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‘Yeah.’

  ‘Meditation’s looking good,’ she whispered. She’d thought, when Jerome had left the country, that such communities were a thing of the past. But maybe it was a lifestyle attractive for a lot of people.

  It still horrified her. ‘I’m feeling a really strong bout of feminism coming on,’ she managed.

  ‘Try and keep it to yourself,’ he advised. He pulled the car to a halt and reached into the back for his bag. ‘Value judgements aren’t wanted here.’

  ‘Then what are you doing here?’ she demanded, shaking her sense of unreality and trying to haul herself back to the present. ‘You, the very king of value judgements.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘A greedy, money-sucking, bulimic call-girl.’

  ‘OK.’ He held up his hands in surrender. ‘OK. Enough. Truce. You want to come inside or stay in the car?’

  ‘You’d trust me with real people?’ Then, at his look, she suddenly relented. ‘I may as well. I guess I could hike off home-if the women cart water up here it seems a bit soppy to whinge about a hike of an hour or so-but…’

  ‘There are still people I want to talk to you about.’

  ‘More Ivys? More people you don’t trust me with?’

  ‘Ally…’

  She sighed. ‘Oh, goody. It seems I’m going to be insulted all the way home again, too. OK. I’ll stay. I might have to find someone here I can insult in turn.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘I know.’ She shrugged but then she smiled again. ‘Not appropriate. You don’t need to worry. I’ll be good. You’ll hear no value judgements from me. I won’t charge anyone for massage. I’ll do no harm. It was a truly excellent thick-shake and they were wonderful sandwiches, Dr Rochester. They were even worth being good for.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE hut they entered was a shock.

  She’d forgotten how appalling it could be. Ally walked through the door and the first thing that hit her was the smell.

  Smells. Plural.

  There were pigs hanging round the yard, and a pile of dung by the door was attracting flies, inside and out. Smoke permeated the room, with the vague smell of hundreds of past meals-not all of them appetising. And human smells.

  There was a lot to be said for deodorant, Ally thought grimly as the stench reached out to hit her. Then she amended the thought. No. There was a lot to be said for washing.

  The smell was overpowering. And the sensation that the past was closing in on her.

  Unaware of the vast wash of remembrance flooding over his companion, Darcy didn’t pause. Clearly he’d been here before. He didn’t knock-there was no door, just a gap in the timber slabs that made the wall.

  ‘How are they?’ he asked before Ally even had time to get used to the gloom. There was a fire smouldering in the centre of the hut, and smoke was wisping up toward a rough hole in the centre of the roof. Not all of it was escaping.

  It looked like something out of the Stone Age, Ally thought, and had to swallow and swallow again as she fought for control. It was just like…just like…

  A figure emerged from the gloom, a woman, skirt to the floor, hair braided down her back, dirty and…a little bit desperate? She’d been sitting on one of the benches that ran around the walls, and from under a bundle of blankets came a thin, despairing cry.

  A sick child? It was a little girl, Ally decided as her eyes adjusted to the smoke-filled room. The child looked about six or seven. Her face was colourless and her sandy curls were a tangled mat on the hessian sack that served as a pillow.

  The woman didn’t greet Darcy. She didn’t look at him. She stood, her shoulders slumped in a stance of absolute despair, and she stared at the floor. ‘Jody’s worse,’ she whispered.

  Dear heaven. Ally was almost overwhelmed with disbelief. That this could be happening again…

  Darcy was already kneeling by the child. He motioned back toward Ally. ‘This is Ally Westruther,’ he said briefly. ‘A friend.’

  The woman lifted her head for a moment to glance apathetically at Ally, and then she stared at the floor again.

  ‘I can’t make her eat anything.’

  ‘Is she drinking?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘Have you been doing the fluid chart?’

  ‘Yes.’ She pulled a tatty piece of paper from her pocket and Darcy studied it with concern.

  ‘Hell, Margaret, she’s not even close to even fluid balance.’ He lifted the little girl’s wrist, but even from where she was Ally could guess that the pulse would be weak and thready. Sick kids-really sick kids-weren’t the ones that came into Emergency, crying. They were silent and limp and scary.

  ‘How long’s she been like this?’ she asked, and the woman cast her a distracted glance.

  ‘Three days now. The other two are a bit better.’

  ‘That’s something.’ Darcy was putting a thermometer under the little girl’s armpit. ‘You mean they’re eating and drinking again.’

  ‘Yes. But Marigold’s arm looks really red-she’s been scratching so much we can’t stop it getting infected. She says it hurts under her arm as well, and in her neck.’

  ‘Hell, you need to let me give antibiotics.’

  ‘He won’t let us.’

  Darcy sat back on his heels. He waited in silence until the thermometer had had time to register.

  A chicken wandered in the open door and started to scratch in the dust around the fire.

  He lifted the thermometer free and winced.

  ‘It’s high, isn’t it?’ the woman said, as if it was a foregone conclusion.

  ‘She’s had high temperatures for almost a week. She’s not getting any fluid on board. Margaret, she must come to hospital.’

  ‘No. He won’t-’

  ‘He has to let her come. She needs an intravenous drip to get fluids on board. She needs antibiotics.’

  ‘Give her fluids here.’

  ‘You know I can’t. Margaret, look around. There are reasons the kids’ sores are infected.’

  ‘I can’t help it. We do our best.’

  ‘I need to see Jerry.’

  ‘He won’t-’

  ‘Jerry?’ Ally froze.

  ‘Jerry’s the head of the community.’ Darcy was totally occupied with the child but he talked to her over his shoulder. ‘There are three women and four men here, but Jerry’s the head.’

  ‘We do as he says,’ Margaret whispered.

  ‘Even if it means someone dies?’ Darcy demanded, and the woman gasped. He hadn’t referred to Jody by name but his meaning was unmistakable.

  ‘No.’

  ‘It may well happen.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Then let Jody go to hospital. You’re her mother.’

  ‘Jerry says no. You know he says no.’

  ‘I’ll have to bring in Social Services.’

  ‘You know he won’t let them take her. Last time he went into the bush and stayed there. You know what happened then. And even if you report it…’ Her voice broke on a sob. ‘It takes weeks for them to do anything, and when they come he’s so reasonable and he makes them feel like everything’s under control.’

  ‘It isn’t though, is it, Margaret?’

  ‘N-no,’ she faltered. ‘But I’m only one. I can’t… The group decides.’

  ‘Lorraine’s Marigold is sick, too, and she’s just as upset.’

  ‘Lorraine won’t fight Jerry. Neither will Penny, and David’s sick, too.’

  ‘You must. You all must.’ But Darcy’s voice was weary, as if he’d had this argument a thousand times before.

  But Ally was no longer listening.

  She stared down at the sick little girl and she felt like she might explode.

  Jerry. Jerome. Jerome was here?

  ‘Where’s Jerry?’ Ally asked-casually, but her voice was loaded. This whole situation… She might choke, she thought. After all these years.

  ‘He’s meditating,’ Margaret told her. ‘The men are. Penny and L
orraine are making dinner in the other hut.’

  ‘The other kids are there?’ Darcy demanded.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll see them.’ Darcy rose. ‘But when I leave I’m taking Jody with me, Margaret.’

  ‘You can’t.’

  ‘If I don’t…’ He glanced down at the little girl who was staring up at him with eyes that didn’t seem to be registering. ‘You know what will happen. It’s happened before.’

  ‘Sam was an accident.’

  ‘A burn that got infected. That I wasn’t allowed to treat.’

  Ally stepped back and gripped one of the wall supports, leaning heavily against it. The room was spinning. She felt sick. Jerome Hatfield. It had to be him. In this place, after all these years.

  And a little boy called Sam had died of burns. Dear God, how much more damage had he done?

  ‘He’s in the far hut?’ she demanded, and the woman looked at her, startled. The fury in her voice was unmistakable.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll talk to him,’ she said, and wheeled.

  Darcy caught her before she reached the door. He’d moved like lightning, reaching her to grip her arm and stop her from going further.

  ‘Leave it,’ he said roughly. ‘I’ll see him.’

  ‘Yeah, like you’ve done a lot so far.’ She was so angry she didn’t care who heard her fury. ‘A little boy dead? And now Jody. I don’t believe this. Let me go.’

  ‘You’ll do more harm than good,’ he said urgently. ‘If you threaten him he’ll take himself off to the bush and take his people with him. He’s done it in the past. When Sam died.’

  ‘And you let it happen?’

  ‘I didn’t have a choice,’ he told her. ‘They watch the road. When Sam was ill I was so desperate I even called in the police. But they couldn’t find them. And now… It’s taken me ages to persuade Jerry to let me come and treat the kids.’

  ‘But you let the children stay.’

  ‘There’s been a Social Services hearing,’ he told her, and she could hear years of frustration in his voice. ‘Margaret loves her kids. Social Services knows that. So do Lorraine and Penny. Jerry’s agreed to let the kids be assessed once a month. Hell, Ally.’

  Enough. His hands were tied. She could see that. Focus on Jody. Focus on one child’s needs.

  Margaret loved her little girl, she thought, watching the woman’s face. But…did she love Jerry more?

  Who could possibly love Jerry?

  ‘Margaret, you can’t possibly want to stay with Jerry when it’s putting Jody in danger.’ She hesitated and moved to face her. She reached out and gripped her shoulders, forcing her to meet her eyes. ‘You can’t.’

  ‘You don’t know what he’s like,’ Margaret whispered. ‘I’m his. We’re all his. When Sam died, Penny tried to leave but…she came back. He’d find us.’

  ‘So you’re scared of him?’

  ‘Of course we are.’

  ‘There’s no physical abuse,’ Darcy said from behind her. ‘We went through that after Sam died. Margaret might say this now, but if the authorities come in Jerry will have all their support.’

  ‘Right.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I do know what he’s like, Margaret. And I can deal with this. I promise.’

  ‘How the hell?’ Darcy was looking at her as if she was out of her mind.

  ‘Bring the rest of the kids and the women here,’ she told Margaret. ‘Things are going to change. Right now.’

  ‘You’ll destroy…’ Margaret looked appalled.

  ‘No,’ Ally told her. Once upon a time she’d been terrified of Jerry Hatfield herself, but that was going back almost twenty years. No more. And that these women and these kids-probably the men, too-were going through what she’d faced.

  ‘I’ve waited a long time for this,’ she said. ‘Trust me. I can cope with Jerry Hatfield. Darcy, give me your phone.’

  ‘What-?’

  ‘I don’t have a cell phone,’ she told him, as if he were being stupid. ‘I need it.’ Then, as he didn’t react, she stepped forward and lifted it from the clip on his belt.

  She started dialling.

  And she started walking.

  ‘If you want to see what a massage therapist can do when she decides to do no harm, come along and watch,’ she told him over her shoulder. ‘But this tragedy will stop right now.’ And she started talking urgently into Darcy’s cell phone.

  He followed. He hardly had a choice.

  Whatever harm she did…well, it couldn’t be worse than what was happening, he thought. His intention now was to put Jody into his car and take her down to the hospital, facing the consequences later. There would be consequences. To physically remove a child from her parents…

  It didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter. The alternative was Jody’s death, and he wasn’t prepared to have what had happened to Sam happen to another child. Sam’s death had occurred in the first month he’d been in Tambrine Creek and he still felt dreadful that he hadn’t done more. He’d called in the social workers, rather than taking things into his own hands, and it had backfired dreadfully.

  But what on earth was Ally about? He watched in stunned amazement as she spoke urgently to someone on the other end of the phone and then stomped furiously across to the neighbouring hut. She was only about five feet one or five feet two. She was slightly built. Her jeans were faded, her shirt had a paint streak down the back and she was wearing flip-flops. Her long blonde hair hung down her back, and it swayed as she walked, accentuating her entire stance of fury.

  She looked like David stalking off to face Goliath, he thought, and he quickened his steps to join her.

  Should he stop her?

  Maybe not, he decided. This situation had reached breaking point. There was no use skirting round the issues at stake, because those issues involved a child’s life.

  But what did she know about this? He was under no illusion that her anger was solely caused by one sick child, justified as that was. She’d reacted too fast, too directly.

  What had she called Jerry? Jerry Hatfield? The name the group’s leader was using was Jerry Dwyer.

  What did Ally know of him?

  All he could do was watch. He arrived at the hut door two seconds after Ally did, and by the time he arrived she was already in action.

  This was the meditation hut. He’d glanced in here once, but the women had almost seemed afraid of it. ‘We only go in there to clean,’ he’d been told.

  The two living huts were putrid but this was lighter and brighter, with a ring of bright candles around the perimeter sending a golden glow over a group of four men kneeling on prayer mats in the centre.

  But the glow was fading. Ally was kicking every candle over, pushing its wick into the dust.

  She was ignoring the men.

  ‘What the…?’

  Jerry was the first to rise.

  The other three men were spineless. Darcy had decided that early in his encounters with the group. Acolytes who didn’t have the courage to stand up to Jerry, they simply did as he said in all things. It was Jerry who called the tune.

  Jerry was in his late fifties or early sixties, a huge bull of a man, habitually dressed in a vast purple caftan with his beard and hair falling almost to his waist. He seemed a bit mad, Darcy had decided. His people were afraid of him, and even though there’d been no proven physical abuse, he guessed there was good reason for their fear.

  Ally didn’t seem afraid of him, though. She kicked over the last candle and then stalked over to face him.

  ‘Jerome Hatfield,’ she said in a voice that was rich with loathing. ‘I can’t believe it’s you.’

  ‘I’m Jerry Dwyer.’ The man was off balance. He obviously didn’t recognise the woman in front of him and he hadn’t a clue what was going on.

  He hadn’t noticed Darcy standing by the entrance, and for the moment Darcy was content to merge into the shadows. And wait.

  Maybe he should take the child now while Jerry was dist
racted, he thought, but then…he could hardly abandon Ally. And Margaret would never let him take her surreptitiously. He intended to take Jody, but he’d have to face Jerry as he did it.

  ‘You’re Jerome Hatfied,’ Ally was saying. ‘Jerry if you like, but it makes no difference. Don’t lie to me.’

  ‘I have no idea-’

  ‘You have every idea,’ she spat. ‘I can’t believe you had the nerve to come back here. After all this time. If your father knew…’

  ‘My father has nothing to do with you,’ Jerry said, in the great booming voice he used so well to intimidate everyone who came within hearing. ‘Get out of my prayer house.’

  ‘I don’t know who you’re praying to,’ Ally told him, lowering her voice to almost a whisper. It was an incredible contrast to Jerry’s booming vocal, but it was every bit as effective. Just as menacing. ‘But I tell you now. Nobody’s listening. Why would anyone listen to your prayers, Jerome Hatfield, when you don’t even listen to the people around you? When you let children die.’

  ‘Get out.’

  ‘You know,’ she said, suddenly switching her attention to the three men still crouched in disbelief on the prayer mats, ‘if I were you guys, I’d get out now. Consorting with a known criminal is an offence all by itself.’

  ‘I’m not-’

  ‘Oh, yes, you are.’ She kept the hush to her tone. There was no need to raise her voice. Even the chickens seemed to have stilled to listen. ‘You left this country seventeen years ago, while you were on bail for assault, forgery, bigamy, theft…you name it. You left a trail of destruction in your wake, including two wives. The police tracked you down twelve years ago and found you doing the same thing in the States. But you ran again, before you could be deported. I’d hoped we’d seen the last of you then, but suddenly-guess what? A man called Jerry Dwyer is living on a barren bush block that no one ever comes near. It’s unsaleable land. Your father owns it and you know he’s written it off as unusable. So you come back, pick up another lot of vulnerable people and start all over again.’

  ‘You don’t know-’

  ‘Of course I know,’ she said wearily. ‘Do you think I’m stupid? I’m Ally Westruther but, like you, I’ve changed my surname. Try Ally Lindford for size.’