word about her marriage being unhappy.
Maybe she couldn’t. Maybe the man was violent. 106
No.
He thought back to his medical training, to the one question he’d been told could predict violence in marriages in almost every case. He’d used it time and again with sometimes astonishing results.
‘Is there any time in the last couple of years where you’ve felt afraid of your husband?’
He thought of Rachel and he knew instinctively that she’d shake her head if he directed his question at her. She’d been angry at Michael at the dog show but she hadn’t been afraid of him. She’d flung those car keys at him with such force that the memory still made him smile.
‘You thinking of the new lady doctor?’ Tom asked, and Hugo nearly dropped his bandages.
‘No. I was thinking how good this arm is looking.’
‘People don’t smile like that thinking about a sixty-year-old fisherman’s broken arm,’ Tom said dourly, though there was the hint of laughter in his eyes.
‘Why not? You have a very nice arm,’ Hugo tossed back, and Tom’s face creased into reluctant laughter.
‘Yeah, and yours is sexy and all as well,’ he retorted. ‘But I bet our Rachel has a sexier one.’
Our Rachel… How quickly had the community taken her as one of its own?
‘The lady’s married,’ Hugo snapped before he could stop himself, and Tom’s grin broadened.
‘So I’m on the right track, then.’
‘Look-’
‘It’s nothing to do with me, mate,’ Tom told him. ‘I’m just here to get an arm fixed. You’re the one who has to go home tonight and sleep in the same house. Married or not.’
Hugo shook his head, thoroughly confused. ‘I can’t…’
‘Yeah, you can,’ Tom said encouragingly, knowing exactly what he was thinking. Like it or not. ‘Or you can at least try.’
It was well past dinnertime when a weary Hugo arrived home. What a day, and there was still a ward round to do before he could sleep. Even so, he was aware of a lifting of his spirits as he walked from the hospital across the lawn to the house. It’d be different tonight. Rachel would be there.
She certainly was. He walked in the back door and instead of a formally set table, with Myra waiting to serve up chops and three vegetables-her standard fare, to be expected at least three times a week-he walked in to find Rachel packing an enormous picnic basket. Toby was sitting on the table, poking things into its depths, and his small face was lit up with excitement.
‘We’re going to the beach for tea,’ he told his father before Hugo could open his mouth. ‘Or for your tea and an after-tea picnic for us. Rachel says it’s so hot and stuffy that if she doesn’t get a swim she’ll expire.’
‘She will, too.’ Rachel was back in those extraordinary yellow clothes again. Her wonderful clothes. ‘And the dogs are going stir-crazy.’ She gestured to the two dogs, who were lying on the floor eyeing the picnic basket with a devotion that said they’d already tested the contents. ‘Have you finished for the day, Dr McInnes?’
‘I need to do a ward round before-’
‘I’ve done your ward round,’ she told him before he could finish. ‘Elly talked me through every patient in the hospital and there’s no need for you to see any of them again tonight.’ She corrected herself. ‘You might like to look in on Kim to check that her obs are still OK before you go to bed, but as of twenty minutes ago they were fine. There’s no change in the fire crews for another two hours, and things seem relatively settled. The wind’s forecast to strengthen tomorrow, which means havoc might break loose, so Toby and I figured we might have some fun while the going’s good. That’s now.’
‘The nursing home-’
‘Yep. There are a couple of oldies who need checks. Mrs Bosworth’s breathing is cause for concern. I’ve told Don we’ll stop in on the way.’
‘The way…’
‘To the beach.’
She tossed a bag of grapes into the picnic basket and beamed at him, expectant. So did Toby. The dogs looked up and wagged a tail apiece and he could swear they were beaming, too.
‘I can’t,’ he said faintly, and Rachel’s beam slipped immediately. He found himself staring at a lady with her arms crossed, schoolmarm-like, and a martial glint in her eye.
‘Why ever not?’
‘If I’m needed-’
‘You’re needed at the nursing home and Toby and I have agreed we’ll watch television in the oldies’ sitting room while you do the doctor bit. Or vice versa, but Mrs Bosworth’s anxious and she’s asking for you.’ She smiled. ‘You must have something in your bedside manner that I don’t.’ Her smile faded. ‘Or Hazel Bosworth knows you and it’s a familiar face she needs when she’s frightened. But after that… The smoke’s not so bad that it’ll be awful. We have cold sausages. We have cold drinks and fresh bread and some of Toby’s wonderful lamingtons. Your bathing costume’s already packed and we’re already wearing ours under our clothes, so what other objections would you care to make?’
Hugo couldn’t think of any. He couldn’t think of any at all. How long since he’d had a picnic on the beach?
‘Please? Can we go, Daddy? Can we go?’ Toby was jiggling with excitement. Under the table Penelope and Digger were jiggling as well.
‘Yes,’ he said promptly, before he changed his mind and got sensible. ‘Yes, we can.’
Why not?
The nursing home was quieter than they’d expected. ‘Most of the residents have seen scores of bushfires in their time,’ Don told them. ‘They’re not panicking.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘Most of them gave up their households of precious possessions when they came in here. It makes a difference when there’s not so much to lose. Even Mrs Bosworth… Her breathing’s dreadful, Hugo. She has emphysema and we can’t get the smoke out of the atmosphere. She’s so sick. But when I told her I was going to call you she said not to bother-that the doctors would have more than enough to cope with tonight, and if she died then it was her time. Age puts a different perspective on things.’
Not just age.
It was experience, Rachel thought as Hugo disappeared to see to Mrs Bosworth’s breathing problems and she settled to wait with Toby. Once upon a time in another life she’d collected porcelain. She remembered Craig coming home from football, bouncing in the front door full of his triumph, shouting to her. Whizzing her round in triumph, crashing one of her porcelain statuettes off the hall table.
She’d been angry.
Dear God, she’d been angry.
The porcelain was long sold. It had been many years since Rachel had seen anything more important than people. Life.
Now.
This minute.
Mrs Bosworth was settling. Hugo was emerging, discussing her condition with Don. The oxygen rate was up to maximum now and he’d given her a relaxant. Fear was making her breathing faster, causing more problems.
Because, of course, there was fear. Possessions could be abandoned. But not so life.
Sometimes life was wonderful.
Life was now, Rachel thought with quiet satisfaction as they reached the shoreline. Tomorrow might well be ghastly, but for now…for now there was this moment.
The locals had too much sense to be sitting on a smoky stretch of beach. Everyone not directly committed to the fire effort was supporting those who were. Tired people chose to stay indoors.
But now was too good to waste.
The tension eased from Hugo’s tired mind almost as soon as his toes touched the sand.
The wind had miraculously dropped to almost nothing. The fine haze of eucalypt-filled smoke was even
