heaven.
It was Rachel heaven. She sniffed. Bacon. Coffee. Toast.
Some things were irresistible. She hitched up her pyjamas and hiked right in.
‘Hi,’ she said, and tried not to look self-conscious.
‘Hi,’ said Toby, while the lady and Hugo just looked.
‘No comment is required,’ she told them. She glared at Hugo-at the lurking laughter she could see behind his eyes. ‘Don’t even think about it.’ She held out her hand to the bacon lady, while the other still clutched her waist. ‘I’m Rachel.’
‘I’m Myra Partridge,’ the lady told her, taking her hand and gripping it with warmth and real friendliness. She eyed Rachel’s outfit in concern. ‘They’re not the doctor’s pyjamas?’
‘I have no idea,’ she told her. ‘They’re the ones the doctor kindly gave me last night. All I know is that they’re not this doctor’s pyjamas. They’re threatening to slide, but I’ve decided that they still look better on me than Doris Keen’s frock does.’
‘Oh, my dear…’ Myra’s lips twitched. She was in her late fifties, Rachel guessed, with eyes that said she smiled most of the time. She reached into a kitchen drawer and proffered a safety pin-which Rachel accepted with real gratitude. ‘I saw you in Doris’s frock last night. Doris rang a while back.’
‘If she wants her frock back, she’s welcome to it.’ Rachel thought about it. ‘Though she might want to come and get it. I can’t see myself hiking over to her place in these.’
‘Sit yourself down.’ They were all smiling now as she stuck the safety pin in place-all three of them. The kitchen felt great. Here the opulence and over-decoration were toned down by the sheer domesticity of cooking and the dog under the table and smiling people. There were pots and pans and…
‘Pancakes?’ Rachel said faintly.
‘I thought you’d all be hungry.’ Myra beamed. ‘The doctor’s been out since dawn.’
‘Has he?’ Rachel’s smile slipped. She looked across the table at Hugo. ‘Problems?’
‘Kim’s running a fever. Not too bad. I’m hoping it’s nothing. I’ve upped the antibiotics to maximum. And a couple of the fire crews have been working through the night. I checked them as they came in.’
‘He’d be doing something else if it wasn’t Kim and the fire crews,’ Myra said comfortably. ‘He’s always gone at dawn. I come in and look after the wee one…’
‘Until Aunty Christine comes in and takes me to school,’ Toby told her. ‘Mrs Partridge would take me to school and I want her to, but Aunty Christine makes Dad let her.’
She wasn’t buying into any family argument. Not yet. ‘Well, lucky you to have two ladies to escort you.’ She wriggled herself around in her pyjamas, testing the security of the pin. She let go the waist and did a little test jump-her hands hovering just in case, while Hugo, Toby, Myra and Digger looked on, fascinated. They were doomed to disappointment. The safety pin held. She sat herself down and reached for a pancake, deeply satisfied. ‘You were going to wake me up for some of these, right?’
Hugo was looking at her with a very strange expression. ‘Um…right.’
‘I wanted to wake you up hours ago,’ Toby announced. ‘But Daddy wouldn’t let me.’
‘You have a very kind daddy.’ Rachel beamed. ‘Just as long as he lets me share his pancakes and his bacon and coffee. Very kind indeed.’
Clothes. That was the most important thing.
‘Doris dropped your bag off an hour ago,’ Myra told her. ‘But she’s kept your clothes. There’s stains…’
‘I don’t want to know about them,’ Rachel said firmly, thinking about the last time she’d seen them and deciding if she never saw them again it’d be too soon. ‘There’s nothing wrong with Crimplene and flannelette.’
‘Digger saved your bra,’ Toby told her, and she faltered. Her bra. The last time she’d seen that had been…
Whoops!
‘Flannelette and Crimplene and lacy black bras are hardly professional,’ Hugo told her, and Rachel managed a sickly sort of smile.
‘Um…no. Not your white-coated doctor image, huh?’
‘No,’ he said faintly, and her grin widened. Hey, it wasn’t he who was doing the discomposing. It was suddenly Hugo who was discomposed. She had Hugo McInnes out of his comfort zone, which felt…good.
Definitely good, she decided. He made her discomposed. It was nice to have him a little discomposed in return.
But he was about to discompose her again. ‘I think we have the problem sorted,’ he told her.
‘Mmm?’ She was into a mouthful of bacon. Yesterday’s hunger was still fresh enough to make her really appreciate her food and this was seriously good.
‘Christine’s bringing you some clothes.’
She thought about it. ‘Christine.’ She looked at Toby. ‘Red and gold Christine?’
They all knew what she meant. There were three smiles. But Hugo was rising, pushing back his coffee-cup. ‘She’s very good. I don’t know where we’d be without her. And she’s not red and gold at all. She has a style all her own.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘She should be here in a few minutes to take Toby to school. I need to do a house call. If it’s OK with you, Rachel, I’ll collect you in an hour and take you out to our nursing home. I was hoping you might be able to help.’
He paused as if what he was asking was an impertinence, but she wasn’t in the mood for worrying over impertinence.
‘Of course I’ll help. If I’m trapped here I may as well be useful. But how?’
‘The fires are worsening.’ He motioned to the window and the haze between there and the sea seem to be thicker. ‘They’re not threatening the town yet but the crews are working hard to keep it like that. And most of the crews are made up of volunteers with differing levels of fitness-as well as differing levels of common sense. There are lots of medical problems. I need to go up to the ridge.’
‘So you’d like me to do the coughs and colds and the like while you do the hero stuff?’
‘Would you?’
‘Of course I would.’ She grinned at him. There was something about this man that made her want to smile- even when she was offering to do his mundane work for him while he did the exciting stuff. ‘Though I guess that means I don’t get to drive fire trucks any more.’
His smile matched hers. ‘I heard about your fire-truck driving. Very impressive. But still…’ His eyes smiled at her-linking them-warming parts of her she hadn’t known were cold. Crazy. But…nice? ‘You’re hardly dressed for fire-truck duty.’
She looked down at her pyjamas and pouted. ‘What’s wrong with these? I reckon I’d look pretty snappy behind the wheel of a fire truck in flannelette pyjamas.’
‘Your safety pin would never hold.’ He chuckled, and the strange link was broken. For now. ‘OK. Let’s negotiate the duty roster when we’re organised. When you’re wearing something a bit more doctor-like. Meanwhile, I have to go. Myra, can you-?’
He was interrupted in mid-sentence. The back door swung wide-and in walked Christine.
It wasn’t hard to pick her. Rachel looked up from her bacon and she knew straight away who this had to be.
The lady was seriously lovely. She also wasn’t decorated at all. She didn’t need to be. What had Hugo said? ‘She has a style all her own.’
She certainly did.
She was tall, with flame-coloured hair swept up into a sleek knot, the hair itself seeming to tug the flawless complexion free of any lines.
No lines would dare come near this woman. She was wearing cropped black pants to calf length, a tiny white top, strappy black sandals and a silver bracelet that must have cost a fortune.
She looked as if she belonged in an inner-city art gallery, Rachel thought, with only one very fast rueful glance down at her pyjamas. She thought back to the people she’d seen yesterday at the Cowral show. This woman didn’t fit.
‘Hello, all.’ The woman’s greeting was bright and warm. She smiled straight at Hugo, though, Rachel noticed, and Toby didn’t look up from his breakfast. ‘Are you ready, Toby?’
