Miracle on Kaimotu Island
Marion Lennox
He loved her once, but now Ben McMahon just needs another doctor – and Ginny Koestrel is the only one around.Tragedy, however, has stalled Ginny’s professional confidence and the only thing she clings to is a little girl called Button.Can Ben help Ginny rebuild her life without falling for her again? Will it take an earthquake to bring them back together?
Dear Reader
New Zealand is known as ‘the shaky isles’ for good reason. Last year an earthquake ripped apart the New Zealand city of Christchurch, leaving the city we’ve all grown to love in ruins.
My friend, fellow author Alison Roberts, was in the centre of it, back working as a paramedic, doing all she could for the city she calls home.
Afterwards we talked about the emotions such an appalling event engenders, how tragedy can so often bring out the best in us. Of course then, as romance writers, our thoughts went to What if?
An earthquake such as Christchurch’s was simply too big, too dreadful for us to contemplate writing about, but what if we took the same event in a closed community—a tiny island where the islanders need to work together, where past emotions are put aside for present need, where men and women are placed in deadly peril and by that peril discover the things that are most important to them?
In life, love can be hidden, pain can be concealed, but when the earth shakes everything is raw and exposed. Humour, courage, love…they’re the cornerstones of our lives, but often it takes tragedy to reveal it. We hope you love reading our Earthquake! duet as our heroes and heroines find happiness amid a world that’s shaken and is now resettling on a different axis.
Marion Lennox
About the Author
MARION LENNOX is a country girl, born on an Australian dairy farm. She moved on—mostly because the cows just weren’t interested in her stories! Married to a ‘very special doctor’, Marion writes Medical Romances
, as well as Mills & Boon
Romances. (She used a different name for each category for a while—if you’re looking for her past Romances search for author Trisha David as well.) She’s now had well over 90 novels accepted for publication.
In her non-writing life Marion cares for kids, cats, dogs, chooks and goldfish. She travels, she fights her rampant garden (she’s losing) and her house dust (she’s lost). Having spun in circles for the first part of her life, she’s now stepped back from her ‘other’ career, which was teaching statistics at her local university. Finally she’s reprioritised her life, figured out what’s important, and discovered the joys of deep baths, romance and chocolate. Preferably all at the same time!
Recent titles by the same author:
THE SURGEON’S DOORSTEP BABY
SYDNEY HARBOUR HOSPITAL: LILY’S SCANDAL† (#ulink_f73ebc71-272a-5684-916d-69027d6df2cb) DYNAMITE DOC OR CHRISTMAS DAD? THE DOCTOR AND THE RUNAWAY HEIRESS
† (#ulink_1c10c853-4490-5374-ad78-e54676ebd605)Sydney Harbour Hospital
These books are also available in eBook format from www.millsandboon.co.uk
Miracle on
Kaimotu Island
Marion Lennox
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Dedication
To the men and women of Christchurch—
and to one amazing paramedic.
Rosie, you’re awesome.
PROLOGUE
NO ONE KNEW how old Squid Davies was. The locals of Kaimotu could hardly remember the time he’d given up his fishing licence, much less when he’d been a lad.
Now his constant place was perched on the oil drums behind the wharf, where the wind couldn’t douse a man’s pipe, where the sun hit his sea-leathered face and where he could see every boat that went in and out of Kaimotu harbour. From here he could tell anyone who listened what he knew—and he did know.
‘She’ll be a grand day at sea today, boys,’ he’d say, and the locals would set their sights on the furthest fishing grounds, or ‘She’ll be blowing a gale by midnight,’ and who needed the official forecasters? Kaimotu’s fishermen knew better than to argue. They brought their boats in by dusk.
But now…
‘She’s going to be bigger’n that one that hit when my dad’s dad was a boy,’ Squid intoned in a voice of doom. ‘I know what my grandpa said, and it’s here now. Pohutukawa trees are flowering for the second time. Mutton birds won’t leave their chicks. They should be long gone by now, leaving the chicks to follow, but they won’t leave ’em. And then there’s waves hitting the shore on Beck’s Beach. They don’t come in from the north in April—it’s not natural. I tell you, the earth moved in 1886 and this’ll be bigger.’
It had to be nonsense, the locals told themselves nervously. There’d been one earth tremor two weeks back, enough to crack a bit of plaster, break some crockery, but the seismologists on the mainland, with all the finest technology at their disposal, said a tremor was all there was to it. If ever there was a sizeable earthquake it’d be on the mainland, on the fault line, through New Zealand’s South Island, not here, on an island two hundred miles from New Zealand’s northern most tip.
But: ‘There’s rings round the moon, and even the oystercatchers are keeping inland,’ Squid intoned, and the locals tried to laugh it off but didn’t quite manage it. The few remaining summer tourists made weak excuses to depart, and the island’s new doctor, who was into omens in a big way, decided she didn’t want to live on Kaimotu after all.
‘Will you cut it out?’ Ben McMahon, Kaimotu’s only remaining doctor, squared off with Squid in exasperation. ‘You’ve lost us a decent doctor. You’re spooking the tourists and locals alike. Go back to weather forecasting.’
‘I’m only saying what I’m feelin’,’ Squid said morosely, staring ominously out at the horizon. ‘The big ’un’s coming. Nothing surer.’
CHAPTER ONE
PREDICTIONS OF EARTHQUAKES. Hysteria. One lone doctor. Dr Ben McMahon was busy at the best of times and now there weren’t enough hours in the day to see everyone who wanted to be seen. His clinic was chaos.
There was, though, another doctor on the island, even though she’d declared she was no longer practising medicine. Up until now Ben had let Ginny be, but Squid’s doomsday forecasting meant he needed her.
Again?
The last time Ben McMahon had asked anything of Guinevere Koestrel he’d been down on one knee, as serious as a seventeen-year-old boy could be, pouring his teenage heart out to the woman he adored.
And why wouldn’t he adore her? She’d been his friend since she was eight, ever since Ginny’s parents had bought the beautiful island vineyard as their hobby/ holiday farm and Ben’s mother had become Ginny’s part-time nanny. They’d wandered the island together, fished, swum, surfed, fought, defended each other to the death—been best friends.
But that last summer hormones had suddenly popped up everywhere. On the night of his ill-advised proposal Ginny had been wearing a fabulous gown, bought by her wealthy parents for the island’s annual New Year’s Eve Ball. He’d been wearing an ill-fitting suit borrowed from a neighbour. Her appearance had stunned him.
But social differences were dumb, he’d told himself. Suddenly it had seemed vital to his seventeen-year-old self that they stay together for ever.
Surely she could change her plans to study medicine in Sydney, he told her. He planned to be a doctor, too. There was a great medical course in Auckland and he’d won a scholarship. If he worked nights he could manage it, and surely Ginny could join him.
But the seventeen-year-old Ginny had smiled—quite kindly—and told him he was nuts. Her life was in Sydney. The tiny New Zealand island of Kaimotu was simply a place where she and her parents came to play. Besides, she had no intention of marrying a man who called her Carrots.
That had been twelve years ago. Ben had long since put the humiliation of adolescent love behind him, but now there was a more important question. Ginny had been back on the island for six months now. She’d signalled in no uncertain terms that she wanted privacy but Ginny Koestrel was a doctor and a doctor was what the island needed. Now. Which was why, even though looking at her brought back all sorts of emotions he’d thought he’d long suppressed, he was asking yet again.
‘Ginny, I need you.’
But the answer would be the same—he knew it. Ginny was surrounded by grapevines, armed with a spray gun, and she was looking at him like he was an irritating interruption to her work.
‘I’m sorry, Ben, but I have no intention of working as a doctor again. I have no intention of coming near your clinic. Meanwhile, if these vines aren’t sprayed I risk black rot. If you don’t mind…’
She squirted her spray gun at the nearest vine. She wasn’t good. She sprayed too high and lost half the mist to the breeze.
Ben lifted the spray pack from her back, aimed the gun at the base of the vine and watched the spray drift up through the foliage.
‘Vaccination is one of my many medical skills,’ he told her, settling a little, telling himself weird emotions were simply a reaction to shared history, nothing to do with now. They both watched as the spray settled where it should, as emotions settled where they should. ‘There’s a good vine, that didn’t hurt at all, did it?’ he said, adopting his very best professional tone. ‘If you grow good grapes next year, the nice doctor will give you some yummy compost.’ He grinned at the astounded Ginny. ‘That’s the way you should treat ’em, Carrots. Didn’t they teach you anything in your fancy medical school?’
Ginny flushed. ‘Cut it out, Ben, and don’t you dare call me Carrots. In case you haven’t noticed, it’s auburn.’ She hauled her flaming curls tighter into the elastic band, and glowered.
‘Ginny, then.’
‘And not Ginny either. And I’m a farmer, not a doctor.’
‘I don’t actually care who you are,’ Ben said, deciding he needed to be serious if he was to have a chance of persuading her. ‘You have a medical degree, and I’m desperate. It’s taken me twelve months to find a family doctor to fill old Dr Reg’s place. Dr Catherine Bolt seemed eminently sensible, but she’s lived up to her name. One minor earth tremor and she’s bolted back to the mainland.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘I’m not kidding.’ He raked his hand through his hair, remembering how relieved he’d been when the middle-aged Catherine had arrived and how appalled he’d felt when she’d left. He really was alone.
‘Every New Zealander has felt earth tremors,’ he told Ginny. ‘We’re not known as the shaky isles for nothing. But you know Squid’s set himself up as Forecaster of Doom. With no scientific evidence at all he’s been droning on about double flowers of the pohutukawa tree and strange tides and weird bird behaviour and every portent of catastrophe he can think of. There’s something about a shrivelled fisherman with a blackened pipe and a voice of doom that gets the natives twitchy. ‘As well as losing us our doctor, I now have half the islanders demanding a year’s supply of medication so they can see out the apocalypse.’
She smiled, but faintly. ‘So you want me on hand for the end of the world?’
‘There’s no scientific evidence that we’re heading for a major earthquake,’ he said with dangerous calm. ‘But we do have hysteria. Ginny, help me, please.’
‘I’m sorry, Ben, but no.’
‘Why on earth did you do medicine if you won’t practise?’
‘That’s my business.’
He stared at her in baffled silence. She was a different woman from the one he’d proposed to twelve years ago, he thought. Well, of course she would be. His mother had outlined a sketchy history she’d winkled out of the returning Ginny, a marriage ending in tragedy, but…but…
For some reason he found himself looking at the elastic band. Elastic band? A Koestrel?
Ginny’s parents were the epitome of power and wealth. Her father was a prominent Sydney neurosurgeon and her mother’s sole purpose was to play society matron. Twice a year they spent a month on the island, in the vineyard they’d bought—no doubt as a tax deduction—flying in their friends, having fabulous parties.
The last time he’d seen Ginny she’d been slim, beautiful, but also vibrant with life. She’d been bouncy, glowing, aching to start medicine, aching to start life. Ready to thump him if he still called her Carrots.
In the years since that youthful proposal he’d realised how wise she’d been not to hurl herself into marriage at seventeen. He’d forgiven her—nobly, he decided—and he’d moved on, but in the back of his mind she’d stayed bouncy, vibrant and glowing. Her mother had carefully maintained her fabulous exterior and he’d expected Ginny to do the same.
She hadn’t. The Ginny he was facing now wore elastic bands. Worse, she looked…grim. Flat.
Old? She couldn’t be thirty, and yet…How much had the death of a loved one taken out of her?
Did such a death destroy life?
‘Ginny—’
‘No,’ she snapped. ‘I’ve come back to work the vineyard, and that’s all.’
‘The harvest is long over.’
‘I don’t care. I’m spraying for…something, whatever Henry told me I had to spray for. When I finish spraying I need to gear up for pruning. Henry’s decided to retire and I need to learn. I’m sorry, Ben, but I’m no longer a doctor. I’m a winemaker. Good luck with finding someone who can help you.’
And then she paused. A car was turning into the driveway. A rental car.
It must be Sydney friends, Ben thought, come over on the ferry, but Ginny wasn’t dressed for receiving guests. She was wearing jeans, an ancient windcheater, no make-up and she had mud smeared on her nose. A Koestler welcoming guests looking like a farmhand? No and no and no.
‘Now what?’ she said tightly, and she took the spray pack from Ben and turned to another vine. ‘Have you brought reinforcements? Don’t you know I have work to do?’
‘This isn’t anyone to do with me,’ Ben said, and watched who was climbing out of Kaimotu’s most prestigious hire car. The guy looked like a businessman, he thought, and a successful one at that. He was sleek, fortyish, wearing an expensive suit and an expression of disdain as he glanced around at the slightly neglected vineyard. The man opened the trunk and tossed out a holdall. Then he opened the back car door—and tugged out a child.
She was a little girl, four or five years old. She almost fell as her feet hit the ground, but the man righted her as if she was a thing, not a person.
‘Guinevere Koestrel?’ he called, and headed towards them, tugging the child beside him. ‘I’m Richard Harris, from Harris, Styne and Wilkes, partners in law from Sydney. You were expecting me? Or you were expecting the child?’
There was a long silence while Ginny simply stared, dumbstruck, at the incongruous couple approaching.
‘I…I guess,’ she managed at last. ‘But not yet.’
The lawyer was tugging The child closer and as he did…
Down’s syndrome, Ben thought. The markers were obvious. The little girl was beautifully dressed, her neat black hair was cropped into a smart little cut, there was a cute hair ribbon perched on top—but nothing could distract from the Down’s features.
He glanced back at Ginny, and he saw every vestige of colour had drained from her face. Instinctively he put out a hand to steady her and she grabbed it, as desperately as if she’d been drowning.
‘I didn’t expect…’ she said. ‘I thought…this wouldn’t happen for months. the legal processes…’
‘Our client was prepared to pay whatever was needed to free her to go to Europe,’ the man said, clipped and formal. ‘We sent you emails. We received no response and we had no phone contact. Our client left the country last Friday, giving us no choice but to bring her. We had a nanny accompany us to New Zealand but the girl gets seasick and refused to come on the ferry.’
He gazed down at the child, and at the look on his face Ben wondered how much leverage had been applied to make such a man do a job like this. A lot, he was sure.
‘I don’t…I don’t check emails any more,’ Ginny managed, and the lawyer looked at her as if she was a sandwich short of a picnic. A woman who didn’t check emails? His expression said she must be as disabled as the child beside him.
But…‘No matter,’ he said, making a hasty recovery. ‘My only fear was that I wouldn’t find you, but now you’re here this is the official handover. According to the documents we mailed to you last month, you’ve accepted responsibility for her. Her mother’s left for Europe. Her instructions were to deliver her to you and here she is.’
And he propelled her forward, pushing her away from him, a little girl in a pretty pink dress, with pink sandals and an expression that said she didn’t have one idea of what was happening to her.
If she weren’t a Down’s child, she’d be sobbing, Ben thought, but he knew enough about the syndrome to know sobbing was a last resort. But still…
‘Oh, my…’ Ginny said faintly, and Ben’s hold on her tightened still further. He’d seen patients in shock before, and Ginny was showing every symptom.
‘Ginny, what is this? What’s going on?’
Ginny gave herself a shake, as if trying to rid herself of a nightmare. She, too, was staring down at the child. ‘I…This is…’
She stopped and looked helplessly towards the lawyer and then at the little girl beside him. ‘Tell him,’ she said weakly. ‘Please…tell Ben.’
And the lawyer was happy to comply. He was obviously wanting a businesslike response and it looked like he’d decided Ben was the most likely to give it.
‘This is Barbara Carmody,’ the man said, clipped and efficient, not even looking at the little girl as he introduced her. ‘The child’s the result of an extra-marital affair between my client and Dr Koestrel’s late husband. Her mother raised her with her other two children but unfortunately her husband has finally discovered that the child isn’t his. He’s rejected her. The marriage has failed and Mrs Carmody has left for Europe.’
‘Her parents have deserted her?’ Ben said incredulously.
‘There are provisions for her care,’ the lawyer said smoothly. ‘Dr Koestrel’s late husband left funds in his will for this eventuality, and there are institutions that will take her. On Mrs Carmody’s instructions we contacted Dr Koestrel for the release of those funds but instead of releasing money she’s agreed to take on her care. So here she is. The paperwork’s all in her suitcase. If you need to contact her mother, do it through us—the address is with her papers. If you could sign the included documents and forward them to our office I’d appreciate it. If you’ll excuse me, I don’t wish to miss the return ferry. Good afternoon.’
And he turned back towards the car.
The little girl didn’t move. Neither did Ginny.
The man was about to walk away and leave the child behind.
No.
Ben strode to the car, slammed closed the car door the lawyer was attempting to open then set himself between lawyer and car while Ginny stood in stunned, white-faced silence.
The little girl didn’t move. She didn’t look at the lawyer. She didn’t look at anyone.
‘Abandoning a child’s a criminal offence,’ Ben said, quite mildly, looking from the little girl to Ginny and back again. Ginny was staring at the child as if she was seeing a ghost. ‘There must be formal proceedings…’
‘I’ll miss my ferry,’ the man said. ‘Dr Koestrel has signed the most important documents. Additional paperwork can be sent later.’
‘You can’t dump a child because you’ll miss your ferry,’ Ben said, and folded his arms, settling back, not understanding what was going on but prepared to be belligerent until he did.
‘Dr Koestrel’s agreed to take her. I’m not dumping anyone.’
‘So…what did you say? Barbara’s the result of an affair between some woman and…Ginny’s late husband? Ginny, can you explain?’
‘W-wait,’ Ginny managed. She looked helplessly at the little girl and then something seemed to firm. Shock receded a little, just a little. She took a deep breath and reached out and took the little girl’s hand.
She led her to the edge of the vines, where a veggie garden was loaded with the remains of a rich autumn harvest. Lying beside the garden was a hose. She turned it on and a stream of water shot out.
‘Barbara,’ she said, crouching with water squirting out of the hose. ‘Can you give my tomatoes a drink while we talk? Can you do that for us?
The little girl looked at the hose, at the enticing stream of water. She gave the merest hint of a smile. Whatever had been happening in this child’s life in the last few days, Ben thought, she needed time out and somehow Ginny had a sense of how to give it to her.
‘Yes,’ the girl said, and Ginny smiled and handed over the hose then faced Ben and the lawyer again.
‘James…died six months ago,’ she managed. ‘Of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.’ Then she stopped again and stared across at the little girl fiercely watering tomatoes. She looked like she could find no words.
‘So tell me about this child.’ Ben still had his arms folded. The guy in the suit with his professional detachment in the face of such a situation was making him feel ill, but he glanced at Ginny again and knew he needed to keep hold of his temper. He needed facts. ‘What’s her full name?’
‘I told you…Barbara Louise Carmody. Everything’s in the case. All her paperwork. Get out of my way, please,’ the lawyer snapped. ‘I’m leaving.’
‘Ginny…’ Ben said urgently, but Ginny wasn’t looking at him. Or at the lawyer. She was staring at the tiny, dark-eyed girl.
‘This…this little girl broke my heart,’ she whispered, and Ben suddenly figured it out. Or the bones of it. Her husband had fathered a child with someone else. She’d faced her husband’s death, and now she was coping with betrayal as well as loss.
How could anyone expect her to accept this child? he wondered incredulously. How could she even bear to look at her? But she’d reacted to her with instinctive protectiveness. At such an age, with Down’s, with a hose in her hand and plants to water, the hurtful words around the little girl would disappear.
But…she’d said she’d take her. Indefinitely?
‘Do you have her medical records in her luggage?’ Ginny asked, in a cold, dead voice.
‘Of course,’ the lawyer said smoothly. ‘I told you. Everything’s there.’
‘Did you know she’s Down’s?’ Ben demanded, and Ginny nodded.
‘Yes, I did. I’m sorry, I should be more prepared. This is fine.’ She took a deep breath, visibly hauling herself together. ‘You can go,’ she told the lawyer. ‘You’re right, the documentation can happen later. Thank you for bringing her to me. I regret I didn’t receive the emails but I’d still rather have her here now than have her spend time in an institution.’
Then she stooped down and took the little girl’s hands in hers, hose and all, and she met that long, serious gaze full on as the water sprayed sideways. And Ben saw the re-emergence of the Ginny he knew, the Ginny who faced challenges head on, his brave, funny Ginny who faced down the world.
‘I was married to your…to your father,’ she said. ‘That means I’m your stepmum. If it’s okay with you, Barbara, I’ll look after you now. You can live with me. I need help watering all my plants. I need help doing all sorts of things. We might even have fun together. I’d like that and I hope you’ll like it, too.’
CHAPTER TWO
THERE WAS NOTHING else Ben could think of to say. The lawyer climbed into his rental car and drove away. The car disappeared below the ridge, and the sound faded to nothing.
There was a long, long silence. Somewhere a plover was calling to its mate. The sea was a glistening backdrop, the soft hush-hush of the surf a whisper on the warm sea breeze.
Ginny’s world had been fragmented and was now floating in pieces, Ben thought.
He thought of her blank refusal to practise medicine. He thought of the unknown husband’s death. He thought of her accepting the responsibility for a child not hers, and he knew that fragmentation hadn’t happened today. It was the result of past history he knew little about.
He’d hardly talked to her for years. He knew nothing of what had happened to her in the interim except the bare bones she’d told his mother when she’d returned to the island, but now she was kneeling beside the tomatoes, holding Barbara, looking bereft, and he felt his heart twist as…as Ginny had made his heart twist all those years before.
But now wasn’t the time for emotion. He flipped open the child’s suitcase and searched, fast. If the medical and legal stuff wasn’t there he could still stop the lawyer from leaving the island.
But it was all there, a neat file detailing medical history, family history, lawyer’s contacts, even contacts for the pre-school she’d been going to.
She might not have been loved but she’d been cared for, Ben thought grimly.
How could a family simply desert her?
‘She has Mosaic Down’s,’ he said out loud, skimming through the medical history, and Ginny closed her eyes. She’d know what that meant, though. Mosaic Downs meant the faulty division of chromosomes had happened after fertilisation, meaning every cell wasn’t necessarily affected.
But it was still bad. Barbara had the distinct look of Down’s. Who knew what organs were affected?
Taking on a child was huge, Ben thought. Taking on a Down’s child…
Barbara had gone back to watering. She was totally occupied in directing the hose. They could talk.
They needed to talk.
‘Ginny, are you serious?’ he said urgently. ‘I can still stop him.’
‘And then what’ll happen?’ She shook herself. ‘No. I’m sorry. I’m not handling this well. I did know this was coming. I did agree to this, even if it’s happened sooner than I thought. I will look after her.’
‘No one can ask that of you,’ Ben said, and Ginny met his gaze head on. There was a long silence and then she gave a decisive nod, a gesture he remembered.
‘No,’ she said. ‘They can’t, but I will. Veronica and James did exactly what they wanted. Their selfishness was boundless but there’s no way this little one should suffer. James’s death set me free, and Barbara should be free as well, not stuck in some institution for the disabled.’ She managed to smile at the little girl—but then she felt silent again.
She was overwhelmed, Ben thought, and rightly so. Her world had just been turned on its head.
And Barbara? She was totally silent. She didn’t look upset, though. She simply stood patiently watering, waiting for what came next.
Down’s syndrome…
A man could mount arguments, Ben thought, for giving the whole human race Down’s. Yes, it took Down’s kids longer to learn things. Down’s kids seldom reached average intellectual milestones, but, on the other hand, the Down’s patients he had were friendly, selfless and desired little more than for those around them to be happy.
He walked forward and crouched beside Barbara. Ginny seemed almost incapable of speech. Maybe she’d said what she needed to say, and it was as if she didn’t know where to go from here.
‘Hi,’ Ben said to the little girl. ‘I’m Dr Ben.’
If he was right about this little one being well cared for, physically at least, then she’d be accustomed to doctors, he thought. Strange places would be associated with medical tests. Using the term ‘doctor’ might make this situation less strange.
And he was right. The little girl turned her gaze to him, but not to him personally. To his top pocket.
The arc of water went wild and no one cared.
‘Jelly bean?’ she said hopefully, and he grinned because some things were universal. Doctors’ bribes.
‘Jelly baby,’ he said, and fished a yellow jelly baby from a packet in his shirt pocket. She took it gravely and then continued gazing at him—assessing him for more?
‘Do you like jelly babies, Barbara?’ he asked, and she frowned.
‘Not…not Barbara,’ she whispered.
‘You’re not Barbara?’
‘Not Barbara,’ she said, suddenly distressed. She looked down at her pink dress, dropped the hose and grabbed a button and pulled, as if trying to see it, as if trying to reassure herself it was still there. ‘Button.’
‘Button?’ Ben repeated, and the little girl’s face reacted as if a light had been turned on.
‘Button,’ she said in huge satisfaction, and Ben thought someone, somewhere—a nanny perhaps—had decided that Barbara was far too formal for this little girl, and Button it was.
‘Your name is Button,’ Ginny whispered, and Ben saw a wash of anger pass over her face. Real anger. Anger at her late husband and the unknown Veronica? He watched as she fought it down and tried for calm. ‘Button, your mum’s sent you to me so I can look after you. Maybe watering these tomatoes can wait. Would you like to come inside and have a glass of lemonade?’
‘Yes,’ Button said, and Ginny smiled. And then she looked uncertain.
‘I have nothing,’ she faltered. ‘I really wasn’t expecting her until next month. I don’t know…’
‘Tell you what,’ Ben said, rising and dusting dirt from his knees. What was happening here was dramatic but he still had imperatives. Those imperatives had seen him take time out to try and persuade Ginny to be a doctor. That was a no go, especially now, but he still had at least twenty patients to see before he called it a day.
‘You take Button inside and give her lemonade, then go through her suitcase and see what she has. When you have it sorted, bring her down to the clinic. I can give Button a good once-over—make sure everything’s okay…’
‘I can do that.’
‘So you can,’ he said. ‘You’re a doctor. Okay, forget the once-over. But our clinic nurse, Abby, has a five-year-old and she’s a mum. If you don’t need a doctor, you might need a mum to tell you all the things you’re likely to need, to lend you any equipment you don’t have. I have a child seat in the back of my Jeep—I use the Jeep for occasional patient transport. I’ll leave it with you so you can bring Button down. I’ll have Abby organise you another—the hire car place has seats they loan out.’
‘I…Thank you.’
He hesitated, and once again he felt the surge of emotion he thought he’d long forgotten. Which was crazy. One long-ago love affair should make no difference to how he reacted to this woman now. ‘Ginny, is this okay?’ he demanded, trying to sound professionally caring—instead of personally caring. ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to ring Bob—he’s the local cop—and have him drag the lawyer from the ferry?’
She looked at him then, really looked at him, and it was as if somehow what she saw gave her strength.
‘No. I’m okay,’ she said. ‘I need to be. I don’t have a choice and neither does Button. Thank you for your help, but we’ll be fine.’
‘You will bring her to the clinic?’
She hesitated. ‘Yes,’ she conceded at last.
‘Big of you.’
She gave a faint smile. ‘Sorry. I guess I’m not up for awards for good manners right now. But I am grateful. I’ll come to the clinic when I need to. Thank you, Ben, and goodbye.’
She watched him go and she felt…desolate.
Desolate was how she’d been feeling for six months now. Or more.
Once upon a time her life had been under control. She was the indulged only daughter of wealthy, influential people. She was clever and she was sure of herself.
There’d been a tiny hiccup in her life when as a teenager she’d thought she’d fallen in love with Ben Mc-Mahon, but even then she’d been enough in control to figure it out, to bow to her parents’ dictates.
Sure, she’d thought Ben was gorgeous, but he was one of twelve kids, the son of the nanny her parents had hired to take care of her whenever they had been on the island. At seventeen she’d long outgrown the need for a nanny but she and Ben had stayed friends.
He had been her holiday romance, welcoming her with joy whenever her parents had come to the island, being her friend, sharing her first kiss, but he had been an escape from the real world, not a part of it.
His proposal that last year when they’d both finished school had been a shock, questioning whether her worlds could merge, and she’d known they couldn’t. Her father had spelled that out in no uncertain terms.
Real life was the ambition her parents had instilled in her. Real life had been the circle she’d moved in in her prestigious girls’ school.
Real life had become medicine, study, still the elite social life she’d shared with her parents’ circle, then James, marriage, moving up the professional scale…
But even before James had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma she’d known something had been dreadfully wrong. Or maybe she’d always known something had been wrong, she conceded. It was just that it had taken more courage than she’d had to admit it.
Then her father had died, dramatically, of a heart attack. She’d watched her mother, dry eyed at the funeral, already gathering the trappings of rich widow about her.
The night of the funeral James had had to go out. ‘Work,’ he’d said, and had kissed her perfunctorily. ‘Go to bed, babe, and have a good cry. Cry and get over it.’
Like her mother, she hadn’t cried either.
She’d thought that night…She’d known but she hadn’t wanted to face it. If she worked hard enough, she didn’t have to face it.
‘Lemonade or raspberry cordial?’ she asked Button. She sat her at the kitchen table and put lemonade in front of her and also the red cordial. Button looked at them both gravely and finally decided on red. Huge decision. Her relief at having made it almost made Ginny smile.
Almost.
She found herself remembering the day of James’s funeral. It had been the end of a truly appalling time, when she’d fought with every ounce of her medical knowledge to keep him and yet nothing could hold him. He’d been angry for his entire illness, angry at his body for betraying him, at the medical profession that couldn’t save him, but mostly at Ginny, who was healthy when he wasn’t.
‘—you, Florence Nightingale.’ The crude swearing was the last thing he’d said to her, and she’d stood at his graveside and felt sick and cold and empty.
And then she’d grown aware of Veronica. Veronica was the wife of James’s boss. She’d walked up to Ginny, ostensibly to hug her, but as she’d hugged, she’d whispered.
‘You didn’t lose him. You never had him in the first place. You and my husband were just the stage props for our life. What we had was fun, fantasy, everything life should be.’
And then Veronica’s assumed face was back on, her wife-of-James’s-boss mantle, and Ginny thought maybe she’d imagined it.
But then she’d read James’s will.
‘To my daughter, Barbara, to be held in trust by my wife, Guinevere, to be used at her discretion if Barbara’s true parentage is ever discovered.’
She remembered a late-night conversation the week before James had died. She’d thought he was rambling.
‘The kid. He thinks it’s his. If he finds out…I’ll do the right thing. Bloody kid should be in a home anyway. Do the right thing for me, babe. I know you will—you always do the right thing. Stupid cow.’
Was this just more? she thought, pouring a second glass for the obviously thirsty little girl. Guinevere doing the right thing. Guinevere being a stupid cow?
‘I’m not Guinevere, I’m Ginny,’ she said aloud, and her voice startled her, but she knew she was right.
Taking Button wasn’t doing something for James or for Veronica or for anyone, she told herself. This was purely between her and Button.
They’d move on, together.
‘Ginny,’ Button said now, trying the name out for size, and Ginny sat at the table beside this tiny girl and tried to figure it out.
Ginny and Button.
Two of a kind? Two people thrown out of their worlds?
Only she hadn’t been thrown. She’d walked away from medicine and she’d walked away from Sydney.
Her father had left her the vineyard. It had been a no-brainer to come here.
And Ben…
Was Ben the reason she’d come back here?
So many thoughts…
Ben’s huge family. Twelve kids. She remembered the day her mother had dropped her off, aged all of eight. ‘This woman’s looking after you today, Guinevere,’ she’d told her. ‘Your father and I are playing golf. Be good.’
She’d got a hug from Ben’s mother, a huge welcoming beam. ‘Come on in, sweetheart, welcome to our muddle.’
She’d walked into the crowded jumble that had been their home and Ben had been at the stove, lifting the lid on popcorn just as it popped.
Kernels were going everywhere, there were shouts of laughter and derision, the dogs were going nuts, the place was chaos. And eight-year-old Ben was smiling at her.
‘Ever made popcorn? Want to give it a go? Reckon the dog’s got this lot. And then I’ll take you taddying.’
‘Taddying?’
‘Looking for tadpoles,’ he’d said, and his eight-year-old eyes had gleamed with mischief. ‘You’re a real city slicker, aren’t you?’
And despite what happened next—or maybe because of it—they’d been pretty much best friends from that moment.
She hadn’t come back for Ben; she knew she hadn’t, but maybe that was part of the pull that had brought her back to the island. Uncomplicated acceptance. Here she could lick her wounds in private. Figure out where she’d go from here.
Grow grapes?
With Button.
‘We need to make you a bedroom,’ she told Button, and the little girl’s face grew suddenly grave.
‘I want Monkey in my bedroom,’ she said.
Monkey? Uh-oh.
She flipped open the little girl’s suitcase. It was neatly packed—dresses, pyjamas, knickers, socks, shoes, coats. There was a file containing medical records and a small box labelled ‘Medications’. She flipped this open and was relieved to find nothing more sinister than asthma medication.
But no monkey.
She remembered her mother’s scorn from years ago as she’d belligerently packed her beloved Barny Bear to bring to the island.
‘Leave that grubby thing at home, Guinevere. You have far nicer toys.’
‘I want Monkey,’ Button whispered again, and Ginny looked at her desolate little face and thought Button couldn’t have fought as she had. Despite her mother’s disgust, Ginny had brought Barny, and she’d loved him until he’d finally, tragically been chewed to bits by one of Ben’s family’s puppies.
But fighting for a soft toy wouldn’t be in Button’s skill range, she thought, and then she realised that’s what she’d taken on from this moment. Fighting on Button’s behalf.
She tried to remember now the sensations she’d felt when she’d received the lawyer’s initial documents laying out why Button was being deserted by the people who’d cared for her. Rage? Disgust? Empathy?
This was a child no one wanted.
Taking her in had seemed like a good idea, even noble. Veronica and James had acted without morality. She’d make up for it, somehow.
Alone?
She was glad Ben had been here when Button had arrived. She sort of wanted him here now. He’d know how to cope with a missing Monkey.
Or not. Don’t be a wimp, she told herself. You can do this. And then she thought, You don’t have a choice.
But…he had offered to help.
‘I guess you left Monkey at home,’ she told Button, because there was no other explanation but the truth. ‘I might be able to find someone who’ll send him to us, but for now…let’s have lunch and then we’ll go down to Dr Ben’s clinic. I don’t have any monkeys here, but Dr Ben might know someone who does.’
Ben had told her the clinic would be busy but she’d had no concept of just how busy. There were people queued up through the waiting room and into the corridor beyond.
Plague? Ginny thought, but none of the people here looked really ill. There were a few people looking wan amongst them but most looked in rude health.
She’d led Button into the reception area, but she took one look and tugged Button backwards. But as she did, an inner door swung open. Ben appeared, followed by a harassed-looking nurse.
Ben-the-doctor.
She’d seen him a couple of times since she’d returned to the island. She’d met him once in the main street where he’d greeted her with pleasure and she’d been calmly, deliberately pleasant. But dismissive. She’d returned to the island to get some peace, to learn about vineyards, but to treat the place as her parents had treated it—an escape. She’d had no intention of being sucked into island life.
Then this afternoon he’d asked her to help him—and then he’d helped her. She’d been incredibly grateful that he’d been there to face down the lawyer on her behalf.
But now he was facing, what, twenty patients, with one harried-looking nurse helping.
He looked competent, though, she thought, and then she thought, no, he looked more than competent.
At seventeen they’d shared their first kiss after a day’s truly excellent surfing, and there had been a reason she’d thought she’d fallen in love with him. He’d been her best friend but he had been an awesome surfer, he’d been kind and…cute?
There was no way she’d describe Ben as cute now. Twelve years had filled out that lanky frame, had turned boy into man, and the man he’d become…
He was tall, lean, ripped. He had sun-bleached brown hair and sea-blue eyes. Did he still surf? He looked a bit weathered, so maybe he did. He was wearing chinos, a shirt and a tie, but the shirtsleeves were rolled up and the tie was a bit askew, as if he’d been working hard and was expecting more work to come.
He’d taken time out today to visit her. That was why the queue had built up, she thought, and then she thought taking time out must have been an act of desperation. He’d made himself later still in an attempt to get the help he desperately needed.
He was surrounded by need. He looked harassed to the point of exhaustion.
‘Ginny,’ he said flatly as he saw her, and then managed a smile. ‘Hi, Button.’ He sighed. ‘Ginny, I need to spend some time with you and Button—I reckon she does need that check-up—but as you can see, I’m under pressure. Do you think you could come back in an hour or so? I hadn’t expected you so soon.’
An hour or so. She looked around the waiting room and thought…an hour or so?
She knew this island. There was a solid fishing community, and there were always tourists, but there was also a fair proportion of retirees, escapees from the rat race of the mainland, so there were thus many elderly residents.
What was the bet that Ben would have half a dozen house calls lined up after clinic? she thought, and glanced at his face, saw the tension and knew she was right.
‘Can I help?’ she said, almost before she knew she intended to say it.
His face stilled. ‘You said…’
‘For this afternoon only,’ she said flatly. ‘But you helped me with Button.’ As if that explained everything—which it didn’t. ‘If there’s someone who could care for Button…’
‘You’re sure?’ Ben’s face stilled with surprise, but before she could speak he shook his head. ‘Stupid, stupid, stupid. The lady’s made the offer in front of witnesses.’ And before she could speak again he’d knelt by Button. ‘Button, do you like making chocolate cake?’
‘Yes,’ Button said, a response he was starting to expect. She was puzzled but game.
‘This is Nurse Abby,’ Ben said, motioning to the nurse beside him. ‘Abby’s little boy is making chocolate cupcakes with my sister, Hannah, right now. We have a kitchen right next door. When they’re finished they’ll decorate them with chocolate buttons and then walk down to the beach to have fish and chips for tea. Would you like to do that?’
‘Yes,’ she said again, and Ginny thought, God bless Down’s kids, with their friendly, unquestioning outlook on the world. If Button had been a normal four-year-old, she’d no doubt be a ball of tension right now, and who’d blame her? But Down’s kids tended to accept the world as they found it.
She would get her Monkey back for her, she thought fiercely, and she picked Button up and gave her a hug.
‘You’re such a good girl,’ she said, and Button gave a pleased smile.
‘I’m a good girl,’ she said, and beamed, and Abby took her hand and led her out to where chocolate cupcakes were waiting and Ginny was left looking at Ben, while twenty-odd islanders looked on.
‘Everyone, this is…’ Ben hesitated. ‘Dr Ginny Koestrel?’
‘Yes,’ she said, and turned to the room at large. She had no doubt what the islanders thought of her parents but she’d never changed her name and she had no intention of starting now.
‘Many of you know my parents owned Red Fire Winery. You’ll know Henry Stubbs—he’s been looking after it for us, but he hasn’t been well so I’ve come home to run it. But Ben’s right, I’m a doctor. I’m an Australian and for this afternoon I’m here to help.’ She took a deep breath, seeing myriad questions building.
Okay, she thought, if she was going to be a source of gossip, why not use it to advantage?
‘Ben says many of you are just here for prescriptions,’ she said. ‘If you’re happy to have an Aussie doctor, I can see you—we can get you all home earlier that way. I’ll need to get scripts signed by Dr Ben because I don’t have New Zealand accreditation yet, but I can check your records, make sure there are no problems, write the scripts and then Dr Ben can sign them in between seeing patients who need to see him for other reasons. Is that okay with everyone?’
It was. First, Ben’s face cleared with relief and she knew she was right in thinking he had house calls lined up afterwards. Second, every face in the waiting room was looking at her with avid interest. Guinevere Koestrel, daughter of the millionaires who’d swanned around the island, splashing money around, but now not looking like a millionaire at all. She’d been on the island for months but she’d kept herself to herself. Now suddenly she was in the clinic with a little girl.
She knew there’d have been gossip circulating about her since her arrival. Here was a chance for that gossip to be confirmed in person. She could practically see patients who’d come with minor ailments swapping to the prescription-only side of the queue. She glanced at Ben and saw him grin and knew he was thinking exactly the same.
‘Excellent plan, Dr Koestrel,’ he said. He motioned to the door beside the one he’d just come out of. ‘That’s our second consulting suite. I’m sorry we don’t have time for a tour. You want to go in there and make yourself comfortable? There’s software on the computer that’ll show pharmacy lists. I’ll have Abby come in and show you around. She can do your patient histories, guide you through. Thank you very much,’ he said. ‘And you don’t need to explain about Henry. Henry’s here.’
He turned to an elderly man in the corner, and she realised with a shock that it was her farm manager.
Henry had been caretaker for her parents’ vineyard for ever. It had been Henry’s phone call—‘Sorry, miss, but my arthritis is getting bad and you need to think about replacing me’—that had fed the impulse to return, but when she’d come he hadn’t let her help. He’d simply wanted to be gone.
‘I’m right, miss,’ he’d said, clearing out the caretaker’s residence and ignoring her protests that she’d like him to stay. ‘I’ve got me own place. I’m done with Koestrels.’
Her parents had a lot to answer for, she thought savagely, realising how shabby the caretaker’s residence had become, how badly the old man had been treated, and then she thought maybe she had a lot to answer for, too. At seventeen she’d been as sure of her place in the world as her parents—and just as oblivious of Henry’s.
‘This means I can see you next, Henry,’ Ben said gently. ‘We have Dr Ginny here now and suddenly life is a lot easier for all of us.’
She’d said that her help was for this afternoon only, but she had to stay.
Ben had no doubt she’d come to the clinic under pressure, but the fact that she’d seen the workload he was facing and had reacted was a good sign. Wasn’t it?
It had to be. He had a qualified doctor working in the room next door and there was no way he was letting her go.
Even if it was Ginny Koestrel.
Especially if it was Ginny Koestrel?
See, there was a direction he didn’t want his thoughts to take. She was simply a medical degree on legs, he told himself. She was a way to keep the islanders safe. Except she was Ginny.
He remembered the first time she’d come to the island. Her parents had bought the vineyard when he’d been eight and they’d arrived that first summer with a houseful of guests. They’d been there to have fun, and they hadn’t wanted to be bothered with their small daughter.
So they’d employed his mum and he’d been at the kitchen window when her parents had dropped her off. She’d been wearing a white pleated skirt and a pretty pink cardigan, her bright red hair had been arranged into two pretty pigtails tied with matching pink ribbon, and she’d stood on the front lawn—or what the McMahons loosely termed front lawn—looking lost.
She was the daughter of rich summer visitors. He and his siblings had been prepared to scorn her. Their mum had taken in a few odd kids to earn extra money.
Mostly they had been nice to them, but he could remember his sister, Jacinta, saying scornfully, ‘Well, we don’t have to be nice to her. She can’t be a millionaire and have friends like us, even if we offered.’
Jacinta had taken one look at the pleated skirt and pink cardigan and tilted her nose and taken off.
But Ben was the closest to her in age. ‘Be nice to Guinevere,’ his mother had told him. He’d shown her how to make popcorn—and then he’d shown her how to catch tadpoles. White pleated skirt and all.
Yeah, well, he’d got into trouble over that but it had been worth it. They’d caught tadpoles, they’d spent the summer watching them turn into frogs and by the time they’d released them the day before she’d returned to Sydney, they’d been inseparable.
One stupid hormonal summer at the end of it had interfered with the memory, but she was still Ginny at heart, he thought. She’d be able to teach Button to catch tadpoles.
Um…Henry. Henry was sitting beside him, waiting to talk about his indigestion.
‘She’s better’n her parents,’ Henry said dubiously, and they both knew who he was talking about.
‘She’d want to be. Her parents were horrors.’
‘She wanted me to stay at the homestead,’ he went on. ‘For life, like. She wanted to fix the manager’s house up. That was a nice gesture.’
‘So why didn’t you?’
‘I have me dad’s cottage out on the headland,’ Henry said. ‘It’ll do me. And when I’m there I can forget about boss and employee. I can forget about rich and poor. Like you did when she were a kid.’
Until reality had taken over, Ben thought. Until he’d suggested their lives could collide.
Henry was right. Keep the worlds separate. He’d learned that at the age of seventeen and he wasn’t going to forget it.
Think of her as rich.
Think of her as a woman who’d just been landed with a little girl called Button, a little girl who’d present all sorts of challenges and who she hadn’t had to take. Think of Ginny’s face when the lawyer had talked of dumping Button in an institution…
Think of Henry’s indigestion.
‘Have you been sticking only to the anti-inflammatories I’ve been prescribing?’ he asked suspiciously. Henry had had hassles before when he’d topped up his prescription meds with over-the-counter pills.
‘Course I have,’ Henry said virtuously
Ben looked at him and thought, You’re lying through your teeth. It was very tempting to pop another pill when you had pain, and he’d had trouble making Henry understand the difference between paracetamol—which was okay to take if you had a stomach ulcer—and ibuprofen—which wasn’t.
Ginny…
No. Henry’s stomach problems were right here, right now. That was what he had to think of.
He didn’t need—or want—to think about Ginny Koestrel as any more than a colleague. A colleague and nothing more.
CHAPTER THREE
GINNY WORKED THROUGH until six. It was easy enough work, sifting through patient histories, checking that their requests for medication made sense, writing scripts, sending them out for Ben to countersign, but she was aware as she did it that this was the first step on a slippery slope into island life.
The islanders were fearful of an earthquake—sort of. Squid was preaching doom so they were taking precautions—buying candles, stocking the pantry, getting a decent supply of any medication they needed—but as Ginny worked she realised they weren’t overwhelmingly afraid.
Earth tremors had been part of this country’s history for ever. The islanders weren’t so worried that they’d put aside the fact that Guinevere Koestler was treating them. This was Ginny, whose parents had swanned around the island for years and whose parents had treated islanders merely as a source of labour.
She hadn’t been back since she’d been seventeen. Once she’d gone to medical school she’d found excuses not to accompany her parents on their summer vacations—to be honest, she’d found her parents’ attitude increasingly distasteful. And then there had been this thing with Ben—so the islands were seeing her now for the first time as a grown-up Koestler.
The island grapevine was notorious. Every islander would know by now that she’d been landed with a child, and every islander wanted to know more.
She fended off queries as best she could but even so, every consultation took three times longer than it should have and by the time she was done she was tired and worried about Button.
Button?
Where was she headed? She’d spent the last six months building herself a cocoon of isolation. One afternoon and it had been shattered.
She needed to rebuild, fast.
She took the last script out to the desk and Ben was waiting for her.
‘All done,’ she said. ‘Mrs Grayson’s cortisone ointment is the last.’ She handed over the script she’d just written. ‘This’ll keep that eczema at bay until Christmas.’
He grinned and greeted Olive Grayson with wry good humour, signed the script and watched the lady depart.
The waiting room was empty. The receptionist was gone. There was no one but Ben.
‘Button…’ she started, and headed towards the kitchenette, but Ben put a hand on her shoulder and stopped her.
It shouldn’t feel like this, she thought, suddenly breathless. Ben touching her?
For heaven’s sake, she wasn’t seventeen any more. Once upon a time she’d thought she was in love with this man. It had been adolescent nonsense and there was no reason for her hormones to go into overdrive now.
‘I hope you don’t mind but I sent her home with our nurse, Abby,’ he said.
‘You…what?’
‘Abby’s a single mum and the tremors happening when she can’t be with her son are doing her head in. So my mum’s taking a hand. Abby will be having dinner with us, so I suggested she and Hannah—my sister—take both kids back to our place. They’ll have put them to bed, and dinner’s waiting for us. Mum says there’s plenty. I have a few house calls to make but they can wait until after dinner if you’d like to join us.’
‘You…’
‘I know, I’m an overbearing, manipulating toad,’ he said, smiling. ‘I’ve manipulated you into working for us this afternoon and now I’ve manipulated you into a dinner date. But it’s not actually a dinner date in the romantic sense. It’s Mum, Dad, whichever of my siblings are home tonight, Abby, Button and you. It’s hardly candlelit seduction.’
She smiled back, but only just. This was exactly what she didn’t want, being drawn into island life. She wanted to work on her vineyard. She wanted to forget about being a doctor. She wanted…
Nothing. She wanted nothing, nothing and nothing.
‘Why not medicine?’ Ben said softly, watching her face, and she thought almost hysterically that he always had been able to read her thoughts.
‘What…what do you mean?’
‘I mean I did some research when I heard you were back on the island. You’ve got yourself a fine medical degree. And yet…’
‘And yet my husband died of cancer,’ she said flatly, almost defiantly
‘And there was nothing you could do? You blame yourself or your medicine? Is that it?’
‘This is not your business.’
‘But you walked away.’
‘Leave it, Ben. I changed direction. I can’t let the vineyard go to ruin.’
‘We need a doctor here more than we need wine.’
‘And I need wine more than I need medicine. Now, if you don’t mind…I’ll collect Button and go home.’
‘My mum will be hurt if you don’t stop and eat.’
She would be, too.
She’d popped in to see Ailsa when she’d arrived back at the island—of course she had. Ben’s mum had always been lovely to her, drawing her into the family, making her time on the island so much better than if she’d been left with the normally sullen adolescent childminders her parents had usually hired on the mainland.
But she’d explained things to Ailsa.
‘I need time to myself—to come to terms with my husband’s death.’ To come to terms with her husband’s betrayal? His anger? His totally unjustified blame? ‘I’m done with relationships, medicine, pressure. I need to be alone.’
‘Of course you do, dear,’ Ailsa had said, and had hugged her. ‘But don’t stay solitary too long. There’s no better cure than hugs, and hugs are what you’ll get when you come to this house. And if I know our kids and our friends, it won’t only be me who’ll be doing the hugging.’
Nothing had changed, she thought. This island was a time warp, the escape her parents had always treated it as.
She wanted this island but she didn’t want the closeness that went with it. For six months she’d held herself aloof but now…
‘Irish stew and parsley dumplings,’ Ben said, grinning and putting on a nice, seductive face. His left eyebrow rose and he chuckled at her expression. ‘Who needs candlelight and champagne when there’s dumplings?’ He held out his hands. ‘Mum says it’s your favourite.’
She’d remembered. Ailsa had remembered!
‘And the kids are already sorting toys for Button,’ he said, and tugged her toward the door. ‘Come on home, Ginny.’
Home.
She didn’t want to go. Every sense was screaming at her to go back to the vineyard.
But Button was asleep at Ailsa’s. Ailsa had made parsley dumplings.
Ben was holding her hands and smiling at her.
What was a woman to do? A woman seemed to have no choice at all.
‘Fine,’ she said.
‘That doesn’t sound gracious,’ he said, but still he smiled.
She caught herself. She was sounding like a brat.
‘I’m sorry. It’s very generous…’
‘It’s you who’s generous,’ he said gently. ‘If you hadn’t helped I wouldn’t be getting any dinner, and Mum knows that as well as I do. So thank you, Ginny, and don’t feel as if by coming you’re beholden. Or even that you’re somehow putting your feet into quicksand. You can draw back. You can go back to your vineyard and your solitude but not before you’ve eaten some of Mum’s Irish stew.’
There were eight people around Ailsa’s kitchen table, and the kids were asleep on the squishy living-room settee just through the door. The children were still in sight of the table. They were still part of the family.
It had always been thus, Ginny thought. Not only had Ailsa and her long-suffering Doug produced twelve children, but their house expanded to fit all comers. Doug worked on one of the island’s fishing trawlers. He spent long times away at sea and when he was home he seemed content to sit by the fire, puffing an empty pipe.
‘I know you smoke it at sea, but not in the house, not with the children,’ Ailsa had decreed, and Doug didn’t mind. He regarded his brood and Ailsa’s strays with bemused approval and the house was the warmer for his presence.
Eight was a small tableful for these two, but the kids were mostly grown now, setting up their own places. Ben was the third of twelve but only the three youngest were home tonight. Becky, Sam and Hannah were fourteen, fifteen and seventeen respectively, and they greeted Abby with warmth and shoved up to make room for her.
Abby, the nurse who’d worked with her that afternoon, was already there. the nurse had impressed Ginny today, not only with her people skills but with her warmth. She looked at home at the table, as if Ben often had her here.
Abby and Ben? A question started.
Ben was helping his mother ladle dumplings onto plates. Doug hardly said a word—it was up to the kids to do the entertaining, and they did.
‘It’s lovely to see you again,’ seventeen-year-old Hannah said, a bit pink with teenage self-consciousness as she said it. ‘We missed you when you went.’
‘Ginny was Ben’s girlfriend,’ fourteen-year-old Becky told Abby, with no teenage self-consciousness at all. ‘I’m too young to remember but everyone says they were all kissy-kissy. And then Ginny went away and Ben broke his heart.’
‘Becky!’ her family said, almost as one, and she flushed.
‘Well, he did. Maureen said he did.’
Ginny remembered Maureen. Maureen was the oldest of the McMahon tribe, self-assertive and bossy. She’d come to see Ginny on the last night Ginny had been on the island, all those years ago.
‘You could have been kind. Ben’s so upset. You could say you’ll write. Something like that.’
How to say that she couldn’t bear to write? That even at seventeen all she’d wanted to do had been to fling herself into Ben’s arms and stay? That she’d talked to her parents about the possibility of university in Auckland but she hadn’t been able to divorce the request from the way she’d felt about Ben, and her parents had laid down an ultimatum.
‘You’re being ridiculous. The boy has no hope of making it through medicine—twelve kids—they’re dirt poor. Cut it off now, Guinevere, if you want to be kind, otherwise you’ll simply distract him from trying. You’re going to university in Sydney and if there’s any more nonsense, we’ll send you to your aunt in London.’
The boy has no hope of making it through medicine. You’ll simply distract him from trying.
The phrases had stung but even at seventeen she had been able to see the truth in them.
Ben had wanted so much to be a doctor. He’d dreamed of it, ached for it. Since he’d been fifteen he’d worked on the docks after school, unloading fish and cleaning them for sale. It was a filthy, hard job, and every cent of what he’d earned had gone to his doctor training fund.
You’ll simply distract him from trying.
And then her father had issued another ultimatum, this one even worse.
Okay. If she couldn’t study in Auckland…If she couldn’t be with him…
She’d made a decision then and there, a Joan of Arc martyrdom, an adolescent burning for a cause. She’d renounce him and prove her parents wrong. She’d tell him not to write, to forget her, to focus purely on his career. Then, when they were both qualified doctors, she’d come again, appear out of the mist, probably wearing something white and floaty, and the orchestra would play and…and…
She found herself smiling, and everyone at the table was looking at her oddly. Even Ben.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I was just remembering how romantic it was. Our first love. I hope your heart wasn’t broken for long, Ben.’
He grinned. ‘For months,’ he said.
‘I thought you started going out with Daphne Harcourt that same summer,’ Hannah retorted. ‘Now, they were kissy kissy. And then there was that painted one you brought home from uni.’
‘And Jessica Crosby with the weird leggings and piercings,’ Becky volunteered. ‘She was hot. And now Mum thinks Abby—’
‘Enough,’ Doug said, breaking in abruptly. ‘Leave the lad alone.’
They subsided as everyone always did when Doug spoke, and why wouldn’t you subside when Ailsa’s Irish stew was in front of you? But Ginny couldn’t help thinking…thinking…
So Ben hadn’t carried a flame for her. That was good, wasn’t it? Yeah, it was, for of course at seventeen she hadn’t carried a torch for him all that long either. She’d immersed herself in university life, she’d had a couple of very nice boyfriends, and then she’d met James.
He’d been older than her, his parents had moved in her parents’ circle and he’d already been a qualified surgeon. She’d been thrilled when he’d noticed her, even more thrilled when he’d proposed.
And that same naivety that had had her dreaming of returning to Kaimotu in clouds of white mist with orchestra backing had then propelled her into a marriage that had been a disaster.
‘Ginny,’ Ben said gently, and she looked up and met his gaze. He looked concerned. Drat, he’d always been able to read her face and it was disconcerting. ‘Are you okay? Did we work you too hard?’
‘Would you like to stay here the night, with the little one?’ Ailsa asked. ‘Ben says you’ve been dropped into parenthood and it’s hard. She’s sound asleep now. She’ll be right here.’
It was so tempting. She could step back into the Mc-Mahons’ protection, she thought, as she’d stepped into it all those years ago.
Its warmth enfolded her. This family…
And then she glanced at Abby, who was looking fiercely down at her dinner plate, and she thought, What am I messing with? If there was something between these two, the kids talking of past loves must really hurt.
Joan of Arc syndrome again? Move aside, Ginny?
It wasn’t dumb, though, she thought. There were no white mists and orchestras in the background now, just hard reality that had been drummed into her ever since she’d made her wedding vows.
‘Thank you but no,’ she managed. ‘It’s a lovely offer but Button and I will be fine.’
‘I’ve put together a wee pack of toys for her,’ Ailsa said. ‘She likes Ben’s old stuffed turtle, Shuffles.’
She flashed a glance at Ben at that, and then looked away fast. Noble doctor donating his Shuffles…It was dumb but why did that tug her heartstrings?
‘Thank…thank you.’
‘If there’s anything else we can do…’
‘I can babysit,’ Hannah said. ‘I’m supposed to be at uni but I copped glandular fever and missed the first two months of the semester. We figured it was best if I took the next two months off as well and start again at mid-year. So if you want to help Ben at the clinic I can keep helping out with Button. I…I do it for money,’ she said, a trifle self-consciously. ‘I mean…I’m sort of saving to be a doctor, too.’
‘We’d love some help,’ Ben said. ‘Wouldn’t we, Abby?’
‘And you know, Ginny, it might help Button settle,’ Ailsa said softly. ‘She’ll find it strange just the two of you. Ben seems to think she’s been used to babysitters, so maybe stretching the care might help her adjust. Hannah looks after Abby’s little boy, Jack, after school. The little ones played really well tonight. It might help you, too, and as Ben says, we need all the medical help we can get.’
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