Rescue at Cradle Lake

CHAPTER TEN

SHE was there-with appendages. Fergus pulled into the east shore parking area, where a row of eucalypts divided the paddocks from the sandy shore, and he thought she’d brought everyone she could think of.

Ginny. Madison. Twiggy, Snapper and Bounce. Richard, lying on a blow-up mattress on the shoreline and seemingly asleep, and Miriam, calmly sitting beside him, her stockings off and her feet in the water.

It was a real family picnic, Fergus thought, and he wanted to run.

‘Hi.’ Ginny rose from where she’d been sorting through a picnic hamper. She was wearing a crimson bikini with a crimson and white sarong. She was smiling.

Maybe he didn’t want to run.

‘Bounce nearly ate the sausages,’ Madison announced. She was also wearing a bikini-a miniature version of Ginny’s. The Cradle Lake ladies auxiliary had held a working bee to augment Madison’s scant wardrobe. She now had outfits for every occasion, but her tiny body still looked waiflike and Fergus felt his heart wrench.

Maybe he should run.

‘So who saved the sausages?’ he asked, and Richard opened his eyes and managed a weary smile.

‘Our Ginny was a rugby player in a previous life. It was a tackle that would have done an international player proud.’

‘Ginny got a sore knee,’ Madison said gravely, and Fergus looked at said knee and saw a graze and a trace of blood.

‘Do you need a doctor?’ he asked, and she flushed a little.

‘I don’t need a doctor, thank you very much,’ she managed.

‘We need a cook,’ Miriam told him. ‘You’re on barbecue duty.’

‘Why?’

‘Men tend barbecues,’ Richard whispered. ‘And I can’t.’

It was all Richard could do to make himself heard, Fergus thought, looking down at his patient in concern. It must have cost him a huge effort to be there tonight. But together Miriam and Ginny had him comfortable. They had his oxygen cylinder set just above the water line. They’d lain him right on the water’s edge and he had a hand trailing lazily in the water.

The night was warm and dreamy, the sun a low ball of fading heat, reflecting softly off the water. If I only had a few days left, this is where I might like to be, Fergus thought, and glanced at Ginny and saw she was thinking exactly what he was thinking. There was pain behind her eyes, knowledge of imminent loss.

‘Let’s get these sausages cooked,’ he said, maybe more roughly than he’d intended. ‘Maddy, would you like to help me?’

‘Madison,’ she whispered.

‘Sorry. Madison, would you, please, help me with the sausages?’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Have they been pricked?’

‘Pricked?’

‘No,’ Ginny told him. ‘They’re unpricked sausages.’

‘That’s a terrible state of affairs,’ he told the little girl. ‘Let me teach you how to professionally prick a sausage.’

They pricked, cooked and ate their sausages. They polished off salad and lamingtons and sponge cake and grapes and lemonade.

‘It’s time to swim,’ Ginny decreed.

‘Aren’t you supposed to wait for half an hour after eating?’ Fergus asked, and she gazed at him blankly.

‘Why?’

‘In case of cramp.’

‘What medical textbook did that come out of?’

‘My mother’s,’ he said, and she grinned.

‘My mother said every minute out of the water on a night like this was a minute wasted. Are you pitting your mother against my mother?’

‘No,’ he said faintly. ‘I daren’t.’

‘You did bring your togs?’

He had. He felt a bit self-conscious hauling off his shirt and trousers, with everyone looking at him. Ginny had seen him before but the thought of that made him even more self-conscious-and Miriam whistling didn’t help at all.

‘Ooh, Dr Fergus. You make me go all wobbly round the knees.’

‘I begin to see what you see in the man,’ Richard managed, and Fergus made a valiant attempt not to blush.

‘I’m swimming,’ he said, and turned toward the water.

‘Not before the race,’ Ginny announced, and he hesitated.

‘The race?’

‘We have a boat.’ Ginny gestured up the bank to where an ancient bathtub lay on its side.

‘That’s a bathtub,’ he said cautiously.

‘The man’s intelligent as well as good-looking,’ Richard whispered. ‘Ginny, you’ve struck gold.’

‘Quiet,’ Ginny ordered. She turned back to the lake and gestured to a series of poles curving about two hundred yards out into the lake. ‘We use the bath to paddle through as many poles as we can. The poles are all in shallow water,’ she said. ‘They mark the boundary of where non-swimmers can go. Plus they act as a sort of slalom run.’

‘A slalom run,’ Fergus said cautiously. ‘As in skiing. Right. Um… Anything else I should know?’

‘Our bathtub doesn’t have a plug.’

‘Right.’

Ginny grinned at his evident confusion. ‘Right behind where the bath is, there’s a clay bank,’ she told him. ‘It’s really gluey clay, and it’s the makings of a Cradle Lake tradition. You make your own plug. Your plug can be made of anything you can find on the ground, like leaves, grass, even cow pats-but the plug has to be held together by clay.’

‘I see.’ He shook his head. ‘Nope. I don’t see.’

‘The trick is to make your plug, launch your bath and then paddle-using only arms over the side. You weave in and out of the poles. The record is the third last marker before the plug disintegrates and the bath sinks.’

‘Who holds the record?’ Fergus asked, and Richard managed a smile.

‘That would be me. Aged all of fourteen. Twenty-three poles.’

‘Richard was great,’ Ginny told them, smiling down at her brother in affection. ‘But, Fergus, you’re a grown man with muscles that make even Miriam whistle. Surely you can beat a mere fourteen-year-old whippersnapper.’

‘With cystic fibrosis,’ Richard added. ‘Everyone without cystic fibrosis should be handicapped.’

‘No one’s beaten your record,’ Ginny said soundly. ‘Stuff cystic fibrosis. It didn’t beat you then.’

It didn’t beat you then…

This was a battle, Fergus thought. He looked from brother to sister and back again and thought this disease had been a part of their lives for so long that it was a tangible thing. A monster to be beaten, over and over again.

Until it could no longer be beaten. Which would be soon.

Meanwhile, they were watching him. Expectant.

‘You want me to show you how it’s done?’ Ginny asked. ‘Richard would but he’s a bit tied up at the moment.’

‘You could say that,’ Richard said, and grinned. ‘Madison, sit by me while your Aunty Ginny plays boat captain.’

‘I reckon Madison could go in the boat,’ Miriam said, smiling at the lot of them like an indulgent aunt instead of the efficient nurse she was.

‘Can the dogs go in the boat, too?’ Madison asked, and Ginny held up her hands in horror.

‘One child maybe but no dogs. I intend to set a mark that Dr Reynard can’t beat. Madison, you can help paddle but the dogs would sink us by the first pole.’

‘Right,’ Miriam said decisively. ‘That’s it, then. The crews are decided. Let’s get this boat race under way.’

It looked easy, Fergus thought, sitting on the sun-warmed sand and waiting as Ginny prepared her plug.

‘The trick is not to show Dr Reynard what we’re doing,’ she told Madison, and they turned their backs on him and stooped over the clay bank. ‘But the trick is to weave the grass, over and over. Watch.’

Two heads bent, intent.

This was great, Fergus thought. This, for Madison, was a night off. She was totally absorbed, and for the moment she could forget the horrors of abandonment, the loss of her mother. She was handing Ginny blade after blade of grass, and a complicated piece of neurosurgery couldn’t have elicited more attention.

‘Right,’ said Ginny at last. ‘Fergus, you’re permitted to help haul the bath to the water’s edge.’

‘Gee, thanks.’

‘Think nothing of it.’

They hauled the bath down to the shore, then Ginny fitted the now empty picnic hamper into the rear, upside down.

‘That’s your seat,’ she told Madison. ‘Put your toes down into the water and kick as hard as you can. Kick and kick and kick. I find yelling helps, too. A sort of warrior war cry. Listen as I yell and follow.’

Madison looked dubiously at Ginny. For a moment Fergus thought she’d refuse, but Ginny was squeezing a little more water out of her plug and not paying attention.

Finally she looked up, satisfied.

‘Right,’ she told Madison, woman to woman. ‘Are we ready?’

‘Yes,’ said Madison.

So Madison was seated on the wicker basket. Ginny climbed aboard and squished her plug into the hole.

‘Right,’ she yelled. ‘Push.’

Fergus and Miriam pushed the boat out into the water, through the first poles.

‘Go,’ Ginny yelled. She was in the bow of the bath, leaning forward so her hands were paddling crazily in front of her. The boat was hardly steerable. The trick was to get close enough to the next pole to grab it and haul the tub around. ‘Go, go go,’ Ginny yelled, and Madison kicked with a ferocity that belied her four years of age.

‘Go,’ Madison yelled, entering into the spirit of things and kicking harder. ‘Go, go, go.’

The dogs were going crazy, barking in chorus. Miriam was laughing, and Richard was doing a close approximation to a chuckle, holding his hands up and clapping to show encouragement.

Five poles. Six. Seven, eight…

The tub settled lower in the water.

‘Kick,’ Ginny yelled, hauling the tub round the next pole. ‘Go, go go.’

Two more poles. The bow dipped…

The bathtub slid silently underwater, but by the time it sank Ginny had Madison in her arms, hugging her and cheering as their vessel disappeared from view.

‘We were fantastic, Maddy, girl,’ she whooped. ‘Weren’t we fantastic?’

‘Madison,’ Maddy said, but she was smiling.

‘Fourteen poles,’ Ginny said in satisfaction. ‘Beat that, Dr Reynard.’

Only, of course, he couldn’t. He made a plug he was sure would hold. Miriam and Ginny and Madison shoved him forward with a push he had to concede was as powerful a start as he’d given them. They whooped, the dogs barked-and he sank as he reached the eleventh pole.

‘Pathetic,’ Richard whispered as they hauled the bathtub back to shore. ‘See what cystic fibrosis can do for a man?’

‘I’ll get better,’ Fergus said.

‘Not if you only stay here a few more weeks,’ Richard told him. ‘It takes a lifetime to build a skill like that.’

He broke off, gasping, and Ginny flinched. But it seemed she was determined to keep them all cheerful.

‘We all need a swim,’ she said determinedly. ‘Richard, would you like us to push you further in?’

‘I’m happy where I am,’ Richard managed. ‘Just watching. I’ve pushed my bathtub for twenty-three poles. What more can a man expect out of life?’

They stayed until dark. Miraculously Fergus’s pager stayed silent. They dried off. Ginny did a quick change behind a beach towel that had Fergus fascinated. Then they toasted marshmallows on the fire and sat and watched as the moon came up over the water.

Miriam excused herself. ‘I’ll be back at the house when you get there,’ she told them, ‘but there’s not a lot of nursing to be done here. Fergus, if you’ll stay to help Ginny get them all home, I might nip home myself and spend an hour or two watering my vegetable patch.’

‘She shouldn’t be staying with us,’ Ginny said, obviously feeling guilty as Miriam left.

‘It’s cost-effective,’ Fergus told her. ‘We worked it out. Two patients needing full-time care. We’d have to put another nurse on if we had them in hospital so the board’s happy to pay Tony and Miriam and Bridget to work like this.’

‘How hard did you have to twist their arms?’

‘I didn’t,’ Fergus said honestly. ‘This is a great little community, Ginny.’

‘I know it is,’ she said. ‘I hadn’t realised… If only my parents had asked for help…’

‘And you hadn’t had a neighbour like Oscar.’

She shrugged. ‘Oscar’s irrelevant.’ She turned and looked at Richard. As the sun had set they’d piled blankets over him to keep him warm. He’d stayed awake until the last ray had faded behind the distant mountains, watching with something akin to greed.

He’d watched the sun set on the lake. He’d watched his daughter trying to swim.

This was some hospice, Fergus thought. Would that all dying patients got such care.

He was deeply asleep now. Deeply…

For a moment Fergus hesitated, but then he rose and crossed to the makeshift bed. He stooped and felt for the pulse.

It was still there. Just. A thready, too fast pattern.

He turned and Ginny was hugging Madison to her, tight. Her face had blenched.

‘It’s OK,’ he said gently. ‘He’s still with us.’

The tension eased from her face, but not the pain.

‘Soon,’ she whispered.

‘Soon,’ he agreed. ‘But you’ve given him this night. You’ve given him the knowledge that his little girl will be cared for. It’s some gift, Ginny.’

‘You’ve helped,’ she whispered. Like Richard, Madison had slumped into sleep. She’d been seated beside Ginny and gradually she’d eased down onto Ginny’s knees. Ginny was cradling her, taking comfort as well as giving it.

The little girl stirred now and whimpered a little, as if she realised that the arms she was in weren’t those of her mother. Ginny eased her down onto the rug, pulling another rug over her. Then she sat and watched the tiny face, concentrating fiercely on sleep.

Soon they’d have to stir. They’d have to wake Richard and move him back to the house. Soon this evening would be ended.

She didn’t want it to end, Fergus thought, watching Ginny’s face and knowing instinctively what she was thinking. She knew her brother wouldn’t be coming back here.

Something was ending tonight.

He couldn’t bear it.

He didn’t remember moving. He just…did. One minute he was kneeling beside Richard. The next minute he was on the rug with Ginny. He had her in his arms and he was kissing her.

He was kissing her as she needed to be kissed.

It was different from last night. Last night their love-making had been driven by passion and laughter and mutual need.

Tonight…

Tonight he needed to kiss this woman as he needed to breathe. She was so beautiful, so needful, so brave…

She was taking the world onto her shoulders and she’d already been there. He had no doubt of the childhood she’d had, loaded with responsibility beyond her years, and here she was taking it on all over again.

She was so…so…

Ginny.

And she needed him. He could feel it in the way her body melted into his. In the way her face came up to meet his kiss, but more. It was as if she was a part of him that he hadn’t realised was missing. When her lips met his it was a completeness that he’d never experienced, could never experience with anyone but this woman.

Ginny.

Her lips were opening under his. She was wearing a fleecy jogging suit, soft pants and an oversized sweater, which should be keeping her warm on such a mild night and so close to the fire, but she was trembling.

He held her and kissed her and kissed her and he thought this was right, this was how the world was meant to be.

This woman in his arms for always. For ever.

But Madison’s little body was hard pressed against Ginny. Maybe she felt the change in Ginny’s body. Maybe she felt the trembling and it fed her own insecurities. For whatever reason, she suddenly whimpered a little and drew away.

It broke the moment. Ginny’s hands touched his shoulders but already he was drawing away, looking down at the child in concern, looking back at Ginny, seeing Ginny’s uncertainty in the firelight…

‘I…’ She reached up and touched her lips where she’d been kissed, as if she had trouble understanding the sensation, the taste, the lingering feeling of awe she must feel because that was how he felt. Like the world had changed.

She’d said their time in the boatshed had changed her world, he thought, dazed. Maybe…maybe tonight had changed his.

No. Last night he’d known that he wanted this woman. The only thing that had changed was the intensity of that feeling.

‘Ginny, we need to be together,’ he whispered, and touched her face.

‘I don’t see how.’

‘We can work it out. We must.’

‘I don’t see how.’

‘I can do this,’ he said. He hesitated, taking in the scene lit by the firelight and the rising moon. A dying man. Three dogs, lying by Richard’s side. Richard had demanded the leftover sausages and he’d fed pieces of them to the dogs while they’d swum, making them his devoted fans for ever. Or for however long he had.

Before him was a beautiful woman, huddled into an oversized windcheater, gazing at him with eyes that were uncertain-but challenging. All or nothing, her gaze said. If I can do it, you can do it. Start again.

A child.

A little girl lying by her side.

He could do this. He could step back into…

‘It’s too soon, Fergus,’ she said gently but surely. ‘Molly’s been dead only these last few months. It’s too soon to even think you can create another family.’

‘It’s not replacing,’ he said, but for the life of him he couldn’t keep the uncertainty out of his voice. ‘Molly and Madison…they’re so different.’

‘Yes, but-’

‘I love you, Ginny,’ he said. ‘I’ll do whatever it takes.’

‘You see, that’s what I don’t want,’ she whispered. ‘Because I don’t think that I’m even ready for that. Yesterday I thought that maybe I could rejoin the human race. I could let myself get attached to Madison and the dogs and this community. But taking you on…’

‘What do you mean, taking me on?’ he asked, startled, and she managed a wavering smile.

‘You come with your own ghosts,’ she said. ‘If I didn’t have a mass of my own to deal with then maybe I could help you with yours.’

‘I’m not asking you to.’

‘No. But…Fergus, I’m not denying this love thing…this feeling we have for each other. The way you make me feel. But it scares me. Everything scares me. Come back to me in a year or so when I’ve learned what loving is again. When you’ve figured out what it means not being Molly’s dad any more.’

‘Ginny, I want you.’

‘I know. But we need to be sensible.’

‘I don’t feel like being sensible.’ He touched her cheek with the back of his hand and she moved into the touch like a magnet finding its north. He hesitated but he’d gone too far to stop. ‘Ginny, I’d like to marry you.’

It was a dumb proposal, he thought. He knew it the moment the words were out of his mouth and he saw her flinch.

‘Marrying me means taking on Madison as your daughter,’ she whispered. ‘Fergus, are you sure you can do that?’

‘Maybe…’

‘You see, there’s no maybe about it,’ she said, and suddenly she sounded angry. She rose, backing away from his touch as he rose with her. ‘This is a crazy conversation. You know it’s much too soon. We hardly know each other. We need to go home. Can you help?’

‘Of course I can help.’ But could he? This is what this is all about, he thought. Ginny had a brother and a child and three dogs. She couldn’t handle them on her own. Marriage to Ginny meant marriage to everything.

‘There’s a child booster seat in the back of my car,’ Ginny said, moving on, marriage proposal set aside. She hesitated. ‘Richard was uncomfortable in my little car on the way here. Can we put him in your truck?’

‘Fine.’ But it wasn’t fine. He wanted to spend more time here. He wanted to gather Ginny into his arms again and kiss her senseless and make her see… Reason?

‘Dogs first,’ she said. ‘Dr Reynard, I need your help.’

Maybe she’d seen where his thoughts were headed. Regardless, she’d called him Dr Reynard for a reason. He needed to be practical. Richard needed care. They both needed to move into professional mode.

They left Madison till last. The dogs were easy to load into the truck, as was the detritus from their picnic. Richard was harder. He woke up when Fergus touched his shoulder.

‘Time to go,’ he said softly, and Richard’s face clouded.

‘It’s never time to go,’ he muttered, and turned to look at the moon streaming over the lake. Fergus saw tears slipping down his gaunt face.

‘Hey, Richard,’ Ginny said, and slipped her hand into his. There was a moment’s pause. Fergus stepped back and left them together, letting the moment stretch out.

How to say goodbye to life?

But finally Richard gave a tiny, decisive nod and Fergus saw his grip tighten on Ginny’s hand.

‘Let’s go,’ he said.

Easier said than done. He had no strength left to stand. They slipped their arms under a shoulder apiece and somehow manoeuvred him into the front passenger seat of Fergus’s vehicle. He should be on a stretcher, Fergus thought, but he also knew it had been important that this night hadn’t involved stretchers.

It did involve oxygen, though, and it was a fiddle getting everything in the front of the truck.

‘Richard, you’re going to have to diet before we come back,’ Ginny told him, and that got a weary grin. But then he winced. He wouldn’t be in physical pain, Fergus knew. He’d been so careful at monitoring medication that he knew there could be little breakthrough. But there was more pain than merely physical.

‘Ginny,’ he whispered, and Ginny held his hand tight.

‘Can you put Madison in my car while I stay with Richard?’ she asked, and Fergus hesitated. Richard needed Ginny.

‘You drive Richard home in my truck,’ he said. ‘I’ll follow with Madison.’

‘If you’re sure,’ Ginny said. She looked down into her brother’s face. ‘Maybe we could drive right round the lake. Miriam will be at home to help you put Madison to bed. And she trusts you, even if she wakes up.’

She did, Fergus thought. She had no choice. She’d been thrust into a family she didn’t know and she had to take what was thrust at her.

Including him.

‘That’s fine,’ he said, and something must have shown in his face because Ginny hesitated.

‘I don’t like-’

‘I’ll be fine,’ he said, making his voice definite and motioning with his eyes for Ginny to say nothing more in Richard’s hearing. Richard needed this time so badly. There was so little time left.

‘Thanks, mate,’ Richard whispered, and Fergus wondered how much he guessed.

Hell.

So they left and all Fergus had to do was lift the sleeping Madison into his arms, carry her over to the car and lower her gently into the child seat…

But as he did so, she stirred. She hardly woke up, but she roused enough to know that she was being carried and she knew enough to make herself more secure.

She sighed, a weary sigh of a child who’d been through too much and had found no joy at the other side.

She lifted her arms, she twined them around his neck and she huddled tight.

As if she was finding her security. Any security.

He cradled her against him as he carried her to the car and she felt…she felt…

Don’t think it.

‘It’s OK, sweetheart,’ he whispered into her hair. ‘I’m taking you home to bed. Home with Ginny and your daddy.’

‘Daddy,’ she whispered, and the word cut through him like a knife.

Molly…

Somehow he managed the short drive, but the knowledge that there was a child right behind him, as there’d been a child right behind him for the last six years except for three empty months made him feel…empty. Blank. Like he didn’t know how to go on.

He concentrated on the road ahead. Kangaroos jumped out of nowhere around here. He needed to concentrate.

‘I want my mummy,’ the little voice whispered from the back seat, and his heart clenched.

‘Ginny will be home.’

‘I want my mummy.’

No substitutes. He knew how she felt. God, he knew how she felt. That she wasn’t Molly…

He pulled into the farmyard and Miriam was on the back veranda, waiting for him.

‘Richard and Ginny are coming home the long way in my truck,’ he explained. ‘They’ll be here soon.’

‘Let’s get the bairn to bed,’ Miriam said, accepting things fast for what they were. ‘I’ll pull the sheets back. If you’ll just carry her in…’

‘Will you-?’ he began, but she’d already turned away.

He opened the car door and unclipped the child harness.

‘Bedtime,’ he whispered, and once again her arms wound round his neck and she clung.

He carried her up the stairs in silence. The whole night was silent. The dogs were in the back of his truck, being ferried around the lake. Miriam was out of sight, doing what had to be done.

Madison clung and sighed, and his heart twisted until he was sure it must break all over again. As it had broken the night he’d said goodbye to Molly.

How could he think…?

He couldn’t. He just…couldn’t.

Madison’s bed was waiting. Miriam was holding the sheets back.

‘I’ll change her into her pyjamas if she wakes up and needs to go the bathroom,’ she said. ‘But it won’t hurt her to sleep in what she’s in.’

She was in a tiny version of what Ginny was wearing. Soft fleecy pants and windcheater.

He gazed down at her tiny face and he saw a likeness to Ginny. Fleeting but there.

Family.

She snuggled her face into the pillow, and her arms came out, still almost in sleep. This was an involuntary movement, made maybe every night as a sleeping chid was carried to bed.

‘Cuddle night,’ she whispered, and he had no choice but to put his face down on hers, kiss her gently and give her a soft hug.

She hugged him back. She couldn’t be mistaking him for her mother now, he thought, dazed. He had a stubbly chin. He’d smell different. He’d feel different.

‘Daddy,’ she whispered, and settled back into sleep.

It was half an hour before Ginny arrived.

‘We drove right round the far side and watched the moon until Richard slept,’ Ginny told him, slipping silently from the truck and going around the back to release the dogs. ‘I’m sorry you had to wait.’

‘It’s OK,’ he said, but something about his voice must have changed.

‘What is it?’

‘Nothing. Let’s get Richard to bed.’

The next few minutes were taken up with the mechanics of getting one very ill man into bed, settled, rewired.

‘I’m setting up a subcutaneous line,’ Fergus told Ginny. He’d watched how much Richard had-or hadn’t-consumed during the evening and he knew he’d be getting really dehydrated very soon. Eating and drinking were now too much trouble.

They’d spoken about this to Richard. He wanted no heroic rescues or anything as intrusive as nasal gastric feeding, but dehydration had been explained to him and he’d agreed to fluids when the time came.

‘I’m with you on that one,’ Ginny said. ‘I talked to him about the need for it this afternoon and he said when you said he needed it then it was fine by him. You’re his doctor, Fergus.’

He was and he couldn’t walk away now. Over the next few days he’d be back here over and over again. But if he had a choice…

‘What’s changed?’ she said. With Richard settled, they’d walked down to his truck. Miriam sat up on the veranda, watching her charges, but she was out of earshot and even if she hadn’t been, Fergus knew that anything he said here would never be repeated.

This town knew everything about everyone already. There was no need for eavesdropping. Miriam probably knew already what he was about to say right now.

‘Ginny, I can’t…’

‘You can’t be with me,’ she whispered. ‘I know that. I told you.’

‘I thought-’

‘Fergus, you’re not thinking,’ she interrupted, and she laid her hand on his arm and pressed. ‘You’re hurting. You and I had a wonderful one-night stand. That night set things free for me in a way that I could never have imagined. But it didn’t set you free. And my freedom doesn’t mean I’m taking things further with you. You’re where I’ve been for years. Running from encumbrances. There’s no way I’ll load you with mine.’

‘But you-’

‘Fergus, I’m a package deal,’ she said softly, and she lifted his hand and held it against her face. ‘I think…I think you’re a wonderful man. A man I’d love to love. But there’s lots of things to love in this world and you’re only one of them.’

‘Gee, thanks,’ he said blankly, and she managed a shaky laugh.

‘Don’t mention it.’

‘It’s only Madison.’

‘No,’ she said softly. ‘It’s nothing to do with Madison. You think you’d like to be with me if only you didn’t have to look at a child again. But you don’t really want to be with me. Not how…not how I want to be with you.’

‘I don’t understand,’ he said miserably, and she smiled and reached up and kissed him lightly on the lips.

‘That’s because you haven’t had an epiphany,’ she whispered. ‘I hope one day you have it. For your sake. Somehow you’ve given it to me.’

‘An epiphany…’

‘I used to try and drive away pain by anger,’ she said. ‘Or work. Dive into medicine and don’t think of anything else, and when the world got too grim I’d go to the gym and kick-box.’

‘Kick-box?’ He stared and she grinned.

‘Didn’t know that about me, huh?’

‘N-no.’

‘Puts me in an altogether new light.’

‘Maybe,’ he said faintly, and her smile faded.

‘Look, it doesn’t matter. All I’m saying is that by loving you I realised that it works. I can love again. I can make this life work for me. I can be happy again, even if I’ve lost.’

‘Yeah, but-’

‘This isn’t about you,’ she said. ‘What I’m saying is about me. You look at Madison and you cringe inside and there’s no way you should put yourself in that position. We go back to being professional colleagues, Fergus. Maybe in a few years you’ll have your epiphany and maybe I’ll be sitting in my rocking chair with my knitting and my dogs and I’ll spend a little part of my pension on another rocking chair so you can sit beside me.’

‘Lie beside me,’ he growled, and she chuckled.

‘I’m betting you’ll be a very sexy octogenarian.’

‘Ginny-’

‘Enough.’ She kissed him again, lightly but with purpose. ‘We both know this isn’t going to happen now for us. Face it, Fergus, and move on. I love you but I don’t need you. I wish that could make the loneliness better for you but I don’t think anything can. Except maybe time. So give it to yourself, Fergus, love. Walk away.’