good.
It wasn’t worth saying that to her.
The whole set-up was a trap, he decide bitterly, and it was Amy who was trapped. He was here for a few days. Amy would marry her Malcolm and be here for life.
With no excitement at all.
Saturday rolled on. Joss found himself making kites with Lionel and wishing the weather would ease so he could try them out. They really were excellent kites.
He thought of what he’d be doing in Sydney now. He was a workaholic. Saturday afternoon he’d be coping with accident victim after accident victim, most of whom he never saw again after he left Theatre. The comparison with what he was doing now-keeping one old man happy by talking about kites and dogs-was almost ludicrous.
It was still medicine. He conceded that and wondered-how happy could he be in such a life?
He couldn’t be happy. He needed acute medicine. He needed more doctors around him.
Iluka needed those things!
Amy didn’t go home. Well, why should she? For once the nursing home was buzzing and vibrant and happy. Even with her new furniture, White-Breakers seemed dismal in comparison.
Bertram took himself for a run along the beach and came back soaked. Kitty stoked up the fire to a roaring blaze, and Bertram lay before the flames and steamed happily. Cook made marshmallows for afternoon tea and Amy helped the residents toast them in the flames. Thelma and Marie coaxed Joss into learning the basics of mah- jong.
If anyone had said a week ago that Joss could enjoy a day like this he’d have said they were nuts. Now… He put down his tiles, ate his marshmallows, watched Amy’s flushed face as she held the toasting fork to the flames and thought…
His world was tilting, and he didn’t know how to right it again.
He wasn’t even sure that he wanted to try.
David and Daisy came by at dinnertime and firmly took Joss home with them for the evening.
‘You can’t impose on Amy for every meal,’ his father told him and Joss waited for Amy to demur-to say she really liked having him.
But she didn’t.
She’d started to grow quieter as the afternoon had progressed. He’d look up to find her watching him, and her face seemed to be strained.
‘Amy…’
‘I can’t keep you from your parents,’ she told him. ‘You have a house key to White-Breakers. I’m a bit tired after last night so I’ll probably be asleep when you get home.’
Damn.
And when Joss woke the next morning she was already back at the nursing home.
‘Have a good day writing your conference paper,’ the note on the kitchen table told him. ‘I’ll ring if we need you but barring accidents you should have the day to yourself.’
Humph. He didn’t want the day to himself.
He couldn’t stay here. He was going nuts.
He drove to the nursing home-to see his patients, Joss told himself, but it was more than that and he knew it was.
He wanted to see Amy.
Sunday. The day stretched on, interminably, and wherever Joss went, Amy wasn’t. Hell, how big was this home anyway?
The rain was easing, but the wind was still high. The talk was that as soon as the wind dropped they could get a ferry running. He could be out of here by tomorrow.
He might not see Amy again.
Why was she avoiding him?
Amy was going nuts.
Everywhere she tried to go there was Joss. He was larger than life, she decided, with his gorgeous smile and infectious laughter. He had the residents in a ripple of amusement, and she’d never seen them look so happy. Every single one of them seemed to have found a reason why they should be in the big living room.
She had a few residents who kept to themselves-who hated being in a nursing home and who showed it by keeping to their rooms.
Not now. Not when Joss and his big dog and his air of sheer excitement were around. With Joss here you had to think anything was possible. Something exciting might happen.
Exciting things didn’t happen to Iluka, Amy thought drearily, and tried to imagine how she could sustain this air of contentment after Joss left.
She couldn’t.
Exciting things didn’t happen in Iluka.
But something exciting did.
‘There’s a boat hit the harbour wall.’
‘What?’ Amy had lifted the phone on the first ring and Sergeant Packer was snapping down the line at her.
‘Of all the damned fool things, Amy. A speedboat tried to come in the harbour mouth-in this wind! It’s come through the heads and nearly got in but it smashed into the middle island. Tom Conner was down there, trying to fish. There’s someone in the water. Can you come?’
‘Joss?’
‘Yeah?’ He was admiring Myrtle Rutherford’s knitting and quietly going stir crazy. ‘Trouble?’ Amy’s face said there must be-and it was serious.
‘Possible drowning. Can you come?’
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT WAS as bad a situation as Joss could imagine.
The harbour entrance was formed by two lines of rock stretching out from the river mouth. In calm water boats could slip through with ease, but this wasn’t a fishing port. It was a fair-weather harbour, maintained by the millionaires to house their magnificent yachts in the summer season. In winter the yachts were taken up to the calmer waters of Queensland where the elite could use them at their pleasure.
Now the harbour was empty, and with good reason. The rain had stopped but the wind was wild. Surf was breaking over the entrance. There were occasional clear gaps as waves receded but they were erratic. The rocks were jagged teeth waiting for the unwary, and what had come through…
It was certainly the unwary.
Jeff was there, and Tom Conner. The old fisherman and the policeman were identically distressed-and identically helpless.
‘I’ve rung the Bowra coastguard,’ Jeff told them. ‘But it looks hopeless. We can’t get a boat out there and it’ll take a couple of hours to get a chopper here. If a chopper can operate in this wind…’
‘Where…?’ Amy was trying to see through the spray being blasted up by the wind. When she did she gasped in horror.
Right in the neck of the harbour was a tiny rocky outcrop. It formed a natural island, forcing boats to fork either
