shower.’
‘It’s too deep.’
‘It wouldn’t be deep if you hadn’t said massive,’ she said, and her voice was suddenly a trifle unsure. ‘How massive?’
‘You haven’t looked?’
‘When would I have had time to look?’ She grabbed her foot from him and bent it up so she was peering at her heel. It was such an unguarded gesture. What other woman he knew would do that? He stared at her vulnerable head, bent over her foot, and he felt something inside tug. Hard.
‘Ouch is right.’ She stared for a moment longer and then put her foot down. ‘But it’ll come out.’
‘I’ll see to it now.’
‘I’ll see to it myself.’
‘Ally, I don’t think it’s going to come out with a pair of tweezers,’ he told her. ‘It’s deep and long and it looks as if it’s in parts. I’ll give you a local anaesthetic and get the thing fully cleaned.’
‘You’ll do no such thing.’
‘Oh, right.’ He stood back and fixed her with a goaded look. ‘So you’ve gone to all that trouble to save Jody from infection, yet you sail into infection yourself-all because you’re scared of a local anaesthetic.’
‘I’m not scared.’
‘Good girl,’ he told her, and grabbed his bag.
‘Hey!’
‘Shut up. I’m working,’ he told her.
‘I can-’
‘You can’t.’ He lifted her foot again, inspected it carefully, then sighed and rose to fetch a bowl of warm water from the sink at the side of the room.
She half rose as if to leave.
He turned and gazed at her-holding her eyes with his.
She glowered again-and then sank back into her chair.
‘You think you’re so indispensable,’ she muttered.
‘Maybe I am.’ He smiled. ‘I can’t imagine you massaging a splinter out of a foot.’
‘No, but-’
‘And there’s not a single essential oil that has splinter removal as one of its properties.’
‘Oh, shut up,’ she told him.
He grinned. ‘You could at least be grateful.’
‘I’m grateful.’
‘Good.’ He came back to her and started loading a syringe. ‘This might sting a little.’
‘Yeah, yeah. I know exactly what “sting a little” means when it’s a needle into your foot. It means sending me through the roof.’
‘You need a bullet to bite,’ he told her, and she grimaced.
‘I’d rather have steak. This is not turning out to be my day, Dr Rochester.’
‘But you have put Jerry in jail.’
‘There is that,’ she said, brightening a little.
‘OK.’ He swabbed the side of her foot, waited until he could see she was ready and then injected.
She bit her lip-hard-and then nodded.
‘Fine.’
‘Good girl.’
‘Don’t patronise me.’
‘I would never patronise you, Ally,’ he told her. ‘I think you’re wonderful.’
Her eyes flew wide at that. ‘Really?’
‘Really.’
‘Wonders will never cease.’
He grinned. ‘OK. Give the injection a few minutes to take effect. In the meantime…tell me about you and Jerry.’
For a while he thought she wouldn’t tell him. She sat with her foot stretched out on a stool before the fire and she looked…blank. It hurt, he thought, and it wasn’t her foot that was doing it.
Would she tell?
He continued to wait, but the combination of firelight and the sound of the sea was almost hypnotic, and finally she started. Her face was still blank. It was as if she was recounting something that had happened to others. Not to her.
‘My father was associated with Jerry long before I was born,’ she told him. ‘Jerome…Jerry…well, you’ve seen him. His personality is overwhelming. Dad met him here when they were both boys. Jerry used to come down here when his father was checking his properties. When Dad went to the city to live, he caught up with Jerry again, and finally he went to live with him. Jerry’s father had given him a farm in the hills above Nimbin in New South Wales. That was the start. You’ve seen the men who were with Jerry. My dad was like that.’
He knew. Damn, he knew.
‘And your mother?’ He’d started washing her foot with the warm water, carefully removing the soil of the day. She appeared hardly to notice. She was intent on her story.
‘Dad met my mother here,’ she told him. ‘Dad was twenty years older than she was, and he’d left town before she was born. But Dad had to come back here to fix up something to do with his parents’ estate and he met my mother then. She was only fifteen and he got her pregnant. My grandfather was furious. He wasn’t…he wasn’t a forgiving man, my grandfather. He demanded she have an abortion and she ran away with my father. So for the first few years of my life I was with Jerry and his people.’
She’d lived as these people had. She knew.
He hesitated. ‘Jerry… Was Jerry all right with you?’
She frowned. ‘You mean, did he abuse me? No. To be honest, I don’t remember much about my early childhood. All I know is that when I was four my mother brought me back here. She didn’t explain why. She seemed afraid but Grandpa didn’t know why and she insisted on going back herself. Whether she was still in love with Dad, or whether she was under Jerry’s spell, I don’t know. But she had enough sense to be afraid for me. Anyway, she left me with my grandfather and I stayed with him for eight years.’
‘And then?’
She sighed. ‘Then my grandfather died and my father took me back.’
‘Your mother…’
‘By that time she was just a victim,’ she said wearily. ‘She did what everyone told her. She’d stood up to them once when she’d taken me to my grandfather, but she was incapable of standing up to them again.’
Darcy was totally focussed on her story-but he had to concentrate on the procedure he was undertaking. He lifted her foot and lightly ran his nail down either side of her sole. ‘Can you feel this?’
‘No.’
‘Nothing?’
‘No.’
‘Good. I’m starting.’ He inspected the wound with care and then reached for a scalpel. She looked down at what he was doing and then carefully closed her eyes.
Good choice. And he could distract her still further with her story.
‘So you stayed with Jerry from the time you were twelve?’ he asked as he carefully split the skin at the side of the wood. The more he saw the more he was astonished. She’d walked on the splinter for hours. It must have been agony. It had shattered into pieces and was deeply embedded.
How had she done it?
But she was focussed on her childhood. Had she stayed with Jerry?
‘Are you kidding?’ She smiled, albeit a shaky one. ‘I had no choice. I was twelve and I went where I was taken. But Jerry was in trouble. Once, when he was really desperate, he came here and he brought me with him. He knew this place was deserted and there was some sort of drug deal going on. I was supposed to sit on the ridge and watch for people coming. For about three days he hid up there, and I was desperately lonely. All that time I knew
