my home was here-the people I knew-and, oh, I wanted to come back.’
‘You could have come.’
‘How? My grandfather wasn’t here any more. I didn’t know who would help me. I figured my father would just come and get me again. No. I was stuck. But while I was up on the ridge I was furious, with all the righteous indignation of a lonely twelve-year-old who was dragged where she didn’t want to be. I used to watch Jerry. I knew he was doing something illegal. I watched where he hid stuff. I memorised everyone who came. I took car registrations. I eavesdropped and I figured things out. From that time on, I kept careful records of everything I could. But of course Mum and Dad were part of the community. I didn’t see how I could do anything without destroying them.’ She swallowed and darted him a look that was suddenly unsure.
Darcy stayed intent on her foot. He was carefully manoeuvring pieces of shattered wood out and he needed to concentrate, but he also knew he had to give her space.
‘Then…’ she whispered. ‘Then Jerry decided I was old enough…’
Enough. Her voice trailed off to nothing.
Darcy’s hands stilled. His heart seemed to still. ‘Ally…’
But he might have known this was no passive victim. Not Ally.
‘Only I wasn’t,’ she told him, her voice suddenly defiant. ‘Grandpa had taught me karate-how cool is that?-and I fought. I took off into the scrub round the horrible place we were staying, and I ran. It took me hours to get to the nearest town but when I arrived I talked and talked and I don’t know why they believed me but they did. I was scratched and bruised and starving and just…vitriolic. In the end the police went up and arrested Jerry.’
He was dumbfounded. ‘You had him arrested?’ He shook his head in disbelief, seeing her as she must have been then. A twelve-year-old, up against the world. There was a lump in the back of his throat and he had to fight to speak again. ‘Guns blazing?’ he ventured, trying desperately for lightness. He wanted to hit someone. He desperately wanted to hit someone. Maybe it was just as well he hadn’t known this when he’d faced Jerry.
‘Hardly.’ She gave a rueful chuckle. ‘Not quite. Though if there’d been guns handy, who knows?’ She shrugged and in an unconscious echo of his own thoughts she added, ‘Maybe it was just as well I only knew karate. Anyway, it didn’t help. He skipped bail and left the country. Leaving a mess.’ She stared down into his angry eyes and ventured a lopsided smile. ‘Um… Dr Rochester, do you think you could concentrate on my foot?’
He caught himself. He was operating here. He went back to the splinter but it was almost clear. All he had to do was clean it really thoroughly.
He started to wash it out. As he concentrated on medicine again his voice came under control and it seemed possible to ask more questions.
‘What happened to your parents?’
‘They weren’t my parents any more,’ she said sadly, staring down at her foot. ‘They weren’t capable of caring for themselves, let alone me. I went into foster care. End of story.’
Only it wasn’t. He glanced up into her face, and behind the satisfaction that this day had given her he saw more.
She was haunted, he thought. He’d treated her as a flibbertigibbet, a person who’d bowled into town with her sky-blue signs and her ideas of making a living from massage.
And she had such shadows.
‘No one knew,’ he said, forcing himself to stay focussed on the dressing he was applying. ‘No one in the town seemed to have any idea of what happened to you.’
‘My grandfather never talked,’ she told him. ‘He was a hard man. He never talked of anything. Jerome Hatfield was our personal tragedy.’
‘Yet…’
‘Enough,’ she said, almost roughly. ‘My foot’s fine.’ He’d taped the dressing in place and her foot was as good as it was going to get. ‘Take me home, Dr Rochester. Even a tea bag’s looking good.’
‘How up to date are you with your tetanus shots?’
‘I’m fine. I had a booster two years back.’
‘Try to keep the weight off your heel.’
‘I’ve been doing that all evening. I’m an expert.’
‘Right.’ He hesitated. He should drive her home. But he couldn’t let her go home to a tea bag. Could he?
No.
‘Let me find you a steak,’ he said, and there was a short silence. ‘You could do that?’
‘I have half a dozen steaks in my freezer. My microwave can defrost them in minutes.’
‘I thought you had a wood stove.’
‘Yep. A wood stove and a microwave. How about that?’
‘You want me to go to your place?’
‘My dogs make great chaperones. And…’ he ventured a smile ‘…I hear you know karate.’
‘And two other Japanese words. That makes me bilingual. Or trilingual. Something.’
He grinned again. She was stunning, he thought. He was appropriately stunned. ‘OK. If all your patients are asleep, let’s go.’
‘They’re not my patients.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ he said faintly. ‘I’m starting to feel superfluous.’
‘Not when you have six steaks in your freezer. You’re not superfluous at all.’
‘There you go, then.’ His smile faded. ‘Not completely superfluous. But definitely completely confused.’ He hesitated. ‘You gave Robert paracetamol?’
‘Let’s check him,’ she told him, meeting his concern before he’d voiced it. ‘I can wait that long. Of all of them, Robert’s the one who’ll be awake. That carcinoma is almost bone-deep.’
He cast her an odd look. ‘You know your medical stuff.’
‘We get it in massage school.’
‘How to treat carcinoma?’
‘How to recognise one.’
‘Massage school’s changed since my day.’
‘You’re how old?’ She shrugged. ‘OK, Dr Greybeard. Let’s check Robert. My tummy’s rumbling.’
Robert was asleep, but not deeply. Ally pushed open his bedroom door and he stirred a little, whimpering with pain.
‘He hasn’t even had an aspirin before tonight,’ she whispered in sudden anger, moving across to stare down at him in the soft light cast by the hall lamp. ‘His face… It would have been a tiny thing to get rid of a couple of years back, but now…the mess…’
Darcy crossed to stand beside her. She was right. He’d only seen Robert’s face in the distance before this. Social Services had forced Jerry to accept him examining the children but the adults had the right to refuse treatment and none of them had come near him.
And now what must have started off as a tiny basal cell carcinoma had spread, covering Robert’s forehead and half his cheek. Horrid.
But as far as he could see it hadn’t invaded his eye. And it looked clean.
‘I washed it and put a mild antiseptic on it,’ Ally told him. ‘I hope it isn’t too deep-that the eye is OK. Even now, he must be facing major surgery. He’s so afraid. I talked to him about skin grafts, though. I told him I’m sure there are things that can be done to help.’
Here it was again. Her knowledge of medicine.
Was she a med-school dropout? he wondered. Or somehow trained and deregistered? If so, her use of the word ‘doctor’ was not only illegal but dangerous.
But this wasn’t the time to question it. Robert moaned softly again and Darcy came to a decision.
‘I’ll wake him. He’s only sleeping now because he’s exhausted. That pain will wake him up as soon as the exhaustion eases.’
‘Morphine and a sedative?’
He raised his brows and she raised hers back.
‘Right,’ he said, deciding not to take it further.
‘I thought Lorraine and Penny might need sedatives to help them sleep,’ she told him. ‘But a massage worked
