The Final Proposal. Robyn Donald

besotted with each other. They’re checking out some lost plateau in Venezuela at the moment.’

      ‘They can have that. Too hot by far for me.’ Gerry blew a curl back from her face. ‘In fact, this is too hot for me. Do you want to stay and watch?’

      ‘No, thanks. I don’t know the rules.’

      ‘What you really mean is that country pursuits bore you,’ Gerry accused.

      ‘Well, I’m a city woman at heart.’ Jan smiled at a woman she’d served on a committee with. ‘Hello, Sue.’

      Sue gushed, ‘I nearly died when I saw that horse slide onto you! Trust you to be rescued by some god-like being! You didn’t get hurt at all? And who was he?’

      Once Jan had assured her that yes, she’d been scooped clean out of the horse’s way, and no, she didn’t know her rescuer’s name, Sue urged, ‘Join us, both of you.’

      ‘I’d love to,’ Jan said, ‘but I can’t, I’m sorry.’

      It wasn’t the only invitation they turned down. All of Auckland, it seemed, was at the polo tournament, and determined to enjoy it.

      As they threaded their way through the crowd Gerry looked around. ‘Between us,’ she said, ‘we probably know everyone here.’

      ‘If you go back far enough in the family tree we’re probably related to most of them,’ Jan said. ‘New Zealand’s pretty small.’

      ‘Do you ever want to go and find a bigger pool to swim in?’

      Jan shook her head. ‘I thoroughly enjoyed the three years I spent overseas, but this is home.’

      ‘I know how you feel,’ Gerry said peacefully. ‘Little it might be, but there’s something about the place.’

      

      The sun was only half way to the horizon when Jan drove her small, elderly, much cosseted MG into the garage of her townhouse in Mount Eden, one of three in a new block hidden from the street by a high, lime-washed wall. Once inside, she stripped off her shoes and, wiggling her toes on the cool, smooth tiles, rang her mother.

      ‘Hello, darling,’ Cynthia said enthusiastically. ‘How did the photo shoot go?’

      ‘Well...’ Because she’d soon hear it from someone, Jan told her about the incident, soothing her natural maternal alarm by assuring her that she was completely unhurt.

      ‘At the polo,’ Cynthia lamented, as though somehow it was especially outrageous that such a thing should have happened there.

      ‘Ah, well, I was rescued by a superb man,’ Jan said.

      ‘I wish I could thank him!’

      Jan recalled the splintering anger in those frigid eyes and shivered. ‘I’m not likely to see him again,’ she said, and changed the subject. ‘I thought I’d have a shower and then come on over.’

      ‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ her mother said sternly. ‘You’ll arrive at exactly eight o’clock. Everything is under control. The caterers are doing all the hard work. The flowers are done. The house is spotless. I don’t need you dashing around getting in the way, so have a rest. Make a cup of tea. Wallow in the bath. Read a book. Don’t come near this place until we’re all ready for you!’

      Laughing, Jan gave in. Her mother much preferred to prepare for her parties in her own way.

      She put the receiver down and wandered out onto the terrace. Ahead, in blissful solitude, stretched the afternoon and early evening. The polo stunt had been the last of the photographic shoots, for which Jan was extremely thankful. In a couple of months Gerry’s article and the photos would appear in the magazine.

      Her cousin had even promised to slip in a mention of the centre, and that group of dedicated, mostly unpaid women who worked with and worried about the girls and young women brought to them—many in severe trouble, most just trembling on the brink of it.

      Money, Jan thought; it all came down to money. Or the lack of it.

      A van, which would be enormously useful, was just a pipedream.

      Still, she thought drily as she moved a lounger into the shade of the sky-flower vine that rambled over her pergola, Gerry’s project would put some extra money in the coffers.

      

      

      She must have gone to sleep, because although the telephone bell invaded her dreams like a berserk bee she was unable to wake herself up in time to answer it. Whoever it was hadn’t left a message, so it wasn’t a summons from the centre. However, the imperative call had destroyed her serenity, leaving her to wander restlessly around the house looking for something to do.

      Yawning, she wondered how the trip was going. Ten of the girls who’d been recommended to the centre by a social agency were with selected adults at a camp on one of the islands in the Hauraki Gulf. A weekend wasn’t long enough, of course, but it would help.

      Unfortunately, they needed more than an occasional weekend if the lessons they learned there about their capabilities, and the self-esteem they gained, were to stick with them. On the centre’s wish-list was a camp of their own, where the girls could stay for several weeks if needed, away from the many temptations of the city and from bad companions.

      Another pipedream.

      A few weeks ago Jan and her committee had worked out how much they needed. ‘We’re not asking for a lot—just the world,’ one of the women had said, staring glumly at the figures.

      Now, as she recalled the enormous set-up costs, Jan’s heart quailed. Over the last few years she’d organised exhaustive and very vigorous fundraising to build up their financial base. They no longer had to worry about the rent, and they could afford the social worker’s salary, but, as costs climbed and more girls turned up on their doorstep, they needed another paid social worker.

      Every year they still had to go cap-in-hand to various organisations just to get money to struggle along.

      So many organisations, all worthwhile, all seeking a share from the public’s generosity.

      ‘I must be running out of steam,’ she told the potted bay tree out on the terrace as she watered it.

      Thirty-one was not old, but it did seem to mark some sort of milestone. Perhaps it was the siren call of her hormones, warning her that time was frittering away.

      For the first time Jan didn’t want the party her mother planned with such care to mark each birthday. It was a family tradition, the end-of-summer, welcome-to-autumn party, and friends and relatives from all over the city and its environs came to wish her luck and enjoy themselves enormously.

      Possibly this feeling of slow melancholy was what another of her cousins had warned her about.

      ‘It’s a crunch year—everyone has one,’ she’d said, smiling wryly. ‘Mine was my thirtieth. I woke up in tears, and wept all day. Everyone thought I was mad, but it’s surprising how many women have one awful birthday—usually in their early thirties.’

      Jan had enjoyed her thirtieth, which made it ridiculous to feel so ambivalent about her thirty-first. ‘Stop right there,’ she told herself aloud, wandering into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of feijoa and grapefruit juice.

      Her gaze fell on the gaily wrapped present her half-sister had given her the day she and her husband left for their South American trip, with instructions to open it just before the party.

      Where were they now, Anet and her husband of almost a year? Slashing their way through some tropical jungle, probably. For the first time, Jan allowed herself to admit that she envied Anet and Lucas the unmeasured, consuming love they shared.

      Because she’d never fallen in love.

      Not once.

      Oh, there’d been a lover when she was twenty—she