DARK CONFLUENCE
By
Rosemary Fryth
To Richard - love of my life.
Copyright © Fay Parkyn 2012
Brisbane, Queensland
Australia
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any print or electronic form without permission.
Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.
Purchase only authorised editions.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the
products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead,
is entirely coincidental.
Cover photo courtesy of
© Lilkar | Dreamstime.com
Editing and proofreading courtesy of
Frankie Sutton
http://frankiesfreelanceediting.blogspot.com.au/
Chapter 1
Jennifer gasped in sudden, heart-stopping panic. Braking desperately she attempted to avoid the shrouded woman who appeared directly in front of her car. However, her attempt was unsuccessful and the mini ploughed straight into the figure.
The sudden stop flung her forward against the seatbelt. Her glasses flew off her face and the bags of groceries on the back seat scattered everywhere, rolling and bouncing about, spilling contents across the inside of her car. Dimly, she heard a second screech of tyres and felt a hard jolt as whoever had been tailgating her, smashed into the back of her car, propelling it forward. That last impact was too much for the frayed safety belt and it tore. She lurched backwards, catching her head painfully on the side window. For a moment, she saw stars and then blacked out.
After regaining consciousness, she turned the door handle and she half fell from the car to encounter the wrathful expression of Dave the local plumber.
“Geezus Jen! Stop in the middle of the road, why don’t ya?” he yelled, whilst pointing back at his four-wheel drive. “Good thing my bull bar took the impact. Do ya know how much it costs to replace a radiator? Do ya? Do ya?”
Jen shook her head and dazed, staggered to her feet. She sagged against the side of her elderly mini, her head thumping painfully.
“Where is she?” Jen demanded through the pain.
“Eh, you’re hurt then?” Dave, his anger dissipating, forgot his own troubles for a moment as he regarded the small and slight older woman propping herself against the now misshapen mini.
“My head hurts,” Jen said, her fingers gingerly exploring the tender lump which was rapidly forming. She looked around again, “Where is she?”
“Who.”
“The woman, I think...I hit a woman”
Dave looked around, “What woman? He checked the front of her car, “There’s no woman here.”
Dave shook his head and motioned her to move away from the car. “Come on sit ya ‘self on the footpath while I move our cars out of the way. We’re holding up traffic in town.”
Looking back, Jen saw a small line-up of cars; the drivers either peering curiously at her and Dave, or impatiently leaning on their horns. Sighing, she allowed herself to be steered to the curb and she abruptly sat on the cracked concrete slabs of the footpath.
“Wait here....” Dave told her, “I’ll be back in a tick.”
Jen watched him get into her car and manoeuvre it to the side of the road. Within a few minutes, his big four-wheel drive pulled up next to her.
Dave leaned out of his car window and called to her, “Look, ya car is over there. I’ve locked it and here are the keys.” He tossed her car keys out the window and they landed in her lap. “I’ve rung emergency and they‘re on their way. I’d wait for the police, but I have a client with a flooded kitchen and I’m already late. I’ll get in touch with the police after my appointment.”
He stared at her quizzically, “Are you sure there was a woman?”
She shrugged and shook her head. Strangely, the memory of the woman was rapidly fading from her mind. Jen tried hard to remember, but every time she tried to recollect what she saw, the memory seemed to slide away. To make it worse she could not think past the crippling headache.
“Well, I didn’t see anything, and there was nothing under your car.”
Jen nodded, with her eyes half closed against the painful thump, thump inside her head.
“See ya!” he called, “I’ll ring ya later about the insurance and stuff.” He glanced back down the road, “I reckon ya car’s a write-off, those nose to tails always bugger up the smaller cars, doubt you’ll be allowed to drive it. Oh, I can hear a siren.” He grinned ruefully, “She’ll be right, just wait where you are. They know where to find ya,” and then in a cloud of noxious diesel fumes, he was off and speeding down the road.
“Are you sure you are alright, dear?” enquired a voice above her.
Jen looked up squinting and could only make out a pink and purple haze. Eventually, the haze resolved itself into the ferret-like features of Miss Amelia Crane, the Chairwoman of the Country Ladies Society. The local town gossip had descended upon her as soon as Dave had departed the scene.
“Headache,” Jen explained, touching the now impressively large red swelling on her head for emphasis.
“Then you best be off to the clinic, dear. Oh, and the ambulance is here” she added quite unnecessarily, as the big white vehicle with the painfully bright flashing lights pulled up where Dave’s four wheel drive had been only moments before. Jen found further conversation impossible as two burly blue uniformed paramedics shooed the now growing crowd of onlookers back to a reasonable distance and started firing a barrage of questions at her.
“Was it a car accident, love?”
“Where does it hurt?”
“Can you move your hands and feet?”
“Are you dizzy?”
“Do you have a headache?”
Jen answered their questions as best as she was able, whilst the medics fussed over her. Moments later, she heard another siren, a police car pulled up, and two uniformed officers got out. Their eyes noted the crowd, the paramedics, and Jen seated on the footpath. One officer went back to the car and started talking on the two-way radio, whilst the other walked over to where she was.
“Hit and run?”
“Jennifer McDonald’s car was hit from behind,” Miss Amelia Crane, piped up helpfully.
“Oh, did you see the accident?” the police Senior Constable enquired.
“Indeed I did,” the old lady said, happy to be the centre of attention. “You see that lady there on the ground,” and she pointed at Jen, “Well, she stopped suddenly, and Dave O’Donnell’s 4WD utility ran straight up the back of her car.
“Ah,” the police Senior Constable continued writing in his notebook, then knelt and turned to Jen.
“Did you hit something, Miss?” he asked.
Jen shrugged, “I thought I did, but Dave looked and couldn’t find anything.”
“Where is your car now...and Dave?”
“He...he moved them,” she explained unsteadily, her headache boring into her skull. “He had to go to a job, he was late,” she said apologetically.
“Was he now?” the Senior Constable was unimpressed. “Cars involved in an accident should not be moved. That will cause problems, and he should never have left the accident scene. I’ll have words with Dave later.” He looked across the road at the mangled end of the elderly mini, “Your car?” he asked.
She nodded.
“I’ll take a look.”
The other officer finished speaking on the two-way radio and walked over to where she was.
“I’
ve called a tow-truck. Your car will be taken to the police yard. We’ll need to properly inspect it there.”
Jen nodded and suddenly remembered, “My purse, my glasses!”
“Don’t worry. We’ll get them to you.”
The paramedic stood and straightened, addressing the officer, “Have you finished here? We need to get her to the hospital.”
The Senior Constable glanced across to his partner who nodded, “Go ahead. We’ll finish up.”
Jen felt herself being deftly moved onto a stretcher and then loaded into the back of the ambulance. As the vehicle slowly pulled out into traffic, the paramedic continued to fuss over her, hooking her up to a myriad of monitoring devices.
“Really, I’m fine,” she assured him, “Just a bump on the head and a bad headache.”
However, he shook his head and muttered darkly about possible brain injury, whiplash, and having to be careful in case of spinal injuries. Therefore, Jen accepted his ministrations and closed her eyes, trying to recollect what she had seen before the crash. After a few minutes, she gave up. Whatever she saw had faded from her memory, no doubt aided in part by whatever it was the medics had injected into her arm.
*
She struggled to wakefulness, disorientated by her unfamiliar surroundings. The room was bathed in a diffused half-light, except for an array of flickering, twinkling lights off to one side. She groped for her glasses, cursed when she could not find them, and cursed again when her hand knocked over something, causing it to fall clattering to the hard tiled floor. Immediately, she heard soft steps, and a figure materialised at her side. A figure clad in a blue cotton tunic and pants.
She felt cool hands on her forehead and wrist, followed by a quickly muttered “Oh, you are finally awake; I’ll fetch the night shift doctor.”
Groggily, Jen tried to take in her surroundings. She was obviously in a hospital and hooked up to various monitoring devices. Around her, she could now hear the soft voices of staff at the nurse’s station, and even less distinctly, the breathing of the other patients – five others in various stages of sleep or wakefulness in the curtained-off cubicles of her ward. The headache that had previously hammered at her temples was now just a faint echo of the ferocity of earlier in the day. However, it was now nightfall, and Jen had no idea how long she had been asleep.
Suddenly, a man in a white coat appeared out of the gloom, picked up her chart from the base of the bed, studied it for a moment and then peered at her over the tops of his rimless glasses.
“Awake are you, Miss McDonald?” His voice sounded foreign. He turned on the light near her bed, and as he moved closer, she saw that he was Indian. “You’ve been asleep.”
“How long?”
He studied the chart again, “You were admitted into emergency just before noon today, Miss McDonald. We gave you a sedative so you could rest and so we could run some tests on you. ” He consulted his watch and made a note on her chart, “It’s just after two in the morning.”
“Oh! What sort of tests?”
“X-ray, CAT-scan, etcetera. We wanted to investigate that nasty bump on your head and check for neck vertebrae damage.”
Jen’s fingers flew to her head to encounter tightly bound bandages.
“Don’t touch it,” the Doctor advised her. “The lump will go down naturally, however, you are very lucky. You could have easily fractured your skull or bruised your brain.”
Jen stared at him, “And the tests revealed what?”
“Nothing of concern,” he hastened to reassure her, “Topical swelling where the lump is, but no injury to the brain – we found no clots or abnormalities.
Jen nodded, “My headache has faded.”
The Doctor studied her, “Good! It could have been far worse. Now, we’ll keep you in a little longer for observation, and if you are still improving, we’ll let you go home around mid-morning tomorrow.”
He studied the chart again, “Now, Miss McDonald, is there someone we should ring? We got your details from the police; they checked your car’s registration. However, there isn’t anyone listed as next of kin.”
Jen shook her head, “I live alone.”
“What about friends? Any family who could collect you?”
Jen shook her head ahead, “I am quite alone. I have distant cousins in Scotland, but no family here in Queensland.”
“Well then, we’ll call a taxi for you at the appropriate time, and arrange for a district nurse to call in and check on you for the next couple of days.” He smiled suddenly at her frown, “Standard procedure, Miss McDonald. Now, any other aches and pains?”
Jen gingerly moved her neck and shoulders, “I feel a bit stiff.”
“Whiplash...again that will fade, there is no vertebrae damage. If it’s troubling you, we can give you a neck brace.”
Jen shook her head, “No trouble, at least not whilst I’m lying down, however...”
“Hmmm…”
“I need to visit the ladies,” Jen said embarrassedly.
“I’ll call a nurse,” the Doctor was brisk and business-like. “When you return, make sure you rest some more, and press your buzzer if you need further assistance.”
“Where is it?” Jen turned her head to look and winced a little.
“Here.” The doctor walked over and placed a small, hand-held device on the bed. “This will call the nurse. Now you must excuse me, Miss McDonald, because I have other patients to attend to.”
*
Jen was released from hospital a day and a half later, and the taxi deposited her, along with the groceries she was able to salvage from her car, outside her small, white and unassuming house. Everything looked normal. The garden beds still sported spring bulbs, although most were past their prime. Sadly, the few tulips that had survived summer looked decidedly ratty. Time for a replanting, Jen decided, yet the stiffness in her neck and shoulders warned her that any strenuous work in the garden would have to wait awhile.
Her gaze drifted to the house, checking that all was well. She frowned over the peeling paint and the guttering that was starting to show some holes. The house badly needed renovating. However, repairs would have to wait until she received payment for the work she had done on the last book. Her older Queenslander cottage seemed sturdy enough, so she decided that she had some leeway.
Stiffly, she climbed the half dozen steps that led to her verandah and sank down on the wooden seat, which afforded her a panoramic view across her garden, and further out to a lush green vista of the Blackall Range. Over thirty years ago, when she had first come to the Sunshine Coast hinterland, she had tried to buy a place overlooking the coast and the ocean. However, such properties were rare, and given that she had expended her small budget in coming to Australia, her modest house amongst the green hills would have to suffice.
Her mind wandered back all those years to when she had arrived in Australia fresh off the Qantas flight from London, via Sydney. She had travelled to Australia chasing dreams and a man she had known only through correspondence. Although her green nook amongst the hills seemed an adequate dreamland, the man proved to be more elusive. He had up and left, seemingly after her last letter to him. The letter informing him that she was migrating to Australia. Jen still had those much folded, much worn, yellowing letters that he had sent her. She did not know why she still kept them. Perhaps, they were a keepsake of days when she was more trusting, more naive and more innocent. Perhaps, more importantly, as an abject lesson in not to trust handsome strangers with a glib tongue who came from far, away and exotic lands. Perhaps, she also kept them as a reminder that no matter what life threw at her, she was able to stand on her own feet. For a time, he had broken her heart, but Jen was stubborn enough not to give in, and she made the best of what at the time had seemed a bad situation.
Now, older and wiser, Jen looked back and thought that a one-way ticket to Australia seemed a particularly foolish thing to do. However, the past could not be undone and she had settled into her new life. Althou
gh the nearby township of Emerald Hills was not Scotland, it was as fair a place as anywhere, and being on the range, afforded a cooler, milder climate than the humid coastal settlements below.
Reluctantly, Jen got to her feet, and fishing the keys from her lap, opened her door. Inside smelled musty, so she began opening windows and airing the house, along with removing rubbish bags that she should have taken to the outside bin at least a day earlier. She put away the groceries that she had been able to rescue and was thankful that she still at least had some tetra packs of long-life milk to use. Unfortunately, the bottle she had bought the other day had split and spilled open onto the backseat of her car, giving the inside of the vehicle a new and decidedly off-putting aroma of soured milk.
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