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she had put by to take to the commune, and now she had the incentive, the opportunity, to do it.
    She ferried the clocks, antiques all, to the Waikato hills, bound in blankets and silent, their gongs and chimes muffled in more layers than was really necessary. (She would only recreate so much.) Some sat on sideboards, some balanced in the seat of faded chairs, rocking gently. These were the pieces Rosemary truly despised—familiarity had bred contempt, and she had been hard put not to take a chainsaw to one dark monstrosity—at least, they were the pieces without any significant intrinsic value
    She helped to unload them, helped wheelbarrow the smaller pieces into an unused shed, stifled her curiosity at dust-sheeted forms seen through studio windows. The artist was friendly, and known for creative destruction. They shared some lemonade, and Rosemary took the empty bottles back to the café for recycling. The day was hot, and she drank more as she waited.
    Performance art was coming back into fashion, and if Rosemary didn’t care for some of the more modern pieces, well, she didn’t have to experience the coins if she didn’t want to. Their value would appreciate, given the reputation of the artist, and contributing to his work now helped retrieve from him the coin containing the performance of one of his chief rivals.
    In the distance, she thought she could almost make out a flat, outraged ringing, as if someone was belting brass with a sledgehammer.
    It made her smile. She no longer remembered why she hated the clocks, only that she did. Her collection—the one that mattered—was growing. She wondered what her grandchildren would think of it.

Taranaki
    “She wants
what
?” said Rosemary, disbelieving. After two relatively painless transactions, she had let down her guard. She had never imagined she would need to steel herself against a proposed trade of this magnitude.
    The request felt strangely counter-intuitive. Rosemary had spent her adult life collecting experience, learning to weigh and measure and discern between the fragmented moments of past lives. Like stepping into a stream, even coins derived from present memories assumed a solid form, became in their way a relic of history. Were Rosemary to pull the memory of this day from herself, to impress it into a suitable form—she would embed it into a disk of manuka wood, the sharp turpentine scent reminding her of quick shock and bargaining—then it too would represent a past event.
    Her life was one of histories.
    There were times she had traded histories with an eye to the future. Collecting the past, embalming the present, was one thing—but a cheap grab-bag of moments, without selection or oversight was the act of a hoarder rather than a caretaker, a competent librarian. If it improved her collection, Rosemary was prepared to deal in futures by trading the past—selling her grandmother’s requiem in order to obtain a moment rarer yet was an example of this.
    Some trades, however, were not so much a bargain. Rosemary was under no illusion. If she were to sell her memory of her daughter’s birth, Ruth would not suddenly become a stranger to her. She had many years with her daughter, and those memories would not be affected. But if the loss of Ruth’s birth affected Rosemary’s future rapport with her daughter, then the trade might cost far more than its surface price.
    “I have many faults,” said Rosemary, slowly. “I don’t deny
that.
But romantic self-delusion has never been one of them. If you’re expecting me to tell you that maternal instinct will see me through, then I’m not sure that I can oblige.”
    “You love your daughter,” said the factor.
    “Do I?” said Rosemary. “I’m not entirely sure.” She sipped her tea, eyeing him over the rim of the teacup. “You don’t look surprised.”
    The factor spread his hands. “It is not my place to comment. Besides, I have not the pleasure of children myself.”
    “They tell you