He tried to calm her down, but she’d stalked the small room, muttering to herself in Italian and throwing her hands in the air. In the end Tim had left her to her anger and gone outside to the area he’d been digging out by hand. His tools and equipment were covered in dust too, but he guessed that wasn’t as bad as the piano.
That was the day they’d started to become rich.
As he picked away the quartz from the soil, he had to look twice to believe what he was seeing: a reef of gold running through the rock. He chipped a bit further along and found the reef continued and in fact become thicker.
He ran his fingers along the rock, trying to understand what he was seeing. Surely he couldn’t be so lucky? Could he?
Working long after dark, his miner’s lamp glowing dimly in the pitch-black. By morning he’d opened up three metres of a gold reef. Running home, he roused Marianne from their bed and she started to yell at him for not coming home, but stopped when she saw how dirty he was.
‘Come on,’ he said, grabbing her hand. ‘You need to see this.’
Together they ran through the bush, until finally he slowed to a walk and put his hands over her eyes. ‘Trust me,’ he said, and walked her carefully towards the entrance.
This part of the mine was open-cut and once he took his hands away she saw it. Tim rubbed tears away now as he remembered her standing there, her mouth open in disbelief, tears on her cheeks.
‘I can buy you as many pianos as you desire now, sweetheart,’ he said.
He could have promised to build her a big house, but no one did that out here and she never asked. Getting up off the bed, Tim rubbed his face again, and coughed. The sun had started to sink; he’d slept for longer than he’d intended.
In the still of the evening he could hear voices floating on the wind. Or was it just his memories coming to life again?
He stopped and listened. No, there were voices—someone was yelling. Tim couldn’t make out the words.
Chief cocked his ears and growled softly.
‘What is it, mate?’ he asked. ‘Or rather, who is it?’
Chapter 25
‘Janelle, how are you?’ Melinda asked as she ushered the young mum into her office. Maddie’s wails had reached her as soon as the pair had arrived at the clinic and she wondered what on earth had gone wrong during the week.
‘Maddie just won’t stop crying,’ Janelle said. ‘I’ve had enough.’ Tears trickled down her cheeks and she thrust the pram towards Melinda. ‘She won’t feed or sleep. Mum’s being horrible and I…’ She broke off, unable to say any more.
Melinda glanced in and saw the baby, her face red from crying, her little fists clenched tightly as she jerked around unhappily.
‘When did you try to feed her last?’ Melinda asked.
‘Just before I came in here. I used the bottle and formula you gave to me but it hasn’t been working.’
‘Okay, well let’s just pop her on the scales and see what’s happened this week.’ Melinda started to undress the baby and tried to shush her by putting a dummy in her mouth. As Janelle had said, Maddie put her fists up to her mouth and pushed it away, but Melinda persevered and finally, after the fifth attempt, she managed to get it into her mouth and the crying stopped.
‘That’s much better,’ Melinda said in her soft, cooing voice. She was sure the baby was hungry. Not wanting to alarm Janelle, she blocked the scales with her body and weighed the baby. Maddie had lost another three hundred grams.
‘Tell me about trying to feed her at home,’ Melinda said, at the same time thinking,This is going to have to stop.
‘I do it how you do. Boil the water and mix it up. Sometimes she takes a little bit, other times she won’t take anything.’ Her voice became defensive. ‘Mum always tells me I’m doing it wrong, but she won’t help me and anyway I’m doing it the exact same way you showed me. It’s not my fault she won’t feed.’
At that statement Melinda felt a little tremor of apprehension. What if it was?
‘I might just try to make up another bottle and see if I can get her to drink,’ Melinda said calmly, all the while her mind was racing. ‘Are you okay to wait here while I mix it up? I’ll take Maddie with me.’ She walked out of the room and straight into Patti’s office.
‘Got the same problem as last week, with Maddie and Janelle,’ she said and told her about the weight loss. ‘The baby’s hungry, nothing short of it. And I don’t believe the story that Maddie won’t take a bottle. I bet if I gave her one, she’d drink it in two seconds flat. What do we do?’
Patti held out her hands for the baby. ‘Let me have a look at her while you mix up the bottle.
In the kitchen Melinda boiled the kettle and added two heaped scoops of the powdered formula and mixed it enthusiastically. She wanted to think that Maddie was just a difficult baby, but there was something telling her things weren’t quite right here. Dave had always talked about trusting his gut when he was investigating a crime. Well, this wasn’t a crime, but she knew she needed to listen to her inner voice; and it was screaming to her there was more to this story than what she was being told.
Back in Patti’s office, she handed her boss the bottle and watched as she squeezed a tiny bit of milk onto the baby’s lips and then carefully put the teat in her mouth. Maddie started to suck instantly.
The women’s eyes met over the hungry child, now oblivious to either of them. She was lost in a world of milk, warmth and comfort.
‘I haven’t seen any signs
