Read Gith for Free Online Page B

was the easy one. She was good-looking and I, if not
a Dan Carter, was at least part of something that she thought
was exciting and glamorous. To be honest, I think she was
more keen on Steve but he had a full-time girl called Julie-
Anne so Michelle settled for me as next best. The second
reason was a bit harder to figure. Michelle and I had grown
up with the same family thing: both of us feeling on the outer
and both of us in the shadow of somebody else. In her case it
was her sister, Sophie. There was a fifteen-year gap between
them and I think Michelle always felt that she had been a
mistake, that her parents never really wanted her. On top of
that, Sophie was good at everything. She had been brilliant
at school, had got married to a professor and was now head
of English at a college in Wellington. Michelle didn't have
Sophie's brains for the academic stuff and, like me, she felt
second rate trailing behind all that success. That's where the
likeness ended though. Michelle finished up with a drive to
succeed with whatever tools she had, while I was rock bottom
on the drive front. I liked fixing things and tinkering with
them and that was about it.
    For a while everything was sweet. Steve and Julie-Anne
and Michelle and I hung out together. The girls would act
like groupies, coming down to the workshop and talking and
posing while the boys pulled the car apart and reassembled
it. Race day they would be there, keeping well out of the
way unless they were needed as gophers, and cheering like
mad every time Steve made a circuit. It was a good life and it
went on for nearly four years. Steve and I were fully qualified
mechanics by then, and Michelle was working in a salon in
Broadway and building up a classy clientele, the sort she'd
always hoped for.
    I have no idea why I asked her to marry me and even less
why she said yes. I guess it was one of those times when we had
been talking about how we felt as kids and it suddenly seemed
that we shared something deep and meaningful. Once we'd
made up our minds, we just went for it. In Michelle's view, it
wasn't trendy to have an old-style wedding in a church so we
did something in the park. There was no family there, just a
few friends and a celebrant who read some kind of poetry. We
were twenty-two years old. We had flowers in our hair.
    It was after that things started to go wrong. Steve took an
off in a practice lap. He wasn't badly knocked around but he
was in a neck-brace for six weeks. The car was pretty much
stuffed except for the engine and gear box, and Steve was
never the same afterwards. It was like everything had lost its
gloss. Within a few months he and Julie-Anne split up. My
guess is that he didn't see them following in our footsteps
down the aisle, whereas Julie-Anne did. If Michelle had any
regrets seeing that Steve was now available she didn't show
them. She wanted to move to Wellington, where there was
more opportunity. She'd rather have a salon there than in
Palmy, she said, and I could set up my own business too. If I
wanted.
    ***
    I MADE A mistake talking to Pansy Cleat. Somehow she
got it into her head that I was going to give Billy a job. He
turned up later that Thursday, on foot. I'd just finished serving
a customer when he shuffled up to the shop doorway and
hovered there, trying to make up his mind if he should be in
or out.
    'Yes?' I said.
    He looked over his shoulder like he was scared somebody
was going to jump him. Then he looked back at me, took a
step forward.
    'Gidday,' he said. 'Mr McUrran. Sir.' He was a skinny bloke,
wearing clothes that were too big for him: a pair of baggy
jeans, a shirt that might once have been white, a brownish
nylon jacket. He was younger than me but he was kind of
haggard. He had straight brown hair like his mother's, and
the same sort of thin, caved-in face. His eyes were different
though. They were big and brown and looked like he was
going to start blubbing any second.
    'My name's Billy Cleat,' he said, staring