Marigold was waiting. Medicine was waiting.
Before he’d reached the bedroom door she was gone.
She walked out into the night, and had slammed the door closed behind her.
She was gone.
CHAPTER TEN
SHE walked.
Ally walked and she walked and she walked.
What on earth was happening? she wondered. What had she done?
She’d let Darcy kiss her.
Why?
She had no intention of having a relationship with Darcy Rochester. The concept was ludicrous. Unbelievable.
He was wonderful.
Her fingers lifted to her lips. She could still feel him. She could taste him. No one had ever made her feel…
Like she’d found the missing part of her whole.
That was a really stupid sensation. It made no sense at all.
Her feet had taken her down to the harbour. Her foot where the splinter had been removed was aching, but she ignored it. She had to see.
Down at the jetty were three terraced houses, each with different shutter colours-yellow, bright crimson and sky blue. The windows overlooked the cluster of fishing boats tied up at the wharf. Two of the houses had window boxes dripping geraniums. The middle one had window boxes but the geraniums looked dead. Elspeth’s house.
It was perfect.
She couldn’t do it.
She walked on, down onto the wharf. Most of the fishing fleet was out but a couple of older boats were still swinging lazily at their moorings. She climbed onto the deck of the one closest to the harbour mouth, then sat and hugged her knees and stared out into the night.
This was where she’d come as a child to take time out. To try and sort out her head.
This was where she’d made the decision that she had to be a doctor, she thought ruefully. This was where she’d decided she had to lead her grandfather’s life.
Could she go back to that life? To medicine?
If she stayed close to Darcy-if she stayed here-then she’d be drawn back into it. How could she not? And where would that leave her mother?
Her mother was only fifteen years older than she was, and in these last few months Ally had discovered something stunning. Elizabeth could be a friend.
It had been an amazing revelation. As they’d learned massage together, they’d discovered each other. Her mother had a keen, dry sense of humour, long suppressed by people who’d never laughed. Her mother shared her love of music-music that for almost thirty years she’d never listened to.
They talked now. They laughed together. They shared their enjoyment of what they were doing.
Elizabeth was finally starting to live.
And then along came Darcy.
‘If I let myself love him, what would happen to Mum?’ she asked the night, and there were no answers.
Or maybe there were.
Her mother would be an outsider. Again. Her daughter and her son-in-law would be a busy medical partnership and once again Elizabeth would be an onlooker. She’d be caught in a town while her daughter loved the town’s doctor.
Great.
‘I should never have come back here,’ she whispered. ‘It was really dumb. I’ve worked too hard over the last two years to risk it all because my stupid hormones are telling me I’m in love with Darcy.
‘So now what?
‘So get out. Go back to the city.
‘Yeah, but…
‘Yeah, nothing. You know it’s the sensible thing to do.
‘You can’t give up Darcy.
‘You must.’
She rose and walked to the bow rail, then leaned over and stared into the black depths of the sea below.
‘My mother gave up nearly thirty years of her life for me,’ she told the blackness. ‘There’s no choice. Get out while you can. There’s nothing else to do. Leaving it longer will just make it harder.’
She flinched. Her windcheater wasn’t enough to keep her warm in the cool sea air, or maybe she would have been cold no matter what she’d been wearing. Feeling ill, she left the boat and made her way up the main street to her rooms.
Her upstairs light was on.
She stared. Surely she’d left it off.
Darcy?
No. His car wasn’t there. And he surely wouldn’t have let himself in. He couldn’t. She’d locked the place. The small spurt of hope that somehow he’d come…somehow he’d dissuade her…somehow he’d provide a possible solution to an impossible dilemma died almost before it was born.
Her door was locked. She must have left the light on herself. She let herself in and walked up the stairs with dragging steps.
She swung open the door to her living room-and her mother was lying on the bed, reading massage manuals.
‘Mum.’
Her mother looked up and smiled. It was a smile that had disappeared for thirty years and it still made Ally catch her breath when she saw it.
At forty-five, Elizabeth was an older version of Ally. They were almost exactly the same height as each other. Until two years ago Elizabeth had been painfully thin but she’d filled out now, and her figure was as lovely as Ally’s. Her hair was cut short, blonde wisped with grey, but her green eyes were Ally’s, as was her smile.
She was wearing jeans and sweatshirt that almost mirrored Ally’s everyday uniform.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Surprise?’
Ally caught her breath. ‘Yeah.’ She shook her head and managed a smile in return. ‘I’m surprised. How did you get here?’
‘I caught the bus.’ Then, at Ally’s increased look of astonishment, she explained some more. ‘I read the papers this morning.’
‘You read about Jerry’s arrest.’
‘I certainly did. They finally have him behind bars.’
Ally hesitated. Seventeen years ago, when Ally had gone to the police and had Jerry arrested, her mother had disintegrated.
‘You don’t mind?’
‘Of course I don’t mind.’ Her mother was still smiling. ‘You’re doing what I should have done when you were four years old but I didn’t have the courage. I still thought I loved your father.’
‘But…’
‘Yeah, I collapsed last time,’ she said. ‘I’d made such stupid decisions. I’d lost so much. I was a different person then. But not now, Ally.’ She sighed, held out her hands for Ally to help pull her to her feet and then hugged her. ‘It’s only taken me thirty years to figure out that I can get over Jerry-that damage can be cured.’
‘Mum?’ Ally hugged her back, then pulled away to stare at her as if she didn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘How…how did you hear?’
