Maybe it was.
He wasn’t going to be there.
‘There’s no need to panic,’ Lily said, and he sensed a fraction of withdrawal of friendliness. ‘I can do it myself.’
‘I’d like to help.’
‘I don’t want help,’ she said. ‘Parenting’s not about help. You either do it or you don’t. You parent on your own terms.’
‘That sounds ominous.’
‘I read it in a book,’ she confided, and suddenly she smiled again, abandoning tension. ‘In truth I know nothing about the rules from here on in. You and Benjy will have to work it out for yourselves. But meanwhile Rosa and Doug will be aching to see you. They’ll be trying to give us private time but just about busting a corpuscle to see you.’
‘Busting a corpuscle?’
‘It’s a medical term,’ she said wisely. ‘I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it. It involves mess into the middle of next week.’
He’d forgotten that. He’d forgotten Lily happy. He grinned at her; she grinned back and then she stood aside so he could come up the steps and past her into the house.
‘Welcome home,’ she murmured as he passed, and it was all he could do not to turn and kiss her. Maybe she would have welcomed it, he thought, but it behoved a man to act cautiously.
Nevertheless, as he passed her he was extremely glad that he hadn’t asked the helicopter to wait.
They had a great dinner. Doug had pulled out all stops to create a feast. Roast beef with all the trimmings, followed by an apple pie that made Ben’s eyes light up with pleasure the minute he saw it.
‘I remember this pie.’ He glanced at Doug and frowned. ‘Hang on. When I was a kid here, you and Rosa worked outside. How did you know I loved this? How did you get the recipe?’
‘Mrs Amson was the cook here then,’ Doug said placidly. ‘When you offered us the job I rang her and asked her for recipes.’
‘For anything you liked,’ Rosa said softly. ‘It seemed the least we could do when you were handing us our lives back.’
Ben coloured. Lily stared across the table, fascinated. The normally in-control doctor who handled crisis after crisis with aplomb was seriously discombobulated.
‘Why are you staring at Ben?’ Benjy asked, her and Lily answered without thinking.
‘He’s discombobulated.’
Benjy thought about that for a minute and then giggled. ‘That sounds like his arms and legs have come off.’
‘Just his cool,’ she said, and smiled across the table at Ben. ‘I like to see a man discombobulated for good reason.’
‘What’s good reason?’ Benjy asked, still intrigued.
‘Because he does good things for people,’ Rosa said, rising and starting to clear away. ‘Except no one’s supposed to thank him. He doesn’t like people hugging him, our Ben, so all we can do is make him apple pie.’
‘We could hug him,’ Benjy said.
‘So we could,’ Lily agreed. ‘He’s been very good to us, our Ben.’
‘He is our Ben,’ Benjy agreed. He turned to Doug. ‘He’s my dad.’
‘I thought that must be it,’ Doug said gravely. ‘And dads should be hugged.’
‘I don’t know whether he wants to be hugged.’
‘You’ll have to ask him.’
‘Ask me tomorrow,’ Ben said, getting up from the table in such a hurry that his chair crashed to the floor behind him. ‘I need to take a walk.’
‘We can come with you,’ Benjy offered. ‘Do you want to meet Flicker?’
‘Tomorrow,’ Ben said, backing out the door as if propelled. ‘For now I need some space to myself.’
‘He always needs space to himself.’ Rosa and Lily were washing up. Benjy had asked Doug if he could do bedtime reading duty and Ben was nowhere to be seen. ‘It’ll take an indomitable lady to break down those barriers.’
‘I’m not sure I’m that lady,’ Lily said. She hesitated but by now she was sure Rosa had figured out everything there was to know about her, and she surely knew Ben as well. ‘I’m not sure there’ll ever be a lady for Ben.’
‘He’s looking like a man in love tonight.’
‘He’s looking like a man who’s afraid.’
‘If he asked you to marry him…’
‘He won’t,’ Lily whispered. ‘And even if he did, I can’t leave the island.’
‘Can’t you?’ Rosa dried her hands on the dishcloth and turned to face her. ‘Is there really no one who could take your job?’
‘There’s no money to pay anyone.’
‘Of course there is,’ she said briskly. ‘Doug and I have been reading the newspapers. Kapua has as much oil wealth as it wants. They can easily pay medical staff enough to encourage them to come. It’s not like Kapua’s a desert either. It sounds lovely.’
‘It is lovely,’ Lily whispered. ‘It’s home.’
‘Home’s where the heart is,’ Rosa retorted. ‘Look at me. I’ve been following Doug for years, working where he’s needed to be.’
‘But that’s different.’
‘Why is it different?’
‘Because Ben wouldn’t want us where he is. Nothing’s changed since medical school. Like leaving the table now. The conversation was too close to the bone. He’s cultivated armour and no one’s getting through.’
‘You love him,’ Rosa said gently, and Lily nodded.
‘I always have.’
‘Then…’
‘Then nothing,’ she said. ‘His armour’s thirty years deep. No one’s getting through. We’ll stay in touch now for Benjy’s sake, but we won’t do more than that. And me? I have to rebuild some armour of my own.’
Which was why she should be in bed. Which was why she should be anywhere but where she was at midnight, which was sitting on the back veranda, waiting for Ben to come home.
He did come home, walking steadily across the paddocks in the moonlight. He was still wearing the army camouflages he’d been wearing when he’d arrived. Maybe he had no casual clothes here, she thought. These must be the only clothes he took with him as he travelled the world.
Or maybe there was a reason he still wore them. This was army camouflage, a reminder that he was still on duty somehow. A reminder that his armour had to stay.
He didn’t see her as he strode up through the garden to the veranda. She was sitting on an ancient settee to one side of the front door.
‘Have you been up to the peak?’ she asked gently as he reached the top of the stairs, and he froze. There was a moment’s stillness while he collected his thoughts. When he turned to her he was smiling but she wasn’t sure the smile was real.
‘You guessed.’
‘It’s a great place,’ she told him. ‘It made me stop.’
‘Stop?’
‘Let go,’ she said gently. ‘I spent the first few days here doing what I normally do-trying to cram in as much as I possibly could. Blair’s Peak sort of took that out of me. I’ve slowed down so much now that I’m practically going backwards.’
‘I’m glad. It’s what you needed.’
‘How about you?’ she asked. ‘Has it slowed you down?’
