Chapter 26
Finding Home
Darren’s friendship proved as valuable as manuka honey on an open wound, a balm made in heaven. He walked Sophia to the transport centre in Taupo and put her on the first bus back to Hamilton, paying her fare and settling her into the window seat alone. He stole a roll of toilet paper from inside the depot and squashed it so it fitted into her jacket pocket for her tears, waving her off with as much fake joviality as the wife of a suicide bomber. Sophia in her heightened state of agitation responded to the smile but missed the more obvious cues as Darren’s heavy footsteps took him back to the car park, the ute and Dane’s temper. His heroism didn’t even register in Sophia’s addled brain until Cambridge, when the bus driver stopped to take on passengers and she wond
