Page 22 of Kiwi Gold

Same height. Same haircut. Same eyes.

Twins. They were twins.

Oh, bloodyhell.

Then I forgot that, because I was realizing something else. That Laila had golden eyes herself. Not flecks of gold.Golden.You could call them light brown, but they weren’t. They were gold, they took up about half of her triangular face, and they were looking at me.

She said, “Go watch TV for a minute, girls.” Then she told me, “I’ve been trying to get them to do that all morning. The one time I allow it, and they won’t.” She put her hand to her head. “Ouch. It’s too light in here.”

I told Little Girl One—Amira, who you’d always know by the set of her own pointed chin, “I’ll look after your mum for a bit, shall I?”

“But if the ambulance comes,” she said, “can I ride in it too?”

“I promise,” I said.

The two girls left, the hairy, three-legged dog pranced off after them, and Laila said, “I don’t need an ambulance.”

“Doesn’t look like it to me,” I said. “But she seems determined to ride in it all the same.” I looked her over more closely. “If I didn’t know that you’d only had a few glasses of champagne, I’d call that a hangover.”

She closed her eyes. “I think I had four. Maybe five.”

“Not enough for all this, then. What’s bad? Head, eh. Got a fever? Sick as well?”

She groaned. “How can champagne make you so sick, with all the fizz? It wasbubbly.Like ginger beer, which makes younotsick.”

I laughed, and she opened her eyes, glared at me, then winced.

“Sorry,” I said. “I just remembered that you said you’d never been drunk before. I reckon it’s being small, too. Panadol?”

“Cabinet in the bathroom,” she said on a sigh. “Top shelf.”

“Right,” I said. “Panadol. Large glass of water. Coffee.”

“Coffee. Ugh.”

“All the same,” I said, “coffee.”

* * *

She hadno birth control in her bathroom cabinet. I couldn’t help but notice.

Oh. That would invite questions from the kids. Probably in the bedside table, then.

No shaver except a pink razor hanging in the bath, and only one comb, a heavy wooden thing with fat teeth, probably necessary to get through all that hair. Three toothbrushes in the holder: a large one and two small ones. If a man had ever stayed here, he hadn’t left behind so much as a plastic comb.

I shouldn’t have looked? Too bad. I looked anyway. She was separated, then. I hoped.

After that, I found the kitchen, which I’d guess had last been updated not too late in the previous century, same as the bath. The bath was pink. Tile, sink, bathtub. Everything. It had black accent tiles, and looked like a packet of licorice lollies of the more sickening type. The kitchen, on the other hand, was yellow, dark, and tiny. I found cold water in the bottle in the fridge, poured out a large glass of it, shook out two Panadol, and headed back to the bedroom.

Laila opened one eye a crack and said, “I can’t decide if gastroenteritis would be better or worse. In this situation.”

“Worse,” I said. “trust me. No worries. You’ll be right. Here. Have these. Coffee’s coming.”

“I truly don’t need rescuing,” she said. “It’s a headache.”

“Nah,” I said. “Been there myself. Coffee in two ticks.” I headed back to the kitchen, found the plunger in a cabinet with the bag of coffee stuck inside, and made it. While it steeped, I popped a piece of bread into the toaster and located the butter.

I felt the eyes on me as I was pushing the lid of the plunger down, and turned to findbothlittle girls staring at me this time.