‘You mean … decisions like leaving the island to be a city doctor?’ We were suddenly back in Jack’s tragedy. I deliberately turned back to my patient files. I had a history for someone called Rosy Scott in front of me now. A quick skim told me that she had suffered from depression as a seventeen-year-old, and Jack’s grandmother had put her on antidepressants a year ago. She needed a follow-up.
She’d be Jack’s problem soon enough. I was going home.
But I wasn’t going home yet. I put Rosy on the pending pile and ploughed back in.
‘You enjoyed the city?’
‘Of course I did. I was doing a job I loved. I was making serious money. I drove a car worth more than this farmhouse. Sarah and I were extremely competent and we had egos bigger than the huge apartment we lived in. So, yes, I was happy.’
‘But no turtles?’
‘I don’t actually depend on turtles for my kicks. Or … I didn’t.’ He paused and suddenly we found we were smiling at each other. Like fools?
Yeah, it was foolish. It was really foolish to smile at this man.
But I still didn’t know the full story—and I needed to.
‘So what happened?’ Yeah, right, Jennifer, like that’s your business. I was breaking rules all over the place. ‘The night of the accident, when Bridget’s parents died.’
‘You don’t want to know.’
‘If I’m to help Bridget, then I need information. Tell me. Right now I’m seeing every sign that I might be in a position to help.’
What was I doing? Being stupid. Sticking my nose in where it wasn’t wanted?
But for some reason I couldn’t stop. Maybe I was feeling that what I had to offer was important. ‘Jack, I think I do need to know,’ I told him. ‘No matter how much you hate telling me. You’ve guilted me into staying, and now you’re suffering the consequences.’
‘You’re interfering.’
‘I know. But at least I don’t scare cows anymore. Just tell me.’
This was a boundary he didn’t want to cross. It was written all over his face. Indecision, misery and guilt.
Guilt most of all.
I should get up and go, right now.
But I stayed where I was. And waited.
‘I was so damned important,’ he said at last. ‘Just like my mother always predicted. “Jack has brains,” she told my grandparents. “He’s destined to be more than a country doctor mouldering here in this island backwater.” She said the same thing of my brother but Dave didn’t trust her. He had sense enough to resist. So Dave took over the farm, married a local girl, Kate, and they had Bridget. But that wasn’t enough for my parents. They washed their hands of him. But they were proud of me.’
‘Because you specialised?’
‘You bet I specialised. My work was prestigious and I was seen at all the international conferences. I gave papers, speeches, wrote for international journals. I came here every six months or so, and when I came home I flaunted my success. When Bridget asked if Sarah and I could take her out in Sydney for her birthday I was stupid enough to think I could show the kid what she could be if she tried hard enough. How arrogant was that?’
‘So what happened?’ I was hardly game to breathe. I knew the pain he was voicing now had been contained for a long time. It takes one to know one, I thought bitterly. I was an expert in masking hurt. In masking need.
I didn’t need. What was I thinking?
Listen.
‘Sarah didn’t want to go,’ he told me. ‘Dinner with a kid? It wasn’t her style. We had an argument. In truth we were arguing a lot at the time. Two ego-driven professionals, each trying to figure out who was the most important. Just like my parents. Anyway, Sarah finally agreed to come. We picked up Bridge, Dave and Kate at their hotel, packed them in the back of my Aston Martin and took them out to dinner. It was a magnificent dinner at a flashy restaurant on Sydney Harbour. But Sarah was still angry. She didn’t show it, but I knew. She was a bit … formal. Tight. And then I got a call.’
‘From the hospital?’ I guessed.
He nodded. ‘One of Sydney’s wealthiest businessmen had been admitted and he was in real trouble. Sure, the doctors on call could have dealt with it, but this guy was incredibly powerful and he was calling for the best. And I was so conceited I thought I could succeed where other doctors couldn’t. So off I went, strutting my tail feathers. Mr Important. Only, of course, Sarah was furious. Entertaining my family didn’t cut it with her at all. She asked how the hell they were expected to get home and I tossed her my car keys. I caught a cab to the hospital. I’d show my face, make sure the minions were doing what they ought and go back, I thought, but by the time I returned they’d gone. And they’d gone for good.’
‘For good?’ I was feeling sick.
‘Of course for good.’ His eyes were blank with misery. ‘Sarah must have had a couple more glasses of wine after I left, or even more. She was angry enough to be foolish. Anyway, they left together in my car. It was raining. Sarah drove too fast onto the entrance of the freeway and she couldn’t handle a powerful car at speed. There was a concrete pylon and water on the road. She killed the lot of them. Apart from Bridge. Bridge she just maimed for life.’
‘Oh, Jack …’
‘So there you have it.’ He was staring numbly ahead, as if he could see them still. ‘My grandfather died before they did—thank God he never knew. But my grandmother … She was in her late seventies and was still working here. She was trying to keep this medical practice going. But when I broke the news, she had a stroke and she never recovered. So I brought Bridge home to … nothing. To a life that somehow we’re going to have to rebuild, but I don’t have a clue how.’
‘Maybe you’ve already started,’ I whispered.
‘Is that right? Can you see that? Here’s Bridget who can’t walk and hardly speaks to anyone but me. She won’t go to school. She gets hysterical every time I suggest it. She can’t move on. Why should she? I killed her family.’
‘It wasn’t your fault. You know it wasn’t.’
‘I’m responsible.’
Somehow I found myself crouching before him, grabbing his hands. ‘Hey, you’ll go nuts like this.’
‘I’m nuts anyway.’
‘Only when you’re weeding at midnight. The rest of the time you’re almost sane.’
‘Thanks.’
‘It’s true.’ I put my fingers up and brushed a stray strand of hair back from his forehead. The sunbleached curl fell straight back. ‘Jack, if a patient came and told you this, what would you say?’
‘There’s no cure.’
‘The cure’s time. I’m sure of it. And gentleness. You need to be gentle with yourself. You made a minor mistake. Sarah made a major one. And so did Dave and Kate. They got into the car with her. They’d have known that she’d been drinking.’
‘They were islanders …’
‘Just because they lived here doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have known what alcohol does behind a wheel.’
‘Oh, sure. They’d have known,’ Jack said bleakly. ‘And Dave loved my car. He was so damned jealous. He might have even egged her to go faster.’
‘There you go, then.’
‘So you’d lift my sackcloth and ashes—just like that?’
‘If I could.’ I went back to gripping his hands. ‘I hate that you’re hurting.’
‘I hate that Bridget hurts. Every time I see her … I’m going nuts.’
‘You won’t help anyone if you go nuts.’
‘I just need sleep,’ he said desperately. ‘I drop off about midnight, exhausted, but at two I’m up again. Pacing. Thinking. Reliving the moment I threw those damned keys to Sarah.’
‘So you go weeding.’
‘And I walk and I surf and I stare out to sea. I obsess about patients—I go over and over what I’ve done, asking myself if I could have done better.’
‘Do you miss your work in Sydney?’ I was still kneeling before him. It was an intimate pose for a coupl
e who’d known each other for only days, but at that moment it seemed right.
‘I don’t.’
‘Really?’ How could he not?
‘Strange as it sounds, the work thing is the least of my problems,’ he said. ‘Of all the stupid discoveries … If I’d figured it out years ago—that money and ego and power don’t mean a thing … Okay, sometimes I miss the action. The excitement. But the community here needs me, and my work is every bit as demanding as it was in Sydney. I couldn’t see that before. If I had, then my family would be alive today.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘I can guess.’
‘Sure you can,’ I told him. ‘But you know the butterfly thing? If a butterfly beats its wings in the Amazon it causes a glacier to collapse in the Antarctic? It might well have been the same here. If you’d come home after med school, the tread of your feet on the wharf could have triggered a freak landslide that killed everyone. Or there might have been a flea in your baggage, or worse. Remember student laundry? Anything’s possible. So Drifter could have caught rabies from your flea and bitten everyone on the island. Or it could have brought plague. By staying away you probably saved everyone.’
‘We’re talking remote chances,’ he said faintly but I knew I had him. I just had to work on it.
‘Whatever. Everyone would have been dead and it wouldn’t be your fault. It’d be what we call fate. Maybe your footsteps caused the landslide or maybe they didn’t. Or was it the flea? Where did the flea come from? A rat? If we go by the fault theory then there’d be a rat somewhere pulling its hair out saying mea culpa; it was my fault.’
He was looking bemused—very bemused—but it was better than desolate. ‘Do rats pull their hair?’
‘Sure they do, but then they move on. How many bald rats do you see? They’ve beaten their shadows just as you need to. Get a life, Dr McLachlan.’
‘Like you?’
‘I have a life. My life’s in Manhattan.’ Which reminded me … I tugged back to free my hands but he didn’t release them.
‘Do you really want to go back?’
‘Of course.’
‘You enjoyed today.’
‘One morning’s surgery and a surfing lesson? It’s not enough to base a career change on.’
‘You miss Richard?’
‘Of course I miss Richard.’ But I’d stopped pulling. I was still holding Jack.
‘Like I miss Sarah?’ he asked.
‘It’s hardly the same. Your Sarah’s dead. Richard’s a plane ride away.’ I winced as I heard what I’d said, but it was the truth all the same.
‘There are similarities. Sarah had the same career ambitions as I did. As I imagine you do.’
I froze at that. Just a little. ‘So what’s the alternative? I don’t see running a non-existent surf school as a career ambition, if that’s what you mean.’
‘I do.’ He was focusing now, as if moving away from his own orbit of misery and really seeing me. ‘I think you’re as confused as I am.’
‘I’m not confused.’
‘No?’
‘No!’
‘So you’re happy.’
‘Yes!’
‘Jenny …’ But he paused.
And there was suddenly nothing to say.
The silence stretched out. The only sound was the crackle of burning logs and Drifter’s wuffling snores. We’d been working by a lamp apiece. There was a pool of light above Jack’s desk and another over the floor space where I’d spread my histories.
It was all too intimate. I had a sudden jab of perception—a knowledge of what was about to happen. Of where we were heading.
Because suddenly it seemed inevitable—as if the entire evening had been leading to this. Jack. And me.
The chaperone thing had failed dismally. What was most important now was Jack’s need. Jack’s pain and his ache for human contact.
And … love?
Where had that word come from?
This wasn’t love, I thought fiercely. Love would be terrifying and this wasn’t terrifying.
But the word itself had jolted me. What I had with Richard was a controlled, carefully planned relationship that had every chance of success. What was suddenly before me with Jack seemed nothing short of wildfire.
And maybe Jack felt it too. We were so drawn, but at this last crucial minute there seemed enough in our combined pasts to hold us back.
His face was so close, but we were apart. A fraction apart. Less than a sliver but it was enough. Somehow I put my hand to my face, increasing the distance. Forming a barrier. I closed my eyes and drew back, and only I knew how much effort that cost.
‘No.’
And it seemed he knew what that one word meant. No, this is really dumb. We’d kissed before and it had lurched both of us into a situation we could hardly control.
‘I don’t think we’re being all that wise here.’ Jack’s voice wasn’t steady but he was agreeing. That was good. Wasn’t it?
‘We … we didn’t mean the last kiss. Right?’
We both seemed to be striving for lightness. This situation had every sign of starting an avalanche and that was the last thing either of us needed.
A butterfly in the Amazon? What consequences?
‘Maybe it’d be better if we hugged Drifter instead of kissing each other,’ I whispered and I got a lopsided smile in return.
‘Aye, but not kiss,’ Jack said. ‘I’ll not kiss Drifter for anyone.’
Drifter heard her name. She was stretched out by the fire like the hearth rug she was, but now her tail brushed the floor. She rose and headed for Jack. To try a lick?
‘Drifter’s got a bit more moustache than I find a turn-on,’ Jack said, avoiding the lick and hugging her instead. I could tell he was regrouping. Gathering mental distance.
I managed a wonky smile. ‘There you go. Sorry, Drifter, but I’m not into kissing women with moustaches, either.’ I pulled myself to my feet. ‘Jack, I’m confused. I didn’t intend … I don’t intend … You know there’s Richard.’
‘Of course there’s Richard. And I don’t want …’
‘Of course not. Neither of us wants.’ I glanced down at the floor. ‘We haven’t finished the histories.’
‘We’ve done enough.’
‘I don’t think so but I’ll take some home and do them there.’
He nodded. Impersonal. ‘I’d appreciate it. Did you drive here?’
‘I walked along the beach.’
‘I’ll walk you home.’
‘I can walk home myself.’
The lazy smile flickered into life again. ‘You’re scared of bogeymen, remember? And drop bears and hoop snakes and things that go bump in the night.’
‘Drop bears? Hoop snakes?’ I looked at him sideways, sure that he was joking. Almost sure. ‘You’re making that up.’
‘Would I?’
‘Yes.’
‘But can you be sure?’ Can you be certain the dreaded Nautilus Island drop bear isn’t atop every lurking tree?’
I thought about that for a bit and told him the truth. ‘You know, even if they did exist, which I don’t believe for a moment, I’m not as scared of them as I am of you.’
‘You’ve no need to be scared of me.’
I gazed at him for a long moment while the firelight flickered and tension went zinging back and forth like an electric current looking for earth.
‘Drifter and I will walk you home,’ he decreed. He snagged a jacket from behind the door and placed it over my shoulders. ‘You’ve worked for me tonight and I’m not having you falling off a cliff and blaming me.’
‘Cliffs?’ There were steps down to the beach from his place but after that … ‘I only saw dunes.’
‘They’re very high dunes and I’m still walking you home.’
We walked home in silence, which was essential as there was no room for talking in my muddled state.
The night was beautiful, warm and still. Moonlight was playing over the sha
llow breakers below the dunes, and there was rustling and scampering from the trees along the beachfront. Hoop snakes? Maybe not, but tiny night creatures were certainly foraging in the dark—and the breaking waves formed a hush-hushing backdrop to their gentle noise. Drifter was tagging behind, sniffing scents that seemed entirely satisfactory.
Life here was as different to what I’d known as it was possible to be.
This man was as different to Richard as it was possible to be.
And then I thought, no, he was the same as Richard. What was different was that he’d been hit by tragedy. In time, he’d return to how he’d been.
Would he return to the city?
I couldn’t imagine him there. Jack McLachlan, with wealthy patients, his face smooth and clean, wearing expensive aftershave.
For some reason I hated the thought.
As we neared Henry’s farm the track narrowed, a fall away to the beach on one side and the fence through to the cows on the other.
He was far too close for comfort.
Get a grip. Go home and phone Richard.
Go home and take a cold shower.
Home?
No. I was going back to the farm which wasn’t anywhere like home. Home was Manhattan. Home was so far away it was almost unimaginable.
There were cows in the fields beside us. I could make out their shapes. They were in solemn groupings, watching in silence as we made our way past.
My cows.
‘Have you put the farm on the market yet?’ Jack asked and I jumped. What was it with this man? He had the ability to read minds.
‘I’ve hardly had time,’ I snapped and then regretted it. ‘I’m sorry. I have another few weeks.’
‘A couple of the resort development guys are due here any day now. They made offers to the islanders a few weeks back and said they’ll be back then to hear if there are any takers. There won’t be amongst us. Islanders don’t sell unless they’re desperate. But you … With this prime beach frontage you could name your price.’
‘What will Clive do if I sell?’
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