blinked. Were his thoughts so obvious?
‘Where?’
‘I’ll tell you after breakfast,’ she repeated. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I haven’t eaten enough egg.’
CHAPTER TEN
ONLY, of course, after breakfast things got busy. Really busy.
For a start there was the little matter of a fire having almost destroyed a bedroom and part of the ceiling. It seemed Easter Sunday was no reason why the fire department couldn’t come out in force. The morning ended up as an endless parade of men in hard hats traipsing up and down the stairs, climbing ladders, knocking holes in roofing tiles and clambering about the ceiling.
‘It’s still structurally sound,’ Graham somewhat grudgingly admitted at lunchtime. ‘But you’ve got your work cut out getting Tansy’s room ready for her to come home.’
‘I need to contact her and find out what she wants done with her damaged possessions,’ Dom said. ‘We’ll keep as much as possible intact until she comes back.’
‘When will she be back?’
‘In a couple of weeks,’ Dom said, as Erin listened from behind.
The unknown Tansy.
She shouldn’t mind, Erin thought. Why did the idea of Tansy have the power to unsettle her?
She knew exactly why, but she was trying hard not to admit it.
Luckily she had a distraction. A couple of church ladies arrived and offered to take the boys on an Easter-egg hunt.
Even though the thought of the hunt was enticing, the boys were clingy and Martin still needed observation. An X-ray had shown a rib had a hairline crack, though it didn’t seem to be bothering him. But the boys wanted to go. Dom was needed at the house, so Erin offered to go with them.
The hunt was in a patch of bushland behind the church. Erin limped about on the sidelines as the boys hunted, wishing Dom could be there, trying not to think that he’d seemed relieved when she’d suggested taking the boys- and thus herself-away.
She watched, and while she did so she took stock of this community, wondering whether she could do what Graham had proposed that morning.
But from everyone she told she was a doctor, she got the same response.
‘You wouldn’t like to practise here, would you? We’re desperate for another doctor. And it’d be wonderful to get the hospital up and running again.’
She could do good here. She could be needed.
She could be close to Dom.
No, no and no! The decision had to be made on its own merits. Dom had Tansy. Tansy gave him all the help at home he needed. He didn’t want or need anyone else…personally. This had to be a professional proposition only.
So she needed to talk to Dom about it.
Last night he’d rejected it out of hand.
For dumb reasons, though, she thought. They were illogical reasons. He had to see sense.
It was a gorgeous day. The kids were whooping through the patch of bushland reserve where the church ladies had hidden eggs, the terrors of the night forgotten. They came tearing back every now and then to show her their finds, and she found herself absurdly touched.
‘Erin, Erin, we’ve found nine. Ten. Eleven!’
Something about last night had bonded them to her. They trusted her.
What Dom was doing with these kids was great. Fantastic. He had to let her help.
He missed her.
She and the kids were gone for three hours. It gave him a chance to get some order into the house. A group of church ladies had taken themselves off egg-hunt duties and arrived with mops and brooms. They went through the house like a dose of salts, and by the time they’d finished, the place was cleaner than it had been before the fire.
All the time they worked they chattered. And asked questions about Erin.
‘She seems lovely,’ he was told as the ladies worked. ‘We gather she was lovely this morning. Hughie’s daughter said she sat with him for over an hour. She made him cups of tea and listened for as long as he wanted to talk. She didn’t rush him at all, and that’s after she’d crashed her car and hurt her foot and all. You should have told us, Doc. We’ll organise the men to pull the car up from the river. Doesn’t matter that it’s Easter. What sort of doctor is she? She doesn’t want a job, does she? Ooh, I wonder what Tansy will think of her?’
They were about to find out.
At four o’clock four cars pulled up outside the house almost simultaneously. Dom was in his surgery, dusting through a pile of patient notes. The women had cleaned in here but patient confidentiality demanded he do this himself.
The sound of the kids’ voices made him look out the window.
Erin and the kids were being dropped off by a lady he recognised as Marg Lalor, head of the church choir. That was surprising on its own. Marg was a nervy driver and she didn’t like having passengers. She also Didn’t Like Boys. For her to offer to drive Erin and the kids home was astonishing.
Pulling up behind them was a Porsche.
Charles. Great.
Then there was a taxi. Followed by a small, red car he thought he recognised. Ruby?
But…Ruby was in Dolphin Beach. His elderly foster-mother had intended to celebrate Easter with his foster- brother Pierce and Pierce’s new wife, Shanni.
Nope. Ruby was definitely here, tugging her battered overnight bag out of her car, beaming at the kids.
‘Martin. Nathan. I hear you and your dad have been having some excitement. And Tansy…’
For it was Tansy, looking hot and bothered, edging out of the taxi, dropping her purse, swearing, dropping her shawl, finally sitting down on the kerb, opening her purse and emptying its contents onto the grass.
‘I swear I’ve got a fifty-dollar note. Maybe I can do it in coins. Can you wait for a bit?’
And in the middle of it all…Erin, looking confused.
Uh-oh. He grabbed his wallet and went to confront his…family?
‘Tansy!’
There was no mistaking the joy in the little boys’ voices.
The woman sitting on the kerb counting coins looked like…well, maybe like a Tansy ought to look, Erin thought. She was tall and buxom. She’d made an attempt to subdue her copperred hair into a knot but there was no way hair like that could be subdued. Half her hair was in the knot, the rest was a mass of frizzy curls. She was wearing a ragged-edged purple skirt that reached her bright red boots. Her lacy blouse was cut low, a mass of bright red beads wound round her neck and-until she’d dropped it in the dust-she’d also been wearing a shawl. Daffodil yellow.
She looked maybe mid-thirties?
She was gorgeous!
Why Erin’s heart should sink at the sight of her…Well, why shouldn’t it? She was so far gone she no longer had the strength to lie to herself.
Tansy was beautiful. She minded.
The boys launched themselves at Tansy from a distance and coins went everywhere.
She abandoned the money. She hugged the boys as if they belonged to her. ‘I’m so pleased to see you guys,’ she said. ‘Mrs Neale rang me at sparrow’s f-at rooster crow this morning and said you were in trouble. It’s taken me three flights and all day to get here.’
Erin had just alighted from the car. Marg-the lady from the church-was talking to her.
She wasn’t listening. She was watching Tansy’s flaming red curls bent over two small heads, and she was
