‘Bring him in when you come,’ Quinn told her when she phoned. ‘Is he right to leave alone until you’ve checked Pete and seen Lizzy? I can send the police or Jessie for him if you like.’
‘He’s stopped vomiting for the moment,’ Fern told him. ‘An hour shouldn’t do too much harm and I’ve shifted his phone so it’s close to the bed. He’s well enough-and sensible enough-to ring if he gets worse.’
Who on earth was Jessie? She didn’t know the island had a nurse called Jessie. ‘I’ll go to Pete Harny’s place now and then to Lizzy’s,’ she told him. ‘See you soon.’
‘Be fast,’ Quinn growled and disconnected.
Fern clipped the phone back to her waistband and turned to find Frank regarding her with perplexity. Clearly the afternoon’s events were finally starting to be understood.
‘Aren’t you supposed to be married, girl?’
‘You’ll have gathered we didn’t quite make it,’ Fern said cheerfully. ‘Maybe next time.’
‘Yeah, well, you’re worth waiting for,’ Frank said drily. ‘Can’t say the same for that groom of yours, though, Fern. Puffed-up bag of wind…’
Puffed up bag of wind…
Fern thought of her fiance with a slightly guilty start.
She should ring Sam’s house and find out how he was.
Fern looked ruefully down at the mobile phone as she started the car again.
She was in a hurry. Ringing Sam was wasting time.
Ringing Sam was wasting time…
Pete Harny was fine.
The ten-year-old haemophiliac opened the door when Fern knocked and grinned hugely when he saw who it was.
‘Gee, Fern, you look a lot better like this. I like you much better in jeans. You looked a right proper twit in all that frilly white lace!’
‘That’s what I thought, too,’ Fern smiled. ‘Pete, you haven’t been sick, have you?’
‘Nah,’ he said scornfully. ‘That’s cos I didn’t eat the oysters.’
Fern nodded. This child was sharp. ‘So you worked out what caused it, then?’
‘Well, stands to reason.’ Pete grinned. ‘Mum and Dad were both sick as dogs, though they’ve stopped being sick now, and the only thing they ate and I didn’t were the oysters.’
‘Why didn’t you eat them?’ Fern asked. ‘I was sure I saw you taking a couple from the tray.’
‘Yeah, well I did,’ he said. ‘Lizzy Hurst was so insistent-and Mum says when you’re a guest you have to eat everything that’s offered to you. But I hate oysters-especially ones with gunk cooked on ‘em like garlic. So I took some and buried ‘em in one of your aunt’s pot plants. I guess you’d better dig ‘em out when you get home, Fern, or the plant’ll cark it when they rot.’
‘You have such a delicate way of putting things.’ Fern grinned. ‘Are your mum and dad upstairs?’
They were, and their condition reassured Fern. Both were starting to recover. Mrs Harny was well enough to protest against Fern’s visit.
‘I don’t know how you’re coping, Fern, dear,’ she said sadly. ‘What a tragedy. It would have been such a beautiful wedding.’
‘It still will be,’ Fern sighed, but it was starting to seem so unreal that it was like a bad dream.
How could she go through it again?
Lizzy next.
This was the hardest.
As Fern started the car again, the telephone at her waist shrilled into life.
‘Yes…’
‘Fern, it’s Quinn…’
‘Auntie Maud? Has she arrested again?’ Fern’s breath froze in fear.
‘No, she’s fine,’ Quinn said quickly. ‘Hell, Dr Rycroft, I didn’t mean to scare you.’
‘Why…Then why are you ringing?’
‘Where are you?’
‘Outside the Harnys’. About to see if I can find Lizzy.’
‘Pete?’
‘Pete’s OK. He didn’t eat the oysters,’ Fern reassured him. ‘His mum and dad did but they’ve stopped being sick and are recovering. It seems once the oysters are out of the system they’re doing no lasting damage. Frank definitely needs observing, though-the vomiting’s made his diabetes run out of control and I’m not certain he’s stopped vomiting for good. Are you sure you have room for him at this hospital of yours?’
‘Four beds, all of them empty at the moment,’ Quinn told her. ‘Women’s and men’s ward.’
‘Good grief!’
‘“Good grief”?’ His voice rose in mock query. ‘Surprised that someone would put money into making a go of a medical practice in a place like this, Dr Rycroft?’
‘Yes,’ she said flatly. ‘I don’t understand why you have.’
‘And you suspect my motives?’
‘No. I…’
‘You’re just surprised,’ he said.
‘No one in their right mind wants to practise on Barega.’
‘You mean you don’t.’
Fern took a deep breath. ‘Was that…was that all you wanted to say to me, Dr Gallagher?’
‘No.’
To her fury Fern could hear the inevitable laughter in his voice again. This man thought life was one long joke. He’d found the events of the day one huge piece of comic theatre.
‘Well, what?’ There was fury in her voice and Quinn heard it.
‘I just wanted to say that I wish I could be with you,’ Quinn said, and the gentleness of his voice undermined her fury like nothing else could. It drove the air right out of her lungs and left her gasping. ‘You shouldn’t have to face Lizzy alone.’
‘I can cope alone,’ Fern managed.
‘I know,’ Quinn said softly. ‘But you shouldn’t have to.’
CHAPTER THREE
LIZZY wasn’t home.
Fern knocked once on Lizzy’s front door but didn’t wait for an answer. Lizzy would hardly be here. Not if there was trouble.
She’d be down on the hiding boat-a wreck of an old fishing boat that Lizzy had treated as a refuge since a child.
Below Lizzy’s house was an estuary, scattered with oyster leases and overhung at the sides with giant willows. Lizzy’s grandfather had planted the willows sixty years before on a cleared estuary bank but the natural rainforest had returned, pushing its way around and through the growing willows in an impermeable mass.
Not quite impermeable…If you knew the way…
Lizzy had shown Fern the way-when life had been bad for Lizzy as a teenager and she’d desperately needed a friend. She’d led Fern down through the rainforest to where the ancient boat still miraculously floated under the willows. Lizzy’s family had a proper fishing boat moored at Barega jetty. This boat was one only she and Fern knew of.
‘It’s my private place,’ Lizzy had whispered all those years ago. ‘When Dad’s giving me a hard time I come here.’
Lizzy’s dad had given her a hard time all too often. Her mum had departed, never to be seen again, soon after Lizzy’s birth and Lizzy’s dad had taken the brunt of his bitterness out on his daughter.
It wasn’t all Lizzy’s fault that she was half-crazy.
