The Surgeon’s Family Miracle

CHAPTER NINE

BEN stepped out from under the rotor blades and looked across at the house. She was there.

Lily was standing on the veranda, dressed simply in shorts and a singlet top. Even from here she looked different.

And Benjy… Benjy was racing to meet him, a nugget of a kid, all arms and legs, his grin the same as Lily’s, multiplied by ten.

His grin was Lily’s grin before she’d taken on the worries of the world.

‘Ben, Ben, Ben!’ Ben was forced to drop his holdall as Benjy catapulted himself into his arms. Before he knew what was happening he was hugging his son and being hugged, and looking over the mop of curls to where Lily was smiling a welcome of her own. His gut twisted so sharply it was physical pain.

‘Ben’s here,’ Benjy called, deeply satisfied, and wriggled in Ben’s arms to face his mother.

‘Really,’ Lily said. ‘I thought it was the milkman.’

‘Silly,’ Benjy said reprovingly. ‘It’s our Ben.’

‘You never said that about Jacques.’ Lily halted on the third step down from the veranda. Ben had reached the base of the steps. He needed to climb three steps to reach her but he hesitated, aware that this moment was important.

‘I didn’t like Jacques,’ Benjy said, and buried his face in Ben’s shoulder. ‘He kept saying I had to be a man.’

‘You’re a kid,’ Lily said.

‘I know,’ Benjy said, and peeped his mother a smile. The smile was pure mischief, Ben thought. He’d never seen Benjy like this, as free as kids were supposed to be free.

Their stay here had done them both worlds of good. He could read it in their faces.

Maybe they’d want to leave almost straight away.

Well, that was OK. He’d only dropped in to check on his way to the next mission. On his way to the next danger.

‘I can ride a horse,’ Benjy told him, wriggling until Ben set him on his feet. ‘But not Flicker ‘cos she’s going to have a baby. Rosa says I can help choose a name for her foal.’

‘And what about your mama?’ Ben said, smiling up at Lily. ‘Can she help choose?’

‘Mama chose my name,’ Benjy said. ‘It’s not fair that she chooses the horse’s name, too.’ He skipped up the steps to Lily. ‘Why did you call me Ben’s name?’ he asked.

‘Because…’ Lily said, and faltered. She looked at Ben, in her eyes a question. Now or never, her gaze said, and he had to make an instant decision.

OK. He could do this. Maybe this wasn’t the best time, but was there ever a good time for something so momentous? He nodded.

‘Benjy, I’ve told you about Ben,’ Lily said softly. ‘I told you all about the good things he does and the brave doctor he is. What I should have told you, Benjy, is that Ben is your father.’

Ben’s small mouth dropped open. He stared at his mother like she’d lost her mind. Then, very slowly, he turned on the steps to stare at Ben.

‘You’re my dad?’

‘Yes,’ Ben said, feeling…odd. ‘I am.’

‘Henri said Jacques would be my father.’

‘No,’ Lily said. ‘Ben is.’

‘You mean he gave you the tadpole that went into your egg,’ Benjy demanded, and Ben almost choked, but he didn’t because, funny or not, this was a really serious moment.

‘That’s it,’ Lily said, sounding relieved.

‘I knew I had to have a father somewhere,’ Benjy said. He looked Ben up and down, head to toe. ‘You’re sure?’

‘We’re sure,’ Ben said softly. ‘We should have told you before, but I’ve been off adventuring and your mama didn’t want to tell you by herself.’

Benjy considered that for all of ten seconds. He looked at it dispassionately-and decided it was acceptable. More than acceptable. His grin came back with a vengeance. ‘Cool! Can I ring up Henri in hospital and tell him?’

‘Sure,’ Lily said. ‘We’ll ring tonight.’

‘Can I tell Flicker now?’

‘Of course.’

‘Cool,’ he said again, and breathed a great sigh of satisfaction. Then he bounced down the steps and headed horsewards to spread the news.

‘I guess I’ve done what I came to do,’ Ben managed. Benjy’s departure had created a silence that was lasting too long. He didn’t know how to break it and his words now sounded flippant. And sort of…final?

That was how she took it, anyway. ‘You should have held the helicopter,’ she said stiffly. ‘Maybe if you radio fast they’ll come back and collect you.’

That was so ridiculous that he didn’t respond and she didn’t press it.

‘Tadpole, huh?’ he ventured, and the tension eased a little. She managed a smile.

‘Fathers are supposed to give their sons sex education. Not mothers.’ Her smile grew rueful. ‘Actually, I didn’t give him the tadpole bit. I suspect that was from Henri or another of his mates on the island.’

‘Maybe it’s time I took a hand.’

‘If you have a better sex spiel than tadpoles, be my guest.’

Her agreement took him unawares. Here he was, meeting his son as his son for the first time, and Lily was handing over responsibility for sex education. It was his responsibility?

Maybe it was.

He wasn’t going to be there.

‘There’s no need to panic,’ Lily said, and he sensed a fraction of withdrawal of friendliness. ‘I can do it myself.’

‘I’d like to help.’

‘I don’t want help,’ she said. ‘Parenting’s not about help. You either do it or you don’t. You parent on your own terms.’

‘That sounds ominous.’

‘I read it in a book,’ she confided, and suddenly she smiled again, abandoning tension. ‘In truth I know nothing about the rules from here on in. You and Benjy will have to work it out for yourselves. But meanwhile Rosa and Doug will be aching to see you. They’ll be trying to give us private time but just about busting a corpuscle to see you.’

‘Busting a corpuscle?’

‘It’s a medical term,’ she said wisely. ‘I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it. It involves mess into the middle of next week.’

He’d forgotten that. He’d forgotten Lily happy. He grinned at her; she grinned back and then she stood aside so he could come up the steps and past her into the house.

‘Welcome home,’ she murmured as he passed, and it was all he could do not to turn and kiss her. Maybe she would have welcomed it, he thought, but it behoved a man to act cautiously.

Nevertheless, as he passed her he was extremely glad that he hadn’t asked the helicopter to wait.

They had a great dinner. Doug had pulled out all stops to create a feast. Roast beef with all the trimmings, followed by an apple pie that made Ben’s eyes light up with pleasure the minute he saw it.

‘I remember this pie.’ He glanced at Doug and frowned. ‘Hang on. When I was a kid here, you and Rosa worked outside. How did you know I loved this? How did you get the recipe?’

‘Mrs Amson was the cook here then,’ Doug said placidly. ‘When you offered us the job I rang her and asked her for recipes.’

‘For anything you liked,’ Rosa said softly. ‘It seemed the least we could do when you were handing us our lives back.’

Ben coloured. Lily stared across the table, fascinated. The normally in-control doctor who handled crisis after crisis with aplomb was seriously discombobulated.

‘Why are you staring at Ben?’ Benjy asked, her and Lily answered without thinking.

‘He’s discombobulated.’

Benjy thought about that for a minute and then giggled. ‘That sounds like his arms and legs have come off.’

‘Just his cool,’ she said, and smiled across the table at Ben. ‘I like to see a man discombobulated for good reason.’

‘What’s good reason?’ Benjy asked, still intrigued.

‘Because he does good things for people,’ Rosa said, rising and starting to clear away. ‘Except no one’s supposed to thank him. He doesn’t like people hugging him, our Ben, so all we can do is make him apple pie.’

‘We could hug him,’ Benjy said.

‘So we could,’ Lily agreed. ‘He’s been very good to us, our Ben.’

‘He is our Ben,’ Benjy agreed. He turned to Doug. ‘He’s my dad.’

‘I thought that must be it,’ Doug said gravely. ‘And dads should be hugged.’

‘I don’t know whether he wants to be hugged.’

‘You’ll have to ask him.’

‘Ask me tomorrow,’ Ben said, getting up from the table in such a hurry that his chair crashed to the floor behind him. ‘I need to take a walk.’

‘We can come with you,’ Benjy offered. ‘Do you want to meet Flicker?’

‘Tomorrow,’ Ben said, backing out the door as if propelled. ‘For now I need some space to myself.’

‘He always needs space to himself.’ Rosa and Lily were washing up. Benjy had asked Doug if he could do bedtime reading duty and Ben was nowhere to be seen. ‘It’ll take an indomitable lady to break down those barriers.’

‘I’m not sure I’m that lady,’ Lily said. She hesitated but by now she was sure Rosa had figured out everything there was to know about her, and she surely knew Ben as well. ‘I’m not sure there’ll ever be a lady for Ben.’

‘He’s looking like a man in love tonight.’

‘He’s looking like a man who’s afraid.’

‘If he asked you to marry him…’

‘He won’t,’ Lily whispered. ‘And even if he did, I can’t leave the island.’

‘Can’t you?’ Rosa dried her hands on the dishcloth and turned to face her. ‘Is there really no one who could take your job?’

‘There’s no money to pay anyone.’

‘Of course there is,’ she said briskly. ‘Doug and I have been reading the newspapers. Kapua has as much oil wealth as it wants. They can easily pay medical staff enough to encourage them to come. It’s not like Kapua’s a desert either. It sounds lovely.’

‘It is lovely,’ Lily whispered. ‘It’s home.’

‘Home’s where the heart is,’ Rosa retorted. ‘Look at me. I’ve been following Doug for years, working where he’s needed to be.’

‘But that’s different.’

‘Why is it different?’

‘Because Ben wouldn’t want us where he is. Nothing’s changed since medical school. Like leaving the table now. The conversation was too close to the bone. He’s cultivated armour and no one’s getting through.’

‘You love him,’ Rosa said gently, and Lily nodded.

‘I always have.’

‘Then…’

‘Then nothing,’ she said. ‘His armour’s thirty years deep. No one’s getting through. We’ll stay in touch now for Benjy’s sake, but we won’t do more than that. And me? I have to rebuild some armour of my own.’

Which was why she should be in bed. Which was why she should be anywhere but where she was at midnight, which was sitting on the back veranda, waiting for Ben to come home.

He did come home, walking steadily across the paddocks in the moonlight. He was still wearing the army camouflages he’d been wearing when he’d arrived. Maybe he had no casual clothes here, she thought. These must be the only clothes he took with him as he travelled the world.

Or maybe there was a reason he still wore them. This was army camouflage, a reminder that he was still on duty somehow. A reminder that his armour had to stay.

He didn’t see her as he strode up through the garden to the veranda. She was sitting on an ancient settee to one side of the front door.

‘Have you been up to the peak?’ she asked gently as he reached the top of the stairs, and he froze. There was a moment’s stillness while he collected his thoughts. When he turned to her he was smiling but she wasn’t sure the smile was real.

‘You guessed.’

‘It’s a great place,’ she told him. ‘It made me stop.’

‘Stop?’

‘Let go,’ she said gently. ‘I spent the first few days here doing what I normally do-trying to cram in as much as I possibly could. Blair’s Peak sort of took that out of me. I’ve slowed down so much now that I’m practically going backwards.’

‘I’m glad. It’s what you needed.’

‘How about you?’ she asked. ‘Has it slowed you down?’

‘Unlike you, I don’t need to be slowed down. I’m not a workaholic.’

‘Sam said you’re an adrenalin junkie. Which is just as bad as me.’

‘Sam doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’

‘He’s your friend.’

‘I don’t have friends.’

There was a silence at that. It stretched out into the night sky. Permeating everything.

‘We were friends,’ she said at last.

‘And now I find you’ve borne me a son without telling me. So much for friendship.’

‘You think it might have been something more, then?’ she demanded. He was standing before her, dressed for battle, and that was suddenly how she was feeling. Like she was geared up for battle as well. She hesitated, but the look on his face said he wasn’t even going to consider their relationship. OK, then, try another track. ‘Do you love Rosa and Doug?’ she asked, and his brows snapped down in confusion.

‘What sort of question is that?’

‘Just answer it. Do you?’

‘As much as I love anyone.’

‘That’s what I thought. Do you know Doug has angina? Or worse. Rosa’s terrified but she can’t persuade him to go near a doctor.’

‘Why didn’t she say?’

‘How can she say anything when your visits are so rare they make special dinners? They’d never dream of interrupting one of your visits with medical necessity.’

‘That’s crazy.’

‘It is,’ she retorted. ‘It’s because they love you.’

‘Hell, Lily…’

‘I’m tired,’ she said, pushing herself to her feet. ‘I wanted you to know about Doug, so if you leave tomorrow you’ll at least know there’s trouble here. He won’t take advice from me. It sounds like angina but it could be more serious. I can’t tell that unless I examine him and how can I?’

‘I’ll talk to him.’

‘Which will solve the problem this time. But after that?’

‘Hell, Lily, I’m not responsible for these people.’

‘Then you should be,’ she snapped. ‘They love you. Just like…’ She caught herself, drawing herself back, closing her mouth with a gasp. ‘No. That’s it. Leave it.’

‘Lily-’

‘Leave it!’

‘Fine,’ he said cautiously, and she made to push past him to go indoors. But his hand caught her shoulder and he turned her so she was facing him.

‘Lily, you don’t need to go back to the island.’

‘Of course I need to go back to the island.’

‘You don’t,’ he said heavily. ‘Sam and I have worked it through with Gualberto. We’ve set up an embryonic medical service that should be up and running within weeks.’

‘An embryonic medical service…’

‘Gualberto’s agreed,’ he told her, eager to move to a neutral, impersonal topic. ‘It’s time for the island to stop sitting on all its resources. We had a massive meeting last week. The consensus is that they’ll not exploit their oil for individual wealth but they’ll spend real money on education and medicine. Which is where you come in.’

‘I come in where?’

‘Everyone knows you’re overworked. The plan is to get at least two fully trained doctors plus interns working on the island-but that’s just for starters. We see a medical service that eventually serves all outlying islands, with you or someone like you as administrator, but with every specialty represented. We see a much bigger hospital. You need connections to Australian teaching schools so Kapua can become part of their remote training roster for young doctors. You need a helicopter service for outlying islands, and the oil money is more than enough to fund it for generations to come. It’ll be huge, Lily.’

She stared at him, dumbfounded, and ran her tongue over lips that were suddenly dry. ‘You’ve set all this up already.’

‘Yes. Gualberto-’

‘Gualberto never thought of this by himself.’

‘No. Sam and I-’

‘Have been on the island for little more than a month,’ she said blankly. ‘What do you know about what we need?’

‘We know what you need. Lily, this leaves you free to spend time away from the island.’

‘Why would I spend time away from the island?’

‘You could spend time with me,’ he said, suddenly uncertain. ‘Maybe we could spend a couple of weeks here a year. While I get to know Benjy.’

‘You’ll be a father two weeks a year?’

‘I can hardly do more.’

‘No,’ she said bleakly. ‘Of course you can’t.’

‘Lily, I don’t do family.’

‘Why the hell not?’

‘I told you-’

‘So many years ago. When we were kids. I’d hoped you’d change by now.’

He stared at her in the moonlight. ‘What more do want of me, Lily?’ he asked. ‘You tell me.’

‘I don’t know,’ she said wearily. ‘But I’m scared. Benjy knows you’re his dad, so now there’s two of us. Two of us spending months of every year not knowing where you are. What you’re doing. If Benjy get as attached to you as I am, how can I put him through that?’

‘You’re attached…’

‘Of course I’m attached.’ She sighed, ‘You know I am. I tried so hard to fall in love with Jacques-with anyone-but all I ever wanted was you. You’ve been in my heart every minute since the day I met you. But I’m not letting you destroy my life. I’m not letting you mess with Benjy’s life. Come here two weeks every year and fall in love with you all over again… How can I do that and survive?’

‘Lily, it’s what I am. It’s non-negotiable. I didn’t ask to be Benjy’s father.’

‘But that’s non-negotiable, too.’ She gulped for breath and regrouped. ‘I didn’t ask to be Benjy’s mother, but I am. I didn’t ask to fall in love with you, but I did. Ben, you’ve spent your entire life finding yourself a place where you didn’t have to get attached. You swing into a crisis situation, save lives, do good but you never visit them again. You never need to hear feedback from patients two years after the event. You don’t need to attach yourself to a community in any shape or form. Sam says you even hold yourself aloof from the crisis response team.’

‘I can’t help what I am.’

‘No, and neither can I,’ she said. ‘But seeing you for two weeks every year… It’d destroy me, Ben. So somehow you need to work out a relationship with Benjy that doesn’t include me, and don’t ask me how you can do that because I don’t know. I’ll support whatever you want but I can’t continue to be near you. I just…can’t.’

‘Lily…’

‘What?’ She sighed again and looked up into his face. Which was a mistake.

Because, regardless of anything else, this was Ben. Her Ben. The Ben she’d carried in her heart for all these years.

He wasn’t hers. She’d known that then and she knew it now. The scars of his childhood were too deeply etched. There was no place she could reach him.

‘I’m sorry, Ben,’ she whispered, and she reached up and touched his lips fleetingly with hers.

Which was a further mistake.

She backed away but as she did so she saw his eyes widen, flare.

‘Lily,’ he said, and it was the way he’d always said it. Like it was a caress.

‘Lily.’ It was a plea.

She didn’t move. She didn’t move and she didn’t see him move, but she had or he had or whatever, and suddenly she was being held tightly in his arms, crushed against his chest, kissed and kissed some more.

This was dumb. This was crazy, letting herself be kissed in the moonlight, letting herself be kissed as she’d been kissed all those years ago.

For it was the same, exactly as she remembered. It was a searing, molten kiss that felt like two forces were being hauled together and fused into one. It was a white-hot heat that made her heart twist with longing and desire and love.

Ben.

She couldn’t pull away. Where was the strength for that? Nowhere.

How could she ever have thought she could love Jacques? She’d tried so hard and she’d failed and she knew it was no character flaw in Jacques that had prevented it-though, heaven knew, it should have been. It was because she considered herself irrevocably married to this man.

Her heart.

But here was no happy ending. Ben had been raised to never give his heart. How could such a man change? How could such a man admit a need?

He couldn’t, but she did. Oh, she did, she thought as her body melted into his. She kissed him back with a fierceness that matched his own. She loved him with every fibre of her being, willing him to soften, willing him to love her as she loved him.

His hands were tugging her against him. He felt wonderful-a big man, superbly muscled, strengthened by years of military training, moving from emergency to emergency, running…

He was still running, she thought in that tiny fragment of her mind that was available for such thought-which wasn’t much, admittedly, but it was enough to tinge this kiss with sadness, to tinge it with the inevitability of parting.

He was so right for her. She was so right for him. Her breasts moulded against his chest as if she was somehow meant to be there. They’d been made in one cast and then split somehow, and now, for this tiny fragment of time, the two halves of the whole had come together.

There had to be a way. There had to.

The kiss extended for as long as a kiss could without moving to the next step-the seemingly inevitable step for a man and a woman who’d loved before and who’d been apart for seven long years. She couldn’t take that step, she thought. She mustn’t. There was no such thing as a one hundred per cent effective birth control and to take another pregnancy back to the island…

‘No,’ she managed as he drew back a little, and she saw a trace of confusion cross his face.

‘No?’

Heaven knew where she found the strength to say it, but it had to be said. ‘No further, Ben. We can’t.’

‘But-’

‘I don’t want another child.’ But that was a lie, she thought. She’d love another child. Another piece of Ben to carry forward into her life without him.

‘Hey, we’re not about to…’

‘We might have been about to,’ she whispered. ‘But we can’t.’

‘That doesn’t make sense.’

‘I think it does,’ she said, and pulled further away. Just a little. Just as much as she could bear to. ‘Ben, I love you.’

‘Maybe I do-’

‘Don’t say it,’ she said, suddenly urgent. ‘Because you don’t. You never have. You just love the part of me that you’re prepared to accept.’

‘What does that mean?’ He seemed genuinely baffled and she shook her head. Nothing had changed, she thought bitterly. This was the same problem they’d had seven years ago. Oh, maybe it had been clearer then. The islanders had paid for her medical training and there was no way she could refuse to return. But there were two reasons she couldn’t be near with Ben. One was her obligation to her island home. And the other was that Ben didn’t want her.

Ben didn’t want her.

‘Maybe we could work something out,’ he said, his voice husky with passion and desire. ‘Lily, OK, I don’t do family, but maybe…What I feel for you… There’ll never be another woman I feel this way about. So maybe we could do something. Marriage or something. Maybe I could come to the island whenever I’m on leave.’

She stared at him, stunned. ‘You’re talking marriage?’

‘I don’t know.’ He ran his fingers through his hair in a gesture of pure bewilderment. ‘But we have to do something-to make this work.’

‘For Benjy?’

‘How can I be a father to him if you’re not there? And if we were married, would that make you feel better about me being there-sometimes?’

‘You’re asking me to marry you because of Benjy?’

‘I want you, too, Lily.’

‘Two weeks a year?’

‘However long I can spare. I’ll try-’

‘You can’t just…try.’

But then she looked into his eyes and saw his confusion and she felt her heart twist. He was trying. He was trying so hard…

This was her Ben. If she said yes he’d sweep her into bed right now, she thought, and that was what she wanted more than anything else in the world. All she had to do was say yes and he’d marry her and Benjy would have a father and then…

And then he’d leave for the next crisis.

‘Would you think of us while you were away?’ she asked, and the look of surprise she saw in his eyes answered her question before he spoke.

‘Of course I would,’ he said, but she didn’t believe him.

‘Did you remember I was on Kapua?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sam said you didn’t.’

‘Sam-’

‘Sam talks too much,’ she whispered. ‘But he answered my questions. He knows you well, Sam. And so do Doug and Rosa. They say you never stay long enough anywhere to be involved. You run like you’re terrified of what happens if you lose your heart.’

‘Psychoanalysis by Rosa and Doug.’

‘And by Sam and by Lily,’ she whispered. ‘What did they do to you, those parents of yours, to make you so fearful?’ She hesitated. ‘Ben, what happened to Bethany?’

‘Bethany…’

‘Your sister. All the time we spent together, you never told me you had a sister.’

‘She died when I was six. It’s old news.’

‘Did you love her?’

‘Hell, Lily, I was tiny.’

‘Did you love her?’

‘That is none of your business. And it’s nothing to do with what I am now. I’m a grown man.’

‘Yes, you are.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And I’m a grown woman. A woman who thought about you every day that we were apart. Who’d die a little if you died. And who feels sick that you lost someone you loved and you won’t talk about it. But you won’t. You’ve closed off. God knows if it’s because of your sister. I don’t. You won’t let me near enough to find out. But, Ben, if any of us went missing…Doug or Rosa or me or Benjy or Sam or anyone else who cares for you…would you miss us?’

‘Of course.’

‘Be truthful, Ben.’

He paused. She stepped back a little. The veranda light was on and she could see his face clearly. What she saw there answered her question without him finding the words.

‘You’ll never let yourself get that close,’ she whispered. ‘Will you?’

‘Lily, I’m saying I think I love you.’ He sounded exasperated rather than passionate, she thought. He sounded…confused? ‘I’m offering marriage.’

She shook her head. ‘How can you say you think you love me? Don’t you know?’

‘How can I know?’

‘I’ll tell you,’ she said, anger coming to her aid. ‘Love’s great, but it’s opening yourself again to that chasm of loss. It’s lots else besides, but it’s definitely not putting a signature on a piece of paper and a deal to spend a few days each year together.’

‘I can’t-’

‘Of course you can’t,’ she said, anger fading and a bleak acceptance taking its place. ‘Of course you can’t. I should never have agreed to come here. I’m putting more pressure on you than you can bear. Even by telling you that Benjy is your son…’

‘You should have.’

‘If I had, maybe the pressure would have been on you for the last seven years and maybe you would have fallen properly in love. Or maybe you would have cracked under the strain. I don’t know. But I do know that I need to back off now. I need to let you be.

‘I’m going to bed now, Ben,’ she said, and somehow she kept her voice resolute. ‘I’m going to bed alone and I’ll stay that way. Because no marriage at all is better than the one you’re offering. I have to stay sane, for Benjy’s sake if not my own.’

‘Lily-’

‘If I were you, I’d take another walk up to Blair Peak,’ she told him. ‘I think you need it more than I do. Oh, and, Ben…’

‘Yes?’ It was a clipped response. He was angry, she thought, and she knew it was confusion that was causing the anger. He thought he was doing the right thing-the noble thing. And she was rejecting that absolutely.

How hurtful was that?

Practicalities. When in doubt, talk medicine.

‘Ben, Rosa’s really worried about Doug,’ she told him, and somehow her voice was steady. And it worked. She’d deflected him, she thought, seeing the relief in his eyes. Medicine was the great escape. ‘Don’t worry about me,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about Benjy. We’ll be fine. Worry instead about Doug, who isn’t fine.’

She saw the confusion fade still more. She saw him clutch at medical need as if he was clutching a lifeline.

‘How long has he had pain?’

‘Rosa says for months, but he’s admitting little and he won’t see a doctor. Rosa says he’s been waiting for you.’

‘For me?’ he demanded, startled. ‘Why the hell? I’m not his doctor.’

‘No,’ she said softly. ‘There’s an attachment there that I don’t think you’re admitting either.’ She hesitated. ‘Rosa’s scared it’s worse than Doug’s letting on. She thinks Doug might want to talk to you about caring for Rosa if…’

‘He’d know I would.’

‘You would what?’

‘Look after Rosa. But I need to find out what’s wrong.’

‘You’ll look after Rosa how? If anything happened to Doug, she could hardly stay here.’

‘This is a dumb conversation. Nothing’s happening to Doug.’

‘He’s showing every sign of worrying himself into a coronary. Sure, he needs an examination and maybe treatment but the best thing you could do is what you’re incapable of doing.’

‘Which is?’

‘Giving yourself,’ she whispered. ‘Telling Rosa you’ll be here for her.’

‘I’ll look after her.’

‘The same way you’d be husband and father to us? No,’ she said sadly. ‘That’s no use to anyone. Oh, Ben.’

And she turned before he could say another word. She walked into the house and let the screen door slam behind her.

He did indeed walk up to Blair’s Peak but the answers weren’t there. She was asking too much of him, he told the night, but he knew that was a falsehood.

He was afraid.

She’d accused him of not loving. Of not throwing his heart into the ring and letting fate take a hand.

She was right.

Why?

He needed a shrink, he decided, but he sat up on the peak and he knew the answers were already his.

For the first time in more than twenty years he let himself think about Bethany.

At six he’d been sent to boarding school. Lots of kids were sent to boarding school at six. They survived, and he’d hardly seen anything of his parents anyway. He could hardly say he’d missed them.

But there’d been his kid sister. Bethany had been four years old to his six. His little sister. Even now the memories of her were warm and strong. With an assortment of nursery staff caring for them, Bethany had been his constant.

She’d suffered from asthma.

He still remembered the terror of her attacks. The feeling of helplessness as she’d gasped for breath. His six-year-old self telling untrained nursery staff what to do.

And then his father leaving him at boarding school. ‘Who’ll look after Bethany?’ he’d demanded, and he could remember his desperation, the fear.

‘She’ll be looked after,’ his father had said brusquely. ‘You look after yourself.’

There had been nothing else to do. He’d looked after himself but Bethany had died before the year had ended. The school matron had told him of her death, her face crumpling with sympathy, moving to hug him, but he’d wanted none of it.

His parents hadn’t come near him.

He looked after himself.

Any shrink in the world would tell him that was holding him back now. He knew it himself. But to break through…

He couldn’t. He just…couldn’t.

Even Blair Peak had no answers.