17 June 1994
‘I envy you,’ she says. She doesn’t.
Why would she envy me? She’s Dr Leah Parata,five years older and infinitely, effortlessly superior. Everything about the woman screams energy and competence, even the way she’s twirling that turquoise beanie around her index finger. She’stall, light on her feet, all geared up for back-country hiking in a black jacket—or maybe navy blue, as I’ll later tell the police.
Waterproof trousers, walking boots with red laces. Hair in a heavy plait, though a few dark tendrils have escaped.
‘I really do,’ she insists.
‘You’ve bought your ticket to Ecuador. What an adventure.’
‘Hope so.’
‘I know so.’ She grabs a bar of Cadbury’s from the display and holds it up to show me. ‘Got a craving.’‘I didn’t know you were a chocoholic.’
‘Just when it’s cold. This should keep me going all the way toBiddulph’s.’ I’ve only once managed to haul myself up to Biddulph’s bivvy,
a ramshackle hut on the bush line, built about a hundred years ago for professional rabbiters.
They must have been hardy people. As I count her change, I peer out at the weather: standing water on the petrol station forecourt, raindrops bouncing high off the mustard-coloured paintwork of her car.
The ranges are smothered in charcoal cloud, as though some monstrous creature is breathing out giant plumes of smoke.
‘Seriously?’ I ask. ‘You’re heading up there? Today?’She takes a casual glance at the cloud cover. It seems to delight her.
‘Lucky me, eh? Perfect weather for finding Marchant’s snails. The first wet days after a dry spell bring ’em out. I’ve got a happy weekend ahead of me, crawling around in the leaf litter.’
I can’t imagine why anyone would choose to tramp through those rain-soaked forests and uplands, but then I’ve never been a mountain woman. Leah is, of course. She took her very firststeps in the Ruahine Range. To her, that wilderness is home. She’sgoing on and on about her snails while I smile and nod.
‘They’re this big!’—holding up her fingers to demonstrate.
‘Carnivorous.’ She catches me blanching at the image of a giant,flesh-eating snail. ‘Okay, maybe not the sexiest of our native creatures. But their shells are works of art, they’ve been around for millions of years, and now they’re in trouble because everything preys on them. Possums, rats, pigs.’
Blah blah blah, I think, because I’m twenty-one, and empty-headed, and I’ve been jealous of Leah for as long as I can remember. Her teeth are a bit crooked. She has a high forehead, a small mole on her left cheekbone and a permanent concentration crease, a vertical line between her eyebrows. Yet somehow, these imperfections add to the hypnotic effect. I can see why my brother Eddie’s had a crush since he first clapped eyes on her, swimming her horse in the Arapito stream. They were both eleven then, and he was a scrawny kid from Leeds, but he still hasn’t given up hope…
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