‘Lucky Kiwis. Lucky country,’ said Andrew with a smile. The driver started the engine, and Pearly and Andrew shook hands again, this time naturally and with sincerity, no camera in sight. ‘Good to see you, Pearly, and thanks for everything.’ Andrew boarded and took his seat. He smiled down from the window and raised his hand as the bus pulled away. Pearly felt an unexpected dispossession, although Andrew Nisse had never been a friend. Pearly wished he had been and regretted the opportunity had passed him by. It had nothing to do with Andrew’s success but with Pearly’s sense of his own diminishment, a variety of moral missteps, his lack of outreach to the wider world.

Pearly took his time going back to the carpark. The summer sun lazed low in the sky, and the air was heavy with warmth. Colour was slowly leaching from the eastern blue heavens, and from somewhere nearby was the smell of freshly applied hot mix. Pearly took out the driver’s foot mat from the Falcon and shook it free of a few pieces of gravel. After replacing it he got in. There was a small parcel in the cup holder between the front seats, and Pearly recognised it as the gift pack of Whitestone Windsor blue cheese that was Helen’s farewell gift to Andrew. ‘Bugger,’ said Pearly. He wouldn’t tell her that he’d forgotten to pass it on. A harmless and convenient deceit, and anyway Andrew probably wouldn’t have been able to board an international flight in Christchurch with a packet of cheese.

Andrew had called him lucky, and Pearly thought about that, deciding after a time that it was true. Even now it was true. ‘Pearly, Pearly, Pearly,’ he said in falling cadence. He knew he had ground to make up, that he needed to talk to Deidre, support Gumbo, try harder with Kevin and, perhaps most important of all, recover Helen’s trust. His phone rang, and when he flicked the surface for connection a familiar voice began to abuse him. Pearly didn’t immediately respond. He no longer had curiosity concerning the phantom caller: no interest in the identity or motivation of his accuser. He saw the heat shimmer over the carpark seal, saw the pale, silky blue of the sky. He saw the loess clay cliffs at a distance and the restless sea at their foot. He lifted the phone and, overriding the flow of abuse, said calmly, ‘Fuck off.’