A Passionate Proposition. Susan Napier

of the parking area. She’d left an explanatory note for Cathy, although she expected to be back well before the group returned from their survey.

      Her hands tightened on the wheel as she turned from the bumpy track onto the narrow sealed road which was the main route from the coast to the suburbs of South Auckland and tried to soothe her taut nerves. She was probably overreacting. It wasn’t as if she herself hadn’t sneaked out to an illicit party or two during her school days—it was more or less de rigueur for senior boarders, and even an otherwise goody-two-shoes like Anya had been obliged to break a few rules in order to assure a peaceful life in the dorm.

      The trouble was that in the four months since she had left Eastbrook she had got used to not concerning herself with after-hours student high jinks. One of the things she enjoyed about teaching at Hunua College was the separation between work and leisure. When she left school each afternoon she shrugged off her responsibilities at the gate. Oh, she took home lesson plans and piles of work to mark, but she wasn’t personally responsible for the welfare of the kids themselves until the start of the next school day.

      ‘What if they’ve already gone when we get there?’ Jessica asked suddenly. ‘What if they come back another way and we miss them?’

      ‘This is the only road from Riverview to the regional park,’ Anya told her, ‘and there’s very little traffic along it at this time of night, so we should notice if they pass us. Besides, Cheryl and Emma told Kristin they would be back around two, so they shouldn’t have left yet—’

      ‘Unless the party’s a bust and they’ve gone on somewhere else,’ came the sly comment from the back seat.

      Anya gritted her teeth. As if she didn’t have enough worries to contend with! ‘Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it, shall we?’

      She continued to drive in tense silence. Fortunately it was a beautifully clear night, with only the suicidal dance of nocturnal insects in the high beam of her headlights to distract her from the road. The fields on either side of the unwinding ribbon of tarseal were bathed in monochromatic moonbeams and every now and then a glow of warm yellow light pinpointed a farmhouse tucked amongst a wind belt of trees, or perched on the grassy slopes of the foothills which folded themselves up against the towering shelter of the Hunua Ranges.

      Ten minutes had been a macho exaggeration on the boys’ part, for it was a full fifteen minutes at strictly legal speed before Anya reached the cluster of shops, houses and agribusinesses that made up the small township of Riverview.

      She eased up on her speed, not even glancing in the direction of her darkened cottage, set back from the road in the large, overgrown garden which had become her personal challenge and private pleasure. Before she had gone away to school she had spent most of her childhood in a succession of inner-city hotels and apartments where the closest thing to a garden had been a potted palm.

      They passed the community’s one and only petrol station at the far end of the shops, its neon sign switched off and forecourt pumps locked. As buildings gave way to wire fences and trimmed hedgerows again Anya planted her foot back down on the accelerator, eager to get the coming ordeal over. She hoped that Cheryl and Emma would have the good sense to be co-operative when she fetched them away. She wanted the rescue operation to go as smoothly as possible, preferably without any dramatic scenes that might stir up more trouble than she could handle.

      She didn’t fancy having to deal with two recalcitrant, and quite possibly drunken, teenagers on her own, let alone a whole partyful. Although she was fit, and considered herself reasonably strong for her build, at little over five feet three inches in height she was often dwarfed by her senior students and relied on intelligence, compassion and humour to command their respect, rather than a dominating physical presence.

      Her tension tightened another notch as they came over a curving rise in the road and a row of trees loomed up suddenly on the left, towering triangles of stiffly outflung branches etched darkly against the night sky in the classic Christmas tree shape. Even expecting the familiar sight, Anya felt an unwelcome leap of her pulse.

      ‘Is this it?’ Jessica’s excited query was redundant as Anya braked sharply and turned off the road, the little car vibrating as its tyres rumbled over the wooden planks which bridged the deep, open drainage ditch running along the grassy verge.

      At the end of a long, steeply rising sealed driveway lined with overlacing trees, they could see the big, white weatherboard house, multi-coloured lights glowing dimly behind the drawn curtains of the downstairs windows. Even with the car windows closed they could hear the heavy, rhythmic throb of a bass-beat reverberating through the walls of the house.

      ‘No wonder they didn’t hear the phone ring,’ murmured Anya, pulling up behind the haphazard scatter of cars parked on the paved turning circle in front of the house.

      After a brief hesitation she removed the keys from the ignition and stepped out of the car, bending down to speak through the open door. ‘You two stay where you are. Lock the doors and don’t open them for anyone else but me…or Cheryl and Emma. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Don’t get impatient if you have to wait a while, and don’t get out of the car!’

      Having made her point as forcefully as she could, Anya slammed the door and locked it, dropping the key into the hip pocket of her cargo pants and slipping her folded glasses into the breast pocket of her shirt as she hurried towards the sheltering portico that framed the front door.

      Pushing on the doorbell brought no response. Frustrated, she tried knocking, then twisted at the ornate brass doorknob and found that it opened easily. A tentative push allowed her to step inside, where the muffled pounding which had filtered through the exterior walls escalated into an ear-crashing assault that made Anya wince.

      There was little doubt she had come to the right place. There was one hell of a party going on!

      Lithe young bodies were everywhere—gyrating to the music, propped against walls, sprawled over the furniture and floors; some were entwined in eye-popping embraces, others conducted point-blank conversations at shriek-level in competition with the musical cacophony. Bottles, cans, glasses and the remains of snack packets and pizza crusts seemed to litter every available flat surface. The atmosphere was hazy with cigarette smoke and thick with an aromatic combination of perfume, warm beer and sweat.

      Anya threaded her way from room to room, searching for Cheryl’s golden-blonde mane and the iridescent black tank-top that Kristin had said Emma was wearing, her task made more difficult by the red-and purple-coloured light-bulbs which had been screwed into the lamps, casting a murky glow over the seething figures, blending the youthful faces into an amorphous mass.

      At last she spotted a familiar figure scrunched in the corner of a couch, being leered at by a lanky youth who looked unattractively worse for wear. She was grimly satisfied to note that Emma didn’t appear to be enjoying herself very much.

      The girl looked up as Anya approached, her pale face registering shock, disbelief and fleeting panic, swiftly superseded by an unmistakable flicker of relief.

      ‘Come on,’ Anya mouthed against the music, taking hold of her unresisting wrist and tugging her off the couch, ignoring the boy’s slurred protest as she dragged his hapless companion off through the crowd.

      ‘Where’s Cheryl?’ asked Anya, when she had steered her to the front door, where the noise level was slightly less brain-crushing.

      Emma bit her lip, her frightened gaze darting nervously over Anya’s shoulder. ‘She went upstairs—a-about ten minutes ago…She said we weren’t going to separate…but—but then she went up there with one of the boys who asked us to the party—Sean, he said his name was…’

      A chill went down Anya’s spine and a cold weight coalesced in her stomach. ‘Jessica and Kristin are outside in my car. Go and get into it. Do it now!’

      She paused only long enough to make sure the girl headed out of the door before she turned and raced up the staircase, which was clogged with people sitting on the narrow rises.

      Once at the top she sped along the central hall