mother had died. And how nothing had helped.
Fergus stood in the background and said nothing at all. There was this feeling between them, Ginny thought hopelessly as the ceremony moved to its conclusion. It was some sort of intangible link that was somehow just… there. Both of them could feel it, she thought, but neither of them wanted it. It was as if both of them were afraid.
She was afraid, she decided, and she was right to be so. Whatever she felt for Fergus, it had to be sternly set aside.
No involvement.
After the funeral Ginny’s back veranda was set up as a hospital ward in miniature. A couple of tradesmen arrived. Refusing payment, they set up a screen that could be pulled back at will. Thus, there could be two rooms. One side was Richard’s. The other was Madison’s.
The child was stoic. That was the simplest way to describe her, Ginny thought as the days went on. There were no tears. No emotion. Nothing. Tears might have been easier to deal with. What terrors lay behind the expressionless, listless facade?
She voiced her concerns to Fergus and he organised the child psychiatrist from the city to make a second trip to see her. The woman sat by Madison’s bed for all of one long afternoon, gently probing, trying to make her talk. At the end the woman wondered whether she should be moved, taken to a specialist unit in Sydney.
That was the first time Richard was moved to anger, surprising them all. ‘She stays here,’ he snapped. ‘This is where she belongs. And push back that damned screen.’
That was a sort of breakthrough. Father and daughter at least seemed aware of each other from then on, although mostly all they did was sleep.
But sometimes Ginny saw Richard watching his daughter with eyes that were sad and yet proud. And when Richard moved, Madison’s gaze followed him every inch of the way.
‘Don’t pressure her,’ the child psychiatrist advised before she left. ‘She needs time to get used to her new surroundings. To her new…’
She faltered then, because no one could imagine Madison would have time to get used to her new father. Even for the psychiatrist this was new territory.
‘It’s not fair on Madison,’ Ginny told Fergus as the second week ended. Fergus had come out to check on Richard’s medication. There was no longer any need for him to treat Madison. The little girl’s feet were almost healed. There was no need for her to still be in bed, but whenever they dressed her, whenever they tried to do anything with her, she passively did what they asked, then returned to her bed as soon as she could. ‘Maybe we should be doing something more active to cheer her up.’
‘The psychiatrist said give her time,’ Fergus told her. ‘And Richard’s her father. He calls the shots.’
Fergus had finished treating Richard at almost the same time as Tony’s wife, Bridget, had arrived to take a shift. They’d been walking back to Fergus’s truck-a bit self-consciously because that was the way Ginny always was around Fergus. Bridget was ‘an occasional nurse when I’m sick of the kids’, and her presence was a welcome relief, easing strain. Now she included herself in their conversation, putting in her oar with customary cheerfulness.
‘Leave them be,’ she advised. ‘Talking can sometimes make it worse with kids. I’m the eldest of eight and that was my motto. If you couldn’t figure out what to do, then do nothing. This is a funny sort of father-daughter relationship but if that’s all they have then I reckon we should leave them to sort it out.’
‘Richard’s not exactly being warm,’ Fergus said thoughtfully as Bridget walked up the steps and left them to it. Ginny wished she hadn’t. Fergus was too close for comfort. Whenever he was here he was too close for comfort, she thought. There was this frisson…
‘Can you blame him?’ she managed. ‘If he gets close to his daughter, she’ll be hurt all over again when he dies.’
‘Yeah,’ Fergus said. He looked as if he’d say something else but then thought better of it. Instead, he stepped away from her a little. Maybe he was feeling this frisson as well? ‘How are Madison’s feet?’
‘They’re fine. But check them yourself.’ She hesitated. They were out of earshot of Richard, Madison or Bridget. The frisson wasn’t going away and she wanted it dealt with. She needed this man as a person-not some gorgeous hunk of a doctor who sent her hormones into overdrive.
‘Fergus, why are you leaving Madison’s medical care completely to me?’ she tried tentatively. ‘Why don’t you go close to her?’ She hesitated but the sudden stillness of his face told her she wasn’t wrong in her guesswork. ‘There’s more than Richard and I who are scared stiff of being involved here. No?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
In truth, she didn’t know what she meant either. It was just a gut reaction to what she saw-the slight hesitation every time he approached Madison’s bed. There was something…
‘Hey, Doc, what about taking Ginny out to dinner?’ It was Bridget, calling from the veranda. ‘She could do with a break and you two look so good together.’
They both took a hasty step in different directions and Bridget grinned.
‘I don’t need-’ Ginny started, but Bridget was on a mission.
‘You don’t need sausages,’ she retorted. ‘Which is all you have here for dinner. Richard likes them, Madison likes them but the last time we had them you hardly touched them. Take her out, Doc.’
‘Would you like to go out?’ Fergus asked.
Would she?
In the last two weeks she hadn’t been housebound. She’d spent time at the hospital, sharing Fergus’s load, immersing herself in the medicine that gave her blessed time out. But that didn’t mean she’d spent any real time with him.
And then there was this scary frisson…
‘The pub’s good on Friday night,’ Bridget was saying, breaking into her train of thought. ‘Take her there, Doc.’
‘I should stay,’ Ginny said, taking another step backward.
‘Why?’ Bridget demanded, and crossed her arms in disapproval.
‘There’s no need for you to be here,’ she told the nurse, trying to sound decisive. ‘You could go home to Tony.’
‘I have two kids at home and an untrained puppy. I’m staying here.’ Bridget grinned. ‘My kids need to bond with their daddy. Tony’s done less than his fair share this week and I’m here to stay.’
‘Bridget’s not going home,’ Fergus said. ‘That was the agreement when we brought Madison here. There’ll be a full-time nurse here all the time.’ He hesitated and she saw the same uncertainty in his eyes. But it seemed he was braver than she was. ‘What about a steak at the pub?’
But what about…? What about…? Ginny looked at him and thought about the tension between them and thought this was a really bad idea. But when she opened her mouth…
‘Fine,’ she said.
What was she saying? Her head was screaming that it wasn’t fine. It was high risk to both of them.
‘Fine,’ said Fergus, and she knew he felt exactly the same way. ‘Let’s go to dinner.’
The eating-out options at Cradle Lake were limited. To the pub. The pub served steak and chips, sausages and chips (bleah), fish and chips or the vegetarian option catering for city types who cruised through the place on Sundays-pasta and chips.
The steak, however, was fantastic, deservedly famous throughout the district. Dorothy, the pub chef, had been cooking steak for fifty years. She cooked their steaks now, then came to the dining-room door to watch her product go down.
The whole pub watched Fergus and Ginny’s steaks go down. The dining room was separated from the rest of the pub by the bar, but from the moment they’d walked in every eye was on them and it stayed on them for the entire meal.
‘You wouldn’t want to be an undercover agent in this place,’ Fergus complained, and Ginny grinned. In truth, she was enjoying her steak very much, and enjoying being away from the claustrophobic atmosphere of the house even more.
‘I’m used to it. I was brought up here-remember?’
‘Which is why you didn’t want to come back?’
