The Doctor's Unexpected Family

by Lilian Darcy

  How strongly did she feel about this question of boarding at Woodside? Would she risk taking the matter to family court?

  Oh, it was miserable!

  She almost hoped Josh would do badly in the tests and not earn a place there.

  After the morning of tests came an afternoon of activities. An art exhibition, food stalls, sporting displays. Robert insisted on seeing all of it, and since they were going straight on to dinner with him and Gail and Amelia at their home, Caroline couldn’t make an excuse to leave. If Robert thought he’d get Josh on side with all this action, then he didn’t understand the problem.

  ‘What do you think?’ she whispered to her son, shortly before they left, at last.

  ‘I like the pool,’ he answered gloomily.

  She guessed he’d never be able to articulate his reluctance very well, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t real, and worth taking seriously.

  That evening, they all tried very hard. Gail asked lots of questions about Caroline’s work, her house, her family, and Caroline reciprocated. She found Gail much easier to talk to than Robert now. Josh was gorgeous with Amelia, giving her ‘horsy rides’ on his back and making her shriek with laughter, but if Robert was in any way influenced by this, or if he even noticed, he didn’t make any comment.

  The next day, he and Gail had another commitment in the morning, thank goodness, so Caroline and Josh swam in the motel’s heated pool and had a walk and bought some snacks to eat in the car on the way home. Robert had agreed to drive them to Coogee in the afternoon.

  They arrived early, at a quarter to three, and Caroline didn’t want to keep her ex-husband waiting around—or Declan, if he was ready to start ahead of time—so she went up the stairs to the top-floor unit and knocked straight away.

  Suzy opened the door. Frowned. ‘Oh, hi.’

  ‘We’re early. I hope—’

  But Suzy had already disappeared, not interested in what Caroline hoped. It wasn’t clear from her manner that she remembered who Caroline was, although surely she must.

  Caroline stood and waited, staring at the white expanse of a door pushed back towards the jamb so that it was only just ajar. Declan appeared a few minutes later.

  ‘The car’s parked round the corner,’ he said. He looked preoccupied. ‘Let me help you transfer your gear. Do you want to come in for a minute?’

  ‘No, I’m fine, thanks. Robert is waiting in the street with Josh.’

  Beside Robert’s car, she introduced the two men briefly, and asked Josh to help Declan with the overnight bags.

  ‘So…’ Robert said, as soon as Declan and Josh headed around the corner.

  ‘Well, it’s been interesting,’ she answered brightly.

  His face clouded. ‘Better than that, I hope. Don’t treat him like a baby, Caroline. That’s the problem with being the single mother of a son. He’s not getting enough male influence. It you want the truth, that’s a big factor in my feeling so strongly about Woodside. Obviously the fatherson relationship is the preferable one, but if there was some other decent man around for him, I’d be almost as happy. This guy Declan who drove you down…’

  He tilted his head in the direction of Declan, who was just about to disappear around the corner into a side street. Parking was tight in this area, so near the beach, and Robert had been lucky to squeeze into a space in front of the building.

  ‘Declan? Yes?’

  ‘Do you have something going on? Are you involved?’

  ‘No. He’s—’

  ‘You see, that would be the best argument against sending him to Woodside. If you were planning to marry again, to a successful, decent man. Josh would have the male influence then.’

  ‘Right.’

  It didn’t make sense to Caroline. Josh already had his Uncle Chris on the farm, a male soccer coach, her father, until the recent experimental move to Queensland, and Robert himself during holiday visits. Tons of male influence. Again, she didn’t argue the issue, and wondered, half flippant and half painfully serious, whether she should actively look for a new relationship.

  She’d lost weight, felt more attractive than she had for several years, if not as confident as she’d have liked. And she’d seen her friends Kit and Emma find love with good men.

  So, yes. Sure. She’d start answering personal ads, join a singles club or some organisation in which males predominated—the local volunteer bushfire service, perhaps. She’d circle the choppy waters of Glenfallon’s dating scene like a shark, in search of a male influence for Josh. It didn’t matter how much she actually liked the man herself.

  Declan and Josh came back round the corner again towards Robert’s car and the entrance to the block of units. Declan had his car keys jingling in his hand. He tossed them casually in the air and caught them again. Sunlight glinted on the metal of the keys, and brightened one side of his face. His eyes looked as blue as the sea that stretched to the horizon from the beach just beyond the far end of the street.

  One look at him, and Caroline knew she wouldn’t be answering any personal ads. Not yet. Not until she could get over this attraction that had hit her so unexpectedly over the past six weeks, and which had no possibility of a future.

  ‘Well, we’ll talk again soon,’ Robert told her.

  ‘Thanks for looking after us so well,’ she answered.

  They didn’t touch. Hadn’t for years.

  He gave Josh the playful punch on the arm that he’d considered an appropriate degree of physical affection for his son since Josh was two, then climbed into his car and roared off up the street, back to the baby daughter he cuddled and talked baby talk to and bought presents for almost every week.

  ‘I’ll just say goodbye to Suzy,’ Declan said, and loped up the stairs.

  He wasn’t gone for long.

  They left on time, at three, and Josh was soon asleep in the back. He’d had a restless night, and the motion sickness tablet was having its usual effect.

  ‘Did you have a good weekend, then?’ Declan asked casually, after he’d turned into Alison Road.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she answered. ‘Woodside is fabulous. You start to understand why it’s so expensive. Josh felt he did well in the tests. Robert thinks the school will be very good for him. And it was lovely to watch him and Amelia, his half-sister, together.’

  Declan didn’t say anything for a moment, then he glanced across at her and drawled, ‘The last sentence I’ll believe.’

  ‘Oh. Only the last sentence?’

  ‘Hey, didn’t we more or less agree a month or so ago that we were going to be friends, and honest with each other?’

  ‘We agreed that we were going to share a laugh sometimes, I thought.’

  ‘Well, you can’t share a laugh, if you’re not being honest.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ she agreed cautiously.

  Out of a short silence, she suddenly heard him swear under his breath, and glanced in his direction, automatically wondering, after her own experience on Friday, if there was something wrong with the car.

  ‘Problem?’ she asked.

  He shook his head, frowning, a little distant in his thoughts. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve just…realised something, that’s all.’

  ‘Forgot your pillow?’

  He laughed, then drawled, ‘Nothing that dire.’

  ‘Now it’s you who’s not being honest,’ she said.

  Silence.

  ‘Thinking about my weekend,’ he finally answered.

  ‘Was it as good as mine?’ She let the sarcasm show lightly in her tone.

  So did he. ‘Better, if that’s possible,’ he said. He hesitated. ‘I…uh…yes.’ He stopped again. ‘Suzy’s coming down next weekend.’

  Which didn’t tell Caroline very much.

  He didn’t seem inclined to go into any detail about the ambivalent mood she could sense in him, so she let it drop.

  She found it much more difficult to go on hiding her own preoccupation. When you found someone easy to talk to, it was hard not to l
et everything spill out. ‘I just don’t want my son to go away to school,’ she heard herself say…and didn’t even have the excuse that alcohol had loosened her tongue today.

  Maybe the smooth, hypnotic movement of the car along the multi-lane highway could have just as dangerous an effect. ‘I think Robert is trying to remake Josh in his own image, and in his way he means well, but they’re too different for that.’

  ‘Is Josh more like you, then?’

  ‘In some ways. And he’s a lot like my father. Mostly, he’s just himself.’

  ‘Which is the best thing to be.’

  ‘Absolutely. We—we didn’t plan him. I was on the Pill. I was six hours late in taking it one crucial day, and that was all my system needed.’

  ‘You must be very fertile.’

  ‘I must have been. Then. I was only twenty-one. Robert took ages to accept that we were having a baby, but I was thrilled straight away. Robert will see more of Josh than I do if he goes to Woodside, and even though he talks about building a better relationship, and means it, I’m not convinced he’d notice if Josh was seriously unhappy, or going off the rails. He’s very absorbed in Gail and Amelia, of course. It’s right that he should be. But he makes the wrong assumptions about Josh.’

  ‘I think a lot of parents do, particularly about their firstborn, and especially when that first-born is of the same sex. My older sister got a heck of a hard time from my mother, growing up.’

  ‘I haven’t asked, Declan, are you from a large family?’

  ‘Six.’

  ‘Six!’

  ‘What we lacked in material wealth, we made up for in companionship. And fights. We were like puppies, tumbling around the house.’

  ‘And where did you fit in?’

  ‘Third. You learn a lot about compromise. And a lot about grabbing what’s on offer, whether you want it or not, before it disappears.’

  ‘This was in Dublin? Belfast?’

  ‘County Kerry, in a little town called Ballycarreal, in a little house next to the post office, with a garage just like your dad’s. ’Twasn’t the kind of Irish poverty that people write haunting novels about, but it had its memorable moments.’

  The slight veneer of London that usually smoothed some of the curls off his accent peeled away as he talked about his childhood. Caroline listened, entranced by what he said, entranced by his voice and his tone and the expressions that crossed his face, and very glad they were talking about him, not her. She didn’t want to go whining on and on about Josh and Robert.

  ‘You must miss the green of the fields,’ she said.

  ‘But not the rain that makes them that way.’

  ‘Rain! If you could arrange to get some sent across, we’d love it.’

  He laughed, then asked, ‘How are the little boys settling in, by the way?’

  ‘Oh, they’re sweet. And a handful. It was the right thing to do. Chris is bringing them into town first thing in the morning. I know Sandie just won’t get enough rest with them around for more than a day or two at a stretch. It’s hard for her. She’s missed them terribly for the past ten days, even though they’ve talked on the phone every night.’

  ‘Do the boys know much about what’s going on?’

  ‘Not much.’ She told him about their utter faith in their mum getting well, and confessed, ‘Sometimes, sharing their faith is the only thing that keeps the rest of us going, I think.’

  ‘Who’re the rest of you? I mean, besides the obvious. You and Chris and Sandie herself.’

  ‘Well, there’s her two sisters, near Wentworth and Holbrook, and Chris’s and my parents, whose house you’re renting. They’re coming down soon, by the way, for a visit. I get the impression they’re not enjoying the Gold Coast lifestyle as much as they expected to. Sandie’s illness has given them a shock, too.’

  ‘Family pulls more strongly at such times.’

  ‘Where are your brothers and sisters, Declan?’

  ‘Scattered all over the world, which means I feel the family pull in about six different directions and have to make my own way. London seemed the obvious choice.’

  ‘You trained there?’

  ‘Yes, and stayed on afterwards. Meanwhile, my parents are still in the same house we grew up in. They’ve no plans to move.’

  ‘And I wouldn’t be surprised if Mum and Dad end up back in Glenfallon.’

  ‘I like Glenfallon,’ Declan said. ‘A lot more than I expected to.’

  As much as Sydney? More than London?

  Caroline caught herself just in time, and managed not to make a Tom-like, over-enthusiastic response to his statement.

  ‘A few people seem to find that,’ she said instead, in a much more neutral tone. ‘Their prejudices against Australian country towns fade once they settle in.’

  ‘Yes, as a year’s exile, it could be a lot worse.’

  She gave a stricken cry. ‘Exile!’ Then she saw how he was laughing at her, and laughed, too. ‘You’re good, Dr McCulloch!’

  They went on talking, and Caroline was astonished when she saw the fast food and petrol signs at the far end of the Yass bypass, just ahead. Had they come this far? It hadn’t felt nearly that long. She’d been too content, and too interested in their conversation, to notice.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE woman going into the supermarket looked vaguely familiar, Declan realised at once. She smiled at him in a tentative way, not quite meeting his eye. With Suzy pushing the trolley of filled grocery bags ahead of him, he stopped and racked his brains, trying to put the woman in context.

  Someone from the hospital. Around forty years old, with dark blonde hair, freckly skin and a reserved way of holding her body that hinted at a strong need for distance and privacy. Someone who—

  Click.

  ‘Hi!’ he said, feeling his interest rise. ‘Hello!’

  This was the patient whose sister had yelled at her, five or six weeks ago, because she’d left a breast lump unexamined and untreated for so long that it had become an open wound. He remembered the emotion they’d all felt, and had to suppress a shiver of reaction.

  ‘Hello, Dr McCulloch.’ She smiled again.

  ‘You’re back in Glenfallon. I’m sorry, I know exactly who you are, but I’ve forgotten your name.’

  ‘Alison. Alison Scanlon.’

  ‘That’s right. You’re back from Canberra.’

  ‘Just for the weekend. I still have another week of treatment.’ The corners of her mouth turned down in a wry expression. ‘But I needed a break, and it’s my sister’s birthday, so I came back.’

  ‘You’re looking good.’

  ‘Feeling a bit better,’ she agreed cautiously.

  Declan was immediately pleased that he’d run into her. He glanced through the automatic doors and saw Suzy waiting beyond them. She looked back at him, frowning and impatient. Well, she could wait a couple of minutes, couldn’t she?

  ‘The oncologist is pleased with how the tumour is responding,’ Alison said. ‘But they did a scan and there’s something on my ovary as well.’

  The tone suggested she was reporting a wart on her knee, but she would have been told what the ‘something’ on her ovary meant. Metastasis. A spread of the cancer beyond the primary tumour in her breast to other parts of her body. In no way was it anything other than disastrous news.

  Declan could only nod.

  ‘OK,’ he added, to make his response just marginally less inadequate.

  ‘I’m booked in, here in Glenfallon, for the ovary and the, um, other place, as soon as the treatment’s finished in Canberra,’ she told him, and he knew that he or Tom would therefore be the first to learn her prognosis.

  It would probably be him, Declan realised. Tom was mainly tackling other areas of pathology, such as blood analysis and biochemistry, and leaving the anatomical pathology to him now that he was on board.

  In around ten days, Declan would examine some cell clusters and some fragments of tissue, with this woman’s whole life hanging on wha
t he saw. And the prognosis would almost certainly be dire. He didn’t look forward to making it, and he knew Alison’s GP would hate having to give her the news, no matter what stage of acceptance she might have reached.

  Suzy abandoned the trolley and strode back through the automatic doors. ‘Are you coming, Declan? Or…?’ She tossed a cool, uninterested glance at Alison.

  ‘Good luck,’ Declan said to the woman. ‘Are you here on your own?’

  ‘My sister dropped me off. She’s parking. We’re getting a ton of fruit and vegetables. She’s nagging me to death about eating right. Everyone is.’

  She grinned suddenly, still managing to look shy and reserved even when the smile lit up her whole face. And Declan knew that at least she’d been given this gift of truly understanding how much she meant to her family.

  ‘Well, as I said, all the luck in the world, Alison.’

  ‘Who was that?’ Suzy asked outside a few minutes later.

  ‘A patient.’ He took over the trolley.

  ‘I thought you saw cells and tissue, not patients.’

  ‘Sometimes I see actual patients. More than I used to in London. She’s one of them.’

  ‘Interesting?’

  ‘Yes.’

  But he didn’t want to talk about it. Suzy got angry, in a teasing sort of way. ‘Hey, doesn’t it ever occur to you, McCulloch, that I might be able to use some of this stuff?’

  ‘That’s what I’m afraid of.’

  ‘Oh, honestly, Dec, I’d change the details, of course. Actually, I need an illness right now, in Episode Six, where the character has to be at death’s door, and then—’

  ‘Not this illness. Not today. Let’s talk about where we’re going for our picnic.’

  ‘Yeah, the picnic, that’s going to be fun.’

  ‘Is that the best you ever look for in anything, Suzy?’ Declan heard himself say. ‘That it’s going to be fun?’

  He saw her startled, uncomprehending, let’s-not-spoil-the-moment expression, and knew that they had to talk.

  This weekend.

  Caroline had a cup of tea in her hand, on the way back to her office, when she heard Declan’s phone ring in the office just along the corridor. Declan heard it, too, and looked up from the multi-header microscope, where he was giving Natalia his opinion on a difficult slide. He saw Caroline in the doorway.