A Secret Shared...

by Marion Lennox

  ‘He is.’ Harry beamed. Finally, here was something he agreed with. ‘Jack’s silly.’

  ‘And I hope he’s not bothering you.’ It was Kate; of course it was Kate. How long had she been there, on the other side of the screens, listening and waiting for a chance to break in? He tugged back the screen and she was calmly sitting on the sand, with Maisie’s head in her lap, as if this was where she sat all the time. ‘Jack’s an excellent doctor but he can be silly,’ she told Susie, as if she’d been part of the conversation all along. But there was no mention of what had just happened. No fuss. ‘I went to university with him,’ she told Susie. ‘So I should know.’

  ‘He says I can still dance,’ Susie faltered.

  ‘Then make him prove it.’

  ‘He says he will. I...hope.’

  ‘Then, silly or not, if he says he will then he will,’ Kate said, smiled down at Susie. ‘You feeling okay now?’

  ‘I... Yes.’

  ‘Not too fuzzy-headed to swim with the dolphins this afternoon?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Maybe a wee rest first?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Great,’ Kate said, and moved on, as if the whole episode was behind them.

  * * *

  ‘How did you know what happened?’ Jack demanded, as Susie and her mum made their way back to the bungalows, walking hand in hand as if nothing had happened.

  ‘I saw,’ Kate said. ‘I was about to come up but then you took over. Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’ He hesitated. ‘How many medical problems do you have in this place?’

  ‘More now that I’m here,’ she said. ‘We don’t advertise medical care, but now I’m here we don’t turn away kids with conditions like Toby’s. But Susie doesn’t need medical care. She just needs...confidence.’ She smiled down at Harry. ‘And, Harry, your Jack might be silly but he did a great job looking after Susie. He said just the right thing. I’m grateful.’

  What was there in that to make a man want to blush? Nothing. It was a simple compliment, nothing more. But Kate’s smile transferred itself to him and he definitely wanted to blush. Or something.

  That smile had stayed the same since the first time he’d met her.

  That smile was really something.

  ‘You want to meet the dolphins now?’ Kate asked Harry, and the moment was broken. But not the sensation. Not the desire to see more of that smile.

  Harry hesitated but Maisie had leaped to attention and her whole body quivered. She looked from Harry to Kate and back again, and her message couldn’t be clearer.

  There’s fun this way. Come with me and play.

  How did they train a dog to do this?

  No matter, the message was irresistible. Harry put a tentative hand on Maisie’s collar and it was like pressing a go button. Maisie headed off steadily along the beach with Kate, with Harry clinging behind.

  Bemused, Jack was left to follow.

  He walked slowly, watching Kate chat to his nephew. Down at the water two of the dolphins were playing with a ball, tossing it seemingly just for pleasure. The sun was glittering on the sea, the tiny waves were only knee high at most and sandpipers were once again searching for pippies along the shoreline. This was the most perfect place.

  ‘You’re welcome to join us but you don’t have to come in with us, Jack,’ Kate said, quite kindly. She’d slipped her hand into Harry’s and to Jack’s astonishment Harry didn’t tug away. This was a child who’d hardly let himself be touched since his parents had died. ‘We can have fun ourselves.’

  ‘I’d like to come,’ he said, thinking he did not want to be excluded from the fun his nephew could have with this woman.

  Fun? He thought of the story she’d told him last night, of the pain she’d gone through, and he thought, here she was, dispensing fun.

  ‘Then you need to know the rules,’ Kate told him. ‘Harry and I were discussing them while you dawdled.’

  ‘I did not dawdle.’ Astonishingly, she was laughing at him.

  ‘You did so dawdle, didn’t he, Harry?’ She chuckled. ‘But for the slowcoaches, here are the rules again. The main one is no touching.’

  No touching? He’d been expecting touchy-feely stuff. Riding the dolphins? Maybe not, but close.

  ‘Dolphins don’t like being touched except on their terms,’ she told him. ‘All the dolphins in this pool were born wild. They’re here because they’ve been injured, or orphaned, or somehow left so they can’t survive in the open sea. But that doesn’t mean they’re pets. Some of them will nudge us. Hobble, for one, is a very pushy dolphin, but it’s for him to decide, not us. But they do like playing. In the wild, dolphins surf. They seem to leap just for the joy of leaping when they’re wild and free. But what’s happened to them in the past means that they can’t be free. Even though this pool is half the bay wide, it’s not enough. They get bored so it’s up to us to make them happy.’

  And as she said it she walked into the water, lifted a beach ball floating in the shallows and tossed it far out.

  It never hit the water. As it reached the peak of its arc a silver bullet streaked up from the surface. The dolphin’s nose hit the ball square on, it rebounded, another silver bullet flashed from nowhere, the ball rebounded again—and landed in the shallows in front of Kate.

  Harry had been standing behind Kate, open-mouthed with awe. Kate took a step back to stand beside him.

  ‘This is our favourite game,’ she said idly, and Jack couldn’t tell whether she was talking to him, to Harry or to the dolphins. ‘But it makes me tired.’ She lifted the ball again and threw, with exactly the same results. ‘My arm aches,’ she said. ‘I’ve been tossing it for ages. That might be all I can do today.’

  ‘I will throw the ball,’ Harry said.

  ‘You’d have to throw it far out,’ Kate said dubiously, looking out to where one of the dolphins was rearing out of the water as if checking to see if the ball was returning.

  ‘I can.’

  ‘If you think so,’ Kate said, and stepped back still further.

  She didn’t pick up the ball for him, though. The ball was floating about six feet in front of the little boy, in the shallows. He’d have to wade forward.

  For three months Harry had been totally passive. He’d done exactly what he was told. He’d submitted to everything with stoic indifference. His world had been shattered and he’d been totally, absolutely joyless.

  Now, as the world seemed to hold its breath, something changed. The little boy’s shoulders, for months slumped and defeated, seemed to square.

  He looked out at the dolphins and as if on cue they both reared, skating backwards. Come on, their body language said. What are you waiting for?

  And then they dived, so deep they disappeared, and that message was obvious, too. Time to start the game now.

  And while Jack watched in awe, and Kate said nothing at all, Harry strode purposefully out into the waves, grabbed the ball and tossed it high out over the sea to the waiting dolphins.

  There was nothing for Jack and Kate to do but stand and watch. The dolphins did the rest.

  This must be a game they played over and over with withdrawn children, Jack thought. Harry was putty in their...flippers?

  Harry threw the ball and they tossed it back to him, but as they did they gradually returned the ball a little further out. The waves were tiny and non-threatening. Harry found himself chest deep in the water before he knew it, but he was focussed only on the ball.

  The next time he threw it, the dolphins flipped it back, but this time they flipped it over his head. He turned to grab it but before he could, a silver streak flew through the shallows, reached the ball before he did and flipped it back to where it had been landing before.

  Harry lunged for it but the second do
lphin reached it first, tossing it high again.

  ‘It’s mine,’ Harry yelled, and grabbed for it, got it and tossed it out again. ‘I got it, I got it,’ he yelled, and he turned to Jack and Kate, his face alive with excitement. ‘They tried to take it away from me but I got it.’

  ‘Watch out, they’re coming back,’ Kate said, chuckling. ‘They’re champions at playing keepings off.’

  The ball came back again and Harry pounced.

  He was twisting on his injured leg, Jack realised. It had been badly broken. It still hurt to weight-bear so he usually tried not to use it. But Jack hadn’t needed the physio’s explanation to know where the problem lay—they all knew it. The only way Harry could get back the use of his leg was to use it.

  He was using it now. It must be hurting, at least a little, but he was too entranced to notice.

  ‘I can’t believe this,’ he murmured to Kate, while Harry was ball-chasing, out of earshot.

  ‘It’s our specialty,’ she said, flashing him a look that was almost smug. ‘None of your hospital physiotherapists have this—the means to make kids forget every single thing that’s wrong with them. It’s why this place is magic.’

  ‘I don’t believe in magic.’ But maybe he did, he thought as he watched Harry pounce again. He thought of Susie, withdrawing into herself, desperately unhappy but still aching to play with the dolphins. He thought of Toby, his last days made happy. And he watched Harry.

  It seemed like a miracle. Maybe he was even prepared to give magic a shot if it’d get Harry well again.

  He was feeling disoriented, watching his nephew throw the ball, standing beside this woman in her crazy blue swimsuit.

  He felt totally out of his depth.

  Medicine. When all else was confusion, focus on medicine. It was a mantra that had served him well for years and he retreated to it now.

  ‘His leg shouldn’t be taking so long to heal,’ he told Kate, trying to sound professional, two medical colleagues discussing a patient. Two medics in swimsuits. ‘His femur was badly fractured but, even so, most kids with intramedullary nails are weight-bearing almost straight away. But we haven’t been able to get him to use it.’

  ‘He’s had no reason to use it,’ Kate said gently. ‘It hurts and he’s had enough hurting, losing his parents. Why put himself through more?’

  He thought of the last physiotherapist Harry had seen—a young man not long out of training. He’d sat back and exclaimed in exasperation, ‘Harry, you’re not trying. I can’t help you if you don’t try.’

  Harry’s quadriceps were growing more and more wasted the less he used them, but that sort of reasoning got nowhere with him. Why should he try? It hurt and there was no point.

  But now this woman had nailed it. She knew instinctively why Harry was like he was. They were in her hands, he thought, and his doubts were fading. Hers were competent hands. She knew what she was doing. He watched her subtly manoeuvre Harry, using the dolphins and the ball to have him bounce up and down, twist left and right. He threw and threw and the dolphins seemed to love every moment of it. Occasionally Harry winced and grimaced but he wasn’t complaining. The dolphins—and Kate—seemed indeed to be magic. This was better than any medical intervention Jack could have thought of.

  He’d love this back in Sydney. He thought of so many of his terminal cancer patients. How much joy this could give to families in distress.

  He was willing to bet, even without his conversation, Kate would have got Susie back dancing.

  He and Harry were blessed to have found this place.

  Whoever Kate was, he thought, she was okay by him.

  * * *

  Finally Kate glanced at her watch and called a halt.

  ‘It’s almost lunchtime,’ she told them. ‘The dolphins need a break, even if we don’t. Harry, later today you could do some leg exercises with Dianne in the swimming pool. She’ll show you how to use a kick board so you can chase balls further. Then you can come back into the dolphin pool and see what the dolphins think of your new skills. Meanwhile, you can dig with Maisie or build sandcastles or have a nap or whatever you and Jack want to do. But now we’re having hot dogs for lunch. Coming?’ And she held out her hand.

  Once again Jack found himself holding his breath. There was so much in those few short statements. You could do some leg exercises in the swimming pool... Using a kick board would be the best possible therapy for Harry—it would mean strengthening the quadriceps in the most natural way possible. The physios in Sydney had tried to get Harry to use one in the hospital therapy pool and Harry had refused, but here it had come out naturally, as if there could be no possible objection. Kate had moved straight onto hot dogs, and now she was holding out her hand as if she expected Harry to take it.

  How did she do it? It wasn’t only dolphins, Jack thought. This woman created an aura of absolute trust. If he was Harry he’d put his hand in hers, he thought, and he wasn’t in the least bit surprised when Harry did.

  ‘I like hot dogs,’ Harry said in satisfaction, and then turned to look out to sea.

  ‘Bye, dolphins.’

  ‘Bye, dolphins,’ Jack repeated, and then added under his breath, ‘And thanks.’

  * * *

  They ate in the friendly dining-cum-lounge room. This was no aseptic hospital cafeteria but a homey area with a couple of bustling, smiley women ladling food on the tables. Each of the small dining tables was set with home-like tableware and place mats made by kids before them. Windows overlooked the bay, toys were scattered on the veranda, and through the arch, big comfy lounge suites and a massive billiard table made you think it was worth hurrying lunch because the world was waiting.

  Susie was there, with her mum. The mum smiled and waved as they entered, and even Susie gave a cautious, teenager-not-wanting-be-noticed half-smile. Jack wasn’t tempted to join them. Act as if nothing has happened, Susie’s half-smile said, and that was fine by him. They found a place by the window and settled in.

  Harry had retreated into his customary silence but he sat calmly by Jack’s side and ate his hot dog without prodding. And why wouldn’t he? Jack thought, heading back to the serving table for his third. He hadn’t even been throwing the ball and he was ravenous—as well as exhausted. How had tension made him so tired?

  ‘They tell you that you’re bringing the kids here to make them well,’ a burly guy sitting opposite said. ‘What they don’t tell you is that you end up doing as much or more than the kids.’

  ‘It wasn’t me doing the exercises,’ Jack said, but the guy nodded toward the next table where a boy of about twelve was seated in a wheelchair, discussing the merits of which dolphin was fastest with a girl who looked like she’d been through chemotherapy.

  ‘It takes it out of you just watching,’ he said. ‘I reckon every step our Sam takes, we take six. Your heart’s in your mouth all the time. Wendy, the kid he’s talking to...she’s got some cancer called neuroblastoma and it’s spread too far to fix. She’s eleven, can you imagine what her folks are going through? But I saw her in the pool today, mucking round like she was just a normal kid and a happy one at that. Her folks were even laughing. Geez, we’re pleased we found this place. Have another hot dog, mate.’

  Jack did, and so did Harry. Then they retired to their bungalow for Kate’s prescribed nap.

  There was no protest from Harry. He was simply following rules and Jack thought, for a little boy whose world had been turned upside down, rules were good.

  Harry slept. Jack did some highly satisfactory research on ballet dancers—it looked like he wouldn’t be buried in sand after all—and then dozed.

  Or sort of dozed. Images kept flitting through his mind.

  Kate.

  In less than a day he’d stopped thinking of her as Cathy. In less than a day he’d started thinking of her in a whole new way f
rom how he’d considered her when she’d been his friend and lab partner back at university.

  She was gorgeous.

  She was hiding. The sensations of the morning faded and he was left with that one main thought.

  She had to hide.

  Jack Kincaid was a man who didn’t do anger. Sure, there were things that annoyed him, but until Beth’s death life had been pretty much how he’d anticipated. He’d had a great job, good friends, a beautiful girlfriend. He’d always known he was lucky. He’d appreciated his good luck, and he’d been making the most of it. In his work he’d seen how life knocked some people around but he’d never been knocked. What had he had to be angry about?

  When Beth had died he’d been gutted. His perfect world had been knocked sideways but even then he hadn’t been angry. Anger would have been better, he thought. Easier. Instead, he’d just felt empty.

  Going back to work, taking his place in his perfect life again, that emptiness had remained. It was like there had been a gaping hole where his sister had been, where Harry’s family had fitted.

  And now, suddenly, for the first time, he felt anger, and it wasn’t on behalf of his small nephew. It was for a kid called Cathy who’d been hauled from the life she loved and turned into the hunted. She hadn’t needed to tell him how hard it must have been to run to New Zealand, to try and survive through a new university course, to cut herself off from every person she’d known in her past life. He could see it in the life lines on her face, in the shadows, in the way the laughter in her voice was edged with constant wariness.

  This Simon had a lot to answer for, and Jack found himself staring out to sea and wishing he could face the bastard. Just once.

  For Kate.

  How corny was that? It was a caveman reaction, a testosterone-driven male protecting his own.

  His own? Where had that come from? Kate was Harry’s treating doctor—or treating physiotherapist and counsellor. He was here as Harry’s guardian. There were professional boundaries that couldn’t be crossed.

  So why was he thinking of crossing them? He must have had too much sun, he decided, and on impulse he called Annalise.