How could he think…?
He couldn’t. He just…couldn’t.
Madison’s bed was waiting. Miriam was holding the sheets back.
‘I’ll change her into her pyjamas if she wakes up and needs to go the bathroom,’ she said. ‘But it won’t hurt her to sleep in what she’s in.’
She was in a tiny version of what Ginny was wearing. Soft fleecy pants and windcheater.
He gazed down at her tiny face and he saw a likeness to Ginny. Fleeting but there.
Family.
She snuggled her face into the pillow, and her arms came out, still almost in sleep. This was an involuntary movement, made maybe every night as a sleeping chid was carried to bed.
‘Cuddle night,’ she whispered, and he had no choice but to put his face down on hers, kiss her gently and give her a soft hug.
She hugged him back. She couldn’t be mistaking him for her mother now, he thought, dazed. He had a stubbly chin. He’d smell different. He’d feel different.
‘Daddy,’ she whispered, and settled back into sleep.
It was half an hour before Ginny arrived.
‘We drove right round the far side and watched the moon until Richard slept,’ Ginny told him, slipping silently from the truck and going around the back to release the dogs. ‘I’m sorry you had to wait.’
‘It’s OK,’ he said, but something about his voice must have changed.
‘What is it?’
‘Nothing. Let’s get Richard to bed.’
The next few minutes were taken up with the mechanics of getting one very ill man into bed, settled, rewired.
‘I’m setting up a subcutaneous line,’ Fergus told Ginny. He’d watched how much Richard had-or hadn’t- consumed during the evening and he knew he’d be getting really dehydrated very soon. Eating and drinking were now too much trouble.
They’d spoken about this to Richard. He wanted no heroic rescues or anything as intrusive as nasal gastric feeding, but dehydration had been explained to him and he’d agreed to fluids when the time came.
‘I’m with you on that one,’ Ginny said. ‘I talked to him about the need for it this afternoon and he said when you said he needed it then it was fine by him. You’re his doctor, Fergus.’
He was and he couldn’t walk away now. Over the next few days he’d be back here over and over again. But if he had a choice…
‘What’s changed?’ she said. With Richard settled, they’d walked down to his truck. Miriam sat up on the veranda, watching her charges, but she was out of earshot and even if she hadn’t been, Fergus knew that anything he said here would never be repeated.
This town knew everything about everyone already. There was no need for eavesdropping. Miriam probably knew already what he was about to say right now.
‘Ginny, I can’t…’
‘You can’t be with me,’ she whispered. ‘I know that. I told you.’
‘I thought-’
‘Fergus, you’re not thinking,’ she interrupted, and she laid her hand on his arm and pressed. ‘You’re hurting. You and I had a wonderful one-night stand. That night set things free for me in a way that I could never have imagined. But it didn’t set you free. And my freedom doesn’t mean I’m taking things further with you. You’re where I’ve been for years. Running from encumbrances. There’s no way I’ll load you with mine.’
‘But you-’
‘Fergus, I’m a package deal,’ she said softly, and she lifted his hand and held it against her face. ‘I think…I think you’re a wonderful man. A man I’d love to love. But there’s lots of things to love in this world and you’re only one of them.’
‘Gee, thanks,’ he said blankly, and she managed a shaky laugh.
‘Don’t mention it.’
‘It’s only Madison.’
‘No,’ she said softly. ‘It’s nothing to do with Madison. You think you’d like to be with me if only you didn’t have to look at a child again. But you don’t really want to be with me. Not how…not how I want to be with you.’
‘I don’t understand,’ he said miserably, and she smiled and reached up and kissed him lightly on the lips.
‘That’s because you haven’t had an epiphany,’ she whispered. ‘I hope one day you have it. For your sake. Somehow you’ve given it to me.’
‘An epiphany…’
‘I used to try and drive away pain by anger,’ she said. ‘Or work. Dive into medicine and don’t think of anything else, and when the world got too grim I’d go to the gym and kick-box.’
‘Kick-box?’ He stared and she grinned.
‘Didn’t know that about me, huh?’
‘N-no.’
‘Puts me in an altogether new light.’
‘Maybe,’ he said faintly, and her smile faded.
‘Look, it doesn’t matter. All I’m saying is that by loving you I realised that it works. I can love again. I can make this life work for me. I can be happy again, even if I’ve lost.’
‘Yeah, but-’
‘This isn’t about you,’ she said. ‘What I’m saying is about me. You look at Madison and you cringe inside and there’s no way you should put yourself in that position. We go back to being professional colleagues, Fergus. Maybe in a few years you’ll have your epiphany and maybe I’ll be sitting in my rocking chair with my knitting and my dogs and I’ll spend a little part of my pension on another rocking chair so you can sit beside me.’
‘Lie beside me,’ he growled, and she chuckled.
‘I’m betting you’ll be a very sexy octogenarian.’
‘Ginny-’
‘Enough.’ She kissed him again, lightly but with purpose. ‘We both know this isn’t going to happen now for us. Face it, Fergus, and move on. I love you but I don’t need you. I wish that could make the loneliness better for you but I don’t think anything can. Except maybe time. So give it to yourself, Fergus, love. Walk away.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
RICHARD died eight days later.
Fergus had been back at the house many times in the interim, but he’d kept his visits relatively formal. With Ginny.
With Richard he’d established something that was as close to a friendship as could be made between people in such disparate circumstances.
‘You’ll look out for Ginny for me, mate,’ Richard had whispered in one of his last few moments of consciousness when Fergus had been by his side. Ginny had been out visiting one of the community’s new mums and had taken Madison with her. ‘She’s playing hardy but when the others died… She breaks up inside,’ Richard had told him.
Fergus knew what that felt like. He thought of a grief-stricken Ginny and thought if he only had the courage…
To take Ginny, to take three dogs, to take one little girl…
‘I’ll keep in touch with her,’ Fergus said. ‘Though I’m not sure…’
‘You don’t have to be sure it’ll lead anywhere,’ Richard whispered. ‘And you don’t have to be scared either. Take it from me, there’s nothing to be afraid of. You know, a few weeks ago I was terrified. But not now. I’ve been given this place. I’ve been given the gift of knowing I have a kid and Madison’s going to be great. Great for Ginny. Great for…’ He paused and his gaze turned inward, as it did increasingly. ‘Well, who knows who she’ll be great for.
