by Lilian Darcy
‘Emma will look after me.’ Pete frowned at the ankle, which he’d raised onto the cushioned seat of the adjacent chair and draped in its plastic packet of peas. ‘As long as I stay off it today, I’m hoping it’ll be all right tomorrow.’
‘You had three doctors poking at it, including yourself, and none of us thought it was serious.’ He stood up. ‘I’ll be heading off home, I think.’
‘Thanks for driving me.’
‘Thanks for the beer.’
‘No problem, Declan.’
From her prone position, Caroline heard Declan’s footsteps striding down the corridor. ‘I’ll let myself out, Emma,’ he said in the doorway, and then the front door opened and shut at once, and he thudded across the veranda and down the steps. His car started up less than a minute later.
‘Your shoulders feel very tight,’ Emma told her.
‘Sorry.’
‘No, I meant, am I not doing it right? You felt good and relaxed before the men came back early.’
‘Pete probably wants us to leave.’
‘Don’t worry about it. We’re up to the last series of movements now. It won’t be long.’
Caroline and Kit lay there as Nell and Emma had done, but Caroline wasn’t tempted by sleep. The massage had been ruined for her as soon as she’d heard Declan’s voice. She’d kept her eyes closed, but hadn’t needed to look towards the doorway to realise that he’d have seen her naked, glistening back. He probably hadn’t bothered to look at it for more than a second, but still she’d felt vulnerable.
And foolish, somehow. She hadn’t wanted a near-stranger and new colleague to see her and her friends bumbling through their self-taught massage programme. It was a girl thing.
‘Now, as the book says, you should rest there for a few minutes before you try to move,’ Emma instructed both her and Kit. ‘No, don’t pack up the oil and the spare towels, Nell. I’ll do it.’
She jumped up and went down the corridor to Pete. Nell disappeared into the bathroom, and half a minute later Caroline and Kit both heard Emma helping Pete to hobble back into the house. They heard snatches of their conversation as well.
‘We were going to go out to dinner tonight,’ Pete was saying.
‘We can still do that. I’ll drive.’
‘I never wanted to play tennis in the first place.’ The fridge door opened and closed, and kitchen sounds began to mask some of their words. ‘Tom’s campaign…’ Caroline heard, and ‘our precious time alone….’
Emma’s voice dropped to a soothing murmur, then there was silence and private laughter.
‘We’d better go,’ Kit said. ‘I wonder if Gian’s still playing, or if he’s already at home. I don’t know how many other players they had.’
She sat up, wrapped a towel around her back, dried off the oil and reached for her clothing. In a hurry to give Emma and Pete their privacy, Caroline wondered, or to get home to her own man? Probably both.
I’ll pick Josh up from Rohan’s early, she decided. He won’t want to come yet, but that’s tough.
She put on her blouse and found her watch. Four o’clock. Josh had been at his friend’s since ten. He couldn’t complain. They’d make pizza together and negotiate on the rental of a video they’d both enjoy. It would be fun.
She hoped he wouldn’t ask about having a sleep-over. She didn’t feel she saw enough of him as it was, and next weekend the threatened rugby coaching clinic was happening, so she wouldn’t see him at all.
Robert had sent a plane ticket for him. Josh had a terrible time with the small propeller-driven aircraft that flew between Sydney and Glenfallon. Even with a motion sickness pill, it would be touch and go, and if Robert and Josh forgot about him taking the pill well in advance for the flight home, as was quite likely…
Josh would have had a much easier journey on the train, or by car. Six hours’ drive was such an awkward distance away. Close enough that weekends weren’t completely out of the question, but too far to make it an easy trip, and the plane and train services weren’t frequent enough. Was that why Declan was alone again this weekend?
When she got to Rohan’s, both boys besieged her with pleas for a sleep-over, just as she’d feared. Rohan’s mum, who was a nice woman, told her with a helpless shrug, ‘I’ve said yes, as long as it’s all right with you.’
Caroline didn’t have the heart to refuse, so she made eggs for herself instead of pizza that night, rented a movie that Josh would have hated, and couldn’t help thinking, more than once, as she pottered around her too-quiet house, Declan McCulloch is alone this weekend, too. I wonder what he’s doing with himself tonight?
CHAPTER FIVE
CAROLINE looked at the pile of slide trays in Julianne’s arms and knew she’d be staying late today. Her in-tray, which would usually have been empty at this stage of the afternoon, had several wooden and cardboard racks still awaiting her attention. She hadn’t worked with her usual concentration.
‘Now?’ she said to the lab technician. She softened her exasperated tone with a smile. ‘You bring me this lot now, at four on a Monday afternoon?’
‘They’re mostly Paps. Just a couple of other things. You can leave them till tomorrow.’
‘By which time you’ll have another pile for me, right?’
‘Right, but you’ll have Natalia to help.’
‘Not good enough. I’ll at least make a start this afternoon.’ Or get rid of as much of the old pile as she could. Ten cases, say. That was a nice, round number.
She reached for the phone and dialled her neighbour, who had teenagers and was always happy to have Josh over for an hour or so when necessary. Then she phoned Josh himself, to warn him not to expect her until six-ish and suggest that he pop next door. Mrs Hollis was expecting him, and Steve Hollis had just received a new video game system for his birthday. Further inducement was not required.
She hoped his energy levels would hold up, though. His flight had been late in from Sydney last night, and he’d been so nauseous that they’d had to sit in Glenfallon’s tiny terminal for half an hour before he’d been able to face the car journey home.
‘Didn’t Dad give you the motion sickness tablet?’
‘He forgot.’
‘Why didn’t you remind him?’
‘I forgot, too.’
She’d had to give him a late meal, and it had been after ten by the time he’d got to bed.
He hadn’t said much about the weekend. Just a gruff, ‘It was OK,’ which could have meant anything. Interpreting body language rather than words, she was pretty sure he hadn’t enjoyed it much. No surprise there. She didn’t think he was made for rugby, either physically or mentally, and wondered how long it would be before Robert would see this himself and let go of the idea.
Am I handling Robert the right way? she wondered.
He’d remarried four years ago, and he and Gail had a little daughter, aged thirteen months. He doted on Amelia, naturally. Caroline would have doted on a darling baby daughter, too! And it wasn’t fair to say that Amelia had pushed Josh aside in Robert’s heart, but all the same…
He seemed to make these authoritative pronouncements on Josh’s future without taking the time to think about who Josh was, or consider alternatives. Josh would attend Woodside. Josh would play rugby. Josh should aim for medicine or law. Orthopaedic surgery would be an excellent choice, following in Robert’s own footsteps.
And last night, when Caroline had phoned to confirm their son’s safe arrival home, Robert had casually told her, ‘He’ll have to come up again in three weeks. Woodside is having its academic testing for next year’s year sevens and a tour of the school.’
‘Three weeks?’
‘I know, it’s a bit much so soon, but it can’t be helped. I’m sorry we both forgot the motion sickness stuff. I must ask Gail to stay on top of things like that with him. She’s so much better at that sort of detail than I am.’
‘I’ll drive him up,’ she’d said. ‘I won’t put him on the plane again.
I’d like to see the school, too. I’m sure the facilities at Woodside can’t be so very superior to what Ranleigh has to—’
But Robert never wanted to consider Ranleigh. ‘It’d be great if you’d drive up, yes. You’ll be impressed with Woodside, I promise. You know I’m prepared to pay the full cost of tuition and boarding, so there’s really no disincentive for you.’
Yes, there was.
But she didn’t go through the argument again.
Instead, she just slept badly, and couldn’t focus at work, so now she was behind.
Taking a deep breath, she slid another piece of rectangular glass beneath her microscope lens and began to examine the clusters of cells. By the time she got to the sixth case of the ten more she’d promised herself she’d get through, she was so tired that she’d already revised her promise downward to eight. Or seven, if this dawning headache got worse.
It took her several seconds, too, to realise that the name on the slide was familiar.
Sandie McLennan.
Her brother Chris’s wife.
And this wasn’t a routine Pap smear, it was a fine needle aspiration that Declan or Tom must have done this morning here at the hospital. She brought up the information already logged into the computer. Yes, Declan had done it, and the name was no coincidence. All the other details fitted her sister-in-law, too.
OK, she reassured herself. The problem wasn’t necessarily serious. Surely Sandie would have said something if she was worried about her health in any way.
Caroline snapped the first slide onto the microscope platform. It made its usual glassy tink sound, then squeaked as she slid it into position. The department was very quiet. The lab techs had gone home, and so had Steph. Declan and Tom might still be around, or they might have left, too. All she could hear was the faint hum of the computer, irritating rather than soothing at this hour.
She flicked the knob around to focus the slide, then searched for a good grouping of cells within the pretty stainings of pink and purple. Owl eyes stared back at her, too many pairs of them to count.
Owl eyes!
She went cold, and her heart began to pound in her chest. She hadn’t wanted to see something like this. Arranged randomly amongst the normal lymphocyte cells, each abnormal cell was much larger, and contained two nuclei instead of one. This was the ‘owl eyes’ effect that had struck her so forcefully at once. Within each nucleus was a smaller circle that stained redder with the dye the lab technicians used. This was another indicator that the cells were abnormal.
Abnormal, and easily recognised, to her trained eye.
Hodgkin’s cells.
Cancer cells.
There were five slides in Sandie’s sample, and all of them looked the same. Forcing herself to stay calm, Caroline went through each one. These weren’t cross-sections of tissue. There was no ‘architecture’, as doctors called it. The sample had been centrifuged in a special machine to concentrate the cells and separate them from the fluid, then dyed and smeared onto the slides. In a case like this, there was no possibility of error.
Those large, owl-eyed cells denoted Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Sandie had cancer.
Caroline gulped back a hiccuping sob of shock. She pushed her chair back and fled her microscope and her office, holding the last of Sandie’s slides between one forefinger and thumb. The edges of the glass could have cut her if she’d gripped it any harder.
Questions hammered in her mind. Regret and guilt washed back and forth. She paced the corridor, thinking, I should pack up, turn off the equipment. I’m not going to get those other cases done. I should go home to Josh. But if he sees I’m upset, and wants to know what’s wrong…
She hadn’t realised that Declan was still there until she heard a sound and saw him appear around the corner of the corridor, his stride long and easy, his smile already in place. ‘Thought everyone had gone,’ he said, then took a better look at her face. ‘Hey…’
She tried to smile. ‘Yes, I’m a sight, aren’t I?’
‘You’re upset,’ he corrected, not fooled. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I—Nothing. I…’ She only realised then that she still had the slide in her fingers.
‘Don’t tell me…You haven’t made a mistake, and Tom hasn’t yelled at you, so…’ He looked at the rectangle of glass in her hand. ‘This is something serious?’ He looked more closely at her face. ‘Yes, and it’s someone you know.’
‘Should I tell you?’ She waved the slide in her frantic hand. ‘It’s confidential. I’m caught in this cleft stick of—’
‘I’ll be looking at it in any case, won’t I, to sign off on the diagnosis?’
‘Yes. Of course you will. I’m not thinking at all. You already have. You did the fine needle aspiration this morning.’ The realisation focused her fracturing awareness a little. She took a breath. ‘This is my sister-in-law,’ she explained. ‘My brother’s wife. We’re quite close. We should be closer, only I haven’t made the effort to go out to their property as often as I should lately.’
‘She didn’t tell you about this? What is it?’
‘Hodgkin’s lymphoma, unmistakable in every slide. I’m wondering if she knows. If her GP indicated his real level of concern. She must have had symptoms.’
‘Fatigue, weight loss, night sweats, aching joints, loss of appetite. You’d think so, yes. People often put those symptoms down to something else, though. Stress. Flu.’
‘Stress! As if there’s any farmer in this state who hasn’t been stressed, these past couple of years, with the drought! I might have realised it was more than that, if she’d told me about the way she’d been feeling. She might have gone to her doctor sooner if I’d been there to give her some encouragement.’
Caroline began to shake and she felt nauseous. She hugged her arms around herself, fighting both sensations. Sandie and Chris’s two boys were still so young, just four and seven. Sandie would be in anguish at the thought that cancer might take her from them, and from the husband she loved.
Declan stood there, and Caroline whispered an apology, thinking that he must hate this, must wish he’d left ten minutes ago. He reached out and put a hand on her shoulder, but he must have felt the gesture to be inadequate—and it was—because a moment later he stepped forward and took her into his arms.
‘Hey…’ he said again, like soothing a baby, or a foal.
He stroked a hand up and down her back, patted the back of her head, made sh-sh sounds in his Irish accent. She rested her forehead on his shoulder, where firm, elastic muscle softened the straight, sturdy ridge of bone.
His pale shirt smelled of apple-scented laundry detergent and sunny air, and the crook of his arm around her warmed her side and her back. He felt big against her body, strong, sure of himself and of the comfort he offered her. For herself, she could have drowned in it. She’d never been in his arms before, and yet it felt familiar, as if she belonged. At any other time, she would have fought the feeling, but right now she couldn’t.
‘This isn’t your fault, Caroline,’ he said. ‘You can beat yourself up over not going to visit your family often enough if you want, but don’t blame yourself for a twist of fate that’s out of your hands.’
‘I want to go and see them right now,’ she said. Her breath warmed his shirt. ‘Sandie and Chris, and their boys. I wish I could just get in the car and drive.’
‘Can you do that?’ He must have felt the tiny shake of her head against his shoulder. ‘Why can’t you?’
‘They’re an hour and forty minutes from here. It’s a big property, called Comden Reach. I have to pick up Josh. It’s not a good road at night. Dark, no traffic, and—’
‘They’re not very good reasons, Caroline.’ His voice resonated in her ear, achingly close.
‘OK. No. Declan, I can’t…confront her with this, open my arms to her and start sobbing, if there’s a chance she has no idea yet what this is about. It has to come from her doctor, who’ll be able to answer her questions. And it
has to be in a setting—her doctor’s office—where she’ll at least be a little prepared. I have to wait.’
‘What if she does have an idea?’
‘Then why on earth didn’t she phone, or why didn’t Chris? To talk to me?’
‘So you’re hurt, too, aren’t you?’
‘Which is so selfish! This isn’t about me but, yes, if that’s the case, if she suspected something was wrong, then I’m hurt. I could have helped. I hope. I care about both of them. I would have wanted to try to help, anyway. I don’t know what to feel.’
‘And that can be the worst part of it sometimes. Clear-cut feelings are easier.’
His hand still washed up and down her back, like a chamois cloth polishing a cosseted car, careful and soft. Her forehead had glued itself to his shoulder, and her neck muscles refused to lift her head. He smelled good. He felt good—his warm arms, his strong legs. Most importantly, he kept saying the right things. But she couldn’t stay in this position any longer. It just wasn’t right.
‘Thanks,’ she said.
Her voice whispered harshly through her tightened throat, and her head came up at last—up far enough to bring his neck and jaw in line with her vision, just an inch or two away. Something jolted and coiled low inside her. Heavy. Strong as a train.
She stepped back to safety, frightened of the power of this full, physical yearning in her body. Her lips almost tingled with the desire to press herself against his skin. She felt heavy inside. She hadn’t responded to a man this strongly—and this inappropriately—since she’d been in her teens. She ought to have more self-control. Declan’s narrowed eyes raked over her tight face, and she could see him rethinking what he’d been about to say before he even said it.
‘Listen, you said the road to their place wasn’t safe at night.’ He spoke slowly. ‘For you and Josh alone, you mean? Because if you do want to go out there tonight, I could come with you and—’
‘No.’ She cut him off with a decisiveness that he surely wouldn’t ignore. ‘That’s…unbelievably kind of you, but I think it would be wrong.’
