The Far Side of Paradise. Robyn Donald

      Clean once more, and in fresh clothes, she picked up an apple from the bowl on the bench and dropped into the lounger to demolish the fruit, carefully not thinking of Cade Peredur.

      She needed to find work. She’d quite enjoyed selling souvenirs to tourists, but the summer wave of visitors through the village had receded, leaving her behind.

      Jobless and drifting …

      Ever since Peter had killed himself, an aching emptiness made her question the value of her existence.

      ‘Time to stop it,’ she said out loud, and made a sudden resolution.

      Drifting was for slackers, for losers.

      It was more than time to find some direction to her life. Before she’d gone to the United Kingdom, she’d enjoyed her work in one of Auckland’s largest libraries. In London she’d worked in a coffee shop run by a New Zealand friend until she met Peter. They’d clicked straight away and he’d introduced her to his friends—a very earnest, intense artistic circle who’d treated her as a kind of mascot.

      Peter had even found her a new job; she’d been in her element cataloguing the immense library collected over fifty years by the deceased uncle of one of his acquaintances.

      Although she and Peter had become close, there had been no sexual spark between them, so his proposal had come as a shock. She’d thought he was joking and burst out laughing.

      Only he hadn’t been. And then she’d had to refuse him as gently as she could.

      His death had horrified her. She should, she thought wearily, have realised it wasn’t artistic temperament that caused his bouts of depression, always followed by tearing high spirits. She had wondered if something was wrong, but it had never occurred to her that she might be the cause.

      Assailed by questions for which she’d never know the answers, and bitter remorse at not handling the situation better, she’d come back to Aramuhu, the only place she’d ever really called home.

      But there was nothing here for her, no answers. So now what? The future stretched before her, featureless and uninviting.

      ‘I need to make a plan,’ she said aloud, resisting an impulse to give up. Unlike her parents, she was not a born rover. Yes, she wanted some purpose in her life, and she’d like to settle somewhere like Aramuhu, with a steady job in a nice library.

      Unfortunately, the village was too small to be able to afford a salaried librarian. Like the fire brigade, the busy little library was run by volunteers.

      OK, so if she were Cade Peredur, how would she go about making a worthwhile life?

      A list of all the things she had to offer would be a good start. ‘So what’s stopping you from doing that?’ she asked the empty room, and got out of the chair.

      The following morning she surveyed the list with a frown. It looked reasonably impressive—she hoped.

      Much more impressive than the bank statement she’d just opened. It told her she had enough money to last for two weeks. Something perilously close to panic pooled icily beneath her ribs.

      Ignoring it, she sat down and wrote at the bottom of her list: Stay here?

      That had to be her first decision. Living was cheap in Aramuhu—but the sleepout was used for kiwi fruit pickers in season, so it was temporary. She could stay there for another couple of months, perhaps.