In Bed with the Boss

‘I only live a couple of kilometres away—I’d hardly classify it as a journey,’ she said drily, when her mother allowed her to surface for air. ‘Hello, Kris.’ She submitted to her father’s hairy hug, trying to avoid the sight of Duncan’s knowing grin as her bluff was exposed.

‘Oh, phooey! You’re always so literal…astrology is about the bigger picture! Tell her what I said, Kris, when I read it last night—I said, I wonder if that means Sunny might turn up tomorrow?’

‘That’s what she said,’ Kris Donovan agreed amiably. Kalera felt her stomach tighten at the slightly unfocussed look in his eyes. Her parents’ attitude to soft drugs was another reason that she had separated her life from theirs and created her own set of guiding principles. She loved them but didn’t like some of the choices they had made in life. She hoped Kris hadn’t left a joint smoking out in the back room. The way her luck was running lately they would be raided and she and Duncan would end up under arrest!

‘Sonny?’ said Duncan out of the corner of his mouth. ‘Do they think their daughter is a son?’

Her mother overheard and laughed. ‘That’s her name—Sunshine Kalera Donovan…because she was born outside on the grass, a real natural childbirth—at the commune we were living in at the time…’ She chattered on with her usual lack of circumspection about Kalera’s marvellous sunlit childhood, unfettered by the rules of society or the tyranny of government, or the brainwashing of state education. ‘It was only when she decided she had to go to high school that she refused to answer to Sunny and made everyone call her by the middle name that Kris’s mother insisted she have. It’s a pity, isn’t it, because I think Sunshine suits her—don’t you?’

They both looked at Kalera, whose mouth was drawn into a little prune of annoyance, and Duncan’s voice was silky with amusement as he said, ‘Actually, I think moonlight suits her even better…’

Silver laughed again, her blue eyes flirting in approval at his wit. ‘You’re Duncan, the computer man, aren’t you? Kris and I spoke to you at Harry’s funeral. Did you come with Sunny, or are you interested in crystal healing?’

‘I did come with Kalera,’ he said, so gravely that only she was aware of the wicked double entendre indicated by the tell-tale flick of muscle at the corner of his mouth. ‘But I wouldn’t mind finding out a bit about the way your crystals are supposed to work.’

‘You mean how they do work,’ scolded Silver, but Duncan couldn’t have said anything better calculated to open the floodgates and soon he and the two Donovans were deep in a discussion of belief versus science, leaving a disgruntled Kalera to serve the customers. All too soon the conversation strayed from psychic healing, astral projection and aura cleansing to more personal matters and she heard Kris being shamelessly pumped for more reminiscences of commune life involving Kalera.

‘We get the odd hankering to go back to the old life, don’t we, love?’ she heard her father say. ‘This is the longest time we’ve stayed in one place since Sun—I mean Kalera—was born. But we’re only on a short lease with the shop so we can just pick up and go pretty well whenever we want—maybe load all this stuff into a gypsy caravan and travel the fairs for a few years…’

‘What a great idea!’

Kalera imagined Stephen’s reaction to seeing his in-laws drive up to his front door for a visit in a rattletrap gypsy caravan, and shuddered. He had been polite but cool to her parents on the few occasions they had met, and she knew that he was relieved that her relationship with them wasn’t closer. Duncan, on the other hand, was proving a kindred spirit…so much so that she was aghast to hear Silver proposing to shut up shop so that they could all go to the vegetarian restaurant next door for lunch.

An hour later she sat toying with her sprout salad, listening to her mother tell her what a wonderfully open-minded man she worked for—the man in question wolfing down his aubergine casserole and trying his best not to look smug.

And failing.

‘He’s so receptive to new ideas, I can see that working for him must be intensely stimulating to the creative imagination,’ Silver expounded over her plate of stir-fried tofu. ‘It’s such a pity that you’re not going to stay on there, Sunny…’ She heaved a disappointed sigh, and Kalera stopped picking at her salad to regard her in disbelief.

‘When I first started there you told me working at Labyrinth would stifle my “small inner voice” and the radiation from all those computers would stunt my aura!’ she reminded her bluntly.

Silver was unembarrassable. ‘Yes, well, that was before I got to know Duncan better.’ She patted his arm fondly with her heavily be-ringed fingers.

‘You only met him an hour ago,’ Kalera pointed out, nettled at the ease with which he had insinuated himself.

‘Yes, but I could see right away that he had a very healthy aura,’ said Silver blithely. ‘He’s definitely good karma, Sunny…and so very broad-minded about things.’ Her crowning compliment! ‘Much better for you than that stuffy Stephen. I remember when you brought him here you were brittle as a stick the whole time in case he took offence at something we said, but look at you now—happy to kick back and just go with the flow…’

That was because she knew the flow was actually an unstoppable torrent, thought Kalera, although it was true she didn’t have to worry about Duncan taking offence at her parents’ outlandish eccentricities—he was in his perfect element!

She noticed that he had stopped eating, his ears pricking up at the sound of Stephen’s name, and a little ‘alert’ sign switched on in her brain.

‘Silver…’ she warned.

‘Oh, I know, you don’t want us to hassle you about it.’ Silver flapped her hands. ‘It’s your life, you live it—but really I can’t help thinking that the man is impossibly dull. At least Harry, for all he was a bit of a stick-in-the-mud, had a sense of humour and was good for a few laughs. I can’t see you having much fun with Stephen—you’re both so tiresomely serious. I suppose he is sexy in a chilly kind of way, but I can’t imagine I’d find him very thrilling in bed—he’s far too uptight. Or is great sex the big attraction?’

Kalera flushed, clinging to her temper. ‘Silver, I’m going to marry him—’

‘You ought to move in with him for a while first…see if you still want to stay when the sex stops being such a kick—’

‘Stephen can’t do that; he has Michael to consider.’

‘That’s why you should move in. At least then you might get a chance to meet the kid! And anyway, what’s wrong with him knowing that you’re having sex with his father? Kids accept sex as an intrinsic part of life if you treat it as natural and normal and not some dirty secret that should be hidden. You saw Kris and I with lots of different sex partners when you were young and it never bothered you!’

With an effort Kalera managed not to flinch. Her mother really had no idea of just how severely bothered her daughter had been by that casual exhibitionism, or how pressured she had felt to conform when approached for casual sex by other commune members, even when

she was still below the age of legal consent.

‘You’re engaged to Stephen and he still hasn’t introduced you to Michael?’ Duncan interjected. ‘What’s he planning to do—wait until you’re married and spring you on the boy as his stepmother?’