obtained the case notes from Jerry’s arrest when you were twelve, and we went from there. And I know. It’s totally unprofessional, but when I made some tentative enquiries about your mother and added that I was worried about you, I got an earful. About how you’d taken her out of the institution the minute you started earning. You put everything into her care.’
‘I tried to give her a life,’ she whispered. ‘She gave me one.’
‘But-’
‘But nothing,’ she said, suddenly turning fierce. She turned on him then, her anger blazing. ‘Fifteen. Fifteen! Seduced by a man who was twenty years older than her. Kicked out of home by her father, forced to live with that…with that…’ Words failed her. She took a deep breath, fighting fury. ‘And then she gave me up. She gave up her little girl. I remember, you know. I remember her bringing me here and Grandpa being cold as ice and her sobbing and saying he had to take care of me, it was his duty. She said it was Grandpa’s duty to care for me but it was more than that. It was his duty to care for her.’
‘But it’s not your duty.’
‘Don’t give me that,’ she flashed. ‘Don’t.’
He hesitated. He was pushing too hard, he decided. Change tack.
‘Tell me about you and medicine,’ he said, and waited.
There was a long silence. It stretched on and on. She wasn’t going to answer him, he thought, but then…
‘I decided it was the only way,’ she told him. She was leaning against the bench, her hands clenching and reclenching at her sides. He felt an almost overwhelming urge to walk forward and take those clenching hands in his, but he didn’t. There was a look on her face that told him she’d run a mile.
‘From the time I was little, I was taught that medicine was the answer,’ she said dully. ‘My mother said Grandpa could look after me because he was a doctor. She couldn’t look after me but Grandpa could. So I figured the way I could look after us was to be a doctor, too. Maybe I was naive. But Grandpa… He kept saying Mum could have been a success. She could have been a doctor. It was like all our problems wouldn’t exist if only she’d studied medicine. Stupid, isn’t it? But it was something I held onto through the whole nightmare of childhood. When I was with Grandpa and I was miserable, I read his textbooks. When I went into foster care, I studied and studied. If I could just get to be a doctor, I thought, it’d solve all our problems. I could take care of my mother like no one ever had. I could take care of both of us.’
‘But…it didn’t work?’
‘No,’ she said flatly. ‘Of course it didn’t. It was a child’s dream. It was my grandfather’s horrid legacy and it backfired.’
‘What went wrong?’
‘Mum came to live with me,’ she said drearily, as if it was old history that had long lost interest through retelling. ‘Yeah, I was a hot-shot medical intern. I worked hard and I earned more than enough to keep us both and it was all supposed to be good. But I couldn’t get close to her. She’d look at me like she was seeing something else. She sat in my gorgeous apartment, day after day, and she did nothing. She just sat. Like she was already dead. And then…’
She faltered, but somehow she forced herself to go on.
‘I passed my obstetric exam,’ she told him. ‘By that time I was starting to treat her as part of the furniture. I was hardly trying to reach her any more. Anyway, the night of my exam results, I came home jubilant, bringing champagne and lobster and chocolates. The guy I was dating came with me. He was a neurosurgeon and I was an obstetrician. Two fantastic success stories. Still Mum just sat there. Just…looking. And that night…’ Her voice hushed almost to a whisper. ‘That night she attempted suicide.’
‘Ally…’ He made a move toward her but she flinched. As if she was afraid. He stilled. He mustn’t push. He mustn’t. This was far too important.
‘She left a note.’ Ally swallowed and stared down at her hands. ‘She said that I had a life now, just like Grandpa’s, and she was proud of me. But my life had nothing to do with her. Nothing had anything to do with her. I was a success and I didn’t need her. I’d never needed her. She’d stuffed everything.’
‘Hell, Ally.’
‘I didn’t know what to do,’ she whispered. ‘All the reasons I’d done medicine… Suddenly they didn’t mean anything. She took an overdose of aspirin-hardly an inspired choice for a suicide. She went into kidney failure and for a week I thought I’d lost her. My boyfriend told me if she lived then I should walk away. Get her committed back to that awful place she’d been in. It would have been so easy. But I sat through that awful week and I thought of all the people who’d walked away from her in the past. And I couldn’t.’
‘Of course you couldn’t,’ he said gently, and she flashed a suspicious look at him as if she thought he was humouring a child. But she continued, her voice full of remembered pain.
‘Anyway… One of the nurses in the birth unit I was working in was a trained massage therapist,’ she told him. ‘I used to watch her rubbing the babies and massaging the mothers who were traumatised by the births and couldn’t sleep. Liselle did her massages in her own time, but she loved doing them and so did the mothers and babies. When I’d been sitting in Intensive Care for three days, waiting to see if Mum would live, Liselle came to see me. I was exhausted past reason. So she just sat there, and she rubbed my hands and my shoulders and I felt myself relax. It gave me a tiny time out, but I so needed it. It was like a window out of a nightmare. And then I went in and I gently massaged Mum’s face and neck-and she opened her eyes and she smiled at me. It was the best moment.’
‘But…’ He was trying to understand. ‘Your medicine…’
‘My medicine wasn’t as important as my mother,’ she told him. ‘I took myself out and bought a massage book and I sat with her and I tried to reach her through touch. All the pills she was taking were useless. Touch reached her when nothing else would.’
‘Medicine-’
‘Oh, medicine works,’ she told him, with a flash of something that might almost be humour. ‘I’m not saying you’re not needed, Dr Rochester. There’s not a lot of call for massage when you’re treating squashed fingers or obstructed labour. But for me, for now, massage works. Over the last couple of years I’ve sold everything I could to keep us afloat, and I’ve been back to college, learning massage as a professional.’ She smiled then, a faint half- smile that was suddenly almost embarrassed.
‘This time it was different,’ she told him. ‘It was something I could talk to my mother about. I came home every night and we discussed what was happening. I practised on her. Do you know how good that felt? It was wonderful. And the miracle is that she started learning, too. Just a little. Slowly. I practised on her and she practised on me. And by the time I qualified as a full remedial therapist, she had a certificate as well. She’s a relaxation masseuse. Qualified. It may not seem very much to you, but I can’t tell you…’ Her voice broke. ‘I can’t tell you…’
She didn’t have to tell him anything. He gazed at her face, and he saw a mixed-up combination of happiness and uncertainty and hope. Hope for a future she was working desperately hard to embrace.
No. She didn’t need to tell him anything, he thought. He already knew.
He was falling in love.
Wrong.
He’d fallen in love.
When had it happened? He didn’t know. He only knew that it had.
After Rachel had died, he’d thought it could never happen again-and maybe it hadn’t. Because what he was feeling for Ally was a far, far different thing than the emotions he’d felt for Rachel.
Different but the same?
Two wonderful women. Two wonderful loves.
One who’d died six long years ago, and one who was gloriously, wonderfully alive.
And this was Ally. Ally, who’d pitted herself against the world and who was still fighting. Who stood there looking bereft and defiant and filthy and workworn and exhausted-and the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. The most beautiful woman in the world.
Ally.
What he really wanted to do was to walk forward and take her into his arms. Right now. The sensation was almost overpowering and he had to physically haul himself back. She wasn’t ready. He knew she wasn’t ready.
‘How’s your mother now?’ he asked, carefully, as if he might break something infinitely precious.
‘She’s with friends. But she’s happy. She’s cut right back on her medication. She smiles. She’s cooking a little.
