Bushfire Bride

CHAPTER THREE

RACHEL walked slowly back to the showgrounds, dragging her feet in too-big sandals. She’d told Hugo she needed to see to Penelope. Kim’s parents were needing more reassurance. He’d been distracted and she’d slipped away.

He had enough to worry about without her worries. Which were considerable.

It was just on dusk. The evening was still and very, very warm. The sound of the sea was everywhere.

Cowral was built on a bluff overlooking the Southern Ocean. The stars were a hazy sheen of silver under a smoky filter. To the north she could see the soft orange glow of threatening fire. It was too far away to worry about, she thought. Maybe it’d stay in the national park and behave.

Meanwhile, it’d be a great time for a swim. But she had things to sort. Penelope. Accommodation.

Sleep!

Michael’s Aston Martin was parked at the entrance to the showgrounds and she looked at it with a frown. She’d thrown the car keys back at Michael. Were they in his pocket right now as he did his heroic lifesaving thing back in the city, or had he left the keys in Penelope’s dog stall?

It was all very well standing on one’s dignity, she thought ruefully, but if he’d taken his keys then she’d be walking everywhere. She didn’t like her chances of hot-wiring an Aston Martin.

Meanwhile… Meanwhile, Penelope. Rachel pushed open the wire gates of the dog pavilion and went to find the second of her worries.

Michael might have taken his car keys but he hadn’t taken his dog. Penelope was right where Rachel had left her, sitting in the now empty dog pavilion, gazing out with the air of a dog who’d been deserted by the world.

‘Oh, you poor baby.’ She hugged the big dog and hauled herself up into the stall to think about her options. ‘I haven’t deserted you, even if your master has.’

Penelope licked her face, then nosed her Crimplene in evident confusion.

‘You don’t like my fashion sense either?’ She gave a halfhearted smile. ‘We’re stuck with it. But meanwhile…’

Meanwhile, she was hungry. No. Make that starving! She’d had one bite of a very soggy hamburger some hours ago. The remains had long gone.

Penelope didn’t look hungry at all.

‘You ate the rest of my hamburger?

Penelope licked her again.

‘Fine. It was disgusting anyway, but what am I supposed to eat?’ She gazed about her. The pavilion was deserted.

Michael hadn’t left his keys.

Her bag was over at the caretaker’s residence where she’d showered. She could walk over there and fetch it, but why? The contents of the bag were foul. She had her purse with her-she’d tucked it into a pocket of the capacious Crimplene. She needed nothing else.

Wrong. She needed lots of things.

She had nothing else.

So… She had her purse, a dog and a really rumbling stomach.

‘I guess we walk into town,’ she told Penelope. The only problem was that the hospital and the showgrounds were on one side of the river and the tiny township of Cowral was on the other.

‘We don’t have a choice,’ she told the dog. ‘Walking is good for us. Let’s get used to it. The key to our wheels has just taken himself back to Sydney and we’re glad he has. Compared to your master… I hate to tell you, Penelope, but walking looks good in comparison.’

Cowral was closed.

It was a tiny seaside town. It was Sunday night. All the tourists had left when the roads had started to be threatened. Rachel trudged over the bridge and into town to find the place was shut down as if it was dead winter and midnight. Not a shop was open. By the time she reached the main street the pall of smoke was completely covering the moon and only a couple of streetlights were casting an eerie, foggy glow through the haze.

‘It looks like something out of Sherlock Holmes,’ Rachel told her canine companion. ‘Murderer appears stage left…’ She stood in the middle of the deserted street and listened to her stomach rumble and thought not very nice thoughts about a whole range of people. A whole range of circumstances.

Murder was definitely an option.

Her phone was in her purse. She hauled it out and looked at it. Who could she ring?

No one. She didn’t know anyone.

She stared at it some more and, as if she’d willed it, it rang all by itself. She was so relieved she answered before it had finished the first ring.

‘Rachel?’ It was Dottie’s bright chirpiness sounding down the line. Her mother-in-law who’d so wanted this weekend to work. ‘Rachel, I hope I’m not intruding but I so wanted to know how it was going. Where are you, dear?’

Rachel thought about it. ‘I’m standing in the main street of Cowral,’ she said. ‘Thinking about dinner.’

‘Oh…’ She could hear Dottie’s beam down the line. ‘Are you going somewhere romantic?’

‘Maybe outdoors,’ Rachel said, cautiously looking around at her options. ‘Under the stars.’ She looked through the smoke toward the sea. ‘On the beach?’

‘How wonderful. Is the weather gorgeous?’

Rachel tried not to cough from smoke inhalation. ‘Gorgeous!’

‘And you have such gorgeous company.’

Rachel looked dubiously down at Penelope. ‘Yes. Yes, I do.’

‘You know we so wanted you to have a good time, Lewis and I. There’s no chance of extending your time there, I suppose?’

‘Actually, there may be,’ Rachel told her. She explained about the fires and the road being cut. ‘There’s nothing to worry about but…we may be held up here for a few more days.’ There was no reason to explain that ‘we’ meant Rachel and an Afghan hound. Not Rachel and a gorgeous hunk of eligible cardiologist.

But her words were just what Dottie wanted to hear. ‘Oh, my dear, that’s lovely.’ She could hear Dottie’s beam widen. ‘Unless the fires are a real problem?’

‘They don’t seem to be.’ Australians understood about bushfires. Most national parks burned every few years or so-they needed to burn to regenerate-and as long as they didn’t threaten townships they weren’t a worry. Dottie clearly thought this time they’d been sent from heaven.

‘Dottie,’ she said cautiously. ‘Craig…’

‘You’re not to worry. We told you and we meant it. His father and I have taken right over as we should have long ago. As you should have let us.’

‘But-’

‘You concentrate on yourself,’ Dorothy told her. ‘You concentrate on your future. On your romantic dinner under the stars. That’s an order.’

And the phone went dead.

Great.

She stared at it. Her link with home.

She should be back in the hospital right now. Why wasn’t she? Craig…

Don’t think about it. Think about now.

Now what?

If there was no dinner to be had in Cowral then she needed to think about her next need. Sleep. Accommodation.

Cowral Bay’s only motel-the place where Michael-the-rat had slept last night-was on the other side of the river.

She’d walk back over the bridge, she decided. She’d leave Penelope in her dog box in the pavilion and book herself into the motel. Hey, maybe the motel even had room service.

By the time she reached the motel her feet, in her borrowed sandals, were screaming that she had blisters. She’d bother with taking Penelope back to the pavilion later, she decided, so she tied the dog to a tree and walked into Motel Reception. To find no room at the inn.

‘Sorry, love,’ the motel owner told her, casting a nervous glance at Rachel’s dubious apparel. ‘There’s fire crews from the other side of the peninsula trapped here now and they’ve booked us out.’

‘Do you have a restaurant?’ Rachel asked with more hope than optimism, and was rewarded by another dubious look and another shake of the head.

‘Everyone’s closed. The Country Women’s Association are putting on food twenty-four hours a day for the firefighters in the hall over the bridge but you don’t look like a firefighter.’

Rachel swallowed. ‘No. No, I don’t.’

‘Are you OK, love?’ the woman asked. Her eyes narrowed. ‘You don’t need one of them women’s refuge places, do you? I could call the police for you if you like.’

Great. That was all she needed. A girl had some pride but Rachel was really struggling to find it here. She took a deep breath and pulled herself together.

Maybe women’s refuges had food?

Good grief. What was she thinking?

‘Um, no. Thank you.’ She fished in her purse and found a couple of coins. There was a candy dispensing machine by the counter and the sweets looked really inviting. ‘I’ll ring a friend, but meanwhile I’ll just buy a couple of these…’

‘I’m sorry, love,’ the woman told her. ‘The machine’s broken. The technician’s due tomorrow-if he can get through the fires.’

Rachel walked outside and untied Penelope. Then she considered, trying really hard not to panic.

Panic seemed an increasingly enticing option.

She’d go back to the hospital, she decided. Hugo had said he needed her. How much? He was about to be put to the test. ‘If you need me you’ll have to house and feed me,’ she’d tell him.

‘No. Feed me first,’ she corrected herself.

And Penelope?

Maybe she couldn’t expect Hugo to take on Penelope. She’d take her back to the pavilion.

Bad idea. It had been almost an hour now since Rachel had collected Penelope. Penelope had been the last dog to leave and the showground caretakers had done their duty. At some time while Rachel had walked into town and back again, the high wire gates had been bolted closed.

The caretaker’s residence was in the centre of the grounds, well out of shouting distance.

Rachel put her head against the cyclone wire and closed her eyes. Great. Just great. The whole situation was getting farcical.

Where was this women’s refuge?

‘This has to go into the record books as the most romantic weekend a girl has ever had,’ she told Penelope, but Penelope looked at her with the sad eyes of an Afghan hound who hadn’t been fed.

‘You ate my hamburger,’ Rachel told her. ‘Don’t even think about looking at me like that.’

She sighed. Her stomach rumbled a response. She put her hand on Penelope’s collar and started trudging toward the hospital.

There was the sound of vehicle behind her-a big one. She moved onto the verge.

A fire truck came around the bend on the wrong side of the road. It veered onto the grassy verge and she had to jump for her life.

If she’d been one whit less angry she might have been hit, but her reflexes were working fine. Rachel was tired and hungry and worried, but there was still a vast well of anger directed at Michael and herself and her circumstances. When the fire truck swerved around the bend on the wrong side of the road it was almost as if she expected it.

She yelped and leapt, and as the truck screeched to a halt she found herself sprawled ignominiously in the grass at the side of the road with Penelope somehow sprawling on top of her.

Great. What else could possibly happen to her? She lay and addressed herself to a clump of grass right under her nose.

‘Beam me up, Scottie. Where’s a spaceship when you need one?’

‘Are you OK, miss?’ The horror in the voice above her had her pushing herself up from the road. She might be mad as fire but no one here deserved to think they’d squashed her.

‘I’m fine.’ She rolled over, shoved a startled Penelope off, hauled her Crimplene down to something akin to decency and tried to look fine. ‘Honest.’

‘Oh, heck…’ The man had reached her. He’d been driving the truck. Behind him his fellow firefighters were climbing down from the cab to see what was wrong. The engine was still running and the truck lights were illuminating the road. ‘I could have killed you.’

‘It’s your lucky day. You didn’t.’ She tried a smile and the muscles almost worked. Sort of.

They were gathering round her now, a bunch of men and women with black-grimed faces, fire uniforms and hard hats. They looked exhausted. They were looking at her with concern.

She must look a real candidate for her women’s refuge, she thought, and the concept was looking more and more appealing. If there was a women’s refuge somewhere around here that would take her with an Afghan hound, she’d be in there like a shot.

Or maybe… She gave Penelope’s backside another shove… Maybe even without an Afghan.

‘We’re really sorry,’ the fireman told her, and she tried focusing on the man before her. He looked scared to death.

‘I guess you weren’t expecting hikers,’ she told him. ‘It’s too dark to walk off the road.’ She hauled herself upward. Someone gave her a hand which she accepted with gratitude. Then she looked more closely at the man before her. Under the soot there were cuts and scratches, blood as well as grime. He looked dreadful. ‘Are you OK?’

Stupid question, really. It was absolutely obvious that he wasn’t. ‘I just…’ He wiped his hand across his eyes. ‘My eyes… The smoke…’

And he’d been driving.

‘You need to go to the hospital,’ she told him.

‘That’s where we’re going. There was a shed-the farmer told us it was used for storing hay so we made an attempt to save it. What he forgot to tell us was that he stored fuel in there as well. The thing went up with a bang that scared us almost as much as we scared you. But that’s all the damage, thank God. There’s a few of us with sore eyes, but we’re thinking that we’ve been lucky.’

Lucky or not, they looked shocked and ill. Rachel’s personal problems were set aside in the face of these peoples’ needs. ‘You should have been treated before you drove.’

‘Doc’s been busy,’ someone said. ‘We heard up on the ridge that he couldn’t come up. He’s been caught up with a dogbite or something.’

Of course he’d been caught up. And there was no one else, Rachel thought. He was on his own.

Except for her. Hugo had her, whether he liked it or not. And a fat lot of use she was, she thought ruefully, hiking round the country with her crazy Afghan hound, looking for food and for shelter as if she were destitute. It was time she hauled herself together and started being useful.

‘Tell you what,’ she said, brushing gravel from her knees and trying to stop her knees from doing the shaking they were so intent on. ‘Let’s all go to the hospital. I’m a doctor and I’m needed there. But if it’s OK with you…’ She managed a shaky grin as she looked around their smoke-filled eyes which were now tinged with disbelief. A doctor in Crimplene… But she wasn’t going down that road. Explanations could take hours.

‘Indulge me with something I’ve always wanted to do,’ she told them. ‘I’m a country girl from way back. Once upon a time I even drove my dad’s truck at hay-carting so I have my heavy vehicle licence. So all you have to do is say yes. Let me drive your fire engine.’

Which was how Dr Rachel Harper, MD, dressed in glorious Crimplene and Doris Keen’s sandals, with gravel in her knees, nothing in her stomach and dog hair all over her, got to drive the Cowral Bay fire truck with a bunch of ten disgustingly dirty and slightly injured firefighters and one potential Australian champion Afghan in the back.

You told me to have a weekend to remember, she silently told her absent mother-in-law as they headed for the hospital. Well, Dottie, I’m doing just that.

Hugo wasn’t at the hospital, and Rachel was aware of a stab of disappointment. But at least the nurses knew her from that afternoon when she’d helped with Kim. They greeted her as a friend, and the orderly took over Penelope’s care as if she was no trouble at all.

‘You’ve come to help, miss,’ he told her as the firefighters milled around the emergency room, and it was obvious to everyone that Rachel needed to turn into a doctor again. ‘You’re very welcome. I’ll give your dog some dinner, shall I?’

Dinner… Yes!

‘Actually, I-’

But dinner wasn’t her destiny. ‘It’s great that you’re here.’ David, the ginger-haired nurse who’d helped with Kim, was looking more flustered than he had that afternoon. ‘One of our old farmers had a stroke an hour ago. Dr McInnes had to go out there in a hurry and here’s all these guys needing checking. Can I give you a hand and we’ll see what we can do together?’

She worked for an hour. It was solid medicine but straightforward, washing out eyes, checking bruises and cleaning scratches. One of the women was suffering slightly from smoke inhalation and Rachel decreed that she be admitted, but the oxygen alleviated the symptoms almost immediately. Great. She worked steadily through on. Minor stuff.

Except the man who’d been driving the truck. He had a sliver of something nasty in his eye as well as a cut that was deep enough to need stitching. But it was the eye she was worried about.

Rachel shoved her rumbling stomach aside and focused.

She dropped in fluorescein-a yellow stain-and examined the eye through the ophthalmoscope. And worried.

‘Can we X-ray?’ she asked David.

‘Sure.’

The X-ray came back-still worrying. She pinned it against the light and fretted some more as the door opened behind her.

‘Problem?’

She turned and it was Hugo. For a moment-for just a moment-it was as much as she could do not to fall into his arms with relief. She’d pushed hunger and exhaustion and shock away but the events of the day were catching up with her. She was really close to breaking point.

Falling into a colleague’s arms wasn’t exactly professional. She got a grip. Sort of. Mental slap around the ears. She hauled herself into as much of a medical mode as she could muster.

‘There’s a foreign body just at the edge of the cornea,’ she told him, turning back to the light-box and attempting to concentrate on the image. ‘There was fuel in metal drums that exploded while they were trying to save a shed. This looks like a sliver of metal, embedded in the cornea but not penetrating. His sight’s blurred but maybe that’s just the reaction to the pain and a bit of debris that’s on the surface. The eye won’t stop watering. There’s a couple of nasty lacerations around the eye itself that’ll need stitching but it’s the metal I’m worried about. It’s very near the optic nerve. If he moves while I’m trying to manoeuvre it out… Well, I don’t think I can cope with this under local anaesthetic.’

Hugo nodded. He crossed to stand beside her and they stared at the screen together.

‘It’s not touching anything crucial. I think we could do it.’ He stared at it a bit longer. ‘Maybe you’re right, though. It’s going to be fiddly.’

‘But under a local anaesthetic?’

‘I’d rather not.’ He looked down at her and smiled. ‘Like you, ophthalmology isn’t my speciality. It looks straightforward enough as long as he doesn’t move, but there’s a bit of repair work to do and I’m not super-confident. Eyes aren’t my area of expertise and if I have to fiddle and curse I’d prefer that the patient was sedated while I did it.’

‘That makes two of us.’ She looked at the X-ray some more and even managed a shaky smile. ‘We couldn’t evacuate him to the city?’

‘It’s a very small sliver. It’s not penetrating. Evacuating means bringing a helicopter from the city and visibility is making things dangerous.’

‘Yes, but-’

‘But we do have two doctors,’ he went on inexorably. ‘Even if one of them looks like she just came out of a welfare shop.’

‘From a home for battered women actually,’ she said with dignity. ‘I’ve had one offer to take me there in a squad car already tonight.’

‘Have you?’ The ready laughter she was starting to know flashed into his eyes. ‘The fire guys tell me they nearly ran you down.’

‘Yeah, but then they let me drive their fire engine,’ she told him. ‘Which was really cool.’

The deep smile lurking in the back of his eyes strengthened into the beginnings of something that looked like pure admiration. And surprise. She flushed but his eyes were sliding down to her legs, breaking the moment. He’d seen her bloodstained knee. ‘That graze wants washing.’

‘And we all need dinner and a sleep and it’s not going to happen,’ she told him, still strangely flushed. What was it with this man that had the capacity to unsettle her? She had to move on. ‘Our firefighter has an empty stomach which means he’s ready for anaesthesia now,’ she told him. ‘His eye isn’t going to get better on its own. If we’re going to operate there isn’t a better time than now. Is there?’

‘Nope.’ He sighed. ‘I guess not. Lead on, Dr Harper. Do you want to operate or do you want to do the anaesthetic?’

‘I’m choosing anaesthetics,’ she told him. ‘Two anaesthetics in one day! I think I’m starting to specialise.’

It took longer than they had thought it would.

By the time they finished and the firefighter was recovering in the ward, neatly stitched, foreign body removed and intravenous antibiotics preventing complications, Rachel was swaying on her feet. She hadn’t felt it at all while she’d been in Theatre-adrenaline again, she supposed-but when she emerged she sagged. Her stocks of adrenaline must be at an all-time low. She crossed to the sinks and held on, and if she hadn’t held on she would have sunk to the floor.

It’d pass. She’d worked exhausted in the past. After nights on duty when Craig-

No. Don’t go there.

In a minute she’d start considering the complications surrounding her but for now…

For now she held on.

‘Hey.’ Hugo had hauled off his gown and was watching her, his eyes narrowing in concern. ‘Are you OK?’

She thought about it. OK? People kept asking her that and the concept was ludicrous. ‘If you’re offering to take me back to my women’s refuge, the answer is yes.’

‘Women’s refuge…’

‘Any sort of refuge,’ she muttered. ‘As long as it serves dinner. Bread and dripping would be fine. Come to think about it, bread and dripping would be fantastic.’

‘You’re hungry.’

‘You stole my hamburger-remember?’

‘So I did.’ He was looking at her as if she’d just landed from outer space. ‘That was-what-eight hours ago?’

‘It feels more. And I didn’t eat it then. Penelope finished it for me. Someone took her off to feed her when I arrived. I bet she’s had a really good meal. Doggos or something. Something really delicious.’

‘What did you do between operating on Kim and now?’ he asked and she rolled her eyes.

‘I walked. I walked in these really stupid sandals which, by the way, are about ten sizes too big. I walked back to the pavilion to find Michael hadn’t left me the keys to his car. I brought his stupid dog from the pavilion and I walked into town searching for a café to discover the whole place has shut. It’s like a ghost town. I walked back to the motel to discover the place has been booked out by the Boys’ Own Fire Brigade and their restaurant doesn’t serve meals. And their candy-vending machine is broken. I walked back to the showgrounds to discover the gates had been locked. I started to walk back here but the fire engine nearly ran me down. I came in here, I washed out a few eyes, I sewed up a gashed leg and now I’ve operated on an eye. So… I think maybe I’ve reached my limit. I’m wearing Doris Keen’s Crimplene, my feet hurt, my stomach’s empty, I don’t even have a dog box to sleep in and I’m very, very close to hysterics.’ She eyed him with caution. ‘And if you dare to even twitch the sides of your mouth with the suggestion of laughter, Dr McInnes, I intend to lie down on the floor and give way to a full-scale tantrum. They’ll hear me back in Sydney.’

‘I’m not…’ His mouth definitely twitched but it was hauled back under control fast. ‘I’m not laughing.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘I’m definitely not.’ He bit his lip, pushed the laughter resolutely to the backburner and eyed her with a certain amount of caution. ‘OK. It appears you need some help. Where shall we start?’

‘Food,’ she told him.

‘As bad as that?’

‘Worse.’

‘Let’s go, then.’ He smiled. ‘It fits with what I need to do,’ he told her. ‘I’m hungry, too.’

‘You haven’t had dinner?’

‘One of my very elderly patients had a stroke. I’ve been out there with her. She died an hour ago.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be,’ he told her. ‘Annie was a ninety-six-year-old farmer. She’s run her own farm since her husband walked out on her sixty years ago. She didn’t miss him a bit. She’s had a great life; she was healthy and happily living in her own home until the end, and I wish all endings could be as happy.’

‘Mmm.’

It was a happy ending. But his words had caught her unawares, twisting her thoughts back to where her thoughts always ended.

Craig…

She swallowed. She looked down at her hands and found her hands had clenched into fists. Craig…

For some stupid reason her eyes were filling with tears.

Which was ridiculous. Surely she should be used to this by now. It was just that she’d never been away. For eight years…

Food. She needed food. That’s why she was reacting like this. Hugo was watching her with concern and she blinked and sniffed and got on with it.

‘Sorry,’ she told him. ‘I was just…reacting to the day or something. Did you say you knew where we can find some food?’

He was still watching her, still with that look that said he saw far more than she wanted him to, but he accepted that she needed to move on.

‘We’ll give you a few biscuits and cheese to keep the wolf from the door while I wash your knee first,’ he told her. ‘I need a medico with two good legs-not with one infected. Then we find Toby. Toby’s down at the town hall, and that’s where the food is. There’s a fire effort happening in town and the locals are either out on the front or working to support them. Even at this late hour there’ll be food. So we’ll collect Toby and feed you. Two birds with one stone.’

She blinked back the last of her emotion and managed a grin.

‘Lead on, then,’ she told him. ‘Two birds, did you say? I’ll eat them both.’

That he’d noticed the embedded gravel in her knee amazed her. The Crimplene was flapping around her calves and her knees were hardly exposed. Maybe one of the firefighters had told him.

Or maybe he’d just…noticed? He was that sort of a doctor, she decided as he carefully scrubbed the surface and then checked that each particle of gravel had been removed.

It’d be hard to do it herself. But it was also hard to sit still and watch his bent head as he concentrated on what he was doing. His fingers were the fingers of a surgeon, she decided. He was skilled and careful and…kind?

He unnerved her. She didn’t understand the emotions he engendered and she wasn’t sure that she wanted to.

‘Th-thank you,’ she murmured as he put a dressing in place over the damaged skin.

He smiled up at her. ‘Think nothing of it, ma’am. I owe you one.’

‘Why?’

‘I disparaged your dog.’

‘Penelope’s Michael’s dog,’ she said before she could help herself, and he gave a rueful little smile.

‘So she is. But isn’t there something in the wedding vows that says with all your worldly goods? Doesn’t that include Afghan hounds?’

Hugo still thought she was married to Michael. She stared down at the band of gold on her left hand and gave a twisted smile. Married. To Michael. Ha!

But it wasn’t the time or the place to disillusion him. What was the point?

Besides, biscuits and cheese weren’t nearly enough.

‘We need to move on,’ she murmured, and he cast her a look that was curiously questioning. And curiously understanding.

‘Fine,’ he said, and he let his fingers stay on the dressing on her knee for just a fraction of a moment longer than he had to. Long enough to impart…what? Comfort? Understanding? She didn’t know.

‘Fine,’ he told her. ‘Let’s move on.’

They checked on Kim first. Rachel’s stomach couldn’t get any louder than it already was, and when Hugo suggested it she agreed. There were some things still more important than food, and seeing Kim safely asleep was one of them.

‘She woke a couple of hours back,’ Hugo told her. ‘But she went back to sleep almost immediately.’

Her body would be so shocked that she’d sleep for days, Rachel thought, and she was sleeping soundly now. Kim’s mother was by her side, sitting holding her hand. Doing nothing. She was simply watching.

It was enough.

‘Kim shows every sign that she’ll be fine,’ Hugo told the woman as Rachel watched from the doorway. He lifted the base of Kim’s bedsheet to reveal two sets of very pink toes. ‘Her circulation’s almost back to normal. She’s on maximum intravenous antibiotics. Her obs are great. She looks as if she’s going to have very little permanent damage. We’ll do more nerve tests in the morning but she wiggled everything when she woke and had full sensation. Your husband was watching. Did he tell you?’

‘He did.’ Mrs Sanderson’s face creased in fierce concentration. Concentrating on control. ‘I was home getting some things for her when she woke.’ Her fragile control broke and her voice choked on a sob. ‘I shouldn’t have left…’

‘Kim needed her things.’

‘I mean… I shouldn’t have left her at the showgrounds. She wanted to show Knickers. If I’d thought the Jeffreys could be stupid enough to let their dog off the lead… I just didn’t realise…how easy it is to lose someone. We came so close.’

‘But not close enough,’ Hugo said gently, his hand on the woman’s shoulder. ‘She’ll be fine.’ He smiled down into her tearful face. ‘Tell me how Knickers is.’

It was the right thing to ask. It made the terror recede. The woman gulped and gave him a watery smile. ‘Knickers is good.’ She took a big breath and searched for calm. She’d been to the brink, Rachel realised. This day would live with her for ever. ‘The vet says he’ll be OK, though my husband is saying it’ll cost more to have Knickers fixed than Kim. We can’t claim a cocker spaniel’s expenses through medical insurance.’

Hugo grinned. ‘See? I’m cheap at half the price.’ He smiled, a comfort smile Rachel was starting to recognise. ‘Now, what about you going home and getting some rest? We’ve sedated Kim fairly heavily so I’d be surprised if she woke before morning.’

‘I might just watch for a little more,’ the woman whispered. ‘If it’s OK. I just want to watch…’

She just wanted to watch her breathing, Rachel thought. She knew. To sit there and watch a chest rise and fall…

She bit her lip and Hugo turned and saw.

He thought it was the hunger, though. He must do. There was surely no other reason for it. She could see she had him confused and she fought to remove her expression. The stillness of her face…

‘I need to take our Dr Harper for a feed,’ he told Mrs Sanderson. ‘We’ll leave you to your vigil. But don’t exhaust yourself. Kim will need you in the morning, if only to prevent all her friends from visiting in the first five minutes. Keep up your strength.’

‘I will.’ The woman smiled through tears. ‘Thank you both. We were so lucky…’

‘We were really lucky,’ Hugo said as they headed out to the parking lot together. ‘We were hugely lucky to have you here to help us. We still are.’

Rachel said nothing at all.

The local hall was where the action was. It was set a block back from the main street, but even so Rachel wondered how she could have missed it when she and Penelope had walked into town. Hugo turned the corner and bright lights shone out through open doors. Even at midnight there were dozens of cars parked outside and people were spilling out onto the pavement.

‘So this is Cowral Bay’s night life,’ she said faintly, and Hugo grinned.

‘It doesn’t get any better than this. Come and meet Cowral. Oh, and I’d take a deep breath if I were you. I suspect you’ve been voted an honorary local now, like it or not.’

She had. From the moment she walked in the door she was welcomed as a friend. A lifesaver. She’d treated the firemen and she’d treated Kim.

Now she could tell why the pavilion had been locked and darkened-why the town itself had seemed abandoned. Everyone was here. Doris Keen was busy making sandwiches but when she saw Rachel she dropped what she was doing and came forward, her arms outstretched.

‘Oh, my dear, we were that worried. We didn’t know where you’d got to. We assumed you’d gone home but then Charlie found your husband’s car and it was still locked. We searched, but then the fire brigade boys came in and they said you’d gone back to the hospital and you’ve been working so hard…’

Everyone was assuming Michael was her husband, Rachel thought. She’d been with him. She wore a wedding ring.

It didn’t matter. Let them.

She tried to think of Michael with some degree of caring. Had he managed to save Hubert Witherspoon? She didn’t know and she didn’t much mind. For a moment she almost felt it in her to be sorry for him. He’d left and he’d missed out on…this. This hubbub of caring.

Penelope.

The dog flashed back into her mind and she gave a guilty start. Her dog… Michael’s dog was back at the hospital. She half turned, but Hugo was before her.

‘Our hospital orderly has taken Penelope home for the night,’ he told her. ‘Jake’s wife has a poodle. We figured they’d get on fine.’

What was it with this man? He had the ability to read what she was thinking almost as she thought it. The feeling was really, really unnerving.

‘This lady’s a real champion,’ someone said behind her, and she recognised one of the men who’d been on the fire truck. There were scores of firefighters here. This must be their refuelling station before they went back to the fire or turned in for the night.

‘She’s a hungry real champion,’ Hugo said from behind her. His hand was on her shoulder and for some reason it was a huge support. His warmth gave her shaking legs strength. Somehow his presence made this welcome feel real-as if she was part of all this.

But it wasn’t real, she told herself a little bit desperately. It was an illusion. She was most definitely not a part of this. She cast Hugo an unsure glance and pulled away from under his hand.

But then she missed it when he released her. She missed…the contact? The link?

What?

‘Daddy!’ a voice yelled out from the other side of the hall and a tousle-headed, pyjama-clad Toby came bounding through the crowd of locals to greet him. Hugo reached out and caught him, swinging him high in the air.

‘Tobes. Why aren’t you in bed?’

‘Mrs Partridge made me have an afternoon sleep,’ Toby said, with all the indignation of a small man whose person has been significantly violated. ‘She said we’d all had a nasty shock and she needed a lie-down, too. So I went to sleep. And now I’m wide awake and Mrs Partridge’s helping me make lamingtons for the firefighters to eat tomorrow. Can we stay for a while, Daddy?’

‘Yes, we can,’ he told him, hugging him close. ‘Far be it from me to interfere with lamington-making. And we need to wait for Dr Harper to be fed.’

‘Why?’

‘Because we’re taking her home to stay with us.’

To stay with them? He had to be kidding.

He wasn’t. ‘There’s nowhere else.’

Full to the brim of Irish stew, fresh bread rolls and Toby’s magnificent lamingtons, Rachel was tucked into Hugo’s capacious car with as much room for argument as if she’d been a parcel.

‘But why?’

‘You’ve already discovered the motel’s full. There’s a couple of beds at the hospital but we need them. While this fire’s burning I want all resources left free for emergencies. Toby and I have a big house at the rear of the hospital and there’s two spare bedrooms.’

‘But your wife…’

‘I’m a widower,’ he said bluntly. ‘But I’m trustworthy.’ He put on his most trustworthy smile and she had to smile.

‘No, but-’

‘Exactly. No buts. Can you think of anywhere better?’ He smiled across at her and his smile had her insides doing strange things. Very strange things indeed. This was no trustworthy smile. It looked exactly the opposite.

But he was still speaking. She had to concentrate. ‘There’s no women’s refuge to be had,’ he was saying. ‘Despite the rumours. The dog pavilion’s closed for the night and something tells me you weren’t very comfortable there last night anyway. And the park benches are exceedingly hard. So it’s us or nothing.’

‘We really want you to stay,’ Toby announced from the back seat. ‘Me and Digger like you. Even though your dress looks funny.’

‘Gee, thanks.’ She fingered the Crimplene and wondered how it was that the Crimplene was the least odd thing in the succession of things that had happened to her today.

‘We’ll do something about that tomorrow,’ Hugo announced. ‘But for now, we’d be very pleased if you took up our offer of accommodation, Dr Harper. What about it?’

What about it? There was only one answer to that. She had no choice.

‘Yes, please,’ she said, and decided then and there that arguing was out of the question.

Things were entirely out of her hands.