Rescue at Cradle Lake

CHAPTER TWELVE

AFTER the funeral the little girl had been wan and listless, saying nothing, and nothing Ginny could say had broken through.

Richard’s friends had been there, back at the house, wanting to sit on his veranda, wanting to feel close to him, and she’d been hamstrung. They’d driven for hours to be there-some having come from interstate. She hadn’t been able to send them away. So she’d cuddled Madison until she’d slept. At seven, when Madison had seemed deeply asleep, she’d tucked her into her own bed and she’d checked her every half-hour or so.

At a little after one a.m. the last of Richard’s friends had said goodbye.

Ginny had walked into the house to find Madison’s bed empty.

‘We’ll have people searching from one side of the valley to the other within half an hour.’ Ben Cross, the police sergeant, had been there within minutes of being called and was now in organisation mode. ‘You’re sure the people who were here were OK? None of them could have…?’

‘I don’t know,’ Ginny whispered, appalled beyond belief. ‘They were Richard’s friends. There were about twenty of them. Some of them I know but some I’d never seen before. I was so careful. I was so worried.’

‘Hey, Ginny,’ Fergus said, and hugged her tighter against him. ‘This is not your fault, love. Let’s just focus on finding Madison. Let’s think. She wouldn’t run away, would she? Where would she go if she ran?’

‘I don’t know.’ There were car lights coming up the hill. Two cars. Three. Four. Ben’s calls for help were being answered in spades. ‘She seemed almost happy today. We talked and talked. She was so wonderful at the funeral. And then Oscar…’

‘We all saw that,’ Ben muttered, not bothering to hide his distress. ‘What did he say to her?’

‘She wouldn’t tell me,’ Ginny whispered.

‘Maybe it’s time we found out.’ Fergus put Ginny at arm’s length, and held her gaze. ‘Love, there are people coming to help search. Ben’s here. I think the most important thing I can do is to go and talk to Oscar.’

Wrong, his heart was saying. The most important thing he could do was to hold on to Ginny, for ever and ever and ever.

But if he was to rebuild a family for them all then he had to gather the family members together. Madison was part of his family. He knew that in his heart. Maybe he’d always known it.

‘I’ll be back as soon as I can,’ he told Ginny. ‘But I need to go.’

Oscar was sleeping the sleep of the pure of heart. His asthma had receded. The last few weeks of regular meals and limited alcohol had improved his health. He was sleeping in a single room with a view over the valley toward the farm he’d neglected for years, and where half his stock had needed to be put down. Yet no conscience kept him awake. He’s a patient, Fergus told himself, and somehow he refrained from shaking the man awake and shouting. Instead, he switched on the night-light behind the bed, touched him lightly on the shoulder and sat down in the visitor’s chair, waiting for him to wake gently.

He was doing very well, he thought in some abstract part of him that was able to be dispassionate. The doctor part of him congratulated the part of him that wasn’t anything to do with his medicine. The non-abstract part.

The part of him that loved Ginny.

And…Madison?

But Oscar was waking up. ‘What do you want?’ The big man’s voice was slurred with sleep and the after-effects of the alcohol he’d drunk the previous afternoon. ‘You wake a man up in the middle of the night to do your bloody tests-’

‘I’m not here for tests, Mr Bentley,’ Fergus said, still in that strange voice that was all professional and not personal in the least. ‘I need to know what you said to Madison at the funeral today.’

‘Madison?’

‘Richard Viental’s little girl.’

‘The kid,’ he said, his face clearing. ‘The Viental kid.’

‘That’s right.’ Still that detached tone. Good, he told himself. Very good. No anger. No shouting. ‘When she tried to put the flowers round your neck…what did you say to her?’

His face darkened. ‘She spilled my drink.’

‘She did,’ Fergus agreed. ‘I’d be guessing that made you pretty angry. A man’s got to have a drink.’

‘He bloody does,’ Oscar said. ‘Bloody nurses…’

‘It was good of Ginny to put on free beer for the men today,’ Fergus said thoughtfully, and he watched Oscar’s face change.

‘Her. I shouldn’t have drunk her beer.’

‘Why not?’

‘She’s a Viental. They should all be dead by now.’

‘Why?’ Still the conversational tone. Somehow.

‘They’ve got this bloody disease. That woman… I asked her to marry me, you know. This bloody woman’s mother. My farm’s four times as big as bloody Dave Viental’s and she chose him. Made me a laughing stock. I used to see ’em every time I walked up to the ridge, playing happy families, poor as blasted church mice and being…’ He sucked in his breath on an angry hiss. ‘Anyway, when the first kid died I thought, Great, this is how it ought to be. She chose misery over me. She could suffer the consequences. Then the next kid died and Dave took off.

‘You know what I did then? I went over there, cap in hand, and said, “You know what, Mary, I’m a big man. I can let bygones be bygones. We’ll ship the girl off to school in the city and the other boy’ll soon be dead. We can start over the way it’s supposed to be.” And you know what? She stood there, staring at me like I was a lunatic, and then she started laughing. She laughed and laughed and laughed, like it was so hysterical she couldn’t stop, and then that bloody girl came out and grabbed her arm and said, “Come on, Mum, you need to rest.” And that was that. I went home and I vowed I’d never go to that side of the ridge again until every last one of them was dead. Every last one…’

Somehow Fergus stayed silent. Somehow the medical side of him-the part of him that could suggest a diagnosis of obsessive paranoia, of a solitary man stuck in the groove of hate for over thirty years-could force the other part of him to shut up.

‘And now Richard’s dead,’ he said conversationally, and Oscar nodded.

‘Good riddance.’

‘But Ginny…and Madison?’

‘They’ll have it,’ he said, and his hatred sounded awful in the stillness of the night. ‘They’ll both have this cystic thing. Her brothers are all dead, she will be soon, and this last one…Richard…will have passed it on to the kid.’

‘I’m sorry to have to disappoint you.’ Fergus was amazing himself. His voice was almost gentle. ‘Neither Ginny or Madison have cystic fibrosis.’

‘Yeah, but they will.’

‘No,’ he said, and his voice was suddenly harsher than he’d intended. ‘You need two cystic fibrosis genes to be ill. Ginny has one cystic fibrosis gene. That means if she marries someone with a matching gene then she might have an ill child but she herself won’t get ill. Madison’s clear. She’s totally free. A normal little girl with a life expectancy of eighty or more.’

‘But her mother-’

‘Her mother died of cardiomyopathy. It’s an infection of the heart. Like the flu. Madison’s no more likely to die of it that you are.’

There was a moment’s silence. Then Oscar’s breath whistled in through his lips in an angry gasp as he accepted Fergus’s words for fact.

‘Then they’ll live.’

‘Yes.’ With me, Fergus thought, and the thought was a good one. It was reassuring in the awfulness of what he was listening to. Please, he thought. I just need to get him to tell me…

‘So what happened at the funeral to make you angry at Madison?’ he asked, and Oscar’s fingers clenched into fists on the coverlet.

‘Made me sick.’

‘What made you sick?’

‘All that crap about the Vientals. Everywhere…people saying what a shame it was how all the kids had died, and how she’s coming back here now and the kid’s staying with her and won’t it be great? And then that stuff about shells. “She thinks my mummy and daddy might have found a new shell together,”’ he said, mimicking Madison’s tone and words from the funeral, and Fergus winced. ‘That was what I told her. I told her it was crap.’

‘What did you tell her?’ Fergus demanded, and if he forgot to keep his voice even it wasn’t for want of trying. He thought back to that fragment of time-a little girl slipping a garland of flowers over this man’s head, the spilled drink, the fury, the grabbing, hauling her up, spitting the words at her. There’d have been time for so little before onlookers intervened. What could he have said in that short interval?

‘Just…’ Oscar said, and paused.

‘Just?’ Fergus was holding his breath. He was trying so hard to contain himself that he felt sick. ‘Just what, Oscar?’

“‘Your mother hasn’t found a shell,’” he spat, lying back on the bed and repeating his words with relish. “‘Your mother died in the car. She’ll be rotting in the ground or, if there is anything afterwards, she’ll be stuck on the road outside the football ground, whinging about her lost lover for ever.’”

He didn’t hit him.

Somehow Fergus backed out of the ward and closed the door, then leaned against the wall of the hospital corridor, feeling ill.

Such hate. In the middle of tragedy, to hold such hate to yourself when there was room to move on…

He thought suddenly of Molly, his precious little girl, beaming up to him at bedtime, winding her arms around his neck and kissing him goodnight.

There was room to move on. You should move on, because not to…

He had to move on.

He walked out of the hospital, thinking fiercely. Trying not to muddle thoughts of the future with what needed to be done now.

He stood in the car park and let his gaze wander around the moonlit valley.

The football ground lay to the north, about a half of the way round from the hospital, or a quarter of the way round from Ginny’s farm. At night the lights would be on for player practice. Let’s assume Madison heard those words of Oscar’s and took them to heart.

She’ll be stuck on the road outside the football ground.

Madison could see the football ground from Ginny’s farm. It wasn’t very clear during the day but at night it was lit up like a beacon. Madison would have a very clear idea of where it was.

But the lake was six miles round, and the way from Ginny’s farm was rough. There was a better road lower on the lake shore but the road from Ginny’s was a milk run, designed to take in every farm. There’d be dogs along the road, Fergus thought, hauling his phone out and starting to dial.

There were people searching already but they were searching the bushland around the farm and the lake below. They were also following the main road back this way, thinking that she might have tried to head back to wherever she thought of as home.

His gut twisted at the thought. Madison.

Madison and Ginny.

Ginny answered at the first ring, her voice tight with strain and hope and terror.

‘It’s OK, love,’ he told her. ‘I think I know where she’s gone. Let me talk to Sergeant Cross.’

‘How-?’

‘I talked to Oscar,’ he told her. ‘Let’s not get our hopes up too far but I think we’re searching in the wrong place.’

And ten minutes later they found her.

Ginny was in the police car. Ben Cross should have been delegating; he should have been organising others, but those others would take time to get back from where they were searching to try again. Much easier to pile into the police car, put the lights on high beam and head along the track to the football ground.

And there she was.

At first Ginny thought she was imagining it-a sliver of light fading into the shadows at the side of the road the moment the headlights lit the road after a curve. But Ben had seen it, too, and he slammed on the brakes and was out of the car before her.

‘Madison,’ Ginny called, but there was no answer. But Ben had his huge flashlight and he was searching the undergrowth beside the road. There it was again, that flash of white, the cotton of the little girl’s nightie. Ben was through the undergrowth, using his body as a bulldozer, reaching…

He had her, lifting her out of the bushes as one would lift a terrified animal. He handed her to Ginny and Madison held herself rigid in her arms.

‘Madison,’ Ginny managed, trying to hug her close. ‘Sweetheart, you’re safe.’

‘I want my mummy,’ Madison whimpered, and the tiny body stayed rigid.

‘She’s not here.’

‘He said…’

There was the sound of another car, coming fast. Headlights, the car slowing as it reached them and stopping.

Fergus, climbing from the car, his face slack with relief.

‘You’ve found her.’

‘Just about where you said she would be,’ Ben said, looking worriedly at the small girl in Ginny’s arms. This was no happy ending.

‘I want my mummy,’ Madison whispered again, and shoved against Ginny’s body.

Ginny’s face crumpled in distress and Fergus reached forward.

‘Let me take her,’ he said, and he lifted her from Ginny’s arms and held her close, brooking no opposition. He’d held Molly when she’d been like this, when she’d been cross with him, which hadn’t been all that often, when doctors had been running tests and she’d started to be distressed.

Molly.

His face touched this little girl’s hair, his mouth brushing the top of her head in a feather kiss. He sat on the ground, even though it was rough and gravelled and not exactly the place to sit, and he motioned Ginny to sit with him.

Ben had kids of his own. He knew enough to stand back, to give them time.

‘I’ll radio off the search,’ he said, and disappeared into the police car.

‘Mummy.’ Madison was still rigid but Fergus’s grasp was firm and solid, using his body to cradle hers, willing warmth into the shivering child.

‘Your mummy’s not here,’ he said to Madison. ‘You know that.’

‘The man said…’ She hiccuped on a sob. ‘He said…’

‘I know what he said, but he was wrong,’ Fergus said in the tone of someone who wasn’t to be argued with. ‘Ginny told you what happened to your mummy.’

‘Ginny’s not a mummy.’

Beside him he heard Ginny draw in her breath and he felt her body stiffen. But she didn’t move away. She was sitting next to him, so close that her body touched his. It felt good. It felt…right.

And it gave him the courage to say what needed to be said, right now.

‘Ginny’s not a mummy yet,’ he said, soft and firm and sure. ‘But she’s very, very close to being a mummy. And she’s a doctor. She knows what’s right and what’s wrong, much more than the silly man who didn’t want flowers around his neck.’

‘He said-’

‘We know what he said, but he was wrong. He was feeling tired and crabby and he’d spilled his drink so he said something that he didn’t mean, just to make you feel bad. But you know where your mummy is, Madison. You know she’s not in the car.’

‘She is.’

‘No,’ Fergus said, and Ginny’s hand was suddenly covering one of his, the one that she could see as he hugged the little girl tight. ‘You know how I know? I’m a daddy. Daddies know things. Daddies know that, anyway.’

‘Whose daddy are you?’ she asked, and he winced, knowing he’d opened up yet another avenue Madison might find distressing. But suddenly the words were there and he knew what had to be said.

‘I was Molly’s daddy,’ he said softly. He hesitated but it might as well be said. It was what was in his heart. ‘Molly doesn’t need me anymore,’ he whispered. ‘But I think that you do. If you like, if you want me to, I’ll be your daddy.’

Maybe it was wrong, he thought. Maybe it was too soon after Richard. But Madison’s relationship with Richard had been fleeting. For Ginny to say to her now that she’d be her mother would be cruel and confusing. But to give her a daddy…

It could give her roots, he thought, hugging her tighter, and then he thought, It could give him roots.

‘You’re the doctor,’ Madison whispered in a voice tinged with doubt. ‘You’re not a daddy.’

‘I am a daddy as well as a doctor,’ he said evenly. ‘And I love your Ginny. I’ve been thinking… If it’s OK with you, I think we might be a family. I’ve lost my family. Ginny’s lost her family and you’ve lost your mummy. If we came together, I think we could make a really good new family. All of us. You and me and Ginny and Bounce and Twiggy and Snapper. We could all live together in Ginny’s lovely house and we could stay together for ever.’

There was a long silence. Ginny’s hand had lifted away in shock. It stayed lifted but suddenly it returned. Ginny’s hand rested on his, warm and sure and true, and her other hand came up to touch Madison’s soft hair.

‘That sounds really good, Madison,’ she whispered, and she smiled at Fergus in the moonlight as she said it. ‘Fergus has come up with a really good idea. What do you think?’

‘I’ll never find my mummy,’ the little girl whispered, and something in her voice told Fergus that this was necessary grief. Madison was letting go.

‘You know where your mummy’s shell is buried,’ Ginny was saying, smoothing down the tousled hair and moving closer so her own body was lending warmth to the child. ‘We’ll take flowers to the cemetery every time we want, and if you stand on her grave then I’ll bet she can hear us when we tell her things.’

‘Like telling her I’m going to live with Snapper and Twiggy and Bounce?’

‘Exactly.’

There was a long silence while Madison thought this through. The whole world seemed to hold its breath, waiting for a verdict.

Then, out of the silence, a shattering sob. ‘My mummy’s never coming back.’

‘No,’ Fergus whispered. ‘She isn’t.’

And with that it seemed the dam wall broke. Madison, who’d hardly cried these last awful weeks, who’d been self-contained, rigid, older than her years, sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.

They let her cry her heart out, sitting together on the verge of a gravel road in the middle of nowhere, while one sensible policeman held his peace, stayed back, let them do what they willed.

And finally the sobs eased, and when they did, Madison was curled against Fergus’s chest as if she belonged there. Which was how it should be, he thought. It was how it must be. From this day forth.

‘OK, Madison,’ Fergus whispered as the sobs eased to nothing. He rose, lifting her in his arms but still holding her tight against him, and Ginny rose with them. ‘Let’s take you home.’

‘Home,’ Madison whispered, clinging close. ‘To my own bed that Ginny said was mine. With Ginny. With Snapper and with Twiggy and with Bounce.’

‘Let’s not forget me,’ Fergus said, trying to keep his voice steady. ‘I’m part of this family, too.’

Madison opened her eyes at that, very wide, still tear-filled but gazing at him and then at Ginny. She was completely limp now, trusting them to do with her as they willed.

‘And me,’ she said. Her bottom lip wobbled a little but then she regained her composure. ‘Ginny and Twiggy and Snapper and Bounce and…and Daddy. And me. And…my name is Maddy.’