marks where he’d pushed hard.
‘It’s crazy. Crazy…’ Tom looked up at Harry and his face said he still hardly believed them. ‘You mean she really will live?’
‘She’s been lucky,’ Harry said. ‘A broken cheekbone, a couple of fingers that will take a while to heal, some nasty cuts to her hand that we’ve taken a long time to close…’ He cast a sideways look at Lizzie that was almost a smile. ‘Our Dr Darling is quite a needlewoman-I doubt a plastic surgeon could have done better. And May has a deep laceration to her leg. She’s had a fair bang to the head but the X-rays are coming up OK.’
‘I’ll take her home…’
‘In a few days. Yes.’
Silence. ‘She thought I was gambling again,’ Tom said heavily, and Harry nodded.
‘She did. I came out and told you that. You told me to butt out of what wasn’t my business.’
‘I was bloody angry.’
‘I know. If I remember rightly, you told me to go to hell.’
He groaned. ‘I’ve been a fool.’
‘Why?’ Harry was still kneeling before the big man while Lizzie watched silently from the background. ‘Tom, why? You know she’s been busting a gut because she thought you were spending money again. She’s taken on extra shifts. She’s not been sleeping. Just like-’
‘Just like when she had to.’
Silence. Harry had lifted Tom’s big, farm-worn hands and was stroking them, as a father might have stroked a child. That was what Tom needed most desperately now, Lizzie thought. Warmth. And Harry could give it. He imparted warmth, spread it. He cared so much…
Not for her. Lizzie shivered and hugged herself. Shock had had time to take hold now. Emergency back in the city wasn’t like this. Not when you knew the people. Not when you cared so much that your guts hurt…
‘You mean she didn’t have to?’ Harry was asking, and Tom shook his head, his misery a tangible, awful thing.
‘No.’ The farmer looked up at Harry, a sudden surge of anger suffusing his face. ‘Dammit, do you think I’d go back again? To gambling? I lost our house. I darn near lost May and the kids. I pulled myself out of the gambling habit just in time and it nearly killed all of us. So now…do you think I’d ever go near the pokies again?’
‘May thinks you have.’
‘I know.’ He groaned again. ‘And I let her believe…’
‘Why?’
‘I had a windfall,’ he told them. At the look on Harry’s face he shook his head. ‘No. Not the kind you’re thinking. My dad’s been watching me…he was so upset when I got into the mess, but he wouldn’t lift a finger to help us. I asked him but he wouldn’t. “You’ll just gamble it away,” he told me, and maybe he was right at that.’
‘So?’
‘So he came good. It’s been two years since I’ve touched anything to do with gambling and he came to see me one night when May was on night shift. He gave me a gift. A deposit on a house. Or almost. The way my credit rating is, I have to have almost half the value or they won’t touch me. Anyway, I scraped up the rest. I’ve still got one credit card. I went to see a financial advisor and he reckoned it was fine to run it up for three months until settlement. He worked it all out for us. The payments. What I have to do. I just need to work a few hours’ overtime every week and that money goes straight into the credit card. And then…in another six weeks we get possession. It’s a house May has loved for years. I was going to surprise her. For our wedding anniversary I was going to hand her the keys.’
‘But May thought…’
‘She must have found my credit-card statement,’ Tom said heavily. ‘She knew I was working overtime but there was no extra money coming in. And money going out-lawyers’ fees and things-that I couldn’t explain. I told her I was planning a surprise but she didn’t believe me. She didn’t trust… And I was so angry… Hell, I wanted her to trust me again. I wanted it so much. So I wouldn’t tell her and she just said nothing-just started frantically trying to pay it off. And I was so damned stubborn I let her. And now this.’
Harry sat back on his heels. He stared at the man before him long and hard. Finally he said simply, ‘What house?’
‘The Maynard place.’
‘Right.’ Harry nodded, and Lizzie could see his mind in overdrive. ‘This is what you’re going to do.’
‘What?’
‘May’s mum and dad are here now. They’ll stay with her while she comes around, but for the next hour she’s going to be so groggy that she won’t take anything in. Meanwhile, I want you to find Neil Shannon. Urgently.’
‘Neil… The photographer?’
‘That’s the one. He can do good work and he can move fast. You’ve got an hour-the pair of you. By the time May wakes up properly I want a poster-sized picture of that house right in front of her eyes.’
‘But…a poster-sized…’
‘Don’t tell me you can’t do it,’ Harry said sternly. ‘You’ve stuffed it. Now you need to fix it.’
‘She should have trusted me.’
‘She didn’t walk out on you when most women would have,’ Harry told him, his voice still stern. ‘She didn’t abandon you. She simply worked her guts out to try and fix your mess. She forgave you. Are you saying you’re not going to forgive her now?’
‘I don’t-’
‘Tom, you lost her house. She had to sell her beloved horses. She lost her respect in the community. To be honest, surprises aren’t things she’s going to want any more. Ever. She needs total and complete honesty from you, and she’s going to need it for the rest of your lives. You’ve got a great woman. You nearly lost her-twice-but you have another chance. Don’t stuff it yet again.’
Tom thought about it. And thought about it for a bit longer. And his lined face crumpled still more.
‘I’ve been a fool,’ he said at last, and Harry nodded. He wasn’t in the mood for leniency.
‘You have.’
‘You’re sure she’s going to be OK?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Well.’ Tom rose on legs that seemed decidedly shaky. ‘Well… Maybe I’d better go and organise a photograph, then.’
Lizzie had slivers of glass in her fingers. If she could have, she would have taken them out herself, but operating on her right hand with her left was impossible. She waited until Harry had talked to May’s mum and dad and three kids, and then did a round of the little hospital’s patients, all of whom were deeply upset by the afternoon’s events. If he wondered why she didn’t offer to help, he didn’t say so-indeed, she had the impression that he’d have told her she wasn’t wanted. She made her way back to the doctor’s quarters and hugged Phoebe, drawing comfort from the big dog’s placid and dopey presence.
‘I love you, Phoeb,’ she murmured, and felt like weeping. The big dog slurped her tongue down Lizzie’s face and looked as if she agreed entirely. She was a very weepy kind of dog.
She was still there when Harry returned, sitting on the floor, hugging her dog, and Harry stopped at the sight of her.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked.
‘F-fine.’ The tables had turned, she thought. For the last three weeks he’d taken a back seat to her. She’d been the doctor and he’d-mostly-let her take the lead while his leg healed. But now there was no way he was taking a back seat. He might be wearing a cast, but he was very much a man in charge of his world.
That was what she wanted him to be. Not a patient. No way!
‘It could have been so much worse,’ he told her, kneeling down before her.
‘Y-yes.’
‘Lizzie, it’s OK. She’s fine.’
‘I shouldn’t care,’ she said, hugging her dog like Phoebe was the only thing between her and madness. ‘I shouldn’t. And I do, so much. I can’t bear it. If anything happens to May… To Lilly or May or Mavis with her blasted axe…’
