Second Chances by Charity Norman

the northern boundary, whose horses we could see flicking their tails at a haze of insects.
    ‘Tama Pardoe,’ said Pamela.
    ‘Aha!’ I exclaimed. ‘I’ve come across him, then.’ As I described the scene with the red sports car, a fond smile tugged at the corner of Pamela’s mouth.
    ‘Yep, sounds like Tama. He’s running Glengarry—four hundred hectares, sheep and beef—entirely from the saddle. It’s less common nowadays but it makes sense because there’s some steep country at the back of his land.’
    I looked at the hills that reared to the north. They could almost have been Scottish highlands. ‘What’s he like?’
    ‘Tama? Nobody’s fool. His grandfather was a Scots immigrant who married into one of the local Maori families. Tama never saw eye to eye with his father—I knew old man Pardoe well, stubborn brute—so he left home at fifteen. He took a job as a shepherd on one of those immense stations way up in the hills. Thousands of hectares. He’d be on horseback twelve hours a day, seven days a week, training his own dogs and horses. Fifteen years old.’
    Kit whistled. ‘Younger than Sacha.’
    ‘Didn’t come home for years, not until his father was safely dead. He carried the coffin in the morning, got on with docking the same afternoon.’
    ‘Is there a Mrs Pardoe?’ I asked.
    Again, that indulgent smile. ‘Tama’s had no shortage of applicants for the post, and women have moved in from time to time. But I think he prefers horses to people.’
    When Pamela insisted on seeing Kit’s new studio—a crumbling black-and-white-tiled conservatory that had just the right light—Jean and I set out for a stroll. My neighbour’s command of English was impeccable; quite a lot better than mine, in fact. His delivery was deliberate and measured. I wondered about trying out my schoolgirl French on him, but thought better of it.
    ‘So you are English, and Kit is from Ireland?’ he asked as we followed the drive along the edge of the bush. ‘How did you meet?’
    ‘At a funeral, of all places.’
    ‘But he was not an artist then?’
    ‘Yes and no. He’s been in advertising all his adult life—successfully, until the latest recession.’ I made a throat-cutting sign, and Jean’s eyebrows bobbed in sympathy. ‘But a shiny advertising executive—that wasn’t how he truly saw himself. All Kit McNamara wants to do, all he’s ever really wanted to do, is paint. His arty friends reckon he’s the bee’s knees.’
    We’d strolled a couple of hundred yards when Jean halted. ‘Ah,’ he said, peering at a ramshackle structure half-hidden in foliage to the right of the path. ‘The shearers’ quarters.’
    There were several decaying sheds on the land, and I hadn’t yet been into all of them. This one looked like the cottage in a fairy story. It had two windows and a door—eyes and nose—and a chimney at one end.
    Jean pushed at the door. ‘Something is making this stick . . . one big shove . . . there! I have got it open. It was this dead bird, you see, jammed underneath.’
    I looked at the lump of black feathers. ‘Charming.’
    Jean was edging it out of the doorway with his foot. ‘Oh, long dead and dried up. Doesn’t smell any more. It will have got trapped in here, poor creature. Nasty way to go.’
    He held the door for me, and I stepped past him into gloom. The hut smelled of abandonment, of rotting wood and heated plastic. Jurassic cobwebs clung to the cracked glass of windows opaque with dust. There were tattered greyish curtains. Giant ferns pushed their way through the cracks between the timbers, robbing the place of light and tinting it with an ethereal green.
    A bulb hung from the ceiling. I pressed the switch, and it glowed half-heartedly.
    ‘Still connected up to the power,’ I said, surprised.
    ‘Of course. Shearers were quartered in here originally.’ Jean turned a circle on his heel, looking around. ‘More recently, forestry workers used it for their smoko