath a two-story family home. Through floor to ceiling windows he overlooked an overgrown, private backyard garden. The family, who lived overhead, never frequented that garden. He assumed they were afraid of embarrassment by the bubble-like view of his life, worried about discovering him masturbating or with a woman or, prosaically, that they did not wish to intrude on his privacy. The family's existence was unimportant to Euan and in the evenings, when they walked overhead, there was a drumbeat of footsteps that signaled normal lives Euan ignored.

The plan of his one-roomed apartment, minus a separate bathroom, was rectangular with the windows on the long side. Against the wall, opposite the floor to ceiling windows, was a couch that pulled out to become a bed. In the early mornings, when he slept, he often had the rising sun in his eyes. It probed inside his room to prod him awake, to interrupt when his dreams were driven by his almost conscious mind. Those dreams were, mostly, of women and he was always disturbed before any particular woman's face was clearly defined. The woman, or women, since he did not know if his dreams were of the same one, was slightly blurred but he knew she was perfect, except for one small, inconsequential blemish that would prove her humanness and make her approachable.

Each sunny morning the searchlight of the rising sun filtered through his eyelids and washed his dreams in pale red, fading the form of the unknown woman.

In some dreams, that he would never admit to, he stood before that almost-perfect woman and shielded her from the arrows of attackers. He died a noble and painless death but, resurrected, he would accept her gratitude for his ultimate sacrifice. He steered those dreams and her gratitude to include sexual favors. The consummation of gratitude would always be interrupted by the morning sun. Euan would roll over and try to continue the story telling but the conscious act of moving would wake him enough for life outside his dreams to intrude, like water fills a sinking ship.

Euan cut off a bite-sized piece of chicken. The meat was opaque white on the outside but pale and uncooked on the inside. He knew people ate raw fish and that some liked their beef rare but Euan was unsure if uncooked chicken was safe to eat. He remembered something about pathogens. The piece of chicken oozed. The heat from the oven had barely reached the middle. What to do? His thoughts raced in a frenzy. If he was alone with Liam and his wife the chicken would have gone back to the kitchen. No questions asked. However, he was also with three people he didn't know. He had arrived late, riddled with anxiety. He had forgotten to be grateful. The uncooked chicken would be partly, maybe mostly, Euan's fault. Would she be demonstrably upset?

Should he eat the chicken anyway? He could hide the rawness by covering it in sauce. However, what if someone else's chicken was also uncooked? Would he look foolish? He could plead that he did not notice, but the uncooked chicken was obvious if undisguised.

Euan overreacted. He raced forward through an imagined lifetime of loss caused by a single inappropriate response. What if Clare was the dream girl whose features he could never see clearly? Hindsight is what he wanted. Critical lifelines depended on this single moment of decision. He was not confident enough to bluff his way through an embarrassment. A mistake would be fatal. He was certain that Clare would withdraw her offer to take him skiing. His clumsiness over an undercooked chicken would end everything with Clare before it started. The chicken piece stared at him with its unblinking, pale, seeping eye, goading him to make the wrong decision. It was infused with the ghosts of failure as it tempted him to make a choice.

Euan genuinely believed he was on the cusp of a major life choice, that once made would lead his life in one of two opposite directions. He did not know that lives are lived out of simple choices that are of little consequence when made, and can only be judged in retrospect.

Should he eat the chicken or not? He remembered similar circumstances, but those had occurred when he was not responsible for his actions. He was a child. He was with relatives and there was food he did not like or was unaccustomed to eating. His behavior was explained by a parent and he was shown the leniency of childhood. Familial patriotism excuses excesses. However, Euan was supposed to be grown up. Decisions were his own and with that freedom came the possibility of failure. Euan wanted the dinner with Clare to be the beginning of something important but the specifics forgotten.

He masked his indecision and embarrassment, as best he could, and ate the chicken. He told Clare he would love to try skiing.

##  Chapter 3

Euan did not sleep well that night. He fussed and analyzed the outcomes that would lead to embarrassment, if he asked Clare to go out with him. He worried that he had misconstrued her interest and attention and that she was, really, only being friendly in a situation she had no option of quitting. Was Clare's display of interest imagined? He replayed the evening in his mind, sifting relevant information from inconsequential moments. Were his feelings the whole script? He did not know but, as he lay in his bed, he thought they might have been.

He was unable to sleep and his sleeplessness wound him tightly as he worried about the embarrassment of refusal. However, he could not relax as he wondered if he should risk embarrassment after all.

An hour before dawn he decided to do something about his sleeplessness. He resolved, for the sake of his own peace of mind, to call Clare that day and ask her to join him for something small and unimportant, like a quick coffee in the cafeteria. If she refused him, then she was the one who was reading too much into his, friendship-only, request and he would indignantly tell her so. It was then only a simple case of avoiding the Geology department for a few weeks. He could do that. He could also avoid the main cafeteria as well. He could go elsewhere for lunch. He could restrict his visits to the main library, in case Clare was there, and use only the Physics library. It would be easy. He let himself sleep, having set up a face saving strategy after an embarrassing defeat.

Failure was catered for. He did not once think of success.

Each following morning Euan woke with unwarranted optimism. He thought, today I will definitely talk with Clare. He would arrive early at his office at the University but it would be too early to call her; he would need a coffee first; he would have to finish a piece of work; there were errands to run; he was busy; he was not in the mood. The mornings disappeared and the afternoons would have a different set of excuses. As the day wound down his pretext would be that it was getting too late to call. He did not know where she lived and had not requested her home telephone number. In any case, to call her in the evening had an obvious relationship-starting connotation. However, he went to bed each night optimistic that he would call her the next day.

The days repeated. Looking, in retrospect, for the perfect opportunity became an end in itself. He reflected on the day just passed, usually when the "too late to call" excuse began, and find times that would have been perfect. 'Yes, eleven a.m. was the right time. I had fixed that physics problem, I was feeling good and that's when the geology department finishes their communal morning tea. I should have called her then.' There were many such chances that went begging and Euan made mental notes to remember those times for the next day but something would always interfere with the execution.

He fell into a depression as he was saved from embarrassment. He wasn't going to call Clare. The days of procrastination meant he'd left it too long. She wouldn't remember who he was. The evening at Liam's had faded into long term memory. Euan's pleasure had been in planning and anticipation. The execution of a plan meant the interaction with real, messy, inexact, life. Unseen complexity and disappointment could only result.

The weather followed Euan's mood and became single-minded, brooding, disappointed and dark. It was not officially winter but it was cold and there were early and heavy dumps of snow on the mountains. For the first time Euan took an interest in televised weather bulletins. He watched the images of children rugged up and throwing snowballs and enthusiastic cross-country skiers taking advantage of clear slopes before the lifts opened and they were consigned to back country trails.

A few weeks after the dinner at Liam's, Euan went to an evening gathering of graduate students hoping to see Clare. She wasn't there but Kate was.

'Where have you been?' she asked him. 'I expected you to be a regular visitor at home by now.'

'What?' Euan was mystified.

'Were you listening at all?' Kate asked.

'When?'

'At the dinner.'

'I don't understand,' Euan said. He was genuinely confused.

'I guess you really don't,' she said with surprise. 'Clare and I are sharing a house. You really didn't hear us talking about that?'

Euan shook his head.

'It seems a waste. Your friend Liam goes to all that trouble after, I assume, you asked for his help, and you don't follow it up,' she said.

Euan complained that Kate's insight into his premeditated intentions for Clare were false. He sounded like an errant child.

'Just call her,' Kate said, ignoring his hollow complaints. 'Or go and see her.'

Kate pointed out a young man on the other side of the room. 'Do you know Michael?' she asked.

Euan said that he didn't.

'You'd like him,' she said. She took Euan by the arm and led him across the room. Euan liked the feel of being controlled by a beautiful woman.

Michael was tall and thin with long dark hair. He had a dry sense of humor that made it difficult to know if he was being humorous or naive. Kate introduced the two young men and turned to leave. Euan protested her departure, he wanted to grill her for more information on Clare.

Kate laughed and shocked him by giving him a quick kiss on the cheek. He withdrew his face with surprise as if Kate had been attempting an attack.

'Just call her. Call her tonight,' she said and then left Euan with Michael as she went to join another group of students.

'She likes you,' Michael said.

'What?' Euan said with annoyance as he watched Kate walk across the crowded room.

'Kate said you played guitar. Is that right?' Michael asked.

Euan played classical guitar, for personal pleasure. Michael had aspirations of a professional music career.

They discussed music. The two men showed off their knowledge like it was an intellectual arm wrestle. They tested each other on Beethoven, Britten and Bach and soon realized their music interests were complementary and their knowledge similar. Their competition ceased and thirty minutes after meeting they had become friends.

Euan dreamed of being able to play all the Bach Lute Suites but he procrastinated. He had had some success, as he waded through the notation, but had stalled at a few of the hardest passages. He discussed his difficulties and Michael made suggestions. Euan thought of the similarities between his wish to master the Lute Suites and his attempt to contact Clare. There could be no achievement without the effort of attainment. He was unwilling to risk failure in one and embarrassment in the other. He was inspired and convinced, as he listened to Michael, that the safety of failure after inaction was no safety at all.

Michael invited Euan to a lunchtime concert, that he and a few musicians were giving at the University the next day. Accepting the invitation was Euan's first step towards a less risk-averse lifestyle. Music to begin with and then, using his new inspiration and confidence, Clare as well. It was late when Euan left the graduate gathering and after looking unsuccessfully for Kate, he hurried home ready to follow her advice and call Clare. He picked up his telephone and realized he had not asked Kate for her home telephone number. In any case, it was probably too late, Clare may have gone to bed. He decided he would call her at work, the next day, after the lunchtime concert. That would be the perfect time to call, he thought as he, again, went to bed full of optimism.

However, he did not call Clare the next day.

##  Chapter 4

Euan went to the lunchtime concert the following day. The lighting was dim inside the University's theatre. He carefully found his way to a seat towards the middle. When his eyes adjusted to the low light he noticed that the auditorium was almost deserted. The stage was covered with a mass of snakelike chords from microphones, a mass of amplifiers and small monitor speakers. The musical instruments included electric guitars, drums and percussion, an amplified acoustic guitar and a stacked bank of keyboards, set in the three-sides of a square.

Euan wondered if he had made a mistake and had come on the wrong day. There was no way this was to be the classical guitar recital he had expected. Euan stood up and prepared to leave. He then noticed a classical guitar on a stand next to a hard-backed chair and a flute resting on a grand piano. The guitar looked out of place and inconsequential among its solid-bodied and, potentially, louder cousins. A few disinterested and disheveled people poked about on stage, making and testing connections and tuning instruments. Euan squinted in the cavern-like lighting and recognized Michael tuning one of the electric guitars. He sat down again. He waited, expecting to be disappointed.

The random movement on stage reduced until all the musicians were stationary in their allotted positions and the two extra people on stage jumped off the front and walked up the center aisle to a large mixing desk. Classical, symphonic music swelled though the stack of speakers on the side of the stage. Euan smiled. Maybe this will be something different and good after all, he thought.

One of the band members began softly playing the acoustic guitar in unison with the recorded music. The recording faded and the guitar played a crescendo in a chord sequence that held back from a resolution. The band exploded into a new, and unrelated, key. Euan was overwhelmed with the volume, intensity of playing and the complexity of the music.

Michael played a theme and then variations on the electric guitar, the keyboards provided counterpoint with the keyboard player often playing two instruments simultaneously. The acoustic guitar added a lightness to the music at odds with the bass guitar and drums. The music was very loud. Euan did not know which instrument to concentrate on. He heard the drums reproducing the variations from the guitar and blending them with the counterpoint of the keyboards. He listened to only the drummer and understood he was joining the music, not keeping time. He shifted his focus from instrument to instrument and tried to untangle each melodic line. He failed. He gave up and listened to the whole. After a few minutes he realized the music, so far, was a long overture.

The music was a guttural, whole-body experience but, also, it included the delicate structure of theme and variations. Michael tempted his audience, as he gave hints of longer musical sequences and morphed those themes into new ones. Strange sounds arose from the guitar as if Michael was stretching the instrument beyond its limit, like a jazz saxophonist might achieve.

There was a particularly beautiful, melancholy melody that Michael hinted at in the first minutes and each time it began the band softened their playing style. However, before the melody was complete, Michael moved on to another theme and the band would follow.

The music forced emotions on Euan, as if he had ceded intimate control of himself to a group of strangers. His only possible response was to leave, he could not alter how he felt. Euan was forced to remember things: joyous times as a child; confused times; angry times and, by the incomplete melody, deep melancholy. Euan despaired at the thought of a lifetime spent without Clare and was jealous that Michael was able to force that feeling onto him.

The microphones remained unused, waiting for singers, but there had been no room in the music for a human voice. The acoustic guitar player looked like he may be a singer, he remained close to the centre of the stage, but he appeared as overcome by the music as Euan. Eventually, the acoustic guitar player shook off his reverie, stepped to the central microphone and drew breath. The band coalesced around one of the themes and the singer's high pitched, delicate, amplified voice rung out over the top of the other instruments. The amplification allowed the singer to sing softly and purely. The instruments on stage were increased by one.

Many themes introduced during the overture were sung but at times the guitar or the keyboards would carry the melody, the singer was not paramount. A discordant variation reminded Euan of a Britten quartet and he remembered his conversation with Michael the previous evening. When that section had gone on for too long it came to a messy crescendo and then dissolved into the complete melancholy melody Michael had heralded earlier. The confusion faded and the difficult time signatures became a flowing 3/4. The singer played the flute, a simple counterpoint to Michael's guitar melody. Euan was overcome with a sadness he did not have.

The soft music did not herald the end, it was the eye in the centre of a hurricane. The loud music returned until the band played a coda based on the melancholy melody but loud, fast and in a major key. The last few bars quickly switched back to the minor and the ending was a gentle conclusion to a hectic and charged journey. The last chords were played on the mellotron bringing the beauty of the orchestra to the last seconds. Euan was reminded of the end of Wagner's Ring Cycle.

There was scattered applause from the few people in the auditorium. Euan guessed there were at most thirty people in attendance. It was a great shame that so few had witnessed that performance.

Michael put his electric guitar away and sat in the chair next to the classical guitar.

'Did you like that? I knew you would,' a female voice said.

Kate and Clare were seated directly behind Euan. He had been unaware of them. Kate had spoken.

'When did you come in?' Euan asked after he had turned in his seat.

'I told you you'd like Michael,' Kate said.

'Just after the music started,' Clare answered Euan's question. 'Kate suggested we don't disturb you.'

Euan wondered what to say next. His body was twisted so that he could look at the women. One arm was across his chest holding onto the back of the seat so that his body did not uncoil. He was uncomfortable. Michael began playing his classical guitar and Euan wanted to watch his technique. He began to untwist his body so that he faced forward. He wondered if he should get out of his seat and sit next to the women but Kate was on the outside and if he moved he would be sitting next to her and not Clare.

'Would you like to go and get a coffee?' Clare asked quickly as if forcing the words out.

It was the question Euan had been too fearful to ask.

'Now?' Euan asked.

He retightened his grip on the back seat, his body re-twisted towards the women.

'Why not now?' Kate said indignantly.

'No, no reason,' Euan said. He hesitated. 'Now is good.'

Euan got out his seat and shuffled along to the aisle. Kate stood as if she was also coming but sat down again once Clare had wriggled passed her. Euan and Clare walked up the centre aisle and out of the theatre. At the top of the steps, just before leaving, Euan stopped and watched, for a moment, Michael playing classical guitar. He played well. Euan was jealous.

It's difficult to celebrate success in other people when they share a skill but are better.

##  Chapter 5

Clare led Euan to a small cafe near the University. It faced the Botanic gardens across a road that was never busy with traffic. The cafe's atmosphere was rustic and welcoming, not at all like the University cafeteria's Formica cavern. They sat at a small, window-side table overlooking the road with a view over the gardens on the far side.

'I expected you to call me after that dinner. Isn't that the normal thing to do? You know, when mutual friends go to all the trouble to set us up. It seems a waste.' Clare laughed.

Euan could not explain why he had not called. It was too silly and too childish now that he sat across the table from her. He was not nervous with Clare, his fear was of embarrassment, not of women.

'Did you enjoy that music?' he asked.

'Not really. It was too loud. I prefer acoustic music. Country stuff, from home, mostly. Kate insisted that I go with her. She thought you might be there.'

'I thought it was great. One of the best things I've heard. I didn't notice anything else.'

'I could see that. I was watching you. It was cute,' she said. 'Does that bother you? Being watched.'

Euan laughed. 'No.'

'It's cute that you can be so overcome by something.'

'I didn't want the music to end,' he said with regret.

'But you left before it was over,' Clare said, questioning.

'Yes,' Euan said emphatically. 'I did.'

Euan remembered an excess of detail from that afternoon with Clare, as if his life was more concentrated over those first hours with her. He always remembered the taste of that cafe's blend of coffee and the afternoon sun as it struck the wooden floor with the reflections from the floating specks of dust raised by customers and staff as they walked passed Euan and Clare's table. He can remember watching Clare's long fingers as she moved her hands in circles when her conversation became animated.

They stayed at the cafe until late in the afternoon. They went elsewhere for an evening meal but Euan can't remember the restaurant with the definition of the cafe, by then the location was unimportant, there was only Clare and she fills his memory of the rest of their first evening together. Euan went home, alone, before midnight. He slept that night without remembering his dreams. There was no need of a brave death and resurrection since he had found, he thought, the unfocussed face of his dreams.

The next morning Euan could not concentrate on his work. He left his office at the University and went for an idle walk through the Botanic gardens. It was an unusual thing for him to do.

The gardens were celebrating autumn and Euan, naturally, thought only of Clare as he walked. He felt foolish and young but in the privacy of the gardens, midmorning and midweek, he did not mind allowing his pleasure to carry him to extremes. He smiled idiotically while keeping half an eye out for other patrons. His newly found, consuming, pleasure was a unique discovery.

He walked without purpose, only to stay within the bounds of the gardens. He tried to name his new feeling. He was scientist so he had to find a description, but he failed to find a meaningful label. His ideas were silly, nonsensical and childlike. However, one phrase stuck with him although it was unscientific and embarrassing in its contradiction. Joyful melancholy, Euan decided, described his odd sense of happiness. At the beginning of a journey all directions are forward but change involves loss. His melancholy was not sadness, it was contradictory. It was uplifting but contained dependency as well as ill defined prospects. He was satisfied that he had labelled his unique feeling and returned to simply walking and enjoying the experience of his emotion.

Euan recalled the strings from the mellotron during the final chords of the lunchtime concert and he walked through the gardens with a musical accompaniment. The trees and shadows were figures in a movie with background music playing in his head. Euan was the movie camera and all possibilities were under his direction. He could make them happen by thought alone. He thought of Clare and true to all low grade movie scripts she appeared. She walked purposively towards Euan, her head down, unaware that he was there. Euan blinked, expecting the apparition to disappear. She saw him when she was close.

'Hi,' she said with pleasure. 'What are you doing here?'

Euan didn't think before he spoke.

'Thinking of you,' he was embarrassed when he heard the words as if they had come from someone else.

Euan tried to take back what he had said.

'I'm sorry,' he said. He frowned. 'How embarrassing,' he said, not meaning to say that out loud either. He could not keep his thoughts private.

'I just spoke without thinking,' he said without thinking.

There was a short silence.

'What do we do now?' she asked quietly.

Words often fail. A physical action was all he knew he was capable of and, with deliberation and gentleness, Euan took Clare's hand. He held it like it was a prize of great delicacy and beauty. It was all he could do and all he wanted to do.

Euan can freeze-frame that moment in the gardens and relive it. He can step out of the frame and walk around Clare and himself, looking at the two of them as if time has stopped. He can remember the feel of her hand, the gentle resilience, the warmth of her skin and its texture. Sometimes, later in life, taking the hand of a stranger or accepting change after a purchase when he touched the hand of a female shop assistant, he would remember that moment with Clare. The intensity of an emotion more than the duration is what decides how much of a memory is retained. Over the years of Euan's life, that memory of holding Clare's hand, for only seconds, has been retrieved and replayed many times. There has been a slow purification. That process is why it is often a disappointment to return to the places of childhood experiences. Euan has no wish to relive touching Clare's hand, even if that was possible. His memory holds the purest form of that moment.

'Do you want to eat? Again?' Euan asked.

Clare laughed. 'Yes, but not now. I have to go. I have to work.'

Euan didn't want Clare to leave, the spell would be broken. He asked to spend the afternoon with her again and kept talking to delay her answer.

'I really do have to work,' she said. 'I really do. I could come over tonight but not now. I have to go. Call me and give me directions.'

She left and Euan watched her walk away towards the University. It wasn't until she disappeared that he realized he could have walked with her. He also should return to work.

##  Chapter 6

Time does not flow as we wish when we are anticipating. Euan finished preparing a simple meal for Clare a long time before her planned arrival. He sat, staring out of his windows over the backyard garden, willing time to go faster. He wanted the dead time before Clare arrived to be over. He wanted to join the ends of the span of time like they were a piece of fabric he could fold so that it had no length. The more he concentrated and wished time to speed, the longer the waiting time stretched. His life had no meaning before Clare's arrival. Hours and hours passed and they were only minutes.

The small garden had begun his waiting by returning his stares with color, then the shadows lengthened and the backdrop faded into grey-scale and then whole areas merged into nothingness. The searchlight of sunset ranged higher and higher until the cirrus clouds caught the end of the day and held the last seconds of it. He watched and waited until the world outside his windows was black and he stared at his seated reflection. There were dull, rhythmic thumps of repeated footsteps from the house overhead. Life was continuing without him.

'Hi,' Clare said happily when Euan opened the front door for her.

'Come in, come in.' Euan's pleasure in inviting her into his home was stretched across his face.

'I had a little trouble finding this place. There isn't a number on the gate and the little pathway down to here isn't easy to see in the dark.'

Clare wasn't complaining, she was talking and Euan didn't concentrate on her words, just the sound of her voice. He asked her to sit down. They sat in armchairs with a rickety table between them. The table doubled as a coffee and bedside table for Euan. They faced the windows but there was nothing to see but their reflections.

'What's out there?' Clare asked.

'Just a garden.'

'Don't you shut the curtains?'

'There's no-one to look in. I rarely bother.'

'I could've walked here, I didn't have to drive. It's not too far,' she said.

'Did you finish that work you had to do this afternoon?' Euan asked.

They had a pleasant, simple conversation as comfortable with each other as if they had been friends for a long time. Clare told Euan about her geology studies and he knew the right questions to ask. Intelligence is made impressive by asking the right questions, not by dogmatic answers. Euan told her, in general terms, of his Physics work and tried to explain the beauty of higher mathematics. He sounded like he was discussing art. Clare did not understand but his enthusiasm was attractive.

Over the uncomplicated dinner, while sitting at the second, and larger, of Euan's two tables, the conversation became intimate. They told personal stories. Clare and Euan were certain they were at the center of all things.

The dinner had been consumed. The conversation momentarily paused. Clare stood. She held out her hand to Euan.

'That's enough. Let's go to bed,' she said. 'But do you mind shutting the curtains?'

Clare crouched over the naked Euan as he lay on his back on his bed. She took his hand and wrapped it around his penis to form a support, to keep it steady. She gently pulled her labia apart and downward and wrapped herself over him like she was protecting and preserving him inside her body. Clare took control of their lovemaking. He was a passive participant. He preferred that, not having to guess the satisfaction of his partner. He was always bad at predicting his partner's orgasm and often came too early after thinking it was all over. He enjoyed simply watching Clare's pleasure. He was free to think, remember and experience. Her simple action, when she assumed control, opened the world of women to Euan. It was an exciting world where mutual sexual gratification, friendship, comradeship and love were all possible in the one person.

Clare reached the end with a shudder. Euan came quickly and then rolled her over so they lay side by side, facing each other. He stayed inside her as they talked.

Euan burned a second, permanent memory to add to the one holding Clare's hand in the park. His memory was not of the active time of sex but the time afterwards. He remembered a melting penis inside Clare and the soft sound of her voice.

##  Chapter 7

The next morning Euan partly opened his eyes and wondered why the world was so dark. He should have seen the garden in the morning light. The curtains, he remembered. He drifted back towards sleep having decided to not get up and open them. His mind shuffled through scenes from the night before. He examined what Clare said and did and how he had responded. He was a half-asleep film director viewing rushes to decide which scenes were worth keeping. He should get out of bed, he thought, but couldn't be bothered. He was completely engaged in remembering but scenes became disjointed and out of order. He was an observer watching his own penis entering Clare, but she was no longer Clare. He was in bed with someone else and Clare was sitting next to them watching.

He had fallen asleep again and was dreaming.

No, he wasn't asleep. He moved his arm and touched real flesh that was not his.

'Nice dreams?' Clare sat on the edge of Euan's bed. She had dressed and was smiling like Euan was all that was important in the world. Her hand was around his erect penis.

Euan slowly woke to full comprehension that Clare was real.

'How can you be so cheerful?' he asked. He placed the back of his hand against his forehead as if to shield his eyes from the nonexistent morning sun.

'Why are you dressed?' he also asked.

'Some of us have things to do and can't dwell on a night of passion.' She pushed his hand out of the way, bent over and kissed him on the forehead. 'Also, I have to take Hamish's car back. Would you have preferred Hamish came and woke you up? Like this,' she said as she squeezed his testicles.

'I'm taking you skiing,' she announced and stood up. 'No questions allowed. For two nights. We'll pick you up later this morning.'

Clare left.

Euan was surprised at how his life had changed so quickly. He, apparently, had a full time girlfriend and now he was to be a skier. He returned the back of his hand to his forehead and worried that he had found real love only to die by avalanche, or by falling off a cliff, or wrapped around a lift pylon.

He got out of bed and opened the curtains to greet the morning and the garden.

##  Chapter 8

The car trip to the ski-fields took five hours. Hamish drove his car and Kate and Clare were the other passengers. They arrived at the base of the mountain in the late afternoon and then followed the gravel road that switched back and forth as it climbed. The landscape was dead, sharp, black and devoid of life. It was newly created by volcanic activity. Patches of snow appeared by the side of the road and joined to become continuous as they drove higher. The landscape morphed into a continuous white sheet of snow with some black, protruding, volcanic outcrops.

The car stopped outside the University chalet, a rudimentary wooden accommodation set among a cluster of similar buildings near the base of the lowest chair-lift.

Euan was surprised at snow's gritty crunch, he had expected it to be silent and fluffy. He helped unpack the car and then while the others discussed dinner he went outside and played. He tried running and sliding on the hard packed snow; he fell into undisturbed snow drifts with a dry splash; he picked up a handful of snow and dodged after he threw it into the air. He acted unselfconsciously, like a child at the beach on the first day of a long summer holiday. He never acted exuberantly in a calculated way, he was simply enjoying himself, but by doing so he attracted the women he wanted to attract.

Kate and Clare watched Euan through the window.

'That looked like fun,' Kate said when Euan had been called inside, when dinner was ready.

'I've never been in snow before,' he said.

A smile was fixed on his face. It would remain there until morning.

'The last time I remember doing that I was ten years old,' Kate said.

She grabbed him by the shoulders, turned him around, to stand away from her, and brushed the snow off the back of his jacket.

Euan laughed. 'Maybe you should try it again. Snow's not like anything else, is it?' he said.

Kate finished her brushing and he took off his jacket.

'No, I guess not,' Kate said. 'You tend to forget to play when it's everywhere. When it's a nuisance.'

'How could you get sick of that?' Euan pointed out of the window. The light was fading and the view over the stark white snow fields to the hard-edged, snow-less world below the mountain was slowly dissolving. It was as if they were entering their own, disconnected domain.

'Dinner's ready,' Clare called out.

'Great,' Euan said and brushed passed Kate. 'I'll do the dishes after,' he said to Clare. 'I promise.'

Clare and Euan went to bed soon after dinner had been tidied up. Euan was a little nervous as he undressed Clare. He was more concerned about what could go wrong than thinking about the obvious pleasure of a woman allowing him to undress her. It was cool in the bedrooms and Clare got quickly into bed, Euan followed. This time he lay on top of her and as he gently pushed through the slight, initial resistance to penetration, Clare watched him, alternating her attention from one eye to the other and back again as if she could not decide in which eye Euan really lived.

Everything was so perfect that Euan thought it could not possibly last.

##  Chapter 9

Early the next morning Euan stood, on skis, at the top of a ski run. The snow was pure white, there was no dirt and no leaf litter, because there was no vegetation on the mountain. One side of the run was overshadowed by towering cliffs of jet black lava, frozen in motion. While the landscape was definite, it was either black or white, Euan was hesitant. He was unsteady on his skis but was standing, which was quite an accomplishment. He tried to look nonchalant but was scared as he looked down the suicidally, he thought, steep slope. There were some adults but most of the people dressed in bright colors, who plunged off that precipitous edge, were children. He regretted asking Clare to take him immediately up the access chair lift and not spend time on the almost flat nursery slopes. He would have been horrified with embarrassment learning to ski next to children who did not look old enough to walk. As he waited at the top of the chair lift and looked longingly down to the bottom, where he could see the infants skiing on the flat surface, he almost changed his mind.

'It's a lovely view from up here,' Clare said as she patiently waited next to him. 'But the reason we're up here is to go down there.'

She pointed with her ski pole down the slope.

'I know. I will,' he said nervously.

He was mesmerized by the drop off like it was the edge of a cliff. Euan dragged his eyes away from certain death. He looked at Clare. He tried to smile.

'It looks easy,' he said. 'I just need to get started, don't I? It is quite steep, I mean. Oh, I don't know.'

Euan's face lost the last of his false confidence. He wanted to plead with Clare for forgiveness, to ask her which of his failings had led to this punishment.

Clare laughed, which did not help. 'This is an easy run. You'll be fine. You won't even notice this slope by the time we go home,' she said. 'Remember, lean down the slope, don't lean back. I'll watch out for you.'

Euan believed her. He slid over the edge and immediately lost control as he panicked and leant back to resist the slope. After a series of ungainly movements he lay in the snow detached from his skis. He heard approaching laughter, but it was only Clare as she skied down next to him. People skied passed and did not give Euan a second look, no-one noticed his embarrassment.

Euan laughed too. He spent a long time putting his skis on again. He caused Clare to fall and slide while he was leaning on her for support. He eventually reached the bottom of the slope but more in the way of a toboggan than someone on skis. The elation of his success made him forget his fear and indecision at the top, where he found himself again before he had a chance to think about it.

Clouds formed below the ski slopes later in the morning constructing a false floor of shifting mounds of white while Euan and Clare skied in glorious sunshine. The mountain was freed to float. Occasionally the clouds would break open for a moment and Euan could see the real world below, he felt like an inhabitant of Olympus whose only enterprise was pleasure.

Euan noticed a distant companion for their own mountain, a perfectly symmetrical volcanic mound, a few hundred kilometers away to the West. Its summit also poked above the clouds and was accompanying them on their journey through the sea of white.

Clare had to drag him away late in the afternoon, by which time most of his runs down the access slope did not result in him falling over. He could even turn, of a sort, and occasionally he could stop where he intended.

The next morning the weather was perfect, again, and after two runs on the same, beginners slope of the previous day Clare suggested they go in search of Kate and Hamish. They zigzagged across the mountain using chair lifts and T-bars looking for the other two. When they found them the two couples rendezvoused at the top of a steeper run served by a chair lift.

Hamish and Kate skied off the edge first and Euan watched Kate as she moved effortlessly down the slope. Clare thought he was repeating his hesitancy of the first morning.

'Are you OK?' she asked with concern. 'Is this too steep for you?'

'No, I'm fine,' he said. 'It's more fun than I thought possible. Thanks for bringing me here. This is really great.'

Euan nearly fell over, from surprise and from the collision, when Clare leant over and kissed him.

'It's fun when you're doing this holiday stuff,' she said. 'But it's different when you have to get to school or go to work, when you have to drive in it, decide when to put snow tires on your car. All that stuff. Sometimes you just can't go outside because there's too much snow. When you come and spend time at home with me you might change your mind.'

Clare dropped off the edge and was gone.

Euan repeated her last sentence as he watched her slide away. Did that mean she assumed a long term commitment, or was he to be allowed a short visit after she returned home to the USA? He was both excited and disappointed. She expected them to remain a couple, at least until the end of the following year or so, but she had confirmed that she would leave. If Euan wanted Clare he would have to leave New Zealand and live in another country. He didn't know if he wanted that. He would have a momentous decision to make.

He shook himself out of his reverie. He was, again, racing ahead and assuming difficulties. He had Clare, who he thought he could love, for at least a year, possibly more. How could that be a problem? He didn't care about the future, there was only now. He followed Clare down the slope to where Kate was waiting.

Over the years to come, what he would do in pursuit of her would amaze him.

##  Chapter 10

Months passed. Euan's passion for Clare dulled. The real, physical, necessarily imperfect Clare failed in comparison with the Clare he had first met. The excitement of discovery had gone. Mornings and whole afternoons passed when he rarely thought of her. It worried him. He assumed the fault was his but could discover no remedy. The intense moments of holding hands in the park, the time after first sex, or their first days away skiing could not be repeated. He became discontent. They had become normal people, their lives constructed of mundane activities.

Euan had thought he was in love with her but his altered passion caused him to doubt. As love matures, and changes, is it the same emotion altered or has it been lost? He didn't know the answer.

It was early December.

'I'm going home,' Clare said. 'Just for Christmas.'

She was tense with uncertainty.

A flood of anxiety overwhelmed Euan. He desperately wanted to fuck her, for reassurance as well as desire. He ached for the restoration of their normal, mundane lives together. His discontent was washed away. He was confused by the swiftness of his transformation.

'Oh,' he said quietly.

He had not used articulate words. However, suspicions, disappointments and unreasonableness can be quickly confirmed by an inflection as if spoken of at length. That single syllable told of Euan's unwillingness to let Clare go. That he would be miserable in her absence. That she would be breaking a commitment to spend Christmas together. However, he did not argue with her. He did not attempt to persuade her to stay. He could not have spoken of his anxiety. There was no logic to his worry, he immediately understood that. However, logical or not, his trepidation remained. He was afraid of change when he believed that change would be retrograde.

Many of Euan's significant as well as brutal relationship endings involved airports. For some he was the participant in the farewells, for others he was on his own and distraught, and others he was absent but watched the time tick over until departure.

A week before Christmas, Euan drove Clare to the airport. They did not talk much. There was nothing to say. Clare was looking forward to seeing her family but Euan had to return to the bed he occasionally shared with Clare.

They stood facing each other in the departure hall.

'Well, this is a cliché,' Clare said. 'If it wasn't real I wouldn't believe it.'

'Is this where one of us starts crying?' Euan said as he leant forward and rested his head on her shoulder, only half in jest.

'We can cry, if that's what you want,' she said seriously. She held Euan's shoulders to straighten him. 'I will miss you. Now that I'm here I don't really feel like going. It'll be freezing at home but,' she sighed as if gaining strength, 'it's only for a few weeks. We'll survive.'

'What if I need tucking in at night?'

'Make sure you do it yourself, that's all,' she said and forced a smile.

She walked towards the customs hall and Euan did not cry although he could easily have done so. Their separation was one of many at the airport that day but Euan's sadness for his temporary loss of Clare was real, the other departures were stories.

She gave him a quick, last, diffident smile then she was gone.

Euan's life was forever changed.

##  Chapter 11

'You could come as my date,' Kate suggested.

She had invited Euan to a New Year's Eve party, at the house she shared with Clare. He had refused.

'Hamish is away on a field trip,' she said. 'So I don't, officially, have anyone to accompany me.' She laughed.

Euan reluctantly agreed to go although he did not want to, he had been content enough in his private distress over the absent Clare.

Kate was a beautiful woman, although her mousey-brown, shoulder length hair bordered on unkempt. It disdained control and appeared to always require a few more strokes with a hairbrush. Her hair was the blemish that allowed her to exist in the messy, complex, physical world, barely banishing her from the perfect and platonic.

Kate shared an old timber villa with Clare. It was comfortable and affordable with large rooms and high ceilings. It needed paint both inside and outside. There was no backyard garden apart from some fearsome, untamed kikuyu grass and a cracked concrete path to an old steel rotary clothes line, placed exactly in the middle of the yard. The clothes line was rusted and stuck at a height that would poke an eye of any one of average height. It was a dangerous backyard at night.

At Kate's party, Michael discovered Euan standing outside Clare's bedroom. He had opened the door and was looking in. His hand fixed to the doorknob. The sun had nearly set and her room was lit through one of the windows as if by an outside beacon. Euan was thinking about entering the room and shutting the door behind him.

'Women's bedroom's are your speciality?' Michael's voice whispered next to Euan's shoulder.

'No,' Euan said without surprise. 'Just looking. Remembering.'

He was not embarrassed to be there, looking in at someone's private room. He, in a way, had shared ownership. Euan remembered hours spent inside that room with Clare. He remembered the irregularities of the ceiling as he stared in the early morning light while lying next to Clare while she slept, or at night how the weak bedside lamp left the far corners in darkness. Euan remembered Clare pulling back the covers to come to bed, sometimes to only sleep.

Euan told Michael of some of his memories and of his sadness.

Kate appeared between Michael and Euan.

'I knew you two would be friends,' she said.

'He's been telling me about Clare,' Michael said to Kate. 'How many years has she been absent?'

'About two weeks.' Kate laughed.

'And how long until she's back?' Michael said.

Kate put an arm around Euan's waist and drew him to her side.

'He's on the home stretch. Another two weeks to go. Do you think this poor Kiwi will survive, Michael?' she asked.

'Probably not,' Michael replied. 'Given how he's fared so far.'

Kate shut Clare's bedroom door.

'I said you could come as my date. You're not doing a very good job,' she said to Euan. She led him away. 'You can have him back later,' she called to Michael.

Kate led Euan to a room packed with partygoers, as far from Clare's room as possible.

'I hope you weren't intending to lock yourself away in Clare's room?' she said.

'Possibly,' Euan said. 'Did you send Michael?'

'I didn't like the way you were on your own and drifting in that direction.'

'You were watching out for me?'

'Always,' she said.

Kate and Euan were jostled as guests tried to move between them and around them.

'It's not the end of everything,' she said. 'Not yet anyway.'

'What do you mean?'

'Well,' she said. 'It's a practice run, isn't it? She will be leaving again. Possibly later next year or, nearly,' she looked at her watch, 'this year. She'll have to go. We both have to leave New Zealand, eventually.'

'She has mentioned I could come to the States.'

'Oh,' Kate said.

'I don't know what that means. What do you think it means?'

'I don't know Euan. Maybe she loves you, or thinks she loves you.'

'What?'

'Well, they're not the same. Thinking you're in love is easy to lose, the other isn't.'

'Being really in love you mean?'

'Yes.'

'Are you in love with Hamish then, or do you just think you're in love with Hamish?'

Kate laughed. 'I think I'm in love. That's the safest way, Euan. Hamish and I will be tested as well, sooner than you and Clare.'

They were interrupted by Liam trying to push between them. He was concentrating on not spilling two drinks he was holding and had not recognized Kate and Euan. Euan said hello when Liam's face was inches from his.

'Oh, hello. I didn't see you,' Liam said. He held up the drinks he was carrying. 'I'm a drinks waiter now, that's what you end up as if you marry someone.' He laughed and then recognized Kate.

'Oh, Hi Kate. Great party,' Liam said. 'Are you two consoling each other for absences?'

Kate put her arm around Euan and drew him to her side. 'Of course,' she laughed.

Euan was embarrassed but Liam laughed with Kate.

'Anyway,' he lifted his drinks again. 'Someone's waiting.'

The party ended and a few hours after midnight the house was empty. Euan stayed, he did not want to go home, he did not want to be alone. If it had not been an odd request, he would have liked to have slept in Clare's bed. He began to clean up, to delay the inevitable departure.

'You don't have to do that,' Kate said as she yawned. 'I'll do it in the morning.'

Euan picked up two empty drink cans and put them down, together, in a different location. It was useless tidying but it kept him there. Kate watched as he shuffled items about the room.

'If you stop doing that,' she said, 'I'll make you a cup of coffee.'

Euan agreed.

They sat in the kitchen, facing each other across the metal-framed laminex table, with a cup each, mostly not talking. Euan didn't want to leave and Kate did not ask him to.

Euan woke early the next morning and stared at the ceiling. He was confused by the irregularities and cracks in the plaster and paint work. He could not make sense of the patterns. He dozed off and woke again when the light was stronger. This time he stayed awake. He rolled over and stared at Kate's uncovered body like it was a work of art he would never see again.

'Hello,' Kate said. She had been awake.

'Hello.'

Euan didn't try to touch Kate as she got out of bed. He stayed to help her complete the cleanup. She offered him a cup of coffee when they had finished and, again, they sat around the kitchen table mostly not talking.

Euan filled that silence with conjecture and consequence.

He walked home. He was surprised, and perplexed, that he had not thought of Clare after Kate had commandeered him at the party. Clare had been too easily forgotten. Which, he assumed, proved Kate's point about love being provisional until tested. When Clare had left for the USA, he had imagined worse-case scenarios based on Clare's actions. He had never believed that he would cause a rupture in their relationship. He wondered what he should do.

He could placate his guilt, possibly but unlikely, by confessing when Clare returned. That would cause messy consequences for Kate. Euan was certain that Kate's relationship with Hamish was as ruptured as his was with Clare. He had formed that opinion because of the second silence. To be fair to Kate, he reasoned as he walked, she would need time to sort things out with Hamish. Short-term dishonesty would be required. He would avoid being alone with Clare, while not giving the impression of evasion. He would have to stay away from Kate, as much as humanly possible. He would have to hide his embarrassment when, on the rare occasions, he was with both women. He would be careful around Hamish when he returned from the geology field-trip.

He reached home and walked down the sidesteps to his front door satisfied with his plan and excited about a new beginning. Although short-term sacrifices were required.

His regret was personal, selfish and too easily dismissed.

##  Chapter 12

A line of hills delineated the western boundary of the city's suburbs. They were covered in temperate rain-forest and were always green. Two weeks after Kate's party, Euan drove west for half an hour on a twisting, mountain road. He halted at a small turn-in, that was not a real parking space, but it allowed room for a car or two to pull over safely. On the edge of the roadway was a small sign with a government warning exhorting respect for the flora and another small sign that simply said, Knoll, with an accompanying arrow. They were the only markers of a hidden entrance into the forest.

Euan brushed passed the signs and into the rain-forest. It was silent under the canopy as if a curtain had been closed behind him. Tree ferns overhung a narrow, winding, uphill track that avoided the flora of importance. In places, the path was raised by a wooden walkway to keep visitors from damaging the smaller plants. Towards the summit the path dissipated and Euan had to pick his way over a mass of tree roots from a stand of mature Kauri. There was no undergrowth. When Euan crested the hill, a view over the suburbs and the distant city was revealed. A few small, dormant volcanoes popped their heads up among the thousands of houses like they were neighborhood intruders. The horizon was a sparkle of water in a vast harbor.

He needed a still moment to himself. The prior two weeks of Euan's life had been intense, lived like some people, who face a planned, certain death, live crammed lives. All that time had been spent with Kate. Little research work had been done. Little of anything had been done that did not involve the two of them. Passion had exhausted him, both physically and emotionally.

However, physical exhaustion was an acceptable price to pay, he had loved every second of the last two weeks spent with Kate.

There was no single moment, from that time, to burn into his long term memory. There were too many perfect ones for a single one to take precedence. The specific date for Clare's return, and Hamish's return later in the month, had set in train a countdown to termination that had added an extra narcotic to their shared time. He had not been anxious about that end date, and that lack of forward thinking anxiety was a novelty for him, but had lived those weeks to their fullest like an elite track runner runs to exhaustion and collapses over the finish line, where he is crowned in the glory of personal achievement. However, while he used that end date to add piquancy, and they both had done that, it was not to be a termination, only a hiatus. The time after Clare's return would be a time to pause and reassess, to remove hurdles, that is dismiss Clare and Hamish, before continuing with an altered, yet improved, relationship.

Euan had learned from his months with Clare. He would not allow himself to be disappointed as a relationship matured. He was determined to not repeat that mistake. He convinced himself that he would be patient, that he would be satisfied with the form of any subsequent relationship with Kate.

Euan returned to his car then drove out to the airport to pick up Clare. He was almost happy to see her, since her return was a new beginning.

She walked towards him pushing a trolley of bags and duty free shopping.

'Hi,' she said brightly, glad to see him.

He drove her home and listened as she described people, activities and scenery. She spoke of her feelings for him. He remained, mostly, silent.

They arrived at the house she shared with Kate. Euan unloaded her bags. He hesitated, he didn't want to stay. He could not enter the house with the returned Clare and keep his composure. Not yet. Not while the memories of Kate were so fresh. He said he had a lot to do and that he would call her the next day.

She was disheartened. Something was wrong. She asked him what it was.

He said nothing was wrong. He forced a smile as he tried to, unsuccessfully, reassure her then quickly left.

The importance, and acceptability, of lies are learned at an early age. Childhood games are based on lying, objects are hidden and the searcher is misled. Social life is based on lying. Unwanted gifts are accepted, boring friends are encouraged. People would be solitary and friendless if true thoughts were not often hidden. Each lie is different but there is a divide, that is intrinsically known, that delineates deceit.

Clare called Euan the next day when he had not called her. He was defensive and aggressive as people are when they know they are wrong and are confronted by their error. He wove some idiotic story of tiredness, overwork and distraction for his antipathy. It was a lame excuse for reprehensible behavior. It was deceit and he knew it.

Euan wondered how best to proceed now that Clare had returned. At least in the short term before Hamish's return at the end of the month. He could not break completely with Clare before Kate had time to sever her relationship. So he visited Clare that day, in her office at University. They went out for a meal, she showed him pictures of her trip. He tried his best to sound interested. She suggested returning to her home for the night. He could not do that. Not with Kate there. He suggested he was too tired and needed to sleep alone but Clare's insistence decided that the path of least resistance, at least until after Hamish's return, was the only logical option. Clare spent the night at Euan's home.

Euan resumed a halfhearted relationship with Clare. He convinced himself it was only a temporary arrangement giving Kate time to act.

Kate was intensely, although silently, annoyed.

##  Chapter 13

'The healer of all ills,' Michael said.

He had appeared at Euan's front door holding a copy of Bach's Lute Suites in notation.

'Kate said you could do with some non-human distraction. Which, odd as it sounds, is meant to be me,' he added.

He pushed passed Euan, not allowing Euan the opportunity to refuse entry.

'Kate sent you?' Euan asked as he followed Michael the few steps into his one roomed home.

'She talks about you a little too much to my liking,' Michael said as he sat on Euan's bed and drew the bedside table nearer and opened the book of music.

'What does she say?' Euan asked.

'We talk about a lot of things,' Michael said evasively. 'Anyway,' he continued quickly. 'I thought we could have some fun with these. If you're up to it?'

Euan assumed Michael doubted his technical skills.

'I've played them a bit, over the years,' Euan said tersely, also annoyed that Michael was not willing to discuss Kate.

Michael had not meant to offend. He looked at Euan for a moment before he asked, 'Have you got a stand?'

Euan fetched a music stand.

'Are you OK with the Preludes?' Michael asked.

'Yes.'

'I reckon it would be fun if we alternated, instead of just playing in unison. Do you think? We could play a few bars each and then swap,' Michael said attempting to be inclusive and diffuse the tension between them.

Euan hesitantly agreed.

'Well, get your guitar then,' Michael ordered.

Michael was the better player, he was more dextrous in the difficult passages but Euan was surprised that he as not much behind Michael in ability. When Euan had played the Suites on his own, and made no mistake, he worried as the piece progressed further. The increasing stress, at his expectation of immanent failure, would eventually overpower him and he'd halt after some horrible note. When he played with Michael they shared the responsibility and Euan relaxed. Consequently, he made few mistakes and after repeating a piece of music, he made none. With their four hands and two guitars, they were a single Julian Bream or a John Williams.

Euan was surprised. He and Michael were good.

'Kate's not too happy with you, mate. Although she doesn't talk as if she's pissed off. She's an odd one,' Michael said.

They were pausing after completing the E minor Suite's Prelude, their guitars still resting across their bodies.

'Really? Why?' Euan asked not understanding what Michael meant and how much he knew.

'Well,' Michael began.

He wasn't going to give a complete answer, he knew better than to get too involved in other people's relationships. He decided to impart advice only.

'You think each one is different,' Michael said. 'And in some respects they are, but they aren't really. They usually follow a template but it's rarely live happily ever after. At least not from what I've seen so far,' he said unhelpfully.

'That's reassuring,' Euan said sarcastically. He wanted to talk more but Michael made it clear he was not interested.

'Let's do another one,' Michael said as he turned pages of music.

They dreamed up musical games to challenge each other with increasing difficulty, as they worked to complete the E minor Suite. For the first three pieces each player called out how many bars they would play, as they took over from the other. There was no time to think and often after a strange choice of duration a player was left hanging with tied notes or in the middle of a run. They completed for slowness and exaggerated feeling during the Sarabande as each of them held notes longer and longer until the end was like waiting for a glacier to move. They shared the Bouree, one played the melody while the other played the bass line. They raced the Gigue as they randomly took over playing from their partner like they were playing leapfrog. They raced the final two bars in unison and collapsed in mock fatigue and laughter after the triumphant E minor finish.

'I've never played music like this,' Michael said. 'Sometimes, in the band, it can feel almost as good, when we're writing new material but, it's not like we just did. I mean, I'm not complaining, in their own way the other guys are good musicians but, well, how can you compare playing music like this?'

'I'm not that good really,' Euan said diffidently.

'Don't be a dickhead, Euan,' Michael said quickly. 'Just take the compliment. There'll always be better players but there are many worse ones, otherwise we could not have done what we've just done. I enjoyed it. Did you enjoy it?'

Euan agreed that he had.

'So, one hundred percent audience satisfaction. You can't get better than that, although you can get bigger audiences, of course.' Michael didn't laugh or smile but Euan knew he was joking.

'Well,' Euan agreed diffidently. 'It was awesome, wasn't it.'

'No,' Michael said fiercely. 'We were awesome. Bach's always been awesome, he can take care of himself.'

Michael stood up and put his guitar in its case. 'Sorry, I have to go. I should have already gone, actually.'

Michael walked to the front door and opened it. Euan remained sitting with his guitar across his lap.

'Try to write some new music. Now, in my experience, is the best time for that, with, you know, everything,' he said. 'We'll have to do this again.'

After Michael had shut the door behind himself, Euan began playing guitar and thinking of Kate, unaware of what he was playing like the automatic reflex that is breathing. A phrase containing three different notes brought Euan back to the present, as if waking him. The phrase was beautiful and he tried to bring his attention to it so that he could repeat it. After some failures that were close and almost erased his memory of the original, he succeeded. It needed another phrase for it to be resolved and he tried many until he had found the one that worked. He played the two phrases together and they were perfect. He laughed out loud like a child with a new friend.

He wanted more. He worked on variations but the original melody kept exerting its influence. He decided the new piece of music had to be a rondo. He tried many musical ideas until somehow he knew they were correct and complete. He never knew how close each idea was to completion until it was done. He had to remain patient and let the music create itself through him. As Euan played softly on a single classical guitar he heard arrangements of multiple instruments as the overtones from his guitar added harmonies.

The outside light faded but he didn't move. He felt that getting up to turn on the light would break the spell just as rolling over to avoid the morning light in his eyes ruined his dreams. Later at night, he resolved one note that needed to be flattened and something altered in his brain, telling him that his piece of music was finished. He turned on the light and wrote it down. He stared at the physical representation of his music and loved it, it was balanced and regular like beautiful facial features. He slept late the next morning and woke to a raging hunger. He had forgotten to eat the night before.

He eagerly got out of bed, like a child on Christmas morning, and looked over his composition. He played it. It was still beautiful in the stark, sad time after sleep. He thought it would last forever. It was Kate's music. Euan gave it a name.

He called it Kate's song.

##  Chapter 14

One warm day, just before Hamish was to return from his field trip, Euan left his office to get coffee at the main University cafeteria. It was a lengthy walk he rarely made for such a small item, but he did not feel like working and walking was, at least, an activity. He returned part-way to the Physics department building while sipping his coffee. He didn't really feel like coffee so he halted at a treed and grassed area and sat down in the shade. He slowly poured the contents of his cup onto the ground watching the motion of the fluid as it arced through the air.

He lay down with an arm over his eyes.

A figure halted next to him, blocking the leaf-filtered sunlight. Euan did not respond. The person watched on for a moment, making sure Euan was breathing.

'Are you all right?'

It was Liam.

'Fine,' Euan said but did not move.

'What are you doing?'

'Resting.'

'From what?'

'Nothing.'

'OK, then.'

Liam wandered off in a direction away from the Physics department.

Euan stayed where he was. Laying on the grass was the extent of his future, it was comforting in a moronic way.

Liam returned later and stopped momentarily.

'Still resting?'

'Yep.'

'Good.'

Liam returned to the Physics department.

Euan had almost decided to get up, at least before faculty members saw him and he became a spectacle.

'What are you doing?'

Euan recognized Kate's voice. He sat up immediately.

He lied but then immediately wondered why he did that.

'I had to give a talk to the faculty. I was bit stressed out,' he said nervously.

She stared at him, judging him.

'That can be draining, can't it,' she said, deciding to believe his explanation. 'However, there are better ways to relax than passing out like a drunk on the grass.'

'Thanks for sending Michael,' Euan said. 'How much does he know about us?'

'Us? Is there an us, Euan?'

'Of course. What do you mean?'

'What I mean,' she said angrily as if she was attempting an explanation to an imbecile. 'Is that you appear to have just resumed with Clare. As if those two weeks were nothing.'

'Nothing? You're kidding me aren't you?' he said with annoyance. 'I'm just waiting for you.'

'To do what, exactly?'

'Sort out Hamish.'

'And this is how you wait? Is it?'

He couldn't answer that.

'Why,' she continued, 'is it up to me?'

'Well, you know,' he trailed off, unable to complete his sentence. He was going to tell her the reason was she was the stronger of the two of them but didn't know how to say that.

'I don't know what to do, Kate,' he blurted out.

It was the most honest thing he had said in a long time. She lost most, but not all, of her annoyance.

'I know that Kiwi. It'll take time and it won't be easy. It's just really hard for me knowing that you're with Clare again.'

'I'm not really with her,' he said.

'Aren't you?'

'Not at all,' he said emphatically.

'Poor Clare,' Kate said softly.

Kate half-smiled, tousled his hair like he was a young child and walked away from him. She turned back after taking a few steps.

'Just get off the grass, Euan,' she said. 'Pay attention, be patient and grow up.'

##  Chapter 15

'You're not busy Thursday night, are you?' Michael asked Euan. 'No, of course you're not.' He answered his own question. 'You're either at work or home, most of the time trying to decipher Clare and Kate.'

He and Euan were in Euan's room practicing the Bach Lute Suites. They could play them all and had formalized how they swapped from one guitar to the other.

'Because,' Michael continued. 'We're going to play the Suites at the University cafe. In front of people. Nothing major, we'll just sit in the corner.'

'I can't play in front of people,' Euan protested and frowned his disapproval.

'Of course you can but there'll hardly be any people there anyway. It's the next logical step and you, of all people, should appreciate logic.' Michael pointed to the garden outside the floor to ceiling windows. 'It's time to display your skills to more of the world than your garden.'

The next Thursday evening, Michael and Euan arrived at the cafe. It was the same one Euan had spent his first afternoon with Clare. No-one noticed them as they entered with their classical guitars in their cases. There were more people present than Euan had hoped for. Some were eating desserts but most were sitting around tables drinking wine or bottled beer. As they threaded their way across the venue to a far corner, Michael told Euan that his band had played there, many times, when they first started. The owner was adamant that his venue was for acoustic instruments only, but Michael had, somehow, convinced him that a mellotron was, at heart, an acoustic instrument and had been allowed to use it. His band no longer played small venues with acoustic guitars, stand up bass, percussion, flute and mellotron and Michael missed the intimacy of a small audience.

Michael stopped to chat to people he knew and while Euan stood behind him waiting, he looked over to the window table where Clare and he had sat that first afternoon. Reverie did not result. He simply wanted the performance with Michael over.

They sat on stools in a corner and checked the tuning of their guitars. Euan's hands were shaking.

'I can't do this Michael.' Euan was distraught. 'Look at my hands. How can I play like this?'

'I'm a little nervous too. Does that surprise you? I've never given a real classical recital before but these guys,' he flourished to indicate the audience that were paying them no attention, 'won't worry about a few mistakes. Once we start you'll be fine. If you do make a mistake then, apart from don't, just keep playing.'

Michael played a short scale and then smiled at Euan, who knew the rarity of that expression. Michael's smile increased Euan's nervousness. He must be really worried, Euan thought.

'Don't worry,' Michael said, trying to be reassuring and failing. 'It'll be fun. Ready?'

They played the first piece from the E minor suite. Michael played the first bars of the Passaggio and then Euan came in and played some of the runs. Euan started the Presto too quickly and Michael frowned to slow him down. Euan's hands stopped shaking and he played fairly well. He stuffed up a few of the trills but only Michael would have known. Euan concentrated during the first piece of music and looked only at his hands or at Michael for direction. He pointedly ignored the audience. He could not hear any sound other than their playing. It was like the people in the room had disappeared and he and Michael were again playing on their own in Euan's room. Euan was pleased that his concentration was such that he could remove the audience. He had visions of ignoring a much larger audience. His nervousness had completely gone when, with a great flourish, the two of them hit the final E major, almost at the same time.

Euan looked up at the audience as the final notes rung out. The silence remained. He had not removed the audience by concentration. There was not a single sound in the venue as people stared at the two men holding guitars. Some of the audience were frozen mid-action, with raised drinking glasses. Every set of eyes were on either Michael or Euan, who had an urge to look behind him because some terrifying scene must be acting out. The audience erupted into applause which lasted so long that Michael stood and gave a mock bow. He pleaded for silence because they had more music to play. The noise from the audience increased after Michael asked for silence. He sat down and lent over to Euan.

'Was that fun? That was fun,' Michael said.

They played through all the Suites, twice. The owner was happy as owners are when their venues are filled with patrons buying things. As they left, the owner stopped Michael and beamed, asking him to return whenever he wanted. Preferably every night until his popularity subsided.

Euan and Michael regularly played small acoustic venues from then on.

A month later, Michael telephoned Euan at his office at the University. He sounded worried.

'Ah, I've just had a telephone call and I told them I'd have to ask you first,' Michael said, confusing Euan with the lack of explanation. Michael was silent as if he expected Euan to have understood his request and was waiting for a reply. 'They want to slot us into the Festival,' Michael continued. 'Ah, we'd be a main act. On Saturday night. Next week.' Michael stuttered to a halt as if it had been difficult to get the words out. Euan did not understand why Michael sounded nervous.

'That would be good wouldn't it?' Euan asked. 'Where would we play?'

Michael was annoyed.

'You're not listening Euan,' he said. 'I said, at the Festival. Saturday night. At the Concert Hall, of course.'

Euan understood and immediately felt light headed. They were being asked to perform at an international festival of classical musicians, before an audience that would find mistakes in presentation, interpretation, tempo, anything and everything.

'Why did they ask for us?' Euan asked, hoping it was all a mistake or some weird joke of Michael's.

'What I've been told is that they want to add some local color, something a little different, to show what can be done to modernize a classic, without turning it into Muzak. One of the organizers has heard us play and liked it. They know we'll draw a mixed crowd and it is, well, Bach and,' he said, and by his altered deadpan delivery Euan guessed he was amused, 'they had someone cancel at the last minute. What do you think?'

'Can we say no?' Euan asked.

Michael sighed. 'Not really,' he said.

During the Saturday afternoon before their performance, Euan wondered if it was possible to die simply from nervousness. He was way beyond worry and embarrassment, he sustained a physical and mental ailment. As he drove to the concert hall early in the evening he seriously considered a motor accident that would, gratefully, render him incapacitated. He dreamed of crossing the median strip and crashing into oncoming traffic. He parked his car and raced inside the hall to the toilets, where he threw up.

Euan returned to the toilets many times as he waited before their performance. When he washed his face, he stared at the person in the mirror, angry at him for agreeing to such a stupid idea. He wanted to return to his safe and silent room and lock his front door forever. He dreamed of being alone. He returned from his last trip to the toilets just before he was due on stage.

'You look horrible,' Michael said. He was standing just off stage, holding his guitar by the neck.

Euan had a wonderful idea and was disappointed that he had not thought of it earlier. He did not need to die or be injured to stop their performance, damaging his guitar would be sufficient. Euan rehearsed in his mind the action of smashing his guitar on the ground at his feet.

Of course, he could not damage his guitar. The inevitable humiliation and extreme embarrassment was seconds and meters away.

'Thanks,' Euan said sarcastically. 'This is going to be bad, isn't it?'

'Possibly not,' Michael said.

Michael began his march across the stage and Euan followed immediately behind, hoping to be unnoticed in Michael's wake.

It was a large audience and their applause, as the two of them walked on stage, did not calm Euan. He thought he and Michael looked like a silent-era comedy duo.

The performance started badly. They began with Suite I, the E minor suite, and unfortunately, Euan had the music open in front of him. He was so nervous that he doubted his capacity to remember and instead of playing from memory he read the music. The notation looked unfamiliar and he had a moment of panic, thinking it was the wrong music. He played mechanically, he did not trust his physical memory, he didn't let his hands play unhindered. He changed position on the guitar as if it was the first time he was attempting that piece of music. He played F naturals instead of F sharps.

Michael stopped playing. He sighed and looked to the roof of the auditorium. He reached across and put his hand over the strings of Euan's guitar. He slowly stood, methodically placed his guitar on his chair, lifted Euan's music from its stand, carefully shut the book of music and flung it across the stage with a flourish. He bowed to the large audience as if to apologize for his inept assistant.

'That was the modern, twelve-tone interpretation. Now, we'll play in the same key. Both of us.'

He looked sternly at Euan and wagged his finger.

The audience laughed as if it was part of the act.

Euan was horrified. His mouth opened in shock and embarrassment as if he had been wrongly accused of an illicit act. An audience often wants to enjoy a performance and will laugh at anything. They laughed at Euan's failure like it was a well planned routine and they laughed harder at his wide-eyed look of shock.

Michael and Euan started again. The audience took its cue from the comic opening. They laughed at some of Michael's flourishes as he passed control to Euan and at Michael's comic actions as they raced some of the faster sections in unison. Euan played the straight man and, after their restart, he played without obvious errors. The audience applauded after each Suite, which Michael encouraged, and there was sustained applause once they had finished.

The critical and the popular crowd loved them. They became celebrities, for the short time that those things last.

##  Chapter 16

The ski season returned. Kate, for all her initial annoyance at Euan for resuming a relationship with Clare, had done the same with Hamish. She had decided to let things run their own course. Hamish had been close to completing his degree during the summer, the January field trip had been a final collection of confirmation data. She thought it unfair to burden him with a ruptured relationship at that hectic time of final thesis preparation.

However, as those things always go, delay had occurred. Six unsatisfactory months had passed.

Euan's proficiency on skis increased and by midwinter he could keep up with Kate, Clare and Hamish on all the runs they preferred. He was ungainly compared with the grace of the two American women, but he did not keep them waiting and he did not require assistance.

'You seem distracted,' Euan said to Kate, as they stood at the top of a steep slope. Clare and Hamish were part of the way down already.

'I am,' she said.

'Reason?'

'Nothing,' she said quickly.

'I was just asking,' he said angrily, misinterpreting her abruptness.

He was short tempered with her. He brooded when he was with her in the company others, especially Hamish. He had been patient, as she had asked but he had begun to doubt that they would ever be together.

'Sorry, Euan.'

Hamish stopped on the slope and waved his arm, signaling his concern that Kate was OK. She waved back to indicate she was.

'He's leaving,' she said. 'He's got a job at the USGS at Woods Hole.'

'Oh, I see.'

'Do you?' she asked angrily, turning on him.

Euan was surprised at her response.

'It means he won't be here, doesn't it?' he said. 'But, at least, he'll be over there, for when you go home.'

'Yes, there is that issue,' she said but sounded as if Euan had suggested the wrong thing.

'It's good. Isn't it?' he asked. 'In the long run. Isn't that what you want?' he said sarcastically, attempting to needle her. He did not expect to achieve any positive result, his dissatisfaction made him disingenuous.

'Do you have any idea what's going on around you Euan?' Kate said angrily, responding to his odd suggestion with fury. Her stare made him uncomfortable. 'I wonder if you are even awake most of the time.'

Euan was disconcerted by her explosive anger. He wished he knew what was going on inside her head. He wanted her to talk to him, to tell him what she was thinking and feeling. He, quite simply, just wanted to spend a long time alone with her. That had been impossible with one or both of Clare and Hamish always being present.

'When would he go?' Euan asked.

'Soon,' she said. 'A few weeks.'

'Do you really want to follow him? After you're finished?' Euan asked.

Kate affectionately touched his shoulder.

'I'm glad you're awake today Kiwi,' she said and slid away from him, down the slope.

##  Chapter 17

A month later, Euan and Clare accompanied Kate to the airport, to farewell Hamish. He left them in the departure hall when he had checked in his luggage, not prolonging his goodbye. Kate inherited Hamish's car and she dropped Euan outside his home after a whirlwind trip to the airport and back.

Euan sat on his bed, picked up his guitar and began to practice. He played through the setting sun until he could no longer see the garden outside his windows.

He answered a knock on his door. It was Kate.

'I don't want to be alone, Kiwi,' Kate said. 'Is that being weak?'

'Where's Clare?' Euan asked. He had not yet invited her in. 'Isn't she at home?'

'No, she went to the University. I think she thought I'd prefer to be on my own.'

'Oh,' Euan said. 'Come in, of course.'

Kate sat down in one of Euan's two lounge chairs. Euan stood near her.

'I haven't had dinner yet, do you want something?' he asked.

'I didn't come to invite myself for a meal,' she said. 'Is it a bad time? I'm sorry, I'll go.'

'Don't be silly,' he said. 'You can watch me eat if you want, or you can eat as well. Whatever's best for you.'

'All right then. Yes, I'll have dinner with you,' she said. 'What are we having?' she asked enthusiastically and smiled.

'Pasta. That's the extent of the menu, sorry.'

'That's fine. Really.'

At one end of Euan's one roomed apartment was a small kitchen, made separate by a projecting part-wall. He went into the kitchen and got out some pots.

'What were you going to do tonight, Kiwi? If I hadn't interrupted you,' Kate asked.

'Nothing. Just some practice.'

'I won't stop you will I? Can you play if I'm here to watch?' she asked.

Euan came out from behind the part-wall.

'After playing at the Concert Hall, practicing in front of you will be nothing,' he said and smiled.

'I was there that night. Did you know that?' she asked.

'Were you?' Euan held two pots, one in each hand, as if presenting them for selection.

'Yes.'

'You never told me.'

'I nearly died for you at the start but Michael saved it all, didn't he? It was really great after that. You were really great, I mean.'

'Was anyone else there? I mean, Hamish or someone.'

'No. Just me, and a thousand others,' she laughed.

Euan laughed with her at the memory of his nervousness, although the recollection of his embarrassment caused his heart to thump. He and Michael had tidied up their comic routine and their larger concerts always began with Euan causing a serious error which was corrected by Michael. Euan's shocked face was a standard element guaranteed to cause laughter.

They ate a plate of pasta each, sitting at Euan's table. Their reflections in the glass windows, with the night outside, mirrored their actions. It was as if another couple, but indistinct, partially constructed replicas, watched over them by copying their actions. Kate cleaned up and washed the few dishes while Euan picked up his guitar and began to practice.

As Kate washed and dried the dishes after Euan's meal, she turned and noticed her image at the sink and the image of Euan, in the other section of the room, sitting on his bed playing guitar. She smiled at the scene's domesticity.

'What's that?' Kate said, as she dried the last dish and looked for a place to put the damp tea-towel.

'That's something I wrote,' Euan called out.

'It's beautiful,' she said and walked out into the room and sat in a lounge chair.

'Yes, well,' Euan was diffident. 'It's not Bach.'

'Does it have a name?' she asked.

Euan hesitated. 'Kate's song. I called it Kate's song, for want of imagination on my part. I wrote it when you sent Michael over.'

'Are you still in love with me?' Kate said, in a matter-of-fact voice.

'Not how I was,' he said, astonished that he had not been surprised and flustered by her question. 'But, yes.'

'I should go,' Kate said. 'This is wrong. It's not the time for this.'

However she did not move.

'You don't have to go, if you don't want to,' Euan said quietly.

Kate was reluctant to leave but, also, she was not ready to stay. The timing felt premeditated and clinical. She had not come to spend the night with him, she really had only come seeking companionship.

'I don't want to fuck you, Kate,' Euan said. 'Well, I do, but I just want to be with you if you're uncomfortable with that. If you don't want to go home, if you need company, you should stay.'

He quietly added, 'I'd like you to stay.'

'Thank you, Kiwi,' she said. 'That's how I feel too.'

They spent the night, partly clothed, under a quilt, sleeping together on Euan's bed.

##  Chapter 18

'Where did you go last night?' Clare asked. 'I was worried when you didn't come home.'

It was early morning when Kate walked into the house she shared with Clare. She had not slept well lying next to Euan. She was tired and disheveled. She had hoped to avoid Clare.

'I didn't want to be alone last night,' she said.

'You should have told me,' Clare said. 'I wouldn't have gone to work.'

'Well, you'd gone before I realized,' Kate laughed nervously.

'So, where did you go?' Clare asked.

Kate was too tired to construct a plausible lie. 'I stayed at Euan's. I listened to him practice. He cooked me dinner. He kept me company,' Kate said. 'Nothing happened,' she added quickly.

Clare watched Kate as if she was searching for the hiding place of Kate's lie.

'Where did you sleep?' Clare asked. 'There's nowhere unless you sleep on the bed. Did he sleep on the floor? I can't imagine him sleeping in one of those chairs of his.'

'No, he didn't sleep on the floor,' Kate said quietly.

'Right,' Clare said, wondering if she should get angry.

'Nothing happened, Clare,' Kate said. 'We slept in the same bed, but it was like a sleep-over. Like we were kids.'

'But you're not are you,' Clare said.

Kate didn't reply.

'Did you have to fend him off?' Clare asked.

'No, of course not. He's not like that, you should know.'

'I thought I did but I just can't imagine him lying next to you and not trying something.'

'He didn't. He let me stay, on the condition that nothing happened.'

Clare tried to hide her smile and it ended up being a smirk. She did not believe Kate. She thought she had, probably, tried to replace Hamish with Euan and had been rebuffed.

Clare liked Kate less and felt a little superior.

##  Chapter 19

Euan could not, easily, hide his ambivalence to Clare. He liked her, she had no obvious shortcomings in Euan's mind, but she was not Kate. He chose a logical, to him, solution to his problem of how to avoid being deceitful.

He stayed away from his own home, to avoid unplanned discovery. He worked late. He and Michael rehearsed their Bach duo at Michael's home and, also, he sat around the rehearsal studios when Michael's band practiced. Euan listened and offered suggestions to arrangements that were, surprisingly often, acted upon. By his persistent presence, to avoid Clare, he became a sixth, useful but non-playing, member of Michael's band.

Michael responded to Euan's apparent enthusiasm by including him in the band's performances. Midway through a rock concert, with the loud music playing frenetically, Euan walked onto the stage carrying his classical guitar. He wore his shocked face, the same look he cultivated for the beginning of the classical guitar duo concerts. Euan wandered across the stage to Michael and gesticulated as if arguing that he had been instructed to come to the wrong venue or time.

After the success of their Concert Hall performance, Michael and Euan had appeared on television many times and, even to a rock concert audience, Euan's face was known. The crowd roared their approval as Euan wandered onto the stage like he was a much loved actor walking-on to a sitcom television program.

After Euan had tried to unsuccessfully gain Michael's attention, during the concerts, he sat on a hard backed chair and ostentatiously, comically, attempted to tune his guitar. After a short while, when the loud music stopped, Michael joined Euan and they performed a few short pieces from the Bach Lute Suites.

The procedure was, mostly, a way for Michael to display his musical talents but Euan was pleased to be included.

'I've got a present for you,' Michael announced one day at the band's rehearsal. The other band members knew what was coming and smirked. 'While we all love you and your classical guitar, it doesn't fit with being in a rock band,' he said. He swiveled in his seat and reached down to something hidden behind him. 'So, I got this for you.'

Michael lifted, over his head and onto the floor in front of him, a thin, rectangular, black guitar case with gold lettering on it announcing the manufacturer's name.

Euan stared at it and wondered what Michael meant.

'Go on,' Michael said when Euan didn't move. 'Open it.'

Euan slid the locks open. The inside of the case was covered in soft, deep red, plush, velvet-like fabric and resting on that exaggerated material was an electric guitar. The body was sunburst colored, it was elongated and an asymmetrically skewed shape. The fret board was a beautiful, jet black wood and the fittings were gold plated. It was the weirdest guitar Euan had ever seen. He loved it immediately.

'It's for you,' Michael said as Euan stared at the contents of the guitar case. 'Do you like it?'

'It's beautiful,' Euan said. 'I can't accept it though. It's too much.'

Michael, unusually, displayed his joy by smiling at Euan. 'You can pay me back with your profits from the band. It's a recent model, wide fret board, good for cross over classical guitarists,' Michael said. 'Go on, pick it up. It won't play itself.'

Euan picked up the guitar, initially with difficulty as it was much heavier than his classical guitar. The other band members ostentatiously clapped as Euan picked a few, thin, not amplified, notes. Euan smiled and gave a mock bow.

'Thanks guys,' Euan said.

Euan played with the band from then on, but not as a pivotal member. He had extended periods of inactivity on stage which let him listen to the music he was a part of creating. He enjoyed that as much, if not more than when he was busy playing his electric guitar. He played to audiences of thousands and was never nervous. He stood on stage and searched out the one special face. She would be near the front of the crowd or she would be off stage watching his performance.

Kate was always there.

##  Chapter 20

It was November when Clare, finally, announced, 'I'm going home.'

Euan said nothing. His face blank.

'I can only assume that doesn't distress you?' she asked.

Euan laughed, short and harsh. 'It's expected, isn't it? I know you've finished.'

'So, you're not sorry that I'm going? Not at all?' She was combative.

'Of course I am, Clare.'

'I know how you feel about Kate,' she said abruptly.

Euan shrugged. He didn't care anymore.

'Have you fucked her?' Clare asked. Her eyes were dark.

'Yes.'

'That night after Hamish left?' she said angrily.

'No. Nothing happened that night. I told you that.'

'What do you mean? You fucked her recently? Or did you fuck her when Hamish was around?'

'Yes,' Euan said.

'When?'

'What does it matter?' Euan said angrily. 'We fucked. It had nothing to do with you.'

'So,' she said. She was sad. 'That's it, I guess?'

Euan heard himself being harsh and ambivalent. It was not really him. He sounded like someone he would not like.

'Probably,' he said.

##  Chapter 21

Euan was absent for one of his defining airport farewells, when Clare left New Zealand. He worked in his office. He glanced at the analogue wall clock until the time was close and then stared as the second hand swept towards the twelve. He didn't know exactly when Clare's flight would leave, but once the second hand passed through twelve, and her flight's departure time passed, she was gone for Euan.

Kate had taken Clare to the airport, in Hamish's old car, although the women had barely spoken for Clare's last weeks in New Zealand.

Euan was both relieved and sad. Any ending can be melancholy, even ones that reduce complexity. He left work and went home. He picked up his classical guitar and sat down on the bed with it. He did not play, he simply wanted the reassurance and familiarity of holding something dear to him. He rested his chest against the hard-edged guitar body and draped his arms over it, fitting himself to the curves of the instrument.

He swung his feet onto the bed and shuffled his body back and across until his back rested against the headboard of the bed. He cradled his guitar. He waited.

He heard a door open and close. He heard footsteps.

'I'm in here,' he called out loudly.

Kate appeared in the bedroom doorway. Her old bedroom that they would share.

'She's gone,' Kate said.

Euan nodded.

'Are you hungry?' she asked.

'Do you want me to cook?' Euan said.

Kate came into the room and kissed him.

'No. I'll cook the first night,' she offered.

##  Chapter 22

On a still and warm summer day after the new year had begun, when Euan and Kate had no inclination to work, he drove her west from the city to his knoll of kauri trees. He had not told her of that place.

'It's beautiful up here, Kiwi. How long have you kept this place secret?' Kate said.

They held hands looking over the spread of the city, the suburbs, the volcanoes and the harbor.

'A little while. It's great isn't it. I've never seen anyone else here,' Euan said, and marveled.

The silence was as profound as the view.

'He still says he's waiting for me,' Kate said quietly, with a hint of sadness.

Kate brightened as she gave Euan some news. 'He got Clare a job in the same department.'

'So,' Euan said. His face darkened. 'You'll all be one big happy family again when you go back? Except for me.'

Kate ignored Euan's remark.

'I think it's good Clare is there with Hamish,' she said.

'So they can compare notes?' Euan said sarcastically.

'I don't think so. Hamish doesn't know and Clare only suspected.'

'I told her,' Euan said.

Kate withdrew her hand. 'You what?'

'She asked me directly. I wasn't going to lie to her face.'

'What did you tell her?'

'That we fucked. When I wasn't with her.'

'So,' Kate was angry. 'You look good and I look bad. Is that how it was told?'

'I didn't tell anything, Kate. She asked a question, I answered and that was it. It was, ten words, probably less.'

'Kiwi,' Kate exclaimed angrily. 'It's not a physics question.'

She walked off a little way and stood on her own. Euan stayed put and watched the view as if he was expecting some sudden movement to erupt from the suburbs.

'I'm sorry Kate,' Euan called over to her but did not move closer. 'I did nothing intentionally. There was no premeditation.'

'I know, Kiwi,' Kate said quietly so that Euan could hardly hear her.

He walked over to her.

'I'll just have to see what happens,' she said.

'What does it matter anyway?' Euan asked. His face frowned. 'We're still good, aren't we? What does Hamish have to do with things?'

Kate's anger with Euan had dissipated but she remained annoyed with him.

'This will be my last summer here, Kiwi,' she said.

'So?' Euan said. 'I'm coming with you. When you've finished, we'll go together.'

Kate's anger returned and boiled over. She turned on him.

'Don't be fucking stupid, Euan.'

'What?' Euan asked with surprise and sharply turned his head to look at her.

'What do you mean what?' she said angrily. 'You're not coming with me, that's what.'

'Why not?' Euan said. 'I am coming.' He tried to sound determined.

She stared at him like he was an imbecile. 'How can you be so smart and so fucking stupid, all at the same time?'

Now Euan was annoyed too, but he sulked.

'I won't let you come,' she said. 'That's why not. I will not...' Euan tried to interrupt but Kate put her hand over his mouth. 'I won't let you give up finishing your degree, and your music with Michael.'

'That doesn't matter,' Euan said after he gently removed her hand from over his mouth. He did not let her hand go. His annoyance had gone as quickly as it had arrived.

'Of course it does,' she said.

'There are choices to be made Kate and I choose you. I'm coming. I'd get work, somewhere,' he finished lamely, knowing he had no viable plan.

'In the States? No degree? You're joking. You don't just queue up where they hand out work visas.'

'And,' Kate continued. 'What about Michael? You'd give all that up too? You'd give up everything to sit around and wait for me to come home from work each day?'

'I could do other stuff,' Euan said feebly.

'It wouldn't work,' she said. 'And deep down I think you know that too.' She squeezed his hand. 'Let's not ruin these last months.'

She shook his hand a little, as if to wake him out of a reverie.

'Please?' she asked.

##  Chapter 23

Michael wrote the majority of the music for the band but he encouraged others to contribute. Euan was pestered for his own original music. He said he had nothing to offer but Bach.

During a break in rehearsal, Euan, with an absent mind, played the piece of music he had called Kate's song. Only the singer, Jon, was present. He asked Euan if he was playing Bach. Euan laughed, that his music could be mistaken for a masterwork.

'No,' Euan said. 'It's something I wrote, a while ago now. Thanks for saying that.'

'Play it again, will you?'

Jon hummed and sang random words to Euan's melody. He suggested Euan simplify one of the variations between the main theme, and that the theme be repeated at the end.

Michael came back into the rehearsal room. He was sipping coffee from a plastic cup. Euan and Jon smiled at him like they were conspirators, and had discovered something dangerous, illicit and exciting.

'Listen to this,' Jon said, and nodded to Euan to begin playing.

Michael listened.

When they had finished, only a few minutes later, Jon said, 'That's it, Michael. It's perfect.'

'Where did that come from?' Michael asked with surprise.

'Euan wrote it,' Jon said.

'Euan wrote it?' Michael repeated.

'That's what he said,' Euan said to Michael and smiled.

'I think that should be all there is to it,' Jon said, to pre-empt Michael adding complexity.

'We could add something to it,' Michael tentatively suggested.

'No, I don't think so,' Jon said quickly. 'It can just be a song. A simple song. Something that could be played on the radio. We've never had a piece like that.'

Michael thought for a minute. 'Maybe,' he said. 'Or, it could go at the end of that piece we started last month. Yes,' Michael stared pacing around the rehearsal room. 'That would be awesome. We could make that other piece longer, more discordant and we could finish with Euan's thing. Maybe we could make it a bit longer.'

'I don't think so,' Jon disagreed. 'Let's leave it simple.'

'Simple is boring,' Michael said.

'Not to people that buy music, it isn't,' Jon said. 'We've got hours of stuff. Let's just see with this one. Let's leave it alone.'

'Do you mind, Euan, if I write some words for it?' Jon asked, he was determined to overrule Michael.

'Help yourself,' Euan said.

They recorded the song and distributed it to alternative radio stations, who readily included it in their playlists. The song's popularity gained momentum. It made it onto a few of the mainstream radio stations. Once it had done that there was an exponential increase in popularity. The song was everywhere for a while. International radio picked up on the sensation from New Zealand. Television documentaries licensed its use. It was as if every poignant, serious, noteworthy, momentous and melancholy human moment was better if it was orchestrated with Kate's song. It became a financial success, as well. It introduced Michael's band to an international audience and, because of that song, the band outgrew New Zealand.

Unfortunately, that success increased Euan difficulties.

##  Chapter 24

By the end of May, Kate had finished her degree. Her flight home to the USA was booked. She would leave New Zealand within weeks.

'We've got time for one more ski trip. Do you want to go?' Kate asked.

'Not really,' Euan said.

'Don't be a grump,' she said and tickled him like he was a child. 'Let's go skiing. Come on Kiwi. I'll go on my own if you don't come.'

Euan tried hard to not be morose for that last trip together. He was excessively polite to other people staying in the University's lodge. His smile was strained, it made him look idiotic, when he politely responded in the positive that he was "that guy with the other guy who plays Bach", or "that guy in that band with that song".

Every minute the thought of Kate's departure hit him like a blow to the head.

Thursday had not been a great day for skiing, the morning had been clear but by lunchtime the wind and cloud had increased and it had begun to snow heavily. They had returned to the lodge early in the afternoon. As the sun began to set, there was a break in the clouds and the winds abated. Euan suggested they go for a walk in the fresh snow.

They waded and pushed through the drifts of snow to a place where there was an unobscured view over the flat green farm lands below and in the distance they could see the isolated volcano that Euan had dubbed the Lonely Mountain.

Euan put his arm over Kate's shoulder and she put an arm loosely around his waist. They stood silently watching the green color fade from the fields below. Euan, surreptitiously, moved one of his legs behind Kate.

He put his lips to Kate's hair and softly said, 'I love you, Kate.'

Using the arm that was not around her shoulder, he push her, and with the leg he had placed behind her, he tripped her. She toppled into the deep snow. She tried to hold onto Euan's waist but he twisted and her hand grasped at nothing.

'Euan!' she exclaimed as she fell with a silent splash.

Euan whistled, nonchalantly. He twisted his head quickly, twice, as if he had lost sight of Kate and had, surprisingly, discovered her in the snow.

'Dr. Kate?' he said with comic animation.

He held out his hand to her, she took it and tried to pull him down to her but he had anticipated that and quickly let her go so she fell back into the snow.

'You idiot,' she said and laughed.

Euan helped her to her feet and held onto her.

'I do,' he said quietly.

##  Chapter 25

Some of Euan's airport farewells were so difficult they left scars. The two worst farewells involved Kate. She was present for one of them.

He drove Kate to the airport but could not remember the journey there. That worried him. He frowned as if he was angry. He was numb like he had not slept for many nights, nothing he saw, did or touched was real. The pain of immanent separation was physical.

She stood at the check-in counter as he waited nearby and stared at her. He could not believe a woman like her had ever, willingly, let him touch her, be with her, live with her, love her. He had lived, for a short while, one of his childish dreams. It was real-like but it was impossible. He expected her to turn around and her face to be indistinct and unknowable.

The approaching moment of her final departure was the only tangible thing in his life. Its power to destroy and consume battered at his numb defense. His face was slack. It registered resignation, that the end of meaningful life was unavoidable, permanent, inescapable and minutes away.

They didn't say a word at the entry to the customs hall. They stood for a moment and Euan gently touched her hand but did not hold it. Euan thought she hesitated but then, in the span of a few seconds, she was gone. The last he saw of her was her back as she turned the corner. She did not linger, she did not look back.

Euan returned to his office. The silence in that small room was consuming. He hunched over his desk, unable to work. He felt a prolonged touch on his shoulder and he looked up at Liam, who was upset, for his friend, as if Euan's sorrow was contagious.

Euan's meaningful life was over. All that remained was loneliness, misery, drudgery and mediocrity.

##  Part 2

##  Chapter 1

A Polaroid picture exists that Euan remembers holding in his hand as the paper surface slowly transformed into an image of Kate. He remembers the ghostly inference that he had stolen Kate and placed her essence on paper. He remembers wondering if the real Kate had been extinguished and whether that was a bad thing or not, to have her fixed and unchangeable forever. He remembers holding up the image and comparing the real and frozen Kate.

The image in his hand was not a token of memory, it existed as a part of that moment.

He had regretted the passing of that moment immediately, wishing somehow that he could also be frozen into that perfect image. The past was perfect but it was gone, although it was seconds old.

Euan does not possess that picture but his memory of that moment and that image remains clear and indelible forty years later.

##  Chapter 2

Stress and despair made Euan physically unwell following Kate's departure from New Zealand. It was as if his immune system shared his torment and ignored the intrusion of all foreign agents. He spent days unable to get out of bed. The physical manifestations of his grief magnified his distress as he worried that he could not appreciate, and suffer, Kate's departure and absence sufficiently because he was so ill.

He received a letter from her at the end of the second week, by which time he was back at work although weak and distracted. It was a disturbingly distant communication. He reread the letter many times, sometimes it signaled some faint hope but at most readings it presaged despair. It disallowed discard only because it was a physical link to Kate, an item in her own handwriting. However, the contradictory contents distressed him greatly.

Euan devised a plan. An improbable scheme filled with obstacles. To live with Kate he had to work in the USA. So, he had to finish his degree and obtain a postdoc at the Oceanographic Institute where Hamish, Kate and Clare all worked. He applied himself and, through his doctoral supervisor, cultivated a remote relationship with scientists at Woods Hole.

No-one suspected his keenness for scientific work and long distance friendliness with USA scientists hid an ulterior motive.

Formulating a plan of attack did not alleviate his short-term suffering. It merely gave him hope that his separation from Kate would not be permanent. He understood that real suffering is reduced by the passing of time so he distracted his attention from remembering Kate. As well as hard work and music rehearsal and performance, he filled available moments of his life with atypical activities. He shocked relatives by visiting them, having not seen them since he had been a child and in the company of his parents. He visited gardens and places of historical interest. He hiked to the tops of the little volcanos in the suburbs.

One afternoon he spent at an art gallery. It had been a particularly bad weekend of painful reminiscing. Kate's memory had stuck fast and could not be dismissed, and the gallery was a desperate attempt at forgetfulness. The paintings on display were of summer coastal scenes from the late nineteenth century. He came upon two images, side by side. They were as personal photographs. Despair washed through him. One painting was of a lone woman, dressed in a white flowing robe, picking her way along a deserted beach.

Euan remembered a languid summer day with Kate. They were alone at the beach. It was warm and there was no breeze. She wore a long, white dress that flowed as she walked. Kate was the Ariadne in the painting, sad and deserted on a beach of sparse, leaning trees. In the picture there was a ship abandoning her but in Euan's mind there was only the Pacific Ocean, over which she would disappear forever. He was angry at the picture, that anyone could deliberately leave a woman like Kate. He confused the painting and memory. Euan shared the artist's perspective, as he lay on the sand and watched her as she roamed above the high tide mark and through the sparse trees. She came close to him and he reached out and held her leg. She could have broken away easily if she wished but she laughed and gazed down at Euan like he was a disciple.

'What?' she asked.

Euan looked through her dress to the outline of the leg he had captured.

'What?' she asked again.

'We've never had sex outside.'

'Is that what you're thinking?' She laughed.

There was no coercion.

She crouched down and said quietly, 'I'm not going to lie on the sand.'

'We could use my shirt,' he said.

She thought for a moment. 'All right then.' She kissed him on the forehead. 'Where? We have to be hidden, in case someone comes along.'

Euan kissed her softly, on the end of her nose. They found a place between two sand dunes and she waited until Euan had taken off his shirt and placed it on the sand. Euan ran his hands up her legs and began to take her dress off. She stopped him.

'No, leave that on,' she said. 'In case someone comes.'

Kate lay down carefully on the shirt after hitching up her dress. Euan undid the top of her dress and pulled it down below her breasts. They had simple missionary sex and made no large movements that shifted her off Euan's shirt. Euan's arms shook when he rolled off and lay facing her, they had taken all his weight while he was inside her. She carefully rolled onto her side, not moving off the shirt. Her head rested on her outstretched arm. At that moment, with her dress above her waist and below her breasts she did not care about discovery.

The second painting was of a languid, satisfied woman lying on her side with breasts exposed. She was in love with the artist, as Kate had been with Euan that day at the beach.

##  Chapter 3

'We're going,' Michael was insistent. His face was stern, angry even.

Euan and Michael sat at a table, with a beer each, in the cafe near the University. It was late at night and the owner prowled among the sparsely populated tables. He wanted to close.

Euan and Michael's conversation had been had before. A stalemate was continuing.

'How can you not want to go?' Michael was exasperated. He ran his hand through his long dark hair, in imitation, he realized as he did the action, of annoyance mannerisms of unskilled old-time movie actors.

Euan stared at his beer on the table before him, his fingers wrapped around it, and said nothing.

'Well?' Michael was angry. 'Are you going to say anything at all?'

'I can't,' Euan said without looking up, his drink hijacking his attention.

'Well, let me put it this way,' Michael said caustically. 'We're going.'

'I just said that I can't.'

'We does not necessarily include you, mate,' Michael said vehemently.

Euan raised his head. He looked like a lost puppy.

'Yes. You're right,' Euan said.

'Fuck, Euan!' Michael sat up and scanned the venue, noticing how empty it was. If we were playing here, he thought, it wouldn't be empty.

'What?' Euan asked as if he did not want to understand Michael's outburst.

'What what? You idiot,' Michael said. 'We're going to London, and you have to come with us. We're a band. You're in the band. How could we go without you when it's your song that's done it?'

'You don't need me to play,' Euan said. 'I mostly just listen anyway and, it's not just Kate's song. There is a bit more music than my four minutes.'

Euan forced a smile. Michael did not smile in return, he hardly ever smiled, although he was one of the most amusing people Euan knew. Michael stared straight-faced at Euan's smile as if wondering what that facial extension signified.

'OK,' Michael said. He was matter-of-fact, as if he was a business man missing an opportunity. 'Tell me yet again, why not?'

'I haven't finished,' Euan said.

'So?'

'So everything.'

Michael sighed. 'Can't you, like, do it quicker?'

'You make a degree sound like a race,' Euan said.

'I've given up on my race. So we, note that word Euan, so that we can do this stuff.'

'I know,' Euan agreed.

Michael had abandoned his own postgraduate degree to concentrate on the band. He had done a wonderful job, Euan knew.

'You'll end with some shit job at some shit University. Instead of doing this. I don't get you,' Michael said.

Euan would have agreed with him, except for his plan to work in the USA and be with Kate.

'OK,' Michael continued, as if he was trying to extract difficult information. 'What stage are you at?'

'I've just started writing.'

'Which would take? How long?'

Euan thought for a moment. 'Six months. If everything goes OK and I don't have to redo anything substantial.'

Michael stood up and looked down at Euan. His eyes blazed. If he didn't know Michael better Euan would have thought he was about to be struck by his friend.

'Do it in three,' Michael ordered. 'Then follow us.'

Euan was silent.

'We're going next month,' Michael said. 'Two months after that I want you in London.' Michael turned to leave, then came back, leant down so his face was close, confronting Euan. He whispered harshly.

'And don't come to band practice again, prick. Go and work your arse off in your fucking little office.'

Michael violently shoved Euan's shoulder. Euan understood the whispered and physical threat was a form of affection. Euan called to Michael as he wove through empty tables towards the exit.

'Maybe I will,' Euan said.

Michael did not acknowledge Euan.

##  Chapter 4

One of Euan's airport farewell's was hopeful. He sat excitedly at the departure gate at Auckland airport waiting to board his flight to London. It was a little more than three months since his last face to face meeting with Michael. That didn't matter, it was close enough. The business of music was a mishmash of inexact requirements. He smiled and chuckled, as he remembered that last meeting, then looked around worried what the other waiting passengers might make of the young man giggling to himself. No-one noticed or cared.

He had a shit degree, he smiled again. He had rushed the writing. Still, that didn't matter, not too much. A senior scientist from Woods Hole had promised to get him an appointment but it would take time. Months, possibly a year. The timing would depend on funding and in the meantime, which was the cause for his private humor, he would fly to London and be a famous, maybe even rich, musician while he waited for a reunion with the love of his life.

His flight was announced. He stood, thinking he was about to pass through some figurative gateway leading to the best years of his life.

Sadly, he had no idea what was before him.

##  Chapter 5

Helen was a young woman who worked for the London based management company responsible for Michael's band. His band was her first, sole, responsibility.

To begin with, she worried about proving her worth but relaxed into her new job, after a few months, and accepted an equal partnership with Michael in running their small music venture.

She hoped for mild success realizing, selfishly, that excessive short-term success would lead to her redeployment. The band management would be taken over by a senior member of the agency. She did not want that. She dreamed of being useful and indispensable.

She loved "Kate's Song" and wondered who Kate was for two months before she asked Michael.

'You'll have to ask Euan,' he said. 'He'll be here next month.'

Helen was surprised that the man responsible for their most successful music had not arrived in London with the rest of the band. She decided that Euan had to be too important to do the menial work playing smaller venues, or he was involved in other interesting ventures. Helen was fascinated by Euan before she met him.

She diffidently asked Michael what Euan was like. He shocked her by smiling. He never smiled. She could have been attracted to Michael, she thought, except that he confused her. She never knew when he was being serious, humorous or naive. Although she doubted he was ever naive. She was too often embarrassed as her conversation lagged behind, wondering how to respond to deadpan sentences that may or may not have been intended to be humorous.

'You'll have to find out yourself,' Michael answered her. 'But, it depends when you speak to him and who's asking.'

##  Chapter 6

'This is Helen,' Michael said performing introductions on the day Euan arrived in London. 'And this is Euan.'

The band, along with Helen, were at the house they had rented.

'Helen,' he said to Euan, 'is responsible for our lives. She's now responsible for yours. Enjoy.'

Michael left Euan and Helen together.

'He's a smart guy,' Helen said to Euan after an embarrassing silence.

'That's for sure,' Euan said and laughed.

It was a normal laugh that reassured her that he was not another Michael-type. Her self-confidence would have suffered if another person needed decoding.

She laughed with Euan. 'How do you understand him?'

'I have a PhD in Physics. That helps. Just,' Euan said, intending to be humorous.

Helen's heart sank. Another super-intelligent guy, she thought. How can I keep up, she wondered?

Euan saw her face sink. He understood why. He rested his hand, reassuringly, like a brother, on her shoulder.

'It's all right,' he said. 'I'm normal. Well, as normal as can be expected, I guess. Normal compared to Michael anyway.'

Euan withdrew his hand quickly. He had been surprised how pleasurable touching Helen had felt. His touch had been a gesture of friendship, an action he made with both sexes, but he had felt an attraction. It had not been his intention. He worried that Kate's memory would be swamped by the proximity of another. He did not want that.

Helen's face lit up after Euan's reassurance. He felt the intoxicating power of making someone happy.

'So who's Kate then?'

'Kate?' Euan was surprised, wondering how she had made that connection when he touched her shoulder, like she had read his mind.

'Kate's song. You know,' she said.

'Oh,' he said. 'A girlfriend.'

'It's a wonderful song,' she said.

Euan was embarrassed. 'I don't know about that but it certainly is everywhere. I even heard it on the plane over here.'

'It's paying all our salaries at the moment. You must be very proud,' Helen said.

Euan did not know how to respond to praise. He frowned.

'Thanks,' he said quietly.

##  Chapter 7

It was Christmas time. There had been one snowfall in London and slushy, dissatisfying snow remained in some streets. Euan was disappointed with that kind of snow, it was nothing like the stuff he had enjoyed on the mountains in New Zealand. He wondered if that was the kind of thing Clare, or was it Kate, had meant when she said it sometimes got in the way. Although, he did not understand how a few piles of dirty ice hindered anyone.

Helen took her job seriously, even if it encroached on private time. She invited Michael's band to spend Christmas Day with her family. However, she worried about acceptance, for her parents' sake, and was relieved when only Michael, then Euan, said they would attend. Michael cancelled after Euan agreed. He had only accepted thinking no other band member would want to go.

Helen drove Euan to her parents home in Norfolk, close to the North Sea, on Christmas Eve. It snowed as they left London and the trip was slow and extended. They did not arrive at Helen's parents home until nearly midnight. It snowed heavily as they pulled into the driveway.

'We hardly ever get snow here,' she laughed as they unloaded the car and ran to the porch, leaving footstep impressions in the snow. It was already quite deep.

'I'm not complaining,' Euan said brightly.

The white stuff on his shoes was more like the snow he remembered and loved, not that London mess.

He had, surprisingly, enjoyed Helen's company on the long, slow drive. He had not expected to. She had a mildly infuriating conversational habit of beginning a response then pausing, for too long, while she considered a conclusion. Even her humor was well considered and bordered on being too late to be funny. Her nervous habit was exacerbated around Michael as she had been embarrassed a number of times laughing at his serious suggestions and, vice versa, constructing considered responses to jokes.

Michael and Euan had formed the disrespectful habit of answering for Helen as she considered a reply that took too long to complete. When what was said was her opinion, she shrugged and said nothing but she strongly interrupted when she disagreed. Each time she intervened, her manner surprised the two men since they had meant no insult.

Everyone in the band liked Helen, knew she worked hard and did a good job for them. All the same, they felt a little sorry for her.

Euan shared that mild sorrow as he and Helen waited on the porch for the door to open. It was as if he was saddened that Helen enjoyed his company, as if she had lowered her standards and should have done better.

'You're very late,' Helen's mother said after she had shut the front door behind them. She was angry with relief, her daughter was safe.

'Where's Dad?' she asked.

'Your father went to bed ages ago. You didn't expect him to wait up did you?'

Helen introduced Euan. Helen's mother had been warned and she was restrained in her enthusiasm and praise of Kate's song. It was the only piece of music she liked that her daughter had been professionally associated with.

Euan was shown to a bedroom at the front of the house, near the front door. He did not want to sleep immediately and stood by his bedroom window looking out at the falling snow, illuminated by the porch light that had been left on. There was no wind and the flakes appeared out of the darkness above the porch light's reach, floated then settled to deepen the white on the ground. Euan heard some muffled sounds that could have been voices in a far part of the house, probably Helen and her mother talking, he thought, but those were the only noises. The snow accumulated silently outside in the yard.

He was quite excited at the prospect of a white Christmas and pulled the covers tightly around him like he was a child snug and safe in his first real bed.

He woke early, before dawn, and like he was expecting presents that Christmas morning he rushed over to the window, wondering about the snow. The yard and as far as he could see was well covered. He had half expected, with the rate of fall when he went to bed, for the snow to be above the level of the window and for Helen and her family to be trapped inside the house for Christmas.

He dressed quickly, put on a jacket and went outside. The sky was a steady grey that diffused light making it difficult to know if the sun had yet risen. He plowed out into the front yard. The snow, in parts, was waist high. Outside was starkly beautiful like a black and white photograph. It was still and deathly silent. There was no traffic on the road nearby, there was no life in the trees or elsewhere. He fought his way out to the street and stood in the middle of the roadway peering one way and then the other.

He struggled back and then plowed the whole way around the house simply for the pleasure of sullying the virgin snow. He travelled like he was a ship that cuts through water. He leant forward to push his way through, sometimes even making a small bow wave, until he again stood on the porch. The outside light was still on so he opened the front door and turned it off.

He noticed a large bladed shovel inside, against the wall. It had been left there by Helen's father the night before, after he had heard the weather forecast.

Euan began to vigorously clear a path through the snow to the street. He was amazed, as he shoveled, at the surprising amounts he was able to move with the large blade. He imagined he was a super-man, with great strength, shoveling vast quantities of something that was not mostly air.

He had nearly reached the street when he noticed two women, in dressing gowns, peering through a window from Helen's parents house. Helen and her mother looked concerned as if he might return with the shovel and attack them.

Helen's mother turned to her daughter and said something. He imagined she said something like, 'Are you sure he's all right? Is he quite sane?'

Euan laughed at the thought. He raised both his arms, including the shovel, as if he had been crowned champion of something. He turned away from the women and back to his energetic shoveling.

As Helen watched Euan, the supposedly grown man, composer of marvelous music, enjoying the snow unselfconsciously like he was a young child, she fell in love with him.

##  Chapter 8

On Boxing Day Helen drove Euan out to the beach to walk on the mud-flats. It was a summery thing to do in winter. She drove to a parking area that faced the ocean. They were the only ones there.

Hardpan mud-flats extended for a long way, out to the edge of the ocean proper. Highways of sand were divided by silver avenues of shallow water that ran parallel to the beach. Rays of angled sunshine searched across the water, sand and mud, coming and going as the clouds first divided and then merged. It was uncomfortably cold outside. Euan sat in the passenger seat thinking of the summer it would be at home in New Zealand. The warmth in the car enveloped the frigid winter scene in a blanket of summer as he forced the heat inside the car over the water, scrubby foreshore and flat dunes.

A few piles of snow, the reminders of the dump on Christmas Eve, remained in the car-park.

'Are we going for a walk?' Helen asked. 'Or are we just going to sit here? I mean, it is nice. I guess.'

Euan smiled his agreement and opened his door. The cold struck him but he didn't notice immediately, he was preoccupied, thinking of Helen. He knew where all this was going with her. Her behavior had altered on Christmas morning. She was attracted to him and that worried him. He wanted her to be happy. He liked her. Without Kate's memory he would have liked her even more.

He did not purposely plan his life selfishly. His life was not always centered on himself but the reasoning of self justification took hold as he thought of the consequences of Helen's altered behavior. High intelligence is not required to follow logic to a self advantageous conclusion. If Helen liked him then a relationship for a few months was not a bad thing. That was not taking advantage of her. It was not the ancient days. She was not assuming a marriage contract. Most relationships were short and, in the meantime, she would enjoy herself. A little withholding of information was normal in all relationships. His justification of offering no resistance to presented, pleasurable options took little effort.

They wandered over the tidal mud-flats heading, in a round-about way, towards the distant expanse of ocean water. They skipped and jumped over the shallow streams and traces of water. They chased each other like children but when caught did not prolong physical contact. Helen squealed when Euan got too close, and he yelled with fright and ducked out of her way to avoid capture. They could have been fifteen years younger, with their parents still unpacking the car for a summer day at the beach.

There was a stiff wind that made the temperature unbearable. Euan thought it too cold for weather.

'I love winter. I love the beach,' Helen exclaimed as she held her arms out and spun around. It made Euan a little giddy to look at her but he laughed all the same.

'We would come here when I was a child,' she said as her twirling slowed but did not stop. 'Hot days and swimming.' She laughed diffidently as if embarrassed by confession. 'And sandcastles.'

They were a long way out from the sand at the high tide mark.

'You can feel the aloneness, if that's a word,' she laughed again. 'The cold makes you alive, like we could go on forever.'

She stopped spinning. She held her left hand over her eyes, to shut out vision, and extended her right arm and index finger.

'Spin me,' she ordered Euan.

'What?' he asked.

'Spin me around.'

Euan smiled at her childish game although she could not have seen that. He held her by the shoulders and gently twisted her back and forth.

'On three,' he said. 'One, two, three.'

He gently spun her and ducked out of the way of her rotating arm before stepping back. She continued to revolve, under her own steam of course. She came to a halt and peered through her fingers as her suspended arm pointed at Euan's chest. He laughed at the joke he did not understand as he followed the pointed direction from the finger, to his chest and then behind him. When he turned back to her, her arm was still pointing and she had a more serious look on her face as if she understood something new.

She dropped her arm, scooped Euan up by threading her arm through his and pulled him further away from the beach.

'Let's go as far as we can,' she said as they marched.

They jumped over more small rivulets, many were swift flowing. Some were too wide to jump cleanly and their shoes got wet as they splashed short on the far side. Euan's feet became numb with the cold.

They halted at the open water's edge. There was a visible, strong sideways flow of water and a steady encroaching movement towards them. They had to take regular steps back as they watched distant shipping out in the North Sea.

'We should go,' Helen said eventually. 'Even I'm getting cold.' She turned around.

There was more silver than before. Too much freezing ocean water lay between them and the beach.

'Shit,' Helen said and roughly grabbed Euan's arm. She panicked. 'We've got to run.'

Euan laughed as he ran beside Helen. She was serious as she yelled, trying to make him understand, 'We could die you know.'

'No, we won't,' he said. 'Not yet.' He held his arms wide like he was an airplane, able to fly over the water between them and safety.

They came to the first river of sea water and Euan hesitated. He thought of the inconvenience, not danger. He saw wider rivers of ocean to cross ahead. He thought, for a second, of staying where he was as if that moment of comparative comfort and safety could be preserved. Helen was already thigh deep in water. She yelled and beckoned for Euan to follow.

There was no-one on the distant beach, and it was getting darker too. He had a fleeting thought, as if it was summer and in New Zealand, that there may be someone close by with a boat. Even, perhaps, he could raise his arm and the lifeguards could come to their rescue. He turned back to the open ocean and imagined the North Sea slowly chasing him. His course of action was decided. He plunged in and waded after Helen. His numb feet, from only splashing, heralded what was to come. He knew the consequences if they had to swim.

The cold on the first crossing was painful but bearable. After a second cold crossing Euan decided that Helen's panic had been reasonable after all. He peered further ahead and saw there was worse to come.

The next expanse was the widest and deepest. It was so swift flowing that Euan had to brace himself against the sideways flow so he was not carried away. He was no longer shivering as he splashed over the last, shallow streams of incoming sea water. He ran with uncoordinated legs he could not feel, like they were not his own.

'Take your jeans off,' Helen ordered as she unlocked the car.

'Here? In the car-park?'

Helen had already dropped her pants to her ankles and was struggling with the tight and soggy mess, trying to get her feet through them.

'Just do it, Euan!' she said angrily.

He decided to not argue. His jeans eventually came off and he could feel nothing below his thighs. He stood in the cold, holding his jeans as if he was looking for a peg on which to place them. He dropped them and jumped, stiff-legged, into the car.

Helen started the engine and turned the heater on. It roared it's infusion of life. Euan had a vague memory that it might not be such a good thing to heat up so quickly but did not argue. Helen seemed to know what to do. Stabbing pains of life returned to his legs and feet.

Some time later, after very little conversation, Euan felt almost back to normal. He and Helen sat in her stationary car, barelegged and wearing underpants, as they watched the incessant, incoming tide.

Helen was grief stricken.

'I almost killed the world's most popular composer,' she sobbed. Tears welled in her eyes. 'I'm so sorry. I'm so stupid,' she blurted out. She struck the steering wheel with the palms of her hands.

Euan laughed, he couldn't help it. 'The what?' he said. 'What did you call me?'

Helen's tears progressed no further. She smiled and looked at Euan out of the corner of her eyes.

'Well,' she said, a little brighter. 'You know. Maybe a little bit of exaggeration.'

'I reckon,' Euan said.

He couldn't help himself, at that moment he really liked Helen. His worry for her happiness made him instinctively lean over and kiss her. It was a chaste kiss, he had thought it the quickest way to cheer her up. She returned his quick kiss with a sustained one, her arms wrapped around him allowing no escape.

Not that flight was on Euan's mind.

##  Chapter 9

Euan often stayed over night at Helen's place in London. In the early mornings, as they shared her bed, he would watch her sleeping face gain definition in the strengthening light. He would list her imperfections. There were not many and all were slight. As he watched her breath he was annoyed at the confusion she had added to his life, as if it was her fault.

Some evenings, when Euan had not planned to be with Helen and was alone practicing guitar, in his room in the band's house, she would hesitantly knock on his door with an excuse that meant she had to see him. Euan would, of course, let her in. She'd stay the night and as she was jumping on top of him he'd glance at his guitar standing in the corner of the room. He wished, guiltily, that he had spent the evening alone.

Euan felt sad for Helen, as if she had fallen into an unscrupulous trap. He tried harder to please her to lessen his guilt. Her need for him increased. He wished she was absent more often, which fed his guilt further. The cycle wove itself tighter.

They spent most days and nights together. He was her work as well as her love. She was excited to see him after short absences. Her enthusiasm made Euan melancholy, as compassion does. He was flattered and smothered. At low moments he saw himself married to her because he had never found a way out. However, he didn't want to immediately end their relationship. He liked her. Helen suffered only in comparison.

Euan and Helen lived a pseudo-married life except often ending the day with sex. On the days that were free of music commitments, they drove, at Euan's suggestion, into the countryside in search of snow scenes. They stopped at places of silence for Euan to investigate perfect mounded forms. He dug through them, having to know what caused those perfect smooth, exaggerated shapes. It was never more than a simple irregularity, like a fallen branch, and often less. Euan also suggested they travel to beaches after snow falls. He imagined the heat and the crowds of summer but, at that time of year, the sand was deserted. Euan never fully believed the miracle of snow on a beach. He'd pick the snow up and look from his hand to the water and at the sand and remember a childhood where the beach was always warm. There were many perfect winter days that could have been summer. They were cloudless days with a light offshore breeze holding up tiny waves, but intensely cold.

Euan dragged Helen everywhere in his enjoyment of the white, cold weather. His enjoyment was enhanced by Helen's participation as he frolicked on the beach and in the snow.

We can be embarrassed doing silly things on our own but not in company or with a sympathetic audience. Helen was embarrassed by Euan's awkward enjoyment. She'd look out of the corner of her eyes, as if no-one could see her doing that, to make sure no-one was watching or if they were, that she did not know them. Only then, if the coast was clear, would she join Euan's playtime.

##  Chapter 10

The year progressed towards the Northern summer. Euan and Michael resurrected their Bach duo. When the band had days off in London, the two of them played smaller venues, often a coffee house or wine bar, in the afternoons and evenings. While performing, Euan daydreamed that he was back in New Zealand and Kate sat in the audience. Her eyes only on him.

'Everyone loves your classical guitar thing,' Helen said to Euan one evening in bed.

'It's fun,' he said noncommittally.

He was busy reading an article in a science journal. The mathematics Euan read as a matter of course, confused Helen like he was reading another language. She did not understand what there was to read in symbols and obscure terms.

'I've had an idea,' she said.

'You have brilliant ideas all the time,' he smiled at her and went back to reading.

'I mean to really help market the band,' she said tentatively.

'That's great Helen,' he said. 'But you should talk to Michael about marketing. That's his thing, not mine.'

He quickly returned to his article.

'I thought I should ask you first,' she said.

'Nope,' he said.

He placed a finger on an equation in the text to mark his spot.

'If Michael agrees then I agree,' he said. 'Just do it. I'm sure it will be awesome. OK?'

He had already returned to his reading.

'OK then,' she said.

Helen had not intentionally deceived Euan but had withheld details. She could approach Michael with her plan and say, truthfully, she had Euan's blessing. She felt a little proud of her deception.

'Actually,' she began again.

Euan was disgruntled at the interruption, Hankel functions were difficult enough without constant interruptions.

'Yes,' he said impatiently.

She smiled, she had chosen the moment of least resistance successfully.

'Doesn't matter,' she said, knowing that it would.

'Go on,' he said.

'I might just organize my idea a little bit, so that it's closer to a definite plan before I present it to Michael. Would that be a good idea? Should I get Michael's permission first?'

'Helen,' Euan said with exasperation. 'You're great at your job. Do we have to say that every time? Go ahead, organize stuff, I'm sure it will be wonderful. Is that all?'

He leant over and kissed her. His action worried him, it felt like they were an old married couple.

She kissed him back. 'Goodnight Euan,' she said as she lay down and rolled away from him to sleep. He could not see her smile. Her idea was wonderful, she knew that, but it would not please Michael.

Not pleasing Michael was an understatement.

##  Chapter 11

Michael burst into Euan's room. He had not knocked.

'You idiot! What the fuck have you done?' he said.

'What have I done?' Euan said with surprise.

'I thought Auckland Town Hall was hard enough for you and you've gone and done this? Why didn't you ask me first?'

'Ask what?' Euan was confused and then angry at Michael's outburst.

Michael stared at Euan as if he was subhuman. His language nonsensical. He shook his head and wandered out of Euan's room, through the lounge area and into the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator and took out two bottles of beer. He shut the door hard and headed back towards Euan's room. He sat down next Euan and passed a bottle to him. He opened his and took a long drink, as if he was satisfying a deep thirst.

'We're really fucked. I should have stopped you screwing Helen. It was my fault for bailing at Christmas. If I'd been there...' He took another long drink.

'What's she done?' Euan was perplexed. Then he was defensive. 'It's not my fault, whatever it is.'

Michael stared, not quite seeing Euan.

'You'd better get practicing,' Michael said.

'Practicing what?'

'Guitar, you dickhead. What do you think? More practice screwing Helen? Actually, she needs to be screwed. A lot, and not the enjoyable kind.'

Euan removed the top from his beer and took a small drink.

'Two weeks. We've got two fucking weeks. It's not enough time,' Michael said. 'Why did you let her organize it?' He asked Euan again, forgetting the other's denial.

'Organize what?'

'The Royal Albert Hall. Two weeks. Us.'

##  Chapter 12

Euan was not as nervous as he expected as he waited before their performance at the Royal Albert Hall. Perhaps he was used to large audiences. Also, the critical crowd no longer bothered him, he had tasted success. He thought of Kate as he waited. Maybe because she wouldn't be in the audience meant it didn't really matter. No performance did without her.

Helen placed a consoling hand on Euan's shoulder. She was more nervous than him. He smiled and then kissed her. She needed consoling. She had had a rough time at the hands of Michael. The prior two weeks had been difficult. He had been angry and worse, at times he completely ignored her.

She was convinced her idea was sound, the marketing potential enormous. The exposure from performance, good or bad, would be immense. Her boss at the management agency had hugged her when she presented her plan, booked and confirmed. He wondered why he had not thought of an idea like that himself. However, she worried about Michael's displeasure. She felt like a martyr. Sad at personal loss but uplifted by the greater good achieved.

She felt an arm around her shoulder and a voice whispered menacingly in her ear.

'I fucking hate you Helen,' Michael said. 'But, this was an awesome idea. Thank you.'

He kissed her on the forehead, like she was a child. It was the first embrace of any kind he had given her. It was simultaneously unsettling and euphoric.

She smiled at him, but Michael stared through her. He was elsewhere.

They performed well, not their best but not their worst. The audience applauded enthusiastically at the conclusion.

Michael held his hands up to bring the applause to a premature end.

'For those of you who may not know, or who have been on another planet for the last year.' The audience laughed. 'We're well known for another little piece of music.' Michael waited for another round of applause to end.

Euan was confused, Michael had not mentioned anything about an encore, and that appeared to be what he was leading towards. Euan had stood to take the applause, but he quickly sat down again.

Michael turned away from the crowd and spoke quietly but with authority. 'Put your guitar down, Euan. You little prick. This is your reward.'

Michael addressed the audience again.

'Kate's not here, but...' he began. The audience laughed and cheered.

Euan was horrified, he thought Michael was going to humiliate him. For a horrible moment, he envisaged Kate making an entrance, and Helen striding across the stage in anger and jealousy. Kate, and Helen too, would hate him forever.

'As I said,' Michael repeated once the noise had reduced, 'Kate's not here but we've got two others instead. Euan,' he pointed backwards without looking. 'The composer.' He had to wait until the applause died down yet again. 'And someone more musically able. Enjoy.'

Michael sat down as Jon appeared from off stage carrying his own high chair. He placed it in the centre of the stage. A technician raced out with a microphone and stand. He set it up in front of Jon, then touched the surface to make a sound as a test that it was working.

Michael played the opening chord to Kate's song and the audience erupted, like they were part of a rock performance. Michael expected that the encore he and Jon had secretly planned would be well received. He was right.

Michael and Jon played a beautiful version of Kate's song. Euan had not heard it like that since he had first played it for Jon, before there were lyrics. Michael was a better guitarist and his performance was wonderful. The main theme was repeated and was sung in full voice by the crowd, like it was a Prom night.

Euan listened while many eyes were upon him, all knowing he was the composer of that music. It was the proudest musical moment of his life.

##  Chapter 13

The weather again cycled to cold and Euan received word from Woods Hole. His position was available, funded and ready for him to begin. He only had to obtain his work visa.

Dreaming of a future joyous event is pleasant, while the messy actuality of implementation is not. Euan worried about leaving and about breaking ties but mostly about recriminations and anger.

His resolve faltered, but for short moments only. The consequences of not leaving were judged greater.

'You've been extra distracted,' Helen said, worried at his recent odd moods. 'Even for you.'

Euan stared blankly at her.

'You're reading,' she said. 'All the time. That weird maths stuff. I don't understand the interest.'

She smiled diffidently, knowing she was not expected to understand his interest in higher mathematics.

'Sorry, Helen,' he said.

He had thought of running away. Not saying goodbye. It was an easy solution in isolation. However, he could never do that. All the same, he did not know how to begin the conversation he had to have with her. His fear of antagonistic situations remained, it was linked with his fear of embarrassment. He did not understand why avoiding embarrassment was so important for him. He had lived through extreme moments, the first Auckland concert, and the Royal Albert Hall, for god's sake. He thought surviving, and surviving well in most cases, those embarrassing moments would make difficult social situations easier. Surprisingly not.

He had some deep seated need for approval, he rationalized, but never felt that approval, from anyone, friend or foe, was what he wanted. He resigned himself to a quirk of genetic makeup and like any other blemish, he accepted and attempted to cope with his inadequacy. He often failed.

Helen was worried. She had a cute frown that barely creased her forehead. He thought that he probably loved her and was on the verge of saying so. At that moment, compassion and love were confused.

He didn't want to hurt Helen, but he must hurt Helen. His idea of an easy, dissolvable relationship had been naive. A year had elapsed and she had outlasted comparison with Kate. His memory of the real, physical Kate had faded but she remained a platonic, therefore perfect, ideal. He loved two women, he was just in love with one of them a bit more.

He took a deep breath. He had to begin. His visa had been approved, he had picked it up the previous day. All that remained was to telephone Woods Hole with an arrival date. He could not delay, if his plan was to progress at all.

He stared at Helen as he exhaled. She stared back quizzically. He made up his mind to tell her for no reason other than some conversation was required. The silence between them could not go on forever, however much he would have preferred that.

'I have to go,' he said quickly.

'Go where?'

'Go,' he said softly.

'Well, you can't go far. We're playing in Berlin next week,' she said. She considered herself one of the band.

'I know,' he said.

'Well, what do you mean?' she said with rising panic. His melancholy was contagious.

He quickly grabbed her hand, hoping his touch would help.

'I'm going to the States.'

'Why?' she asked. 'We're not ready for that market, Euan.'

Her panic faded and now she was angry. She thought Euan was taking over her job and he was off to begin marketing the band in the USA.

'You can't just go there,' she said. 'It takes planning, logistics, lots of organizing. I haven't even thought of that market yet. There's still too much to do here. Europe is waiting and it's closer and it's cheaper.'

Euan sighed. 'I have to go and see someone. It's not music related.'

Now she was worried for him. Perhaps a friend was in dire need.

'Do you need me to do anything,' she squeezed his hand sympathetically. 'If I can help,' she said quietly. 'I will.'

Euan could not say the real reason. The threat of embarrassment swamped him. He was annoyed at his weakness.

'Thanks Helen,' he said and felt awful.

'How long will you be away?' she asked. 'Do you want me to come with you?'

Euan became angry, at himself, at her compassion. He was silent for a moment.

'No, there's nothing you can do,' he said. 'It might take awhile.'

'What about the band?'

'Michael doesn't know yet,' he said and then laughed. It was short and bitter. 'They don't really need me to play stuff. I just add a few things, a bit of color now and then. I won't be missed.'

'Euan,' she said abruptly. 'Don't be silly.' However, she could not disagree with him. He was technically correct.

She was glad he had told her before Michael. She believed it was a positive sign in their relationship.

'So how long do you think?'

'Awhile,' he said. 'Quite awhile. I don't know.'

##  Chapter 14

Euan had two airport farewells at Heathrow. One involved a distraught and angry Michael as Euan ran away from the band and from Helen.

Michael waited while Euan checked his luggage. He had refused Euan's repeated request to leave the airport and let him depart unobserved. Euan returned to Michael's side after his bags had been accepted and continued walking, towards the customs area. His head was down, he was ashamedly averting his gaze, his eyes surreptitiously flicked to see if Michael followed. He did.

Michael quickly caught up to Euan.

'You're a fucking prick,' Michael said as he walked beside Euan. 'You know that, don't you?'

'Yes,' Euan said.

He searched for the entry to the customs area where he would be safe, and alone.

They reached the point where Michael could go no further. Euan stopped, unwilling to immediately continue, as if no irrevocable decision had been made until that moment. He wanted to explain to Michael, he wanted his approval but he could think of nothing to say.

'You've planned all this, haven't you?' Michael said.

'Yes,' Euan said. 'I'm sorry.'

Deception had been required, Euan believed. Honesty, undertaken too early, would have been used against him.

They stared self-consciously at each other, like they were separating lovers.

'I don't hate you, mate,' Michael said quietly. 'You're just a prick, that's all.'

Euan smiled.

'What have you told Helen?' Michael asked.

'I haven't.'

'You shit,' Michael became angry again.

'I did tell her I'm leaving,' Euan said.

Michael shook his head.

'I don't understand,' Michael said. 'We're this close.' He held his thumb and first finger a centimeter apart. 'And you're pissing off after all the hard work's done.'

Euan slowly backed away from Michael. 'I'm going,' he said as his farewell.

'I hope she's worth it,' Michael said.

'She is.'

##  Part 3

##  Chapter 1

Euan arrived at Boston's Logan Airport. No-one greeted him since no-one of consequence knew he was there. He hired a car, one advantage of having a financial excess from moderate music success, for the sixty mile journey to Falmouth. He bought a map and drove out from the airport wondering which way was south.

Euan missed a sign-posted turnoff on the freeway south of Boston. He had seen the sign, had intended to take action but at the last minute had doubted himself when the freeway exit was on the right hand side. He was expecting the freeway exit to be on the left side, as is normal for New Zealand. He sailed passed his turn off and panicked when he realized his error. He pulled over and tried to reconfigure his route, using the map he had laid out on the passenger seat in lieu of a traveling companion.

After finding a remedy to his mistake he decided to get out of the car to experience the New England landscape. It looked beautiful from inside the car. Leafless trees and white snow that seemed to go on forever. He wondered if the snow consistency was somehow different in the USA. He remembered Clare's warning, or was it Kate, he wondered, and the confusion in women worried him, that snow would become boring when he lived among it day after day. One of them had said that it was a nuisance instead of a means of pleasure. He couldn't believe that would happen, it was too wondrous a substance.

He opened the car door and stepped out and was immediately pained with the intense cold. The cloudless sky had been deceptive. A strong wind blew. His skin ached with the low temperature and wind chill. He walked around the car, as a private show of bravado to, at least, not immediately give up his intention. He quickly jumped back in the car, grateful for the warmth from the heater. He better understood the warning a little. He could die if he stayed out in that chill. He drove off warily, hoping the hire car company had done their recent servicing.

He reached Falmouth before he had to refer to his map again. The accommodation he had prearranged was, he saw on the map, on a road just off Main Street. He cruised slowly along looking at house numbers and then pulled into a long, snow-covered driveway. Severe trees, that were silhouettes marked by lines of recent snow on the upper-side of their branches, heralded his entrance.

Euan sighed with the relief of arrival and whispered 'Yes,' in triumph, as if an arduous undertaking had been successfully completed. At the end the driveway turned at a right angle into a small parking area for four cars. Euan looked to his left, to his destination, and turned the wheel as he braked to slow down. As if in a dream, the parked cars remained in their relative position as he continued in a straight line. He turned the steering wheel harder and depressed the brakes further. He had the wheel at full lock and was standing as hard as he could on the brake pedal when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a group of letterboxes. Quietly and gently his car slid on and decapitated the letterboxes from their wooden stands. They clattered over the front of the car and then fell into Euan's wake. The car came to stop, without hitting anything else, in an expanse of snow that would have been lawn in warm weather.

Euan sat in the stationary car, still gripping the wheel and pressing hard on the brakes, not comprehending what had happened. The first sound he heard, which convinced him his accident was real, was laughter and a knocking on his side window.

'Goddamn,' said a good humored male Texan voice as Euan wound down his window. 'You made a meal of that.' Euan heard more laughter.

'I'm sorry. I'm really sorry about that,' Euan said, wondering if the man was the property owner but he did not look old enough and was not upset. Perhaps a son, Euan thought.

The laughing man lowered his head to peer inside the car.

'Are you from England, are you?' the man said when he heard Euan speak. 'Don't they teach you to drive over there?' The man held out his hand for Euan to shake through the window. 'Steve,' he said and then laughed out loud again.

'Euan,' he said as he took the man's hand. 'No, not England,' Euan said in answer to the original question. 'New Zealand.'

Steve looked quizzically at Euan, who wondered if Steve knew where or what a New Zealand was.

'Goddamn,' Steve repeated as he looked over the damage Euan had caused. 'She won't be happy about that but, it's a goddamn place to put those letterboxes. Everyone has nearly done what you've done.'

'She?' Euan asked.

He got out of the car and stood next to Steve. They surveyed the dead letterboxes like workers with an onerous task they preferred to delay.

A door slammed shut nearby. There was the sound of female voices.

'Her,' Steve said as two women approached.

The woman that had come from the direction of the closing door sound, the large central house on the block, was in her sixties and large. She had been joined by another woman, older still and thin faced, who had come from one of four cabins on the far side of the car parking area Euan had failed to enter.

Euan heard New England accents.

'What is it Edith?'

'I don't know Joan.'

Steve spoke in a whisper. 'Edith is the landlady. The large one. Joan is her friend.'

Euan and Steve stood, almost at attention, waiting as if they were partners in a crime and the older women were to be the source of their punishment.

'Is this a friend of yours, Steve?' Edith frowned expecting Steve to accept responsibility.

Steve shook his head. 'No.'

'Oh, Edith,' Joan exclaimed. 'The letterboxes have been completely destroyed. What will we do?'

Euan heard the exaggeration, the pleasure in another's troubles.

Joan quickly answered her own question. 'You'll have to get Joe out here. Right away,' Joan said sternly to her friend as if lecturing Edith on the evils of tardiness.

'Oh, dear,' Edith said under breath. Her hand covered her mouth and she shook her head from side to side as she surveyed the trail of damage.

Edith removed her hand. 'Then who are you, young man?' she said.

'I'm so sorry about the damage. I'll pay to fix it,' Euan said. 'I've never driven in snow before.'

He tried to explain his incompetence.

Edith smiled when she heard Euan speak. 'Oh,' she was quite excited. 'You must be our New Zealand friend. I thought you were coming tomorrow.'

'No. Sorry. Today.' Euan said.

Joan frowned, upset that the young man may be getting off easily.

'That won't help with the mail, young man,' Joan said sternly, her face drawn tightly. 'I can't stand the way young people have no understanding of the damage they cause by irresponsible behavior. There is no excuse. You just don't think about the consequences.'

'It's all right Joan,' Edith said. 'He's come such a long way to be with us. He must be very tired.'

Euan did not contradict her that he had only flown from the U.K. that day.

'Don't they teach you to drive all the way down there in New Zealand?' Edith smiled.

Euan laughed. 'That's what Steve asked. They do, but not on the right side of the road and we only get snow in the mountains. In the North Island, at least.'

Joan didn't believe Euan, she was determined that he should suffer further. 'I thought it was only in England that they drive on the left side of the road?'

She thought she had caught him out as a liar. Joan was suspicious of foreigners, not completely believing humans outside the USA were quite the same species.

'Lots of places drive on the left,' Euan said to Joan. He laughed diffidently.

Joan scowled.

'What about the damage, Edith?' Joan asked, worried that Edith was smiling and that Euan had laughed. Punishment seemed a remote possibility.

Edith dismissed her friend's worries. 'Oh, we won't worry about that just now.' She smiled at Euan. 'Leave your keys in the car. It'll be perfectly safe,' she said. 'Joe, my husband, will park it for you a bit later on. Do have any luggage?'

Euan nodded.

'Well, Steve will help you get it out,' Edith said. 'Won't you Steve? I'll go and get your key and we can settle you right in. You're in the cabin second from the end, right next to Steve. It will be nice having someone your own age nearby but no loud noises at night, no parties of course. Joan needs her beauty sleep.' Edith laughed loudly. 'And I need it even more. As you can see. Anyway, do you know anyone here? I was told you're going to be working at the Oceanographic Institute. I'll be back in a second with the key. Steve? Actually. Would you mind just putting his bags on the step? Why don't you come inside for a cup of coffee? You must need one after your trip and your little accident.'

Edith was pleased to have an overseas visitor, she foresaw many opportunities for entertainment. She already considered Euan's minor accident with the letterboxes in such a light. She had begun to weave a story to be told to friends of the amusing, slightly clumsy New Zealander.

She wondered if everyone south of the equator was similar to Euan, pleasantly inept.

##  Chapter 2

Euan began his employment as a research scientist, in the tiny seaside township of Woods Hole, a few miles drive from Falmouth. He bought a cheap car the day after his accident and for the first few days he drove to work the longer way, following the coastal road around Vineyard Sound. On the second morning he stopped his car on the way. The breakwaters along the beach had captured frozen ocean on their leeward sides. He wandered over to the ice, hands in pockets, hooded jacket over his head, and jabbed the ice with his toe not, until then, absolutely convinced that the ocean could freeze outside the Arctic.

He thought of Kate with a pleasure that only comes with self-denial. She was so near but did not know he was close-by. Before he surprised her, he wanted his life settled, to preempt complaints at his presence, to make it appear he wanted to work in the USA and her proximity was simply fortuitous. It was a useful delusion that was completely at odds with his actions.

His social circle began with Steve, who also worked at the Oceanographic Institute, and his friends. On his second weekend he attended a party at a home in Woods Hole. It was an outside barbecue, which Euan thought strange as he froze in the snow covered backyard. Euan remained with the small group of men he knew, Steve and his friends and the host. They huddled around the brick-constructed, built-in barbecue. It had been dug out of a snow drift that morning, the evidence was a mound of shoveled snow piled nearby. Euan pressed as close as he could to the heat without getting in the cook's way, all the time. Each man held a drink in gloved hands. If alcohol froze at the same temperature as water then everyone would have been inside, in the warmth. If Euan had known more people, he would have been inside as well.

'This is too fucking cold,' Euan exclaimed when there was a break in conversation. 'When can we go inside?'

He was laughed at.

'This is nothing,' the cook said as he gently bumped Euan out of his way. 'I'll be finished soon,' he added. 'Then you can all help take the food inside. Hang in there Euan.'

'Goddamn,' Steve said to Euan. 'Don't look now, but there's this woman staring at you from inside.'

'Where?' Euan said.

'She's gone now,' Steve said when Euan turned to look at the house and warm his back against the coals. 'She was nice. She was staring at you for ages. I was hoping it was me.' Steve laughed.

'What did she look like?' Euan turned back to face the fire and pushed his gloved hands close to warm them.

'Long blonde hair. Oval face,' Steve said. 'Here she comes now.'

Euan turned back towards the house. Clare walked towards him. Her arms wrapped tightly around herself, she was not dressed for outside.

'Euan?' she said.

Euan smiled and nodded his head as if his identity required confirmation.

She walked into him, wrapping her arms around him.

Steve was nonplussed. He had assumed Euan knew no-one, although Euan had not said so. Yet, an attractive woman was hugging him. An American woman at that.

'Come inside,' Clare said when she let him go. 'It's freezing out here. I don't know why you're all standing here.' She scanned the half-dozen young men staring at her.

Euan laughed. 'That's what I said and they laughed at me. Yeah, let's go inside.'

'What are you doing here?' Clare said once they were inside the house. She was surprised and confused at his presence in Woods Hole.

'I work here now,' Euan said.

'Does Kate know?' Clare asked.

'No,' Euan said, he had a mischievous grin.

Clare's face darkened with both anger and worry. 'You haven't come here for her, have you?'

Steve appeared next to Euan. 'How do you know this guy?' Steve asked Clare. 'He's only been here days, and I thought I was the only one he knew.'

'How many days?' she asked Euan pointedly.

'A few. I was going to see you. Also Kate. Eventually,' Euan said.

Clare appeared to be about to say something but changed her mind.

'We met in New Zealand,' Clare said, as she turned to Steve. Then her face brightened into the same mischievous look Euan had lost. 'We were in love. Once.'

'Not any more?' Euan asked her, quickly, teasing her.

'No,' Clare said. 'Not anymore.'

Steve looked at them both. 'Goddamn,' he said. He shook his head in amazement. He was easily astonished.

Eventually Steve left to get something to eat.

'I know it's not my business, but did you and Kate get together after I left?' Clare asked.

'What does she say?'

'She doesn't say anything. We don't talk much.'

'Why not?'

'Those last weeks weren't the best. You were there. Well?'

'No.' Euan lied. If Clare didn't know then the odds were Hamish didn't either. Which would make his reunion with Kate that much simpler.

'But you did sleep with her? You told me that.'

'Does that still bother you?'

'No. It doesn't bother me. Not anymore. I just think it's a bit strange. I'd assumed you would get together.'

'Well,' Euan said, not knowing what to say. 'Stuff happens and stuff doesn't happen.'

Clare smiled at his nonsense. 'Physics tells you that does it?'

'No.'

There was silence for a moment.

'What if I told you that I came here for you?' Euan said. Although he did not know why he said that.

'Are you telling me that?' Clare asked.

'Maybe.'

'Hmm,' Clare wondered what he was getting at. 'If it was true, then you would have said it much earlier and not in person.'

'What if it was to be a surprise?' Euan asked.

'Surprises have a habit of backfiring.'

Euan laughed a little, as if in agreement. Of what he did not know.

'Well?' he asked. 'What if?'

Clare didn't reply.

'Do you have a boyfriend then?' he asked abruptly.

Their conversation had began a life of its own, it led him on. Her replies forced bizarre responses from him. Euan was hijacked by nervousness and anxiety, worried that Clare might confirm something that made a reunion with Kate impossible. What that thing might be he did not know.

'No. Not a permanent one,' she said.

Euan laughed diffidently. 'You mean permanent like I was?'

'It's not really any of your business, Euan.' Clare went cold suddenly. She lost interest in his little game.

'Well, I might have come for you,' Euan said lamely. 'How do you know that I didn't? As well as accept a job offer.'

'How could you Euan?' Clare was angry. 'I know about you and Michael. We do have music in the States as well you know. We do have news of what's happening elsewhere. I know what you've done. I've heard Kate's song a million times. It's part of almost every documentary on TV.'

Clare exhausted her anger. She was annoyed with the past Euan not the one standing before her. She calmed. 'It's a beautiful song Euan. It really is.'

'Thanks,' Euan said nonchalantly, which maddened Clare but she didn't respond.

'What happened then?' she asked. 'Why are you here? Did Michael's band break up or did you leave them?'

'I left them,' Euan said quietly. His confidence disappeared. Clare's knowledge of his song unsettled him, he had been reminded of something he had hoped to forget.

Clare looked sadly at Euan as if she was wishing him well for the last minutes of a life that had been happy.

'I'm going to mix, Euan. Will you be all right?'

'Of course,' Euan said. 'I can always go and stand outside next to the fire.'

'I think they've finished with the barbecue. If you want something to eat it'll be in the kitchen.'

Euan wandered off to look for something to eat. He wondered what seared and then snap-frozen meat, from the journey across the backyard, tasted like.

Euan stood on his own just outside the kitchen holding a plate of food and trying to eat it with one free hand when Kate found him. She took away his plate and placed it on a nearby table. She wordlessly took his hand and led him to an unoccupied room. She turned him to face her and then laid her head on his shoulder as she put her arms tightly around him. She was crying.

Steve had seen Kate take Euan by the hand and he had followed them. He peered into the room and saw an even more beautiful woman wrapped in Euan's embrace, and she appeared to be crying. With pleasure, Steve assumed.

'Goddamn,' he said quietly under his breath and shook his head as he backed away. He decided to stay close to Euan, wondering how many attractive women he might also get to meet. 'Women love those foreign guys,' he thought. 'Goddamn!'

'Why are you here, Kiwi?' Kate asked.

'I've got a job,' he said.

'A real job?' She did not believe him.

'Of course. At the Oceanographic Institute. It's all done and I'm settled in. You've got me for, at the least, a year. Probably much longer.' He laughed a little. 'If I'm brilliant, that is.'

'Kiwi! I said don't follow me,' Kate said.

'I love you Kate,' Euan said as if he was arguing with her. 'I wasn't going to leave it like that.'

She took his hand and gently rubbed the back of his fingers with her thumb.

'I'm so sorry,' she said.

Traces of tears remained in her eyes.

##  Chapter 3

Euan worked hard at his job at Woods Hole. It was a distraction that allowed time to pass. A part of him, admittedly a naive part, had expected Kate to immediately wander off into the future with him, hand in hand, happily ever after. Perhaps Michael's advice, on their first day of playing Bach together, was correct. Euan hoped not.

Euan had, in all innocence, believed a year's absence would not prove significant.

Euan did not withdraw into himself, he understood those dangers. He did not sulk or indulge in self-pity. He forced social contact he did not particularly desire. He went out with Steve and his group of friends. The Woods Hole social circle, for younger people, was not extensive and Euan often came across Clare and her friends. A larger social group was formed.

Clare's friends were mostly female, which suited Steve. He had witnessed the apparent attraction of the foreign male, to American women, and he was determined to reap some discarded benefit. Steve did not have designs on Clare, she was out of his league, he thought, but he cajoled Clare and Euan to engage in activities that often whittled down to Euan and Steve and Clare and a few of her female friends.

A month passed.

Steve was drunk. Too drunk to drive. He and Euan and a number of friends from the larger social group had enjoyed an evening out but Steve's enjoyment had been excessive. He had yet to snare any of the available women and had let his disappointment and frustration dictate his behavior.

Steve misplaced his car keys. That became a problem because he and Euan had shared transport. Clare came to the rescue. She offered to drive the two young men to where they lived.

Steve invited Clare into Euan's home. The three of them drank beer and talked.

'I don't understand,' Steve said, his speech loud yet difficult to understand.

Clare smiled. She liked Steve, but in a way that would have disappointed him.

'What don't you understand, Steve?' she said condescendingly, while smiling at Euan.

'Him.' Steve pointed at Euan.

'Me?' Euan said and smiled back at Clare, as if confirming a conspiracy.

'Yes, you. Mate,' Steve said, emphasizing the last word. He had learned from Euan it was a term of endearment from a New Zealander.

Euan laughed.

'How do you do it?' Steve mumbled.

'What does he do?' Clare asked.

Steve shrugged his shoulders and nodded his head. The conversation with his two friends was continuing, silently, in his head.

Clare repeated her question.

'I mean,' Steve said to Euan. 'You're not that good looking. You're OK, I guess, but nothing special.'

'Are you after me, are you Steve?' Euan said and laughed. He was a little worried where Steve's conversation was heading.

'All these women,' Steve said as if his statement was obvious.

'Women?' Clare said, with more interest.

'Yeah,' Steve said emphatically. 'All these fucking beautiful women that just fall over him.'

'I think you're the only one falling over, Steve,' Euan said uncomfortably.

'What women?' Clare insisted.

'Well,' Steve said.

He lifted his bottle of beer to take another drink but it was empty. He stared through the glass as if the contents was playing hide and seek. He was about to get another beer but then thought better of the idea. He decided to go to bed instead. He stood and wavered on his feet. Euan and Clare peered up as he looked from one to the other and back repeatedly. He had lost his train of thought.

'Beautiful women?' Clare repeated.

'Oh yeah,' Steve said brightly, like he'd found something. 'Like you, for one, and that other one. The one at the barbecue. How do you do it?' Steve said to Euan, then said loudly for emphasis, 'Mate!'

Steve turned around, looking for the door.

'I'm going to bed,' he announced.

Euan stood up quickly to shepherd Steve outside and over the short distance to his own home. Euan opened his friend's front door, gave him a little push, then shut the door behind him before returning to Clare. She had not moved.

Euan was unsure if he should re-shut his door. He assumed Clare would leave. He stood inside, hesitantly waiting for Clare to stand and say goodnight. She stared at her drink as it sat on the little table in front of her.

'I don't have to go,' she said quietly, not looking at Euan. 'If you want,' she added diffidently.

She did not suffer from the same fear of rejection as Euan. He could not have made Clare's offer. He knew that and marveled at her confidence.

'If you want,' Euan said noncommittally.

On balance he would have preferred Clare to leave but he did not want to upset her.

Clare stood up, she was unsure.

'Well, do you want me to stay or not?' she said, sounding disappointed that her offer had not been instantly accepted.

Euan heard her disappointment.

'Of course, Clare. Stay.'

He already knew it was a bad idea.

As he slid inside Clare, he had a disorienting sensation of déjà vu. He wondered how he had ended up fucking Clare again when there were already two other women he was in love with.

##  Chapter 4

Euan woke before dawn. He stayed in bed and watched Clare sleep. He itemized her features and attributes like they were a collection of special objects. He liked her, he said to himself. He liked her a lot. She was intelligent, she was attractive, she was inventive in bed. They were friends. They were comfortable in each other's company. He could see no reason why he wasn't in love with her. She was almost perfect, as perfect as a real woman could be. Unfortunately, there was a queue for his affections.

He dozed and dreamed.

Clare woke him.

'Are you awake?' she asked quietly. 'We're being watched.'

Euan opened his eyes and turned his head to Clare. She was peering over him towards the front window.

'Why don't you ever draw the curtains?' she asked, annoyed.

'Habit, I guess,' he said.

He swiveled his head to look where Clare indicated.

Joan's face was framed in the window, her hands tried to shield her eyes from the low sun's reflection so that she could get a clear look inside. She was unaware that she was watched. She had seen the strange parked car and was investigating the, probably, morally suspect behavior inside Euan's home. She was outraged at people's habits but content with her own intrusions into the privacy of others.

Euan felt like throwing something at the window to frighten her.

##  Chapter 5

'Oh, Euan!' Edith called out in a singsong voice one morning, catching him as he got into his car to go to work.

It was a week after Clare's first night with Euan. She had returned every night since.

Edith waddled over to where Euan waited impatiently. She was taking so long that he shut his open car door and decided to meet her part-way.

'Yes, Edith?'

'Just a short moment, if I could,' she said. 'Do you have time to come in for a minute?'

'I'm on my way to work,' Euan complained, refusing indirectly.

'Oh, I see,' she sounded surprised and disappointed as if she had always wondered where her tenants went each day.

She stared at Euan for a moment, judging his resolve to not accompany her inside and out of the cold. He stamped his feet.

'Maybe I could come and see you tonight? After work,' he said.

He made a small movement back towards his car.

'No, it shouldn't be necessary,' Edith said. 'It's just about the rent, that's all.'

'There's a problem?'

'Potentially. Yes.'

She did not elaborate.

'And this problem is?' Euan asked, a little annoyed at further delay.

'It's a little delicate,' she said and paused, yet again.

'Joan has told me,' Edith continued. 'That you've had a permanent visitor this last week or so. Is that true?'

'Yes.'

'Is this likely to continue?' Edith asked.

'It might. Why?' Euan asked.

'The rent is only for one, my dear boy. Visitors are, of course, quiet acceptable but a permanent dual occupation would have to be discussed, negotiated.'

Euan was surprised and did not know what to say. Defending his behavior was anathema.

'It must be quite crowded,' Edith said in a pleasant voice. 'It's only a small place. It wasn't really made for two. Do you see what I mean?'

Euan did understand. Joan had, perhaps, exaggerated his unseen activities. Clare had insisted on closing the curtains after that first morning.

'Do you want me to move out?' Euan said abruptly.

He lost his temper and was annoyed at implied moral displeasure.

'Of course not,' she said pleasantly. 'If it were up to me, I wouldn't mind at all. Although it was a very long time ago, I do remember what it was like to be young. I remember my first years with Joe were quite, what shall I say, torrid.'

She laughed at her recollection, almost forgetting Euan and the reason she was standing outside in the bitter cold. The wind came up a little and blew frigid air. She grabbed her clothes pulling them tight around her body. She would have liked to chat with the young foreign man but, with the wind, it was too cold for someone dressed for inside.

'Oh dear,' she said. 'I think it's going to be a cold one today. So,' she added, as if a long discussion had come to its logical conclusion. 'Is everything clear? Some tenants complain about that sort of behavior. I just want everyone to get on.'

'Of course, Edith,' Euan said, controlling his annoyance.

'That's wonderful,' she said, genuinely delighted. 'Have a nice day now.'

She turned away and waddled back to the warmth inside her own home.

##  Chapter 6

'I what?' Clare said.

She was furious.

'You can't stay over anymore,' Euan said apologetically. 'She told me so.'

'Euan!' Clare was astounded. 'This isn't the 1870s.'

'I know, I know,' Euan said.

He was not upset at his landlady's directive, after he'd considered the consequences. He could be absent from Clare without explicitly telling her he wanted to be alone.

'Authority has spoken,' he said flippantly.

Clare angrily ignored him.

Euan often stayed at Clare's home, which she shared with one of the women in her social group. He, also, often stayed away from her. After three weeks of their resumed relationship Euan had fallen into the habit of returning home after work and only responding to a summons from Clare. If she did not contact him, he did not search her out. She became frustrated at his lack of initiative.

One evening Euan was alone, at home, practicing guitar. There was an angry knock at his door and his name was called. It was Clare.

He stopped playing guitar but did not move. He wrapped his arms around the instrument's body as if giving it a farewell embrace. He silently stared at the shut door. He wished he had not been interrupted. He did not want to see Clare and that made him feel incredibly sad.

He sighed.

'It's open,' he called out loud enough to be heard outside.

Clare thrust the door open. She was angry and upset.

'Are we in a relationship, or not?' she said acrimoniously.

'Yes,' Euan said quietly.

'Doesn't seem like one.'

There was nothing for Euan to say, not yet. Clare had to finish what she wanted him to hear.

'I get the idea,' she said, 'that you don't care if you see me or not.'

'I do, Clare.'

'What are you doing here then? It's been three days, and you haven't called me. I've been waiting, just to see how long you'd leave it. It seems you'd be happy to leave it indefinitely.'

'I'm practicing, Clare. That's what I'm doing. It's nothing against you.'

'Why are you practicing? You've given up that or so you've said. I think there's a whole lot you haven't told me.'

'I like playing guitar,' he said. 'I'm not going to stop just to spend every moment with you.'

Clare sighed. She shut the open front door and sat down near Euan. Her initial anger had dissipated. At least, she rationalized, her competition was not human.

'You never suggest anything, Euan,' she complained. 'It's always up to me.'

She was right. He should have been honest with her. He had not told her how he felt about Kate. He had not mentioned Helen. He knew he should break up with her, it was cruel, it was ultimately selfish. However, as was usual with him, he only saw Clare's immediate distress. He wanted an unpleasant situation diffused, regardless of future consequence.

It was his major failing, he knew it, he understood its horrible consequences but could not resist. It was part of who he was, it was the root of his embarrassment problem. He wanted people to be happy and to like him. He was unable to navigate a reasonable, fair course between the women who loved him. He could not make a choice because choice closed options and someone, other than himself, would be unhappy. He should have known how to manage better, he knew that.

His life was lived planning for an impossible future but any disruptive implementation, that may ultimately lead to a better future for everyone concerned, was too inexact, too messy and would always distress someone. The memory of teenage dreams, of the perfect woman with the indistinct features, lived on into adulthood and precluded hard choices. Perfection was impossible, his physics training, if not everything else in his life, taught him that, but Euan refused to accept that loss. His childhood remained with him and often took control.

He, and those he loved, suffered for it.

Euan, reluctantly, stood up. He slowly walked across his lounge-room, away from Clare, to his guitar stand. He placed the instrument in its place, returning it to the safety of its home. He stole a last, fond look, like a farewell, then walked back to Clare. She was watching, like replacing the guitar was a religious rite.

He took Clare's hand. The memory of his first touch of her skin flashed in his mind, that moment in the park. He stepped out of that memory and examined the two of them as they stood together during that first tender moment. He remembered how he felt for that Clare. Some of that emotion leaked from the memory and infused the current Clare. He loved her again, just a little. However, it was the prior Clare, not the current Clare, who he really loved. She was not the same person and neither was he. Too much had happened.

Clare drew him into an embrace. He did not resist and that was his ultimate problem. He took Clare to bed. He wistfully looked at his guitar and remembered a similar moment with Helen, as he went bed with another wonderful woman who loved him. His dissatisfaction with the rewards of life, with the life of the moment, upset him greatly.

He obtained great pleasure from the simple things life offered but, in truth, there was always something else, or someone else.

##  Chapter 7

It was an extremely cold day but, apart from the frigid air, it was beautiful outside. The winter world was blue and white, clean colors stolen from sky, ocean and snow. Euan opened the outside door of the building where he worked and tentatively, gracefully even, negotiated the concrete steps down to the ground. He had been warned often about invisible ice and he assumed it was everywhere. He walked as if each footfall was potentially fatal.

He assumed it was an exaggeration, his friends and work-mates loved to share the dangers of winter living and he was the overawed newcomer who could not disagree. People love to share the dangers they take for granted and live with every day. He did the same, nonchalantly talking of large white-pointed sharks and summer swimming.

Euan negotiated his way across a small snow-covered courtyard to another building that had a shower, where he could change for his lunchtime run. He was addicted to his new found activity. The resultant evening weariness left him stupefied and mildly euphoric. He did not worry about Kate and Helen, and he accepted, and enjoyed, the constant Clare.

Euan changed and then began his run in Water Street. He jogged over the bridge and out of the village. Euan concentrated fully on his footfalls as he ran through the woods. He was peripherally aware of the beauty of his surroundings but dare not slacken his attention. He watched his feet and was aware of knowing where his footfall would be three or four steps ahead, but no further. It helped him avoid obstacles along the path by subtly altering his stride length in advance.

However, on this day, his concentration on the act of running broke. He was no longer running. He thought of Kate, Helen and Clare and the impossibility of successful, and happy, extraction from two of those relationships. The two women he wanted less were the ones unreservedly in love with him. The woman he wanted most was ambivalent or, at least, gave that impression. It had been more than a month since he had spoken to Kate.

His feet slipped and he tumbled sideways into a hard-packed snowdrift. He hurt himself as he struck the snow. He hoped he was seriously injured and unable to move. A noble death from exposure in the cause of three women's happiness was not such a bad thing, he thought for a fleeting moment.

Kate had been an abstract problem to be solved, like a platonic reality, separate, something to be discovered. However, Kate was real, and she was living with Hamish. She had a current life, a life after Euan. Perhaps she enjoyed that life. He had not thought of that.

He lay prostrate, splattered with snow and consumed by sadness. He thought of Clare, how he loved the old Clare but not the current one. Kate thought the same about him, she must. She had loved him but no longer did. He had given up music and Helen, convinced that Kate reciprocated his affection and always would. He giggled a little maniacally as he thought, 'recipro-Kated,' as if it was an injury that she had inflicted. He shivered with the sadness of just deserts, not only that he lay in snow and the air temperature was well below freezing. He had treated others badly, although not maliciously. He had loved Clare and Helen and had hurt them, was still hurting them. His actions were immature, his behavior childish and ultimately selfish. He deserved punishment. A painless death, from freezing, seemed appropriate.

Kate was at the top of the relationship hierarchy. She had taught him a lesson. He had been presumptuous to assume he was worthy of her. Second-best was all he could hope for.

Euan was not injured. He got to his feet and ran slowly back to Woods Hole. He showered and changed. He retraced his steps across the frozen courtyard. He halted at the bottom of the steps, contemplating the final ascent and return to work. It all seemed so futile. His current life was pointless.

In the few seconds it had taken him to cross to the concrete steps his wet hair, from his shower, had frozen. He grabbed a lock, stared at it for a moment then snapped off the end. He stared at the frozen, detached hair in his hand.

'Living in this place is fucking ridiculous,' he said angrily to himself.

##  Chapter 8

Euan had an intractable problem that would require extended and complex analysis to solve. Consequently, his moods brightened and tiredness from running was no longer necessary to enjoy his life with Clare. The Physicist's love of the difficult unknown gave his immediate life purpose.

His problem was, what was he to do?

Euan's problem solving exercise began, as finding solutions to all intractable problems do, by implementing simplifications. He suggested Clare resume spending regular evenings at his home. It made logistical sense. It reduced complexity and discord between them. She could work or relax while he played guitar and thought. They would cross the bridge of Joan's disapproval when, or if, it again became an issue.

If the cohabitation issue became serious enough then he would move out. Either to a new place with Clare or elsewhere, depending on how his problem solving progressed.

Clare and Euan left to go to work at the same time each morning. A few of those mornings Euan waved enthusiastically to Edith who happened to be outside. She smiled and waved back. Euan assumed his landlady would only respond to a specific grievance from others. He liked her all the more for her inaction.

On a weekend morning, while Clare was still in bed, he walked to Main Street, Falmouth to buy a newspaper. He was in a distracted mood as he thought through one solution to his problem. The remedy of least action was to make the existing circumstances work. He could forget Kate, or at least try. He might be able to love Clare again. He had once done so, why not now? He had already disappointed Helen and Michael, that bridge could remain burnt. He missed playing music, he enjoyed the thrill of performance. However, all performance careers ended. Maybe his was over early, in which case it was simply a matter of adjusting. All lives are lived with regret. It's only if regret consumes a life that it becomes dangerous. He could accept what he had lost and embrace what he had. His problems would dissolve if he was able to do that. Embracing that one logical decision could cut his Gordian Knot.

Euan sauntered along Main Street as he pondered possibilities, he was not fully aware of his surroundings. His reveries were broken when a voice called his name from the opposite side of the street. Joan waved insistently at him, making a spectacle of herself. She called out for him to stay where he was. Euan looked around, worried at embarrassment but there were few passersby that morning. He thought of escape, he thought of simulated deafness, he thought of staring at her then pointedly ignoring her. He did none of those things. He halted and waited, as if he had been fairly captured and no escape was gentlemanly feasible.

Joan walked purposively across the road. She stared at the young man, only taking her eyes off him to quickly scan both ways for approaching cars. She strode up to him and halted. She stood silently before him as if he had been caught performing a despicable action of willful intent and she required his apology. Euan quietly accepted silent punishment. He knew what was to come. The consequences of Joan's anger at Euan's neglect of her complaint to Edith would be minor. He may have to move out but he no longer cared. Joan and her moral indignation was irrelevant.

Euan passingly thought of abusing her. She was a silly old woman, interfering in other's lives.

'I want to have a word with you,' Joan said, once the silent stare had lasted long enough for Joan to communicate her displeasure. She spoke with an authority she did not have.

Euan said nothing.

'Well?' she asked, indignant at his silence, as if her intent and outrage had been discussed at length. 'What have you to say for yourself?'

Euan smiled, it was a nervous reaction at an embarrassing moment.

'I don't know what you mean, Joan,' he said.

'You know exactly what I mean,' she said and shook a finger at his chest. He thought she was about to poke him as a physical assault. Euan's smile was incompletely restrained from turning to laughter, as he thought of being attacked by Joan's finger.

'I have to keep going Joan,' Euan said and backed away from her.

He thought of adding, 'because I have a sleeping, naked, unmarried woman in my bed.' However he said nothing.

'Goodbye,' Euan said, he was dismissive. 'I'll see you later on.'

He turned away from Joan and resumed his journey to buy a newspaper.

Joan was immediately forgotten.

Euan jerked his head to the sound of screeching tires responding to locked brakes. A car's forward momentum was barely checked when Euan saw it plough into Joan. She was thrown onto the hood, her head smashed against the windscreen with a sickening sound. Her rag-doll body slid over the top of the car and fell into a crumpled heap of clothes and angles on the road.

She had attempted to return to the far side of the road. She had been furious with Euan and had neglected to lookout.

She was dead before her body retouched the ground.

##  Chapter 9

Joan's death pushed Euan into depression. He did not go to work, he didn't play music, he didn't run. He did nothing but sit in his small home. Euan had no excess energy, bar that to breath and stay minimally alive. He wondered where the energy sapping emotion that consumed him came from. His mind tried to fight it, it was illogical, but he failed even after constructing arguments that would have contradicted the most strident opponent. He could, seemingly, do nothing about it. He wondered if perhaps his mind had snapped and this was his new normality. He hoped not, as waves of unfocussed, unstoppable despair ran through him.

Each second of every life has consequences for others. Mostly the consequences are unknown or benign. Many paths that led to Joan's death concluded with Euan's insignificant action. He had not killed her directly nor, by any stretch of the imagination, could he be held responsible. Many people contributed. The path leading the driver of the car to that moment and place was important. His excessive speed more so. Also Joan's choice to leave home and when she departed was contributory. Her determination to cross the street to argue with Euan and then return to the other side was important. As was Euan's suggestion, weeks earlier, that Clare resume staying at his home. As was Clare's acceptance. As was Edith's inaction before complaint. Countless actions by many people led to that moment and place. They all contributed to Joan's death.

However, Euan stood at the centre of his time. He was at that place on the sidewalk in Main Street. He watched Joan cross the street towards him. He was the reason. He could have walked away, gone into a shop, stepped two steps in an arbitrary direction. He could have done anything other than exactly what he did and she would not have died. Not then.

He had done nothing premeditated towards Joan's death, but he had made the final difference. Perhaps a life lived following a path of least resistance could be fatal? What if his choices, or lack of choices, led to a loved one's death? What if that someone was Kate? The potential responsibility weighed heavily on his mind. He worried about detrimental effects on others by simply existing and interacting with them.

Euan rejected assistance from Clare. Steve's ministrations were ignored. Clare tried to help but after a few days off work, in an attempt to rouse Euan from his lethargy, she came by in the evenings only. She did not stay overnight. Euan's unreasonable melancholy was contagious. She decided to wait for a week or two, see what happened and if no natural progression was made she would then call for professional medical help.

Euan was intelligent, she knew. He would eventually understand his depression, she believed, and logic would return the man she loved.

Clare told Hamish. Hamish told Kate.

Someone knocked on Euan's door. He ignored it. It would only be Clare or Steve or, maybe, Edith. Company was physically repellant.

The knock repeated and Euan stared at the door as if his eyes could destroy the intended intruder. He heard the shuffling sound of someone leaving. He sighed as he let out a breath he had, unwittingly, held in anticipation of disturbance.

Euan's visitor wandered back to their car. They had almost reached it when Steve came out of his home and signaled to the visitor.

'His door's not locked,' Steve said. 'You can just go on in.'

The visitor returned to Euan's door. Steve watched on. He smiled and then went inside when the visitor turned to look at him.

The door still had all of Euan's attention when he, shockingly, saw it open as if on its own. The door's alive, he thought with horror.

Kate entered and shut the door behind her.

He did not move from his lounge-chair as he stared at her. He cried with relief and complication.

Euan's depression reduced overnight. It had been caused by selfish sorrow and anxiety. The witnessed death of someone he knew, for the first time in his life, had exacerbated the emptiness, as he thought it, of his life without Kate.

Kate's affirmation washed all self-doubt away.

He lay on his side in bed, in the early morning light, and stared at Kate's sleeping form. His frequent voyeuristic pleasure was him reconfirming, each day, the physical existence of a loved one. He required constant reassurance that his real world existed outside dreams.

He resolved, as he watched her breath, to be honest and open in his relationships with others. He would not lose Kate, again.

She woke and smiled at him.

Once again, Euan had that disturbing thought, everything was so perfect that it could not possibly last.

##  Chapter 10

Euan returned to work that day. Kate came to see him late in the morning, to check on his progress.

'Are you all right?' she asked. The door was open, as was usual when a scientist's office was occupied.

'Hi,' he said. 'Of course, why not?'

He smiled.

'You were staring out the window,' she said, a little concerned that his vacant attention was a sign of distress.

'I wasn't staring out the window.'

'Yes, you were,' she said, beginning a lighthearted argument.

'No, I wasn't,' he said.

Kate laughed. 'All right then,' she said. 'If you weren't staring out the window then what were you doing?'

'I was working,' he said and signaled her to sit down in his visitor's chair.

'They pay you for that?'

'Not much,' Euan said. 'But, yes. I was working really hard.'

'Hmm,' Kate said, unconvinced.

'Yes, I was looking out the window but I was working, really hard, on this.'

He lifted a sheet of paper from his desk and presented it to her. It was covered in equations. He pointed to, what seemed to Kate, an arbitrary place in the middle of the mess.

'I've got a small problem there,' he said.

Kate laughed. It was the unmistakable sound of a woman in love.

Euan turned his head in response to a sound at his doorway. Hamish stood there. He had come in search of Kate. He was furious. Momentarily Euan feared for his safety.

Euan felt the world darken, he felt alarmed and had a sense of oppression, he felt as if he was controlled, he became anxious, he thought his depression was returning. Of course, Hamish! He had not, for one-second, thought of Hamish. Every choice he made, or was made by inaction, seemed to cause sadness for someone.

'Hamish. Mate. I'm so sorry,' Euan said.

He really and truly was.

The tension in the room lifted. Euan felt it leave like it was physical thing. Hamish stared at Euan and Kate with old compassionate eyes.

'OK then Kate,' Hamish said quietly. 'I understand.'

Hamish turned away from them and left.

Euan felt, for the first time in ages, that he had a future, that a life with Kate, as a couple, was possible. Kate touched Euan's hand. She had felt the same release of tension. Hamish's forgiveness was like a spiritual gift to sanctify their resumed relationship.

Euan moved out of his small home and, with Kate, into a large, ramshackle, two-story, weather-board house in Pocasset.

Clare was distraught at her abandonment but it was a feeling she had become used to. She had loved and lost Euan so many times she could count them.

##  Chapter 11

On their first night in the new home Euan and Kate went for a walk. It was bitterly cold, colder than Euan had ever experienced. They walked, gloved hand in gloved hand, to the end of the street, to Barlow's Landing. It was deserted. The bay was frozen over. They could have been in the Arctic. Euan thought he was. He stamped his feet and huddled into his clothes. All the same, he wanted to be nowhere else.

Light, from a single globe, pooled at the end of the Landing. The ice sheet was eerily alight as if the color white was light itself. Their breaths hung in the windless air. There was no sound except for the occasional crack from shifting ice.

'Come on,' Kate said enthusiastically.

They walked to the end of the Landing and Euan stood with the ends of his shoes hanging over the edge, pretending his action was perilous.

'Let's go out,' Kate said and walked down a few steps to stand on the ice.

'Are you crazy?' Euan said, he was horrified. 'If you fell through you'd die in seconds.'

Kate laughed and jumped up and down. 'It's fine, Euan. It really is.'

Euan was unconvinced and made no move to join her.

'Come on, Kiwi,' she summoned him with a wave of her hand. 'I've lived here all my life. It's perfectly OK.'

Euan had no choice but to follow her. He crept down the steps, invisible ice again on his mind, then stepped out onto the frozen ocean. He went down onto his knees, brushed and scrapped away snow and peered in the dim light to gauge the strength of the ice. It did not look thick enough to him.

He walked, slid and skated after Kate until they halted a fair distance from shore. It was stunningly beautiful like they were boat-less but coming in to berth on a perfectly still white ocean. It was a view Euan did not associate with walking and standing.

'You're still not worried, are you?' Kate said as she took his hand.

Euan grimaced. 'They'll find our bodies perfectly preserved in the thaw, won't they?

Kate laughed.

There was a long, but comfortable, silence

'I used to have this daydream,' Euan said.

He felt the need to add something intimate to that moment as they stood on the ice sheet, seemingly detached from the real world.

'A sort of wish, I guess, as a child,' he said. 'No, if I'm honest I still have it now. Well, not right now, of course.'

He smiled at Kate, he was having difficulty being concise. She didn't know what he was talking about but didn't mind.

'Although it's not as intense or as often,' he said. 'Not since I've grown up.' He thought for a moment. 'Grown-up, that's an interesting concept. Anyway, when I was being driven through the countryside, my family did that often on weekends, when I was a kid, I'd look out over farmland to small, hillside valleys covered with trees. Ones that were impenetrable and mysterious. I'd daydream about living in there on my own and fending for myself.'

He thought Kate was going to say something.

'No, I'm not weird.' He laughed. 'Not that weird anyway. I know! Cold, insects, hunger. As we drove past each place like that, I remember feeling sad that I would never see it again. As if I was nostalgic as I watched the place disappear, after seeing it for the first time.'

'I don't think you're weird,' Kate said. 'Sounds mild, really.'

'Out here, on our own, it's like we've both escaped. That, finally, no-one can stop us or even find us,' he said.

After a moment's silence he continued.

'I remember writing a story when I was young, maybe even before I was a teenager, I can't remember, about waking up and being the only person on earth. I wrote pages of simple description about wandering through a normal town but there were no people. I ended the story sitting on a beach, totally alone. Forever. It was a great story. It's much better now,' he laughed, 'because I lost it years ago. I'm sure I'd be disappointed if I ever found it again.' Kate's face was dimly lit, with no shadows. 'I kept it hidden and never showed it to anyone. I never wrote anything else, I just kept editing it, changing it. That was the only story I wanted to tell. I only had one story.'

He had forgotten where he was for a second. He turned to Kate, a little embarrassed.

'I've never told anyone that before.'

'Well, I'm glad I was the one you shared it with.'

Kate kissed the end of his nose. That's all she did. She accepted that moment, his inconsequential although intimate confession, as a gift.

They walked back over the ice. Euan often slid almost to falling. He was like an infant that required all its concentration merely to stand and move. Kate watched him like he was a performance. When they had climbed back onto the Landing and again gazed across the bay Euan felt he had accomplished something substantial by returning to where he had started, like returning home at the conclusion of a long journey.

Kate began walking slowly back to their new home. Euan followed.

##  Chapter 12

Each morning, in their upstairs bedroom, Euan woke before dawn. He'd lie in bed trying to work out what sort of day lay before him before he rose. He'd listen to telltale signals from outside, maybe a snowplow going along the street, the sounds of cars starting, a voice, even complete silence was a signal of a dangerous weather day that forced humans indoors.

As their bedroom filled with predawn light Euan watched the tops of the bare trees become solid. The objects in the room grew substantial out of fuzzy shadows. Kate, asleep next to him, was created anew each morning out of the darkness. Euan stared at the ceiling and burned the patterns of cracks and shadows into his memory, giving form to his euphoria.

The day unfolded from a tight sleep, just like normal, just like it did every day. Houses were homes and in that street, that town, that state, they contained people lying like he was, slowly waking before a new day of work. Euan's world was unique and repeated.

The first thing he did on those winter mornings, when it was time to get up, even before he dressed, was to rush to the window and check the thermometer attached to the outside wall. Most mornings he would shake his head in wonderment at the reading.

'It's not even zero, Kate,' he would say to her. 'And that's Fahrenheit,' he would add as if they lived in New Zealand and the Celsius scale was expected.

She smiled. It was a similar refrain each morning.

'And you'd be dead in minutes if you walked outside like that,' she said.

He was naked.

'How can people live in a place like this? It's so cold.'

'Well,' Kate answered as if he had asked a genuine question. 'I live here. You live here.' She stopped for a moment. 'You run in this weather, Euan. How can you complain?'

'I'm not complaining. It's wonderful. It's amazing. The survivability of the human spirit.' He laughed at his nonsense.

Kate kept watching him. It was an affectionate look.

'What?' he asked. 'OK. I'll get dressed,' he said, thinking she disapproved of his naked display at the window.

'No, it's not that,' she said. 'It's just that you get so much enjoyment from the simplest things, don't you.'

'There's a lot more of those,' Euan said.

Kate smiled. 'I guess.'

Euan went back to marveling at the thermometer reading, as if it may rise or fall as he watched.

'Euan?' Kate asked quietly.

'Yeah?' He did not turn around.

'I should take you to meet my parents,' she said.

'Is that a wise thing?' he asked. He turned back to her.

'Probably not,' she said. 'But, this is for real. Isn't it?'

Euan smiled.

'It may not be easy,' she said.

'I'd love to meet your parents,' Euan said and spread his arms. He was still naked.

'Well, not like that perhaps,' Kate said.

##  Chapter 13

Two weekends later, Kate drove them to suburban New Jersey, where her parents lived and her father commuted to work in New York City.

They arrived late Saturday afternoon. It was beginning to snow heavily. Euan was instantly reminded of his Christmas visit to Helen's parents. The memory worried him, he had not told Kate about Helen.

Euan kicked at the snow as he got out of the car and was relieved the snow's consistency was markedly different from Norfolk. He had enough to worry about without errant memories. He was nervous about the coming evening. Kate's parents would be antagonistic and they had justification. Euan had stolen their daughter from Hamish.

When Kate and Euan approached the front door it was opened from the inside by Kate's mother.

After their greeting and the front door had been closed, Kate asked where her father was.

'He's not here,' Kate's mother said.

Her mother glanced at Euan as if the father's absence was his fault.

'Where is he?' Kate asked.

'He's on plow duty, early in the morning. He's over at the station checking things are OK.'

'What's that mean?' Euan asked.

'Dad's a volunteer for this area,' Kate said. 'They have a roster to clear the back streets after a fall and, I guess,' Kate glanced at her mother who nodded, 'he's on duty tomorrow.'

'Could I go with him?' Euan asked enthusiastically. 'Maybe sit next to him in the plow?'

Snow was still intrinsically strange and wondrous to him.

'Maybe,' Kate's mother prevaricated. 'You'll have to go early. Before dawn,' she said thinking only of negatives.

'That's no problem. I'm usually up early anyway.'

'Perhaps,' she agreed, warming to the young man. 'Don't you have snowplows in New Zealand?'

Euan laughed. 'We don't even have snow,' he said emphatically. 'Well, only in the mountains. Well,' he thought of many exceptions, but finished with, 'and in the South Island.'

Kate's mother was not quite sure if Euan was serious or not. She turned to Kate.

'I can't remember the last time you went out with your father. When was it? Do you remember dear?'

'I think I was about ten. A long time ago,' Kate said.

Both women stared at Euan. He looked grownup but then, Kate's mother thought, looks can be deceptive.

Kate and Euan were led to separate bedrooms. Kate complained but the arrangement was not changed.

They waited for an hour but Kate's father had not returned. The light was fading and the snow had stopped falling. Kate decided to take Euan for a walk. She took the old family Labrador with them.

They walked slowly down a nearby country lane. There were no car tracks in the snow and the street lights were on. It was eerily abandoned, quiet and starkly beautiful.

'I was in love with someone before you,' Euan said.

She hooked her arm through his, drawing them together as they walked.

'I know that, Kiwi,' she laughed. 'I was there remember. I was the one who brought you and Clare together.'

'Yeah, I know that but it wasn't Clare. There was this woman in London.'

'Oh,' Kate said quietly.

She waited for Euan to say more but he was at a loss how to continue.

'Do you miss her?' she asked.

'A bit.' He felt Kate's body stiffen through their close contact. 'I think when you've been in love with someone you always miss them. At least the person they were, when they were with you.'

'What was her name?'

'Helen.'

'Was she nice?'

Euan laughed. 'Of course. Do you think I could be in love with someone who isn't nice?'

Kate did not laugh, but he felt her relax a little.

'Do you feel like that with me?' Kate asked.

'What do you mean?'

'Well, you were in love with me in New Zealand, you said that, and that was before Helen.'

'I don't understand.'

'Well, you were in love with me. Then presumably, out of love with me and in love with Helen. Then, maybe Clare again. So, do you miss the old me? Is that who you're in love with? The New Zealand Kate, not the American Kate?'

Euan withdrew his arm from Kate's and put it around her shoulder. He pulled her tightly to him as they continued slowly walking. The dog sauntered along on the other side of the narrow lane, finding many smells to investigate as he wandered to and fro, back and forth but overall travelled in the same direction and speed as the two human companions.

'Both. I love all and every one of the Kates I've known and will know.'

They walked on in silence for a moment.

'And,' Euan continued. 'I wasn't in love with Clare again.'

Kate sighed and Euan knew she all but said, poor Clare.

'She's not too keen on you,' Euan said.

'I know, Euan. It's disappointing. Did she talk about me when you were together?'

'Not really,' Euan said.

'She blamed me for losing you. While we were in New Zealand.'

'Yet,' Euan said. 'She never told Hamish.'

'Yes, there's that,' Kate said.

The old dog slowed. It lost interest in exploring, it plodded in a straight line, head down. The walk became a trudge, a thing to be endured before reaching the warmth and familiarity of home and a place to rest. Euan and Kate slowed their pace to match. The last mile to Kate's parents home took them ages.

'Where the hell have you been?' Kate's father greeted them angrily as the dog dragged itself up the driveway. 'The dog is too old to be out in this weather. Jesus, Kate. Do you think of anyone but yourself?'

Her father fussed over the dog. He struggled and picked it up and muttered as he carried it around the back, he let it into the kitchen and placed it on its warm, familiar dog-bed. He refreshed its water bowl and held it next to the dog so it could drink. It lapped a few times and then peered plaintively at Kate's father as if he was to be disappointed with the dog's lack of thirst.

Euan and Kate had followed the dog and its carrier and stood inside the back door watching the over zealous attention. They felt like errant teenagers caught after especially delinquent behavior. Euan had not felt like that for more years than he could remember. It was an unpleasant feeling for an adult.

Kate's father ran out of things to do for the dog. He glowered at Euan as if he was thinking up something especially nasty to say.

'Oh, there you are.' Kate's mother entered the kitchen. 'Dinner's been ready for a little while. Why don't you go and wash up?'

'Thanks mum,' Kate said and dragged Euan away.

In the bathroom, as they washed their hands, she said, 'I'm sorry about my father, Euan.'

'No problems.'

'I mean, that wasn't about the dog. You know that, don't you?'

'I guessed as much,' Euan said.

'Dad really liked Hamish.'

'What's not to like?' Euan said flippantly, but regretted his outburst immediately.

It would be a difficult evening and Sunday morning before they could return home.

'I knew it would be difficult,' Kate said. 'But, I love my parents and I wanted them to meet the man I love.'

They ate dinner together. It was a tense time but Euan made an effort. He was mostly silent but when he did engage in conversation he was enthusiastic and entertaining. Kate's father's antagonism lessened and he even smiled once, over dessert, when Euan told an amusing anecdote involving Kate in New Zealand.

After dinner they sat down, as a group, in front of the television. It was an easy communal activity that could swallow silences. Kate's father had control over the remote and he surfed to a documentary program that appeared promising. They watched in silence for sometime until there was an especially poignant moment, enhanced by the sound track. It had a deep emotional affect on Kate's mother.

Euan noticed tears in Kate's mother's eyes. He glanced at Kate who had also noticed.

'Mum?' Kate asked, once the musical moment had finished.

'Yes, dear.'

'That music is wonderful, don't you think?' Kate said.

'Oh, yes,' her mother replied emphatically. 'You hear it in many places, don't you? Each time I hear it, even after so many times, it gives me this wonderful feeling. Do you like it, Kate?'

'Yes,' Kate said slowly. 'I think it's wonderful too. Do you know what it's called? Where it came from?'

'No, do you?' her mother asked.

'Yes,' Kate said. 'It's called Kate's song and,' she paused for a moment. 'And Euan wrote that music, Mum.'

Her mother turned to the young man sitting on the couch next to her daughter, 'Our Euan?'

Euan nodded and smiled diffidently.

'Oh,' was all her mother said.

However, she was deeply affected.

##  Chapter 14

Euan rose well before dawn the next morning. He was dressed and waiting by the front door when Kate's father attempted to leave for his predawn snowplow duty.

'Good morning,' Kate's father said tersely, not only from antagonism but also the early hour.

'Can I come with you?' Euan asked.

The older man stared. 'No. I don't think so.'

'I won't be any problem.'

'You already are a problem aren't you?'

Euan hung his head a little, then let a faint smile appear. 'I meant in the snowplow. Not with Kate.'

Kate's father grunted. He was about to refuse again and brush passed Euan.

'I've loved Kate for years,' Euan said. 'This isn't something temporary. I'm not going away.'

'Then why did she spend so long with Hamish?' Kate's father asked brusquely.

'Good question. I haven't the faintest idea.'

The two men stared at each other, like they were testing each other's endurance.

'All right then,' Kate's father relented. 'Just don't get in my way.'

As they walked out to the car, Kate's father said, 'Kate's mother told me you don't get snow like this in New Zealand. Really?'

'No, we don't. Really.'

'Well, it may be pleasant to have company again. The last time I had someone with me was when Kate was a child.'

Euan smiled and was thrilled to be following in the footsteps of the ten year old Kate. Another shared experience, he thought.

They drove around in the snowplow for a few hours. Euan was mostly silent, as was Kate's father, but their silence, and being comfortable with it, drew them together. Although, the older man was not ready to befriend Euan.

'So, you really wrote that music on TV last night?'

'Yep.'

'And it was for my daughter?'

'Yep.'

'Must have made you a fair bit of money.'

'A bit. Less than you might think, but enough to dwarf the salary of a research scientist.'

'Were you any good as a musician?' Kate's father asked, as if he was doubtful.

Euan laughed. 'Probably not but I also had this guitar duo thing. We played the Bach Lute Suites. That was good.'

'Hmm, yeah,' Kate's father agreed, almost reluctantly. 'Bach's good.'

'Did you know Hamish?' Kate's father asked.

'Yeah,' Euan said. 'He was a friend.'

'Strange way to treat a friend.'

Euan was silent for a long moment.

'I'd pay any price for Kate. Even losing a friend,' Euan said. 'Did she tell you we lived together in New Zealand?'

'No. She never told me that but it's not something you tell your father.'

'All I can tell you, Mr Fitzpatrick,' Euan said. 'Is that I love her. I can't justify myself anymore than that.'

Kate's father did not reply but Euan thought he had helped the older man understand.

##  Chapter 15

Near Barlow's Landing a country road began that wound and rolled as it followed the coast but was not always in sight of the ocean. That road had no long straight sections which made Euan's runs an adventure in discovery as he ran further each time he took that route. He ran an out and back course and never ran far enough to get to the end. He, intentionally, never drove along the coast road. It would have been a type of cheating to know where it ended without running to the end, like knowing his future would be a disappointment before living it.

He preferred running on the late afternoons on days when the temperature had risen above freezing and the road surface was clear of snow, although the road's surroundings remained white. On those days he ran free from concern about his footfall and, smiling with pleasure at everything in his life, he surveyed the woods on one side and the ocean on the other side like a tourist pleased with his choice of destination.

Each run took him a little further along the road. He continued to the next corner, excited to know what was just around it. Then, he stopped and turned back knowing his destination for his next outing was the turn in the road a bit further on. He was excited to think that maybe the next run would reveal the road's termination and his runs of discovery would end. He would also, he knew, have been bitterly disappointed.

One Saturday evening, after Euan had completed his run and he and Kate prepared to go out, he idly played with a Polaroid camera in their bedroom. Kate was bathing in the adjacent bathroom.

Euan crept quietly to the open bathroom door, then lay down and wriggled forward until he could just see Kate in the bath. She did not see him. Kate had a pet tabby cat she had brought with her. The cat sat next to the bath, its tail wrapped around its paws, its eyes party closed mimicking contentment. Kate leant over the rim of the bathtub and at that moment her cat inclined its head to her, as if it expected the kiss Kate was offering. Euan captured the image as Kate became aware of him.

Kate came out of the bathroom, later on, while Euan sat on their bed with the photograph in his hand. He had sat like that, unmoving, ever since the image had slowly materialized into existence. He had watched the image form as if he was creating a new Kate. He lifted the photograph to compare the real with the likeness.

The moment represented by the image in his hand was perfect. One of the simplest moments that describe a life completely. The woman he loved, loved him. He was already nostalgic for its passing, wishing he could be frozen forever, somehow, as a permanent part of that instant.

He imagined that nothing else in his life would surpass it, that a summit, once reached, has one way forward.

He was right.

##  Chapter 16

One weekday evening, Euan played his classical guitar in their bedroom. Kate came up the stairs and halted just outside. She waited, out of sight, outside the door and listened as he played the Sarabande from the A minor Suite. The music was beautiful and his playing perfect, as if he was putting an extra part of himself into the performance. Sadness was forced on her by the music. As she listened longer she realized, and was shocked, that it was not the music itself. Euan was melancholy and he was communicating that through his playing.

She waited until he had finished and then quietly entered. Euan had not heard her. She saw tears in his eyes.

She felt like crying herself.

'Now that you have me,' Kate said as Euan, with embarrassment, tried to pull himself together and attempt a smile while he wiped his eyes. 'It's not the same is it?'

'Don't say that,' Euan said. 'It's not true. It's different, it's better.'

'No-one can be everything,' Kate said.

'I know that,' he said and laughed a little at his embarrassment. 'That's too obvious.'

He stared at her for a long time. She refused to speak.

He was anxious that he might be suspected of agreeing with her implied meaning.

'I can't see your point,' he said, after a long wait.

'Well, Kiwi, my point is,' Kate was direct, matter-of-fact. 'If there are two really big things in a life. Mutually exclusive things. Something loses out.'

'Stop it,' Euan said quickly. 'I'll choose you. Every time. There's no choice.'

'If I was a thing, then it would be easy but I'm not. I have to live with your regret when you choose me.'

'That's a bit selfish isn't it? There's always regret. I'll always have some regret, Kate. Either way. We all do,' he said. 'Anyway,' he quickly added, a bit too harshly. 'There must be things you regret too? What about Hamish?'

'I'm not like you Euan. I can manage with my own regrets but I don't know that I can live with you, being the cause of yours,' Kate said.

Kate was worried that she might convince him. That had not been her intention. It was a problem with discussions like these, she thought, you never know where they will take you. She ran the risk of picking at the loose thread that unravelled the garment.

'Kiwi!' she exclaimed. 'It's not all one sided. I'm not some passive prize of yours. I did miss you.'

'Not enough to immediately leave Hamish though,' Euan said.

He could not resist pointing out an inconsistency. He instantly regretted it.

'I have left him, have you forgotten? Earlier would have been too difficult. I didn't expect to see you again and when you arrived I wasn't sure. I am now but I don't know that you are.'

'Look,' Euan was exasperated. He didn't want this conversation. 'Then. Now. What's the difference? Ultimately, who cares?'

Kate was angry at how dismissive he was.

'I'm sorry,' Euan apologized. He attempted levity. 'Let's go out and drown all of our regrets, that's what good musicians would do.'

'You're the only musician,' Kate said savagely.

Euan panicked. He thought he was losing her but he did not know how or why. He didn't know what she had intended or expected when she interrupted his music playing and had begun the conversation.

'What are you saying then?' Euan asked.

She misunderstood him. She thought that missing music performance and the associated lifestyle detracted from his life with her. That misunderstanding grew from a lack of trust, that any of Euan's whims could turn into a passion that swept others aside. Permanently or temporarily made no difference, both were harmful.

Euan's sudden reappearance in the USA had surprised her and it was symptomatic of his naivety. Her feelings for him were complex and, unfortunately for her, his naivety was part of his charm, as well as his seriousness, intelligence and an ability to show deep affection. She found the overall combination irresistible as well as infuriating.

Kate doubted his ability to sustain a normal, day by day, relationship. She hoped she was wrong but his secrecy in planning and implementing his year long scheme to come to the USA, which could have failed for any number of reasons, before or after arrival, lacked maturity. It was difficult to trust someone who made plans and decisions without consultation and for whom consequence was something to be dealt with subsequently.

Also, he had, so easily, given up one of his passions. She was flattered that he thought more of her than his music but she was worried that he may move on from her, if some other, new and exciting, passion appeared. He allowed himself to be distracted by his own pleasures, by the avoidance of embarrassment and by a misplaced, short-term, compassion for the well being of others. Again, this trait made him both irresistible and infuriating.

She needed to know if he was committed and, over the longer term, trustworthy. Euan was her passion, but that was insufficient to sustain both of them.

'I'm not saying anything,' she said.

'Could have fooled me.'

'Not anything specific.'

Euan walked over to her. 'I can't see that it's a big problem, Kate. We've both made choices. I'll live with you, with the memory of Hamish, and you live with me, with Michael and music in the background.'

'And Helen?' Kate asked. 'And Clare?'

'No, not Helen and definitely not Clare.'

He took her hands and pulled her to him.

However, Euan had given Kate an idea.

##  Chapter 17

Months passed and the weather warmed. The snow melted. Life out of doors in New England became livable for a New Zealander.

'Where are we going?' Euan asked. They were in Kate's car and on the freeway to Boston.

'Out.'

Euan laughed. 'I know that. Are you abducting me?'

'Yes,' she smiled. 'We're just going out. I thought it would be nice to go to Boston. We haven't been to the city for a while. Just for a change. I want to hear some new live music. We never hear anything new on the Cape.'

'OK,' Euan said. 'I'm up for it. What sort of stuff?'

'New.'

Euan laughed again.

They went to a small venue, no more than a large bar, with a capacity of a hundred patrons or so. The perfect venue for new, experimental music, Euan thought. He was reassured when he saw a minimal stage setup. He and Kate sat at a small table while they waited.

The place filled and soon they could not both leave their table without losing it to others.

Two musicians came onto the stage. Euan was horrified, he was grossly unprepared. He glanced at Kate, yet to make up his mind if he was angry with her or not.

The musicians were Michael and Jon.

The small crowd were well informed fans, they made a lot of noise for a hundred people as Michael picked up a guitar and Jon sat behind a keyboard. Michael played a short, distorted guitar lick, one he played often in his solos and the crowd roared their approval. Michael smiled like he was trying hard not to show that he was enjoying himself. He bowed to the crowd and then at Jon, who played a short nursery rhyme theme and laughed, as if that was the extent of his keyboard talents. Euan knew that it really was.

They played one long song and then Michael began playing Kate's song, on his electric guitar. It was loud and distorted, Euan loved Michael's alteration. The audience yelled their approval, but Michael stopped as if the audience reaction was inappropriate.

'Did you know?' Michael said over the top of the audience noise encouraging him to continue playing. He sounded like a school teacher embarking on a long discussion of a subject that interested no-one else. 'That we didn't write that song?'

The audience made a loud noise that could have meant anything.

'At least, not Jon, and not me but somewhere out there,' Michael shaded his eyes against the stage lights, 'is the guy who did.'

Euan spun his head to Kate, he understood what she had done. He wondered why she had done that.

'Euan?' Michael called into the darkness behind the stage lights, 'I know you're there, mate. Come up here.'

The audience again made a loud sound, enjoying Michael's search for Euan as part of the show.

Euan glared at Kate.

Michael spoke to someone at the front of the audience, who wrestled their way back to the mixing desk. The stage lights dropped and the house lights brightened. The audience roared their disappointment, thinking the show might be over.

Michael began a chant that the audience readily took up. 'Eu-an. Eu-an,' was repeatedly called.

Kate raised her arm and waved at Michael. He waved back and then spoke quietly into the microphone, 'Please, Euan.'

Euan stood up. His face grimly set, without a trace of humor, as if leaving his seat was an irrevocable act. The crowd roared at him. Kate smiled. Euan turned to face the stage as he was propelled by a push in the back by a member of the audience anxious for the music to continue. Euan was enveloped as he moved forward and Kate lost sight of him although his progress was evident by the crowd's shuffling movement. His arm emerged as Michael leant over to pull him onto the stage. Many hands pushed him from behind and when he finally stood on the stage the crowd again roared.

Euan did not know what to do. He smiled at Jon and then at Michael. The house lights dropped and the stage lights returned. Euan lifted both his hands in a wave to the crowd as Michael took that as a signal to, again, begin Kate's song. This time he and Jon did not stop until it was completed.

Euan self-consciously waited on stage, not involved in the music making. Before the end of the song he ambled off.

After the show Kate announced that she had arranged for the two musicians to spend the following day in Pocasset. Kate and Euan walked to retrieve her car, to take the four of them home.

'Why would you embarrass me like that?' Euan said angrily although he sounded angrier than he was. That was often a problem, he thought, people exaggerate and then have to defend their overreaction.

'You have to know, Euan,' Kate said.

'Know what?'

'How much you want to do music again.'

'Well, I already fucking knew that Kate,' he said.

Kate wrapped her arms tightly around her body as they walked side by side. It was cool at that time of year in the early hours of the morning.

'And,' Euan said. 'This has not made it any easier. Thank you very much.'

They were silent for a while. Kate wondered how she could begin a more logical discussion of his choices.

'Fuck Kate!' Euan exclaimed. 'I love you. More than music. I was coping with that OK, I thought. You just make it all harder again. It's like, you know,' Euan tried to think of an analogy. 'I don't know,' he was about to give up then thought of something, 'like you're poking me in the arm with a stick saying, "does this hurt?", "does this hurt?". Of course, it fucking hurts.'

'Well, maybe you should do something about it then.'

'I was,' he said. 'I was doing nothing.'

He laughed. Kate glanced sideways at him. She smiled and then laughed as well, knowing that only people really in love could laugh during an argument.

'And,' Euan said. 'I was doing nothing really well I thought.'

##  Chapter 18

Euan took the following day off work and in the afternoon he drove Michael and Jon around Cape Cod.

'This is all very nice, Euan,' Michael said as they stood on the ferry dock at Woods Hole. Euan had just pointed out the building where he worked. 'For a 9 to 5 schmuck.'

Euan held his tongue.

'It's just a place, mate,' Michael said. 'There are lots of nice places.'

'I like it here,' Euan protested.

'Do you? Really?'

'It's OK,' Euan said, he had been embarrassed showing Michael and Jon the tourist sites, understanding how lame it was. He liked those places because he enjoyed them with Kate. She made them special.

'So you're choosing OK, over awesome music, are you?' Michael said.

'No,' Euan said like a child fairly caught out but protesting his innocence.

'The place is irrelevant. You now that. It's just Kate. You've got her now. Again,' Michael said. 'Bring her with you. Why don't you both come back to London? The other guys have got relationships going. It's not a problem.'

'What about Helen?' Euan asked.

'Yeah, well, that is an issue. She was upset. Still is, I guess.'

'That would be embarrassing,' Euan said. 'I wouldn't want to cause her to lose her job.'

'Why would she lose her job?' Michael asked, incredulous. 'You'd just have to work something out. You know, an adult-type relationship.'

Euan stared out to sea.

'Look mate,' Michael said. 'You should be getting better at this woman stuff by now. While I've known you, you've fucked and re-fucked heaps of women.' He turned to Jon. 'Have you kept count of Euan's women?'

'It's three, I think.' Jon smiled.

'Yeah, three distinct women but not three relationships, I've lost count of those,' Michael said. 'It's easy, Euan. There's no choice. Bring Kate and lets get on with it.'

'Has she said that?' Euan asked.

'No,' Michael said. 'She just wanted us to get together again. I think she's testing you. She's not the type to make up your mind for you, is she?'

'No, she wouldn't do that. She's the perfect woman.'

'What? Out of the three?' Michael said.

Euan laughed.

'Enough of this tourist shit,' Michael said. 'Let's go back to your place.'

Kate came home from work and helped Euan cook a dinner for Michael and Jon. In the kitchen, as they worked, Euan told her of Michael's suggestion.

'Well? What do you think?' he said.

He was enthusiastic, it seemed a great idea with few obstacles to implementation.

'So,' she said. 'You think it's OK that I give up my work? Change where I live?'

'You could work in the UK.'

'Euan!' she exclaimed. 'You're not thinking straight. Have you already forgotten the effort it took to get your job here? It would be the same for me. You had contacts and it still took you a year. How could I decide where I want to work?'

'We could figure something out,' Euan said lamely.

'The world doesn't allow free travel anymore Euan. You can't just go anywhere and live.'

'Marry me. Problem solved.'

He smiled as if the solution was trivial.

'That's a big step, Euan,' she said, after a moments thought, weighing the possibility. 'And we'd be getting married to solve a problem? You're OK with that? In any case, it's not an instant solution.'

'I know,' he said. 'But it is a solution.'

He felt triumphant.

Over dinner, Euan talked as if he was already a resumed member of the band. Kate had been prepared to lose him if he genuinely could not give up his music. She had thought his choice would be the sole active constituent. She had not thought through consequences. It had become like a chess tussle, and he had made an unexpected, sudden move. The onus and burden had, too quickly, fallen to her.

One of them would have to make a sacrifice. She had thought it would be Euan if he stayed, and her if he left. However, there was a new complication. Euan's enthusiasm meant she would have to make the sacrifice if they were to remain together.

The next morning, as she was getting ready for work, Michael rose early to say farewell. Euan was to drive them back to Boston later that morning. He encircled Kate in his arms and squeezed her in an affectionate embrace. She surprised him by leaning heavily into him.

'I can see Euan's problem then,' he said. 'With a hug like that every morning, even I would consider giving up music.'

Kate let Michael go.

'It hasn't worked out as you thought, has it?' Michael said, compassionately.

'No,' she replied. 'Not exactly.'

'It'll be fine, Kate.'

'Will it?' she said. 'How?'

'I can see how great you two are. There is no possibility of you not getting very old together.'

She smiled. 'Thanks, Michael.'

They had a short silent moment, neither knowing what else to say.

'I'd better go to work,' she said. 'Thanks, anyway,' she smiled. 'For doing this.'

'No problem Kate. I've been at your beck and call for years.'

She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.

'See you,' she said.

'In London,' he said strongly. 'OK?'

She laughed hesitantly. 'Bye.'

##  Chapter 19

'Steve's coming with me,' Euan said.

'What?' Kate replied.

'Steve. You know Steve.'

'Of course I do,' she said impatiently.

'He's got a few weeks leave. He's coming over to check out life as a rock star.'

Euan laughed.

Within a month, after Michael and Jon's visit, Euan had given notice at work, which was not well received. A tour through Germany had been previously planned for the band and Euan booked a flight to ensure he was in London with sufficient time for rehearsals beforehand. He and Kate had barely discussed his choice before he had rushed ahead and confirmed his plans.

Euan was following, he believed, an obvious path through to the rest of his life, with both music and Kate. She had pushed him forward, he thought, giving her blessing to his choice. He was certain his future life with Kate would be obstacle free, easy navigating, with no detours, like following a tunnel with a distant light beckoning him onwards.

'You could still come too you know,' he said. 'For a holiday, until you can organize things here. Are you sure you won't?'

'I can't Euan. Just asking again doesn't help.'

'I'll be back for a visit before you know it,' he said brightly. 'Less than a month, I promise.'

Kate nodded her head.

'Have you asked about work?' he asked.

'Euan,' she said, exasperated. 'It's not something you do in an instant.'

'All right. Then when will you ask about work?'

'I don't know,' she said.

Euan sighed. 'Don't do this to me Kate. What do you mean, I don't know?'

'Don't do it to you?' she said angrily.

Euan tried to enfold her in a hug but she pushed him away. He assumed her anger was a result of worrying about inevitable change and that she would miss him for the short time he was absent.

He genuinely believed those problems were minor.

##  Chapter 20

Euan called Kate every night for the first week of his absence. His enthusiasm swamped her misgivings. However, while Euan's telephone calls excited her to action the silent time afterwards stung her with misgivings.

The telephone calls became less frequent after the first week, when the band went on tour.

Steve returned to work from his overseas holiday.

'We had a great time in London,' Steve told Clare. They were out among a larger group of mutual friends. 'And then on tour. They really accepted me, almost as part of the band.'

'Any groupies, Steve?' Clare asked and laughed.

Steve smiled. 'I wouldn't tell anyway, would I? However, no, they're not really that type of band. They've got girlfriends anyway.' Steve laughed. 'Although that shouldn't stop real musicians, it seemed to stop them. Unfortunately for me.'

'And Euan?' Clare asked, interestedly.

'I don't know how he does it. Do you?' Steve asked, not registering her interest.

'Does what?' she asked.

'You were in love with him, so you should know what he does to women,' Steve said.

Clare just smiled, she wasn't going to answer that question.

There was a long silence.

'Yet another woman in love with him. I don't know how he does it,' Steve said.

'Another woman?' Clare asked.

'Yeah, their manager lady. It was so obvious.'

'Obvious?'

'They laugh a lot. That British humor. I don't get half of the things. It's that Michael guy. He's strange. You never know if he's serious.' Steve chuckled. 'Although he can be really funny sometimes. There was this time in Berlin...'

Steve related a long anecdote about a misunderstanding caused by similar sounding words in German and English that caused the band to be an hour late for a gig. Then, Steve told how Michael related the story of their delay, hilariously in broken German and English, in his deadpan voice, to the crowd once they were on stage.

There was another long silence after Steve finished his story. He made a move to leave.

'What was the manager woman's name?' Clare asked, quickly.

'Ah, Helen. Yeah, she was totally besotted with our mutual friend.'

'And Euan?' Clare repeated.

'Not besotted, no, but he likes her. Everyone likes Helen, although they feel a little sorry for her. I don't know why but even I felt sorry for her, and I had no status in their band but, yeah, the two of us hung out a lot backstage during the performances, she didn't act weird with me at all. She's nice. Real nice.' Steve paused for a moment. 'What were you asking again?'

'If Euan was in love with her?'

'No. I don't think so. Not anymore, anyway.'

'Anymore?' Clare asked.

'They were a couple before he came to the States but, not anymore. I don't think so anyway.' Steve laughed again. 'He was always rushing off to find a telephone to call back here. It must have cost him a fortune.'

Steve knew he had no chance with Clare, he wanted to join another group of her female friends.

'Anyhow,' Steve finished as he left her. 'He's making a flying visit in a few weeks, you can ask him yourself.'

##  Chapter 21

Euan flew into Logan airport to stay for a few days. Kate picked him up and drove them back to their home in Pocasset. Euan remarked how wonderful it felt to be back.

'It's a big house to live alone in Euan,' she said.

'Well, don't then! Leave it. Just come Kate. Just come now, we can sort it all out later on. Money is not an issue. I've got enough to pay for stuff. You won't have to worry about that.'

'It's not about money, Euan. That's the least of problems.'

'What problems?' he asked warily.

He could see none that were not easily surmountable by small sacrifices.

'Well,' she said and wondered what she was beginning. 'What about Helen?'

'What about Helen? There's nothing about Helen,' he said.

'That's not what I've heard.'

'What? From who?'

'Well, from Steve, in a roundabout way.'

'Steve?'

'He spoke to Clare, who told Hamish.'

'And Hamish told you? Don't you think there might be a few vested interests in that chain?'

'Hamish wouldn't lie to me, Euan.'

'Even to get you back?'

'Would you?' she asked.

'No.'

'So,' she asked. 'Are you back with Helen again?'

'You don't trust me?'

She didn't say anything.

'Do you think,' he said. 'I would be hassling you all this time to come to the UK just to present you with Helen? That's ridiculous.'

'You didn't answer though, did you,' she said.

'No,' he said quickly. 'There's nothing between Helen and me. Nothing, nothing.'

He was angry and frustrated. His few days with Kate were to be a time of renewal. A time to plan her departure, to dream of the rest of their lives together. He wondered how a short separation could damage a relationship. He had no idea that the cause of the damage was him.

'If you're worried about Helen,' Euan said. 'Should I be worried about Hamish?'

She wondered, with mild amazement, that Euan could be so unaware of the anxiety she felt.

'Well,' Euan answered his question for her. 'I'm not worried about Hamish. I have complete confidence in you Kate.'

She didn't say anything.

'Helen's just our manager,' he added. 'That's it. Nothing more.'

She appeared about to cry

'What's going on Kate?' he asked.

'It's hard Kiwi. You've gone to something. I would just be leaving.'

'I thought you were leaving and going to me?' he said.

'You know what I mean. I have no intention of just being a groupie.'

'No-one is asking you to. There'll be plenty of opportunities for you. I'll compromise, we'll both compromise. It'll be great Kate, I promise. Just think of the next year or two as a transition, or even a holiday. Everyone has a long break in their twenties. There'll be lots and lots of years to work hard. This music stuff won't last forever. It never does. It might all be over in a year or two or five.'

'Then what will we do?' she asked.

'Be together,' he said emphatically.

After a few days, Kate drove him back to Logan airport, adding to Euan's tally of airport farewells but that departure was not difficult or memorable. He was hopeful and expectant.

They said their final farewell at the departure gate. Euan hugged Kate to him.

'Just come over Kate. Come now,' he said impatiently.

##  Chapter 22

Two months passed.

Kate telephoned Euan and told him she would not be coming to the UK.

When the telephone call finished, Euan left for Heathrow. He waited for hours until he could get a flight to Boston. He had to hear what she had said on the telephone in person.

Euan's anxiety overwhelmed him on the flight. Perhaps he had left the USA a little prematurely, he accepted, but he honestly believed she had agreed to follow him to the UK. He remembered conversations, he recalled altered meanings. Perhaps she had been saying no all the time but he had not listened. He became frantic with powerlessness. He felt trapped and claustrophobic in the airplane.

Euan could not live and work in the USA again. Going back was not an option, the Woods Hole people would not rehire him. He had to change Kate's mind and persuade her to leave.

He hired a car and drove directly to the house in Pocasset. There was no car in the driveway. He knocked on the door. There was no answer. He went around the back, retrieved the spare key, and went inside. There was no one there. He went upstairs and stared out of the window. He sat on the bed. He called her work number. There was no answer.

Euan dozed on the bed as he waited for Kate to come home.

He was startled awake when he heard the front door unlock, open then shut again. They met on the stairs as he was coming down to meet her.

'Kiwi!' she said with surprise. 'What are you doing here? I saw the car outside and wondered.'

'What's going on Kate?' he said sharply.

'I told you on the telephone.'

'Well, tell me again. I want to watch you say it. I don't believe you.'

He was angry but, also, failed to fight back tears.

She took his hand and led him back up the stairs and into the bedroom. She sat him on the bed.

'You're impossible, Kiwi,' she said. She tried to soften hard words with a quiet voice. 'I can't do it. First it's one thing or person, then it's another, then another, then the first thing again. I don't know what you're going to do next.'

'You don't trust me, is that it?' he said softly. 'I told you there's nothing happening with Helen.'

'First it's Clare, then it's me, then it's Clare again, then it's me, again. Then it's Helen. Then it's Clare, yet again. Then me. How many times is that? Euan, do see any patterns there? You're a scientist, tell me,' she said.

She stared at him as if she really did expect an explanation, simplified and distilled into mathematics. He had no answers for her. She was right, of course but how could he convince her that his dithering behavior with women was behind him?

'And it's not just other women, Euan,' Kate said. 'It's things too. It's hard for the rest of us, those around you. We never really know if we'll be the next thing that gets abandoned along the way. So,' she said. 'Yes, I guess, I don't trust you.'

'You're different,' he said. 'You're perfect.'

His resolve wavered. Changing Kate's mind and persuading her to leave the USA, to leave her work, friends and family, suddenly seemed an enormous problem, a bigger issue than he had thought. He wondered how he had been so presumptuous and, again, so naive.

His powers of persuasion, any residual charm that he might have brought to their discussion, left him. Kate was right. Michael was right. Hamish was right. Clare was right. Everyone was right. He was a prick. He deserved this. He accepted his punishment, a life sentence no less, as appropriate and deserved.

Yet, not once in his life had he been purposely malicious.

'No, I'm certainly not perfect,' she said strongly. 'Just look at you when we settled here. You started wanting more. You were so upset you were crying to do music again.'

'That was your fault. You made something out of that. Out of nothing. It was nothing,' he protested.

It was a pitiful, useless attempt to deny her decision was based on logic.

'No, it wasn't and I never expected you to make such a big decision, that affected both of us, on such short notice and with such little debate. You carried on as if what you wanted was what we both wanted.'

'What do you want then? I'll go back to however you want it Kate. What do you want me to do?'

His feeble attempts to persuade were long over. Pleading was all that was left to him.

'There's no going back Euan, but you keep trying to do just that. You always take the path of least resistance, but that always causes more harm in the end. You're continually on the edge of disappointment, even when you're excited about things. I don't want to see you everyday for the rest of my life knowing you're disappointed in me and the choices you made because of me.'

'Well, you're the one choosing now. You're choosing not to come,' he said harshly.

Finally, resignation had led to self directed anger.

'Yes, you're right. Someone has to make a difficult decision. One that isn't necessarily just the easier option of whatever is presented. I'm making the best, long term decision for myself and I think possibly for you too.'

'You're deciding for me?'

'You seem to prefer that,' she said. 'That's how you've lived your life so far.'

'I love you,' he said.

She shook her head. He still didn't understand.

'I know,' she said. 'And I do too but that, on its own, will never be enough.'

##  Chapter 23

All things come to an end. Some terminations are satisfying, a natural conclusion reached, while other endings tear and scar lives irreparably.

Euan's music career ended a few years later. He was not disappointed. He made the decision himself, it was not forced on him. Commercial music composition and performance lost its excitement. The original band carried on performing from time to time while Michael busied himself as a composer for a variety of projects.

Euan had made money. Not an excess but sufficient to live the rest of his life well if he was frugal but, of course, he could not sustain idleness. He required challenges. He went home to New Zealand and resumed scientific research work.

The band did a pseudo farewell tour of Europe and the USA. It was an already planned tour but it was marketed as the last chance to see the original band members performing. The strategy was successful, ticket sales were higher than expected.

At a few of the stops on tour, in the larger cities, Euan and Michael scheduled performances for their Bach duo. Those last six months were some of the better months of Euan's life but he was not nostalgic as the tour wound down. It was a long celebration of a naturally occurring termination. It felt right to him at the time and afterwards, and for the rest of his life.

At every USA venue, for the duration of every concert with the band, and when he could with the Bach duo, Euan scanned the audience looking for one particular face but he never saw Kate.

Those last six months on tour burned into his memory and were purified to sit alongside other defining moments of his life. Most of his distilled, perfected memories were of short duration, for example, holding Clare's hand in the park, but the six month farewell tour was a mosaic memory. It was composed of more moments than others but, even so, it did not outshine those simple, short and perfected other memories.

There was one final airport farewell for Euan, the second of his worst two. The first was at Auckland Airport when Kate left, the second was at Heathrow a few years after he had last seen her. He was there to catch a flight back to New Zealand. He halted at the threshold, where the automatic doors were open for him. He set down his luggage and turned to look behind, as if his past life was closely following. He sighed. It was to be the final act in the saga.

'Come on, Euan,' his companion called impatiently. 'We're going to miss our flight.'

Euan heard but ignored the hurry-up. He waited as if at that last moment he would be rescued, that a solution would present itself but there was nothing but the to and fro of hurrying passengers. Some expressed their annoyance at the man standing in the thoroughfare.

Helen's arm waved, urging him to follow. He reluctantly did.

He looked over his shoulder, one last time, as he picked up his luggage. He shuddered at the meaningless, forgotten, second-best life that lay before him.

He whispered two words.

'Goodbye Kate.'

##  Epilogue

Forty years passed.

Euan's research workload reduced. He had time on his hands. He indulged his memories. He wrote a novel, based on his life as a young man.

He had not lived a bad life. He had not been consumed with regret. He had not thought of Kate every day. However, he did think of her often and those times were difficult and poignant. He often had to be alone to allow those memories to run their course. He wondered what his life would have been like had he spent the last forty years married to Kate and not Helen. He was unsure. He was always unsure. It did not consume him, but that was his regret.

He loved Helen but he was passionate about Kate. At least, the Kate from forty years ago. Her memory was a perfection that had forgotten all disagreements, worn away all messy edges and intensified every experienced emotion. No real, physical human could compete when compared to such a thing.

There is more to life than just the mind. Euan had lived with Helen, accepted her and tried to love her the best he could. She was as wonderful as any human, with average faults, could be. However, while life is not only memory, it is the majority of what we are and in that platonic world Kate reigned supreme.

Euan found a publisher for his book, which surprised him. He had not expected interest, he had written his novel for an audience of one. The book was not a best seller but sold sufficient copies to justify a small scale promotional tour of the USA.

His first tour stop was New York City. A week was booked for discussion groups, readings and book signings. Mostly at small independent book sellers. Ben, a junior at the publishers, was assigned to him. Euan was his first, full responsibility, author. Ben was young, about Euan's age in his book, enthusiastic and a bit out of his league. Euan felt sorry for him, being assigned such a low priority author. He should have been doing better for himself. Ben painfully reminded Euan of how he felt about Helen's role with the band.

Euan's work days began when he was met by Ben in the hotel lobby. This day was to be a late morning signing at a small book store.

'Are you ready?" Ben asked pleasantly when he found Euan reading a newspaper.

'Yes,' Euan said.

He folded the newspaper and replaced it on the lobby table.

'Have a good breakfast?' Ben asked.

'Great. Thanks.'

Euan stood up and a wave of sadness overcame him. Ben was so enthusiastic about such an inconsequential task as chaperoning Euan to a small bookstore to sign a few dozen copies of his book. For a moment, and again, life seemed to be small and pointless.

However, Ben did not see it the same way as Euan. Time was on his side. By doing the small jobs well, with a minuscule budget and little spare time, he could impress his superiors. They were small steps on the way of success. One day, he knew, he would acquire the responsibility of supporting authors of thrillers who sold millions.

Ben led Euan outside to a waiting taxi. They both got in the back.

'At least your book isn't too long,' Ben said as the taxi drove off and then stopped in traffic. 'We've found readers like the enjoyment of finishing a book as much as the reading of it. It's like they've accomplished something. The perfect book,' Ben said attempting to sound authoritative, 'from a marketing perspective, I mean, as well as being well written, also has to be the right length. Not too long, so readers can repeat the enjoyment of finishing the book by buying another but still long enough that readers feel they're getting enough book for their money.' Ben laughed. 'I mean, actual weight in their hands. It's a juggling act and that's why we stuff around so much with typeface. Yours is about the perfect length, with a larger typeface. So, it has that, at least, going for it. For an archaic, paper-based book, I mean. I keep away from those things myself, unless I really have to read paper. For work, that is.'

'Thanks for that, Ben,' Euan said without enthusiasm, trying to halt Ben's monologue.

Ben thought little of the contents of Euan's novel, but Euan didn't mind. He didn't think much of it either. It was too personal, too close. He laughed off questions about the extent of autobiographical content. His supposed book of fiction contained little invention.

Ben had not finished.

'The story itself, and that main character of yours, well, I felt like grabbing his throat and shaking him to his senses.'

Ben acted out the throttling of Euan's main character. Euan could only agree.

The taxi moved forward from time to time.

'To be honest,' Ben said, forewarning Euan, 'And people from your country like being honest don't they?'

Euan nodded.

'It's not the kind of book,' Ben said, 'that I would normally finish. I mean, if it wasn't part of my job and it wasn't the perfect length.' Ben laughed at his own joke. 'But, afterwards, I felt like I had enjoyed reading it although I hadn't while I was reading it. Strange feeling. However,' he added quickly, getting carried away with his marketing advice, 'it's exactly what we want people to do. Then they'll buy another one.'

'It's an odd story,' Ben said. 'I think you've done a great job because you wouldn't want to befriend any of the characters, if they were real. None of them are really likable but, somehow, and I wish it was something we understood, the overall effect of the story is positive and memorable.'

Ben waited for a moment and then asked Euan, 'Are you writing another one?'

'Nope,' Euan said.

'Pity. Most revenue comes from books after successful ones. You know, follow up business.'

'I didn't write for the money Ben,' Euan said.

'No. No-one ever does. It's a crap business,' Ben said. 'I mean for authors. So, do you have a pension or something do you? Savings?'

'Yes, I have all that. Also, I wrote some music forty years ago. There's a little revenue from that still.'

'Just like the guy in your book? Were you any good as a musician?'

'Not really.'

Ben was silent for a long time, which suited Euan.

Euan had only one story anyway. There would never be another. He had said all he wanted to say. His life was about, and influenced by, Kate and Kate's memory.

Euan ostentatiously peered out of the side window of the taxi and strained his neck to see the sky above the New York buildings. He failed.

'Do you have any kids?' Ben asked.

'No,' Euan said. 'Helen never wanted any but,' he added. 'I think deep down she did want children, she just couldn't trust me. Not completely.' Euan laughed, it was a short, gasping sound. 'I think she always half-expected me to run away again. Chasing dreams.'

'Is that the same Helen as in the book?'

'Yes.'

'Did she read it? What did she think about it?' Ben asked.

'She read it,' Euan said quietly. 'It did not go well.'

Euan stared intently out of the taxi's window. He shuddered as he remembered Helen's reaction to the book. More bridges had been burned. He did not want to talk to Ben anymore.

Ben, however, continued to chatter.

'Have you been back to any of the places in your book?'

Euan did not take his eyes off the upper floors of the skyscrapers.

'Yes,' was all he said.

Before coming to New York City, Euan had flown to Boston and hired a car to drive the four hours or so to his reserved hotel in New York City. However, he planned a detour. He was surprised how easily he found the way to Pocasset, even after forty years. He drove to Barlow's Landing and parked the hire car. The weather was cool but the bay was filled with liquid water. He walked right to the end of the Landing and stood, with his toes hanging over the edge, looking out to where he and Kate had walked that first night in Pocasset.

He wandered back to the car. He glanced to where the coast road began and remembered his joy of running along it that winter. He thought, momentarily, that he might finally drive to the end and see where the road came out but he didn't really want to. Some things are best left never discovered, it allowed for dreams.

He opened the car door, thought for a moment then smiled. He shut the door and re-locked the car. He placed his hands in the pockets of his coat, huddled his shoulders and walked along Barlow's Landing Road.

He halted before the house he had lived in with Kate. It was familiar but had been renovated.

'It's probably totally changed inside too,' he thought.

He was glad he did not have access to the altered interior to destroy his memory. He had thought often in the last forty years of returning to that place but he was disappointed, now that he was there. There should be more to signify its importance, he thought. He gazed up and down the road. His intense nostalgia was no more than a span of ordinary seconds to others. The house in Barlow's Landing Road was only a place. It had been lived in by many people, possibly families had grown up there. The pivotal importance of that place to him was unknown to anyone else and, he thought, uninteresting as well. Other people's intense or tragic lives are, at best, mildly entertaining stories.

He could not stand there indefinitely. His reveries became maudlin, his nostalgia was no longer pleasant, it changed into something painful and searing. The house was nothing without Kate and, in any case, it was forty years too late. He wondered, had wondered for years, what had happened to her but, like not investigating the coastal road, he had withheld his search. He worried about discovering an obituary notice, or finding she had lived a happy life and had utterly forgotten him.

Euan wandered back to his hire car. He drove to Falmouth and slowed as he passed the entrance to the house where he had lived. He did not stop. He drove on to Woods Hole and parked at the ferry terminal. Water Street did not have the nostalgic pull of Pocasset. He got back into his car and did not stop again until he surrendered his keys to hotel valet parking in New York City.

'We're just about there,' Ben said. 'This traffic has been bad, hasn't it?'

He asked the driver to pull over, they would walk from there. He paid while Euan stood on the sidewalk and watched him. Ben was organized, he made sure everything under his control ran smoothly until he deposited Euan back at the hotel and then forgot him. Euan was impressed.

A strong and cold wind channelled down the street, it was focussed and forced into directions it did not want to go by buildings whose summits were sometimes lost in low, scudding cloud. The wind audibly complained as it was squeezed. The winds from different directions bustled with annoyance at each corner when they were forced to interact. Some corners were calmer where peaks and troughs cancelled each other while at other corners or at different times the wind was angry and became physical like a New York resident delayed by groups of annoying tourists.

Ben took Euan by the elbow, 'You're making it clear that you're not a local. New Yorkers don't stand still.' He pointed in the direction Euan was being led, 'We're going just around this corner. In minutes you'll be signing copies of your book for crowds of purchasers.'

He gave Euan a cheesy smile.

'We hope and pray,' Ben said.

Euan stopped after they'd gone around the corner. Ben's hand slipped from Euan's shoulder as he took a step forward, momentarily unaware that Euan was no longer moving.

'Problem?' Ben asked when he had also stopped walking.

'Not really. I can't get used to seeing my face plastered over windows.'

Euan stared at a poster of himself.

'The punters like to see who wrote the book, and who to queue before to sign their purchase. A necessary evil I'm afraid. It's not that bad though.' Ben itemized the poster's appearance like it was a work of art under examination. 'Studious, careworn. Even, I dare say, literary, in a contrived way.'

'It's not that. It's not really me.'

'Well, you're lucky that it doesn't matter. You're a celebrity, in a small way, and this is New York City where that can be of use. This is a bookstore and you're an author and you want to make us, and yourself, some money.' He put his hand on Euan's shoulder again, 'Let's go in and make me, you, my boss and the store owner happy people.'

Euan remembered the photo session for the poster. Originally, he had a friend produce a series of photos that he thought would be good for promotion, only to have them rejected by the publisher after a single glance. Those photos looked like him.

He was sent to another photographer and after a lengthy session photographs were created where Euan became someone else, a professorial, erudite, literary writer. That person had his features, although by careful photographic construction they were more regular than his. That person in the poster stared mockingly at Euan like a father whose achievements could never be matched.

The entrance to the bookstore was low, forcing a tall person to bend and bow as if in supplication. It had once been a grocery store and the entrance remained unchanged. Euan half expected a little bell to ring, as Ben opened the door, announcing them as customers.

It was bigger inside than the outside suggested. There was a momentary silence as heads turned when Euan entered the store. He was matched to the posters, probably found wanting Euan thought, and then activity resumed. Ben gently kept Euan moving forward as non-queueing patrons spoke to him. He did not want customers talking to the author unless they purchased a book for signing.

Ben led Euan to a chair behind a table stacked with copies of his book. He was surrounded by images of himself, a crowd of better looking clones. Before he sat down, Euan spoke a few words of welcome, he talked about his book and then invited purchasers to have their copies signed.

Some people spoke to Euan at length, to the annoyance of those behind in the queue. Others were reticent and said only a few words of greeting or encouragement. The queue thinned, too quickly for Ben's liking, until there was only one older woman left. She had been holding back.

'Hello Kiwi,' the woman said, when she approached the table.

Euan looked up quickly.

Ben had been quietly chatting with the store owner. He overheard the woman's greeting and smiled a smirky, superior smile as if he was in on an obscure literary joke. The woman had obviously read the book beforehand to know the private name of the main character.

Euan was silent, which worried Ben, as he stared at the woman with his book in her hand. Ben then had a hard look at that last woman in the queue. He understood why Euan was gob-smacked. The woman was beautiful, for an older woman, Ben thought as he fought to dampen the beginnings of arousal.

'I liked your book,' the woman said diffidently.

'You can close your mouth now, Ben,' Euan said. He had noticed Ben's reaction out of the corner of his eye.

Ben was annoyed that he had been noticed staring at the older woman.

'Hello Kate,' Euan said softly.

There was a long silence. Kate wrenched her eyes from Euan and spoke to Ben.

'Hello, Ben is it?'

Ben nodded his head. He was lost for words.

'You're helping him are you?' Kate asked.

'Yes,' Ben said quickly. 'Making sure he gets to appointments. Organizing things.'

Kate turned back to Euan. 'We're not that old are we? That we need minders yet?'

Ben interrupted. He touched one of the books piled on the table.

'You're this Kate?' Ben asked, not believing that an older woman could be so attractive. He wondered what she must have looked like in her youth. Stunning, he assumed.

Kate smiled. 'Yes, afraid so.'

Ben reluctantly took his eyes off her. 'It's all true?' he asked Euan. 'All of it?'

There was another awkward silence. The two older people simply stared at each other.

'Well,' Kate said. 'Here I am.'

She smiled a little but was obviously worried about Euan's reaction to her presence.

Euan kept staring at her.

'I never guessed half of what you were feeling,' she said as she touched one of the piled books. 'Not at the end. I thought you'd gone. I really did. I never knew how sad you were, Kiwi.'

'Sad?' Euan said. 'That's one way to put it. Actually, Kate,' he said with annoyance. 'I was a bit more than sad and for quite awhile.'

Euan frowned.

'Did you end up having any kids?' he asked abruptly.

'No. Hamish couldn't have children. We adopted one. A boy,' she said. 'Have you seen anyone else from your book?' she quickly asked, changing the subject.

'No,' he said.

'I'm staying at my parents house,' she said. 'Dad died years ago but Mum's still going. I went there to find this.' She twisted her shoulder bag around and rummaged inside.

'It was obviously very important to you,' she said. 'I spent ages looking for it. Ah, here it is.'

She produced a small picture and placed it on the table.

'It's for you, to keep,' she said.

Ben gasped.

'Even the fucking picture's true!' Ben exclaimed and then immediately looked sheepish.

'I'm sorry,' Ben said to Kate, 'I didn't mean to say that out loud.'

On the table was a small, now discolored, Polaroid picture. It was old but well preserved. Its life had been lived hidden and forgotten. Ben craned his head to look. It was mostly a picture of a bathtub, with the edge above the level of the camera. On the floor, to the left of the bath was a mottled but mostly grey cat sitting with its tail wrapped around its paws. On the right of the picture and leaning over the side of the tub, obviously naked but only visible from her shoulders up, was a beautiful young woman with impossibly regular features and mousy, unkempt mid-length hair. The image froze the moment the woman's eyes turned to the camera. She looked down the lens, from all those years ago, she stared at the three of them around the table in the bookstore. Her eyes glowed.

Ben felt he was a witness to a perfect moment, a moment of pure pleasure, of perfect love.

'I've left Hamish,' Kate said quietly. 'For you. If you want.'

Euan looked up from the faded photo on the table and smiled. She smiled back.

'Anyway,' she said brightly. 'This is for you.'

She gently pushed the old Polaroid photograph closer towards him.

###

About Mark Macpherson

He's an author of science fiction and literary fiction and lives in Melbourne, Australia. He's interested in just about everything. He's an ex-scientist and musician and has a passion for exercise and fitness.

Connect with Mark Macpherson on-line:

http://www.markmacpherson.com

More books in this series coming soon!

Here are some samples.

Flawed Gods

Flawed Gods Sample: Chapter 1

The Story of the Finder of Caves.

"The human who was the template, the pattern the gods copied to construct modern people was the bravest and greatest hunter the world has ever known. The hunter lived in the time before Kings, the time before scribes, the time before people lived in villages. The story of how we came to exist, in the form we are today, began when that greatest of all humans had travelled for many days through the ancient jungle searching, unsuccessfully, for game."

"She," Yash K'in said.

He paused reciting the tale from ancient times, understanding the effect that pronoun would have on his audience of two Western archaeologists, Arthur and Michelle.

"She eventually cornered an ancient and dangerous animal. An animal that no longer exists, as large when it walked on its four legs as the shoulder of a standing hunter. She failed to kill it. Even the greatest hunters know failure. Even the gods make mistakes. The animal tore along the length of her leg with its tusks. The hunter's injury was deep and to the bone. Her intended prey tore flesh from her arm and pierced her side. She was thrown into the air and landed violently. Her mouth filled with her own blood as her teeth pierced her tongue. She lost consciousness for a long time.

A pool of her blood surrounded her when she woke.

Her body was broken, her agony extreme. She struggled to her feet but she was disoriented and weak from loss of blood. She could not find the direction back to her people. She was lost. Her only hope for survival was to find help nearby or a source of easy food and shelter until her body repaired.

For many days she moved slowly through the jungle, searching for assistance.

During the first nights of her ordeal she feared attack from large predators. Each night she found a place where an assault could only come from a single direction. She wedged her body into position and watched and waited. As the days blurred into a single repeated one of agony and weakness she gave up her defense and at night she collapsed on the jungle floor and slept through the dark hours.

She weakened further. Life was leaving her. She lost clear vision. Her waking world lacked distinction. She hallucinated a stark white shape, an old, white-robed man. It remained close to her, shouting its uniqueness in the jungle of blurred greens and browns. She stared at the vision to make it disappear but the shape shadowed her. When her strength was almost gone she no longer registered its presence.

Her leg and her arm became infected and the poison spread through her body. She woke one morning and could not stand. She crawled through the jungle, dragging her useless leg and arm. And yet she did not stop. Each further morning, when she woke and was surprised that she was still alive, she continued her struggle.

On the last morning of her ordeal she woke and lifted her head from the earth where she lay prostrate. She crawled onwards. Then the jungle fell behind her. She collapsed and lay on the edge of a clearing. She released tears of relief using the last moisture in her body, assuming people must be nearby. She let her head fall onto the earth. She lost consciousness again.

She woke in the same place.

'I've been watching you for some time.'

An old man sat with his back against the last tree of the jungle. He stared out over the clearing seemingly disinterested in the woman's plight. A white tunic covered him from his neck to his wrists and to his ankles. His feet were bare.

'You will not give up, will you. Even as you are now. At the very end,' he said. He turned his head to look at the hunter lying on the ground and then looked away again.

'Why is that?' he asked, not looking at her. 'Why are you so strong? You're different from the others.'

He spoke calmly as if he was chatting and passing the time, after a day of rest and an ample meal. She was angry and indignant, as well as in agony. She abhorred his indifference. She did not understand why he did not immediately help her. She tried to swallow so that she could speak but it was impossible. Coherent words could not force their way through the coagulated blood in her mouth and the stricture in her throat. She wanted to make some sound of annoyance but she was also hindered by her swollen and infected tongue. She croaked an inarticulate sound.

'Will you help me?' was what she had hoped to say.

He slowly turned his head so that he, again, stared at her. She lifted her head from the earth. She looked fiercely at him as if she could order him to provide her with assistance. However, she could not move from where she lay and if the old man did not help her soon she would die on that spot. His eyes were calm, he was without concern.

'Will I help you?' he repeated the question she had intended to ask but had not spoken.

'I shouldn't,' he said. 'It could be dangerous for me.'

She had no more words, even thoughts were difficult. The strength holding her head from the ground failed and her face fell, again to rest on its side.

He walked the few steps to where she lay. He examined her prostrate body like she was an exhibit.

'You're strong willed. I will grant you that,' he said.

Her head would not lift on its own again. Her eyes were the only sign of life and they blazed anger and pleaded pity. He smiled at her as he weighed the fateful, irrevocable and horrifying decision he was about to make. The consequence of his decision would ripple through the universe forever.

'Yes. I will help you,' he said softly.

She lost consciousness yet again."

Flawed Gods Sample: Chapter 2

Yash K'in paused his story telling as he drew breath on his pungent, hand-made cigar. The old man's face was flat, almost-simian. Unkempt jet-black hair brushed the top of his shoulders.

The jungle air was humid and, an hour after sunset, it remained uncomfortably hot. Thatched huts sat in irregular order within an area cleared of vegetation. Outside one hut a rectangular, white plastic table hosted Yash K'in and his late-teenage daughter, both KulWinik villagers, as well as Arthur and Michelle.

A single kerosene lamp burned on the table. Its light highlighted people's faces like ill-formed masks but did not worry the darkness behind them. Moths and other insects gave the light source busy attention.

Yash K'in exhaled then peered through the pall of smoke at the lamp and its cloud of attentive insects.

Yash K'in resumed reciting the ancient tale.

Flawed Gods Sample: Chapter 3

"She woke inside a structure, unlike anything she had seen before. Her people lived in the open, occasionally making temporary habitations as they moved about their ancestral foraging grounds. The structure was made of jungle materials, she recognized all the elements of its construction, but it was many paces wide and the sky was completely hidden from her by a roof. She lay in a hammock, suspended from the trunks of felled trees used to hold the structure together. A smoldering cooking fire was in the center of the hut, three-stones marking its perimeter. She tentatively moved her head to examine the far reaches of the hut's interior. She stopped, her attention distracted. She was not in pain. She moved her hand and touched her chin and then poked out her tongue and touched it. She felt no pain. She examined her finger and there was no blood. She attempted to swallow. She swallowed easily. She was not thirsty. She was not hungry. She felt down to her injured leg. She grimaced in anticipation of touching her wounds.

Her injured leg was whole. There was no pain in any part of her body. She raised her head and scanned the length of her naked body. She was as uninjured as the day she had begun her hunt. She swung to a sitting position in the hammock and felt no dizziness or discomfort. She placed her feet on the ground and then stood. She kept one hand firmly attached to the hammock, assuming that her legs would fail. She did not falter. She felt strong enough to start a hunt of many days. She walked to the entrance of the hut and looked outside. She saw the clearing where she had collapsed.

'The old man must have saved me,' she thought. She looked down at her body again and touched her mouth, again.

'But, I'm more than healed, I've been returned to how I was before,' she thought.

She felt a little weak as she wondered, 'Perhaps I've died. Perhaps I have not been healed. Perhaps I have not been returned to how I was before.'

She walked out of the hut into the clear area before it. She turned around and looked back. She breathed deeply. She could smell the smoke from the fire. She raised the back of her hand to her nose and smelt the familiar smell of her own skin. She felt the beginnings of a normal hunger. She felt stirrings in her bowels. She knew she must be alive. Those mundane parts of living would be wasted on the dead, she believed.

'However,' she thought, 'I have been healed completely.'

She did not understand.

She walked further from the hut then stopped. She slowly turned in a circle, on the spot. She called loudly, 'Hello?' to each of the four directions.

There was no answer. She heard insects, birds and monkeys in the trees in the surrounding jungle. There were no sounds from people.

She was unsure what to do next. She could find food nearby, she knew. She had no weapons to hunt, but hunting was not necessary for survival. She assumed a source of water would be close to any human construction. There was the hut for shelter. She thought through her predicament. Someone had built the hut. Someone had set and lit the fire that still smoldered. Her thoughts returned to finding the old man, or someone else.

She went back to the hut, after deciding what she would do. She would search for clothing, for weapons and for other signs of recent occupation, anything that may help her find a way to return to her people.

The old man sat next to the fire. She halted when she saw him. He made no sign that he had noticed her entrance. She was silent for a long time while she stared at him.

'Did you heal me?' she asked eventually, when she was sure he was not an apparition.

'Yes.'

'How long have I been here?'

'It is the afternoon of the same day.'

'How?' she asked. She frowned. She was confused.

'I said, I will help you. And, I have.'

She had too many questions and was unable to decide what to ask first.

'Thank you,' she said. Gratitude coming before knowledge.

She decided on a question. She was bold with her request. She asked firmly, 'Can you also help me return to my people?'

'No,' he said quickly.

'No?'

The old man said nothing. She became annoyed at his inattention.

'No? You won't help me?' she asked again.

'I have helped you,' the old man said quietly.

'I know. I am thankful. I was asking for more help,' she said.

He turned his head and looked at her like she was, again, a child asking permission. She was a great hunter. She was unused to being stared at like that. She was exasperated.

The old man felt her exasperation. He explained, 'You cannot return to your people. Those people no longer exist.'

She was shocked. Her hands moved to her face. 'Are they dead? How do you know?' she asked quickly. The ends of her fingers covered her mouth.

'No.'

'No, what?' She became angry. She was frustrated with the old man's answers.

The old man turned away from her to again gaze at the smoke rising from the fire. 'No, they are not dead,' he said slowly as if he was explaining the obvious.

She did not know what to ask him next. She was not asking specific enough questions, she realized. She glared at him.

'I have re-made you,' he said as if that answer should satisfy all her doubts and should answer all her questions.

She sighed, she gave up expecting sense from the old man. 'I'm sorry old man. I appreciate what you have done. You do not make sense. I do not understand you.'

'Of course you don't.' The old man smiled, with compassion. 'I re-made you. This world has a new beginning. I created a new world of sentient beings. The world begins with you. It exists because of you. It is for you,' he said. 'Without your suffering, without your strength, this would not exist,' he gently extended his hand to illustrate his point.

She did not know if he meant the whole world, her people, the contents of the hut or simply his hand.

His smile remained. 'I'm grateful. I'm fond of this place, if not the people,' he said wistfully. 'But you were an amazing exception. With you as the template, it will be better. I'm sure,' he spoke carefully, methodically, as if he had forgotten the hunter and was justifying his actions to an absent audience.

The old man continued staring at the fire. He said, as if it was not something that would interest her, 'I re-made your species to closely match your construction. But the others do not remember. Only you remember the time before today.'

She stared in silence at the old man as if he had spoken a language she did not know. She decided to not ask for further explanation. She was the greatest of all hunters and she knew there was a time to give up on a quarry and start the hunt again.

'When can I return to these re-made people, as you say?' she asked. Her voice was firm and there was no confusion. Her question was unequivocal.

The old man turned and stared into her eyes. She had a strange sensation of his approval.

'Now,' he replied softly.

'Right now or soon? What do you mean?'

'Now,' he repeated.

The hunter turned away from the old man by the fire and walked outside the hut. She hoped her action would force him to follow, so that he could lead her back to her people. Or wherever he understood she was to go.

She stopped immediately she thought she was outside the hut. However, she stood next to the rock shelter her people camped near at that time of year. The setting sun was shining in her eyes. She turned around but there was no sign of the hut or the old man.

Flawed Gods Sample: Chapter 4

Many years passed. People aged and died but the hunter remained unchanged. She thought often of the old man. The few words he had said to her became clearer as the years passed and her wisdom increased. She searched for the place where she had been healed but never found it.

The seasons repeated over a thousand times until she, again, faced life-threatening danger while hunting.

She had been on a hunt of many days, alone in the jungle, when she failed to kill an ancient animal, like a peccary. Its tusks gored her leg. In the long years of her life it was one of the few times she failed while hunting.

She lost a lot of blood and her leg was painful but she continued to track the injured animal. She cornered it against a rock wall after chasing it up a steep slope. She allowed herself a moment of triumph before she killed her prey. Although she was weakened with loss of blood, her skill would prevent her prey from a second escape. However, before she could make the killing blow the peccary turned and disappeared. She waited for a moment, anticipating its return. She approached the rock wall and saw that it was not whole. There was an opening through which the peccary-like animal had vanished.

She crawled through the opening with her weapons ready in her hands. The aperture was wide enough to crawl unimpeded but not high enough to stand. It sloped gently down. The light dimmed quickly as she crawled along the passageway. She decided to give up her hunt and start a new hunt. But then the passageway dipped sharply. The rock surface was slippery. She began to slide. Her hands were full of her hunting weapons. She accelerated downwards. She reluctantly let her weapons go. She slammed her hands down on the rock floor, to slow her descent, but it was too slippery. She grasped frantically overhead trying to hold on to something. The rock vanished from beneath her. She was suspended in a dark space. Her skin shivered with the undisturbed cold of a large enclosed area. She fell but could feel and see nothing.

She struck the bottom of the cave and lost consciousness.

Flawed Gods Sample: Chapter 5

She woke and did not know how much time had passed. The daylight outside beamed through the narrow entrance, like a beacon, far above where she lay. A dim light diffused through the rest of the cave.

Her leg shivered in silver that she knew was blood that had flowed from the re-opened wound. Her other leg rested at an unnatural angle. It was painful. She had broken it. An arm caused a similar pain. It was broken also. She lifted her head. An intense pain shot through her mouth. Warm blood streamed and eddied over her chin. Its sticky shine reflected from the rock underneath her. She knew that pain. She had, once again, pierced her tongue with her teeth.

The animal had fallen further into the cave, carried there by its greater speed. It did not move. She tried to stand up, to gather it, to return with it to her people. Her pain was too great. She could not move. It was only then that she thought of her plight. She could not climb to the entrance with a broken leg and arm. She would die next to her prey. Her pain and suffering was great. She hoped her death would be quick. She lay her head back on the rock floor and waited to die.

Her suffering called to the gods and she was answered.

The dim light and the cave air appeared to coagulate around a single point. It stretched into a sinuous stream of smoke then expanded into the shape of a serpent. The change in the cave became apparent to her. She lifted her head, although her pain was intense.

The serpent shape swayed and grew further. A head formed on the changing stream and its mouth split and widened until the open mouth filled her vision. She watched with fascination and wondered if the serpent was her approaching death. She was not afraid to die. She was the bravest and greatest hunter, of any creation.

She saw movement within the mouth of the Vision Serpent. A shape approached. A young man stepped through the mouth of the serpent and into the cave. She stared at him. He held himself like a king although the days of the 'Story of the Finder of Caves' were before kings. He approached, then stopped next to the dead peccary-like animal.

She knew him.

She tried to speak. Her voice garbled with the blood that pooled in her mouth. Each word she used, each breath, added to her pain. She fought the words like they were adversaries.

'Where have you come from? Why are you here?' Her breath failed on the last word. She was braver than any person had been or would be, she could suffer agony in silence but she was afraid in the presence of great power. She, also, knew his compassion was arbitrary. He had watched her suffer before. He could do nothing and have no concern as to consequences for others.

His answer surprised her. 'You brought me here,' he said softly.

She struggled with another word but it came out of her mouth easily.

'How?' she asked.

She tried to speak more words. 'How could I have brought you here?' she said clearly.

'Your suffering summoned me,' he said.

'Why are you so interested in watching my suffering?' She exploded with anger. 'You have no compassion!' Her fear made her angry. She was familiar with fear and she had learned how to overcome it. When she hunted dangerous prey she attacked. She did that with him.

'You've watched me suffer,' she said with explosive wrath. 'Twice now. You only helped, reluctantly, after I pleaded. I'm a hunter, I do not accept help easily. It's demeaning to ask for help. You changed everything. You explained nothing. Not in a meaningful way. Not with any sense.'

She listed her grievances.

'Then,' she continued. 'You say, I have been re-made. What's that? No-one knew me but they all knew my name. My new name. You disappear. You leave me like that.'

Tears formed in her eyes as her anger was overcome by memories of sadness and loneliness.

'You left me like that for years and years and years,' she continued softly. 'Everyone aged and died. Over and over. Then, here you are again. Uncaring.'

She lifted her arm and pointed it at him. She clenched her fist as if she might strike him.

She looked with surprise at the hand that hovered in front of her face. Her arm moved as if it had never been broken. And she was no longer lying on the rock floor of the cave. She had stood while arguing. She had no pain in her legs, her voice was clear and her mouth was clean and whole. She gazed at his face in wonder. He had not moved.

'Compassion was not required,' he said seriously. 'Not on my part and not at that time. I re-made you. I re-made your people. That was the first day of your species. The time of the world is counted from that day. And it was because of you. This world is yours. I did tell you that.'

Her anger had gone. She said, softly, with contrition, that still managed to transfer blame to him. 'I could have died. I expected to die. Again.'

She wondered how his apparent plan for creation could proceed if she had died in the cave.

To her surprise, he laughed. His laugh forced on her an ecstatic joy, as if the world was wonderful despite everything to the contrary. She had no choice but to share his happiness. It was not a contagious laughter, quite the opposite. It felt inappropriate, sacrilegious even, to add to the sound he was making. His laughter was a gift but not to be shared on equal terms.

'No,' he said when his laughter had subsided. 'Well, yes. You could have died the first time and the fact that you didn't is the reason for, well,' he hesitated to find the right word as if his vocabulary was newly learned. He said, 'everything. However, this time?' He appeared ready to laugh again. 'No. You can't die.'

'You mean you won't let me? You're protecting me? I do not need anyone's protection.'

She was upset again. She did not like how lightly he took her injuries, her pain and her suffering. Twice.

'I re-made this world because of you. For you. You cannot die. Not by accident, disease and not from aging. Perhaps I did not make it clear enough. This world is yours.'

He was surprised to see that she understood.

'However, it is,' he said, 'time I stayed with you.'

Another sample from the series.

Composite Gods

Composite Gods Sample: Chapter 1

Weary after weeks of journeying through dense jungle and difficult swamps the two men, father and son, stood on the lakeside silently staring at their destination. The island capital of the Itza Mayans stood proud and untarnished. The lime-washed pyramids and the stone structures of the royal residences gleamed and shimmered in the hot morning sun.

The old man, the t'o'ohil, the spiritual leader of the few Mayans that remained free from the yoke of the Conquistadors, was pleased. It would be at this place that the tide would turn and the Mayans regained their independence.

His son, a seasoned warrior, crouched down at the lake's edge. He tasted and then splashed water over his head. He was glad to leave the hot and humid jungle behind. They had travelled quickly to stay well ahead of the army advancing on the last unvanquished fortress of the Mayan empire. The weeks ahead would not be a time of rest, his fighting skills would be tested.

The son turned his head at movement. A procession of ceremonially dressed and well armed men emerged from the jungle. He jumped quickly to his feet.

'Father,' he warned. His voice was calm, he was afraid of no man, but his body was tense. He placed a hand on his weapons.

The father gently touched his son's hand to prevent a rash action.

The group of forty men halted when they were twenty paces from the t'o'ohil and his son. The man at the head of the group was the King of the Itza and the procession was a phalanx of nobles.

The father turned to his son, away from the King's severe stare, to reassure him that defense would be unnecessary. At that moment his son's face blossomed with wonder and surprise.

A shuffling and rustling sound caused the t'o'ohil to turn his head quickly. The King and his nobles were on their knees, their heads bowed.

A suppliant voice addressed the Mayan spiritual leader.

'The t'o'ohil and the son of the t'o'ohil are welcomed in the land of the Itza,' the King said.

'The t'o'ohil and his son are well received by the Itza. We thank you for your welcome.'

The King stood then smiled broadly. He was pleased to have satisfied the t'o'ohil with his greeting. He approached the t'o'ohil who was dressed in rags and covered in sweat, mud and grime while the King was dressed in full ceremonial splendor. It was the meeting of the two most powerful men left in the dwindling world of the Mayans in their last year of autonomy.

'We have had news of your impending arrival,' the King said. He was hopeful.

'There is much we can do to fight the invaders. I hope that your city may be a new beginning in our long struggle. But it will take time.'

The King's face fell, his smile faded into a sadness that melted through his body.

'Ah,' he sighed. 'My hopes were unfounded.'

The t'o'ohil smiled. 'At least, you have hope. Most do not.'

'A large army is on its was here. They are intent on destroying us.'

'I know,' said the t'o'ohil. 'My son and I have fled before them.'

'I had hoped that your journey to join us would be our immediate salvation.'

'One man cannot defeat the invaders,' the t'o'ohil said.

The King's smile returned but it had diminished during its absence. 'One man perhaps not, hundreds of Mayan warriors could not defeat them. But you are not one man. You are the t'o'ohil. The man who cannot die. You have felt the breath of Hachakyum. You have been in the presence of the King of gods. Surely, Hachakyum would not let the last city of the Mayans fall?'

The King's smile retreated, his voice pleaded.

'Hachakyum does not help those that must help themselves,' the t'o'ohil said.

The King pointed across the lake to his fortified stone city.

'Then Hachakyum would be proud of us. This place cannot fall to men and horses. I will not allow my city to fall,' he said emphatically. 'It cannot! We have the last library of our people. The knowledge of the gods cannot be lost.'

The t'o'ohil placed his hand on the shoulder of the agitated King, the only man alive who could do such a thing.

'We will do our best. It's all Hachakyum would ask of us.'

The t'o'ohil and his son entered the city with the King and his retinue. Crowds gathered to see the famous man. They were disappointed that the old man did not match their expectations. To have lived so long, to have been the companion of gods, they expected a stronger man, more warrior like. But his preeminence was obvious as he entered the city with their King following meekly behind him.

Composite Gods Sample: Chapter 2

When the end of the great Mayan civilization finally came, the riled elements did not rise. The knowledge of the gods was lost and there was no great roar of indignation throughout the Universe. The sounds of Mayan catastrophe, the loss of unique learning, were muted by violence and ignorance. The end of knowledge was orchestrated with the guttural grunts of men as they fought and died. Metal thudded against, pierced and sliced human flesh while Mayan weapons were proved inadequate as they deflected from metal.

The Spanish and their supporters did not overcome the island city with men and horses, the King was right, but with men, artillery and boats. A fort had been erected on the lakeside, the city had been demeaned and humbled by artillery and had then been invaded using boats. The Itza had no chance of mounting a successful defense.

The t'o'ohil fought the invaders inside the city. His son struck their enemies by the side of his father as they were pushed back to the city center. The King fought with his guards, a warrior among warriors. He grimly acknowledged the t'o'ohil as he joined the fight alongside the King.

The sounds of battle became engulfed by the roar of flames and the significant, tearing sound of the end of knowledge as the last library of Mayan books, made from beaten bark, embraced their extinction.

The King was shocked when he heard then saw the flames rising from his library. There was nothing he could do to save the books. He was distracted from battle as he thought of the thousands of years of accumulated learning that was now lost. He glanced at the t'o'ohil who returned his look, both men having the same thought at the same time.

A sword slashed and the distracted King was mortally wounded. He placed his hand over the flowing blood and stared in amazement.

'So, this is what death is like,' he thought as he fell to the ground. He sought guidance and searched for the eyes of the t'o'ohil.

The old man stopped fighting and came to the side of the dying King. The same sword slashed at the t'o'ohil but had no effect. The Conquistador stared in amazement at the untouched old man and this distraction was the cause of his own death.

The t'o'ohil's son wrenched the sword from the iron-clad man's hand then ran it through his unprotected face. The Spanish invader was dead before his body hit the ground.

The younger man's efforts rallied the King's guard and they pushed the invaders from the city center.

The King had minutes to live. The t'o'ohil remained by his side as the sounds of battle retreated. They were the only living men in the city center, outside the burning Mayan library.

'I'm sorry t'o'ohil,' the King said. 'I failed.'

'You've done more than could be expected. There is no blame.'

The King had difficulty breathing.

'T'o'ohil,' the King began to speak again.

'You may use my name,' the t'o'ohil said, knowing the name of the t'o'ohil was never spoken.

The King smiled at this great honor awarded at the end of his life.

'Yash K'in,' the King said and was surprised how saying the spiritual leader's name gave him strength. 'Our books are lost.'

'Yes, they're gone but the stories of the gods are safe'

'Ah,' the King sighed, relieved. 'What will you do now?' he asked with his last words.

'Wait for the birth of a woman who will end the war between the gods. I'll return home and wait. I'll return to Yaxchilan.'

Composite Gods Sample: Chapter 3

'You're going to New York?' Hamish asked, incredulous.

He raised his head from reading the morning newspaper, while seated at the kitchen table, and asked the same question again, as if he had not heard or not believed what Kate had said.

'New York?' he repeated. He stared at her over the top of his reading glasses, his eyes tight and critical.

Kate knew how his face would be transformed by the tone of his question. She had no need to look at her husband. There was little that was new after four decades together. She held her head high, her body at right angles to the kitchen table as she stared out of a window into the backyard. Her hip danced gently as it repeatedly touched the table and withdrew.

'Yes,' Kate said forcefully.

'Why?'

'I want to see her.'

Kate's mother lived in New York.

'No you don't. You can't stand her.'

'Hamish!' She flashed angry eyes at him and then immediately looked away.

'Well it's true,' Hamish protested.

'Yes. Thank you, Hamish.' She said his name like it was an insult. She was exasperated, and wondered why she felt the need to explain. 'It shouldn't bother you. It won't change anything you're doing if I'm here or not.'

Kate moved, just her head, and stared at him.

'No, it won't,' he said nonplussed, wondering where her anger had come from.

'I'm just interested in why the change of heart,' he said.

She paused as if she was choosing her answer carefully. Her eyes were dark.

'We're all getting old.'

Kate's hip resumed bouncing nervously against the table's edge as she again looked away. She was determined that approval was irrelevant.

Hamish and Kate had both retired and lived in Boston. He enjoyed no longer working full time as an academic geologist. He dabbled, although he hated that word as a description of activity, in consultancy, offering his advice and services to Universities and private companies. He was not upset if his expertise was unused for extended periods of time.

Kate stopped her nervous movement. She announced a decision already made.

'I'm driving down today and I'll be staying for a few days.' She made it sound as if her intended absence was his fault.

'What about Jim?' Hamish asked.

Jim was their late-teenage grandson. He had lived with his grandparents since his mother, father and twin brother had died in an accident.

'Can't you look after him?' she said with exasperation.

After decades together a few days or a few weeks apart from Kate did not upset Hamish.

Kate didn't come back from New York.

A final note from the author

Yes. That's the same Hamish and Kate you've just read about in their back-story, "The Tragedy of Euan and Kate".

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