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Her eyes flew wide at that. ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘Wonders will never cease.’

  He grinned. ‘OK. Give the injection a few minutes to take effect. In the meantime…tell me about you and Jerry.’

  For a while he thought she wouldn’t tell him. She sat with her foot stretched out on a stool before the fire and she looked…blank. It hurt, he thought, and it wasn’t her foot that was doing it.

  Would she tell?

  He continued to wait, but the combination of firelight and the sound of the sea was almost hypnotic, and finally she started. Her face was still blank. It was as if she was recounting something that had happened to others. Not to her.

  ‘My father was associated with Jerry long before I was born,’ she told him. ‘Jerome…Jerry…well, you’ve seen him. His personality is overwhelming. Dad met him here when they were both boys. Jerry used to come down here when his father was checking his properties. When Dad went to the city to live, he caught up with Jerry again, and finally he went to live with him. Jerry’s father had given him a farm in the hills above Nimbin in New South Wales. That was the start. You’ve seen the men who were with Jerry. My dad was like that.’

  He knew. Damn, he knew.

  ‘And your mother?’ He’d started washing her foot with the warm water, carefully removing the soil of the day. She appeared hardly to notice. She was intent on her story.

  ‘Dad met my mother here,’ she told him. ‘Dad was twenty years older than she was, and he’d left town before she was born. But Dad had to come back here to fix up something to do with his parents’ estate and he met my mother then. She was only fifteen and he got her pregnant. My grandfather was furious. He wasn’t…he wasn’t a forgiving man, my grandfather. He demanded she have an abortion and she ran away with my father. So for the first few years of my life I was with Jerry and his people.’

  She’d lived as these people had. She knew.

  He hesitated. ‘Jerry… Was Jerry all right with you?’

  She frowned. ‘You mean, did he abuse me? No. To be honest, I don’t remember much about my early childhood. All I know is that when I was four my mother brought me back here. She didn’t explain why. She seemed afraid but Grandpa didn’t know why and she insisted on going back herself. Whether she was still in love with Dad, or whether she was under Jerry’s spell, I don’t know. But she had enough sense to be afraid for me. Anyway, she left me with my grandfather and I stayed with him for eight years.’

  ‘And then?’

  She sighed. ‘Then my grandfather died and my father took me back.’

  ‘Your mother…’

  ‘By that time she was just a victim,’ she said wearily. ‘She did what everyone told her. She’d stood up to them once when she’d taken me to my grandfather, but she was incapable of standing up to them again.’

  Darcy was totally focussed on her story-but he had to concentrate on the procedure he was undertaking. He lifted her foot and lightly ran his nail down either side of her sole. ‘Can you feel this?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good. I’m starting.’ He inspected the wound with care and then reached for a scalpel. She looked down at what he was doing and then carefully closed her eyes.

  Good choice. And he could distract her still further with her story.

  ‘So you stayed with Jerry from the time you were twelve?’ he asked as he carefully split the skin at the side of the wood. The more he saw the more he was astonished. She’d walked on the splinter for hours. It must have been agony. It had shattered into pieces and was deeply embedded.

  How had she done it?

  But she was focussed on her childhood. Had she stayed with Jerry?

  ‘Are you kidding?’ She smiled, albeit a shaky one. ‘I had no choice. I was twelve and I went where I was taken. But Jerry was in trouble. Once, when he was really desperate, he came here and he brought me with him. He knew this place was deserted and there was some sort of drug deal going on. I was supposed to sit on the ridge and watch for people coming. For about three days he hid up there, and I was desperately lonely. All that time I knew my home was here-the people I knew-and, oh, I wanted to come back.’

  ‘You could have come.’

  ‘How? My grandfather wasn’t here any more. I didn’t know who would help me. I figured my father would just come and get me again. No. I was stuck. But while I was up on the ridge I was furious, with all the righteous indignation of a lonely twelve-year-old who was dragged where she didn’t want to be. I used to watch Jerry. I knew he was doing something illegal. I watched where he hid stuff. I memorised everyone who came. I took car registrations. I eavesdropped and I figured things out. From that time on, I kept careful records of everything I could. But of course Mum and Dad were part of the community. I didn’t see how I could do anything without destroying them.’ She swallowed and darted him a look that was suddenly unsure.

  Darcy stayed intent on her foot. He was carefully manoeuvring pieces of shattered wood out and he needed to concentrate, but he also knew he had to give her space.

  ‘Then…’ she whispered. ‘Then Jerry decided I was old enough…’

  Enough. Her voice trailed off to nothing.

  Darcy’s hands stilled. His heart seemed to still. ‘Ally…’

  But he might have known this was no passive victim. Not Ally.

  ‘Only I wasn’t,’ she told him, her voice suddenly defiant. ‘Grandpa had taught me karate-how cool is that?-and I fought. I took off into the scrub round the horrible place we were staying, and I ran. It took me hours to get to the nearest town but when I arrived I talked and talked and I don’t know why they believed me but they did. I was scratched and bruised and starving and just…vitriolic. In the end the police went up and arrested Jerry.’

  He was dumbfounded. ‘You had him arrested?’ He shook his head in disbelief, seeing her as she must have been then. A twelve-year-old, up against the world. There was a lump in the back of his throat and he had to fight to speak again. ‘Guns blazing?’ he ventured, trying desperately for lightness. He wanted to hit someone. He desperately wanted to hit someone. Maybe it was just as well he hadn’t known this when he’d faced Jerry.

  ‘Hardly.’ She gave a rueful chuckle. ‘Not quite. Though if there’d been guns handy, who knows?’ She shrugged and in an unconscious echo of his own thoughts she added, ‘Maybe it was just as well I only knew karate. Anyway, it didn’t help. He skipped bail and left the country. Leaving a mess.’ She stared down into his angry eyes and ventured a lopsided smile. ‘Um… Dr Rochester, do you think you could concentrate on my foot?’

  He caught himself. He was operating here. He went back to the splinter but it was almost clear. All he had to do was clean it really thoroughly.

  He started to wash it out. As he concentrated on medicine again his voice came under control and it seemed possible to ask more questions.

  ‘What happened to your parents?’

  ‘They weren’t my parents any more,’ she said sadly, staring down at her foot. ‘They weren’t capable of caring for themselves, let alone me. I went into foster care. End of story.’

  Only it wasn’t. He glanced up into her face, and behind the satisfaction that this day had given her he saw more.

  She was haunted, he thought. He’d treated her as a flibbertigibbet, a person who’d bowled into town with her sky-blue signs and her ideas of making a living from massage.

  And she had such shadows.

  ‘No one knew,’ he said, forcing himself to stay focussed on the dressing he was applying. ‘No one in the town seemed to have any idea of what happened to you.’

  ‘My grandfather never talked,’ she told him. ‘He was a hard man. He never talked of anything. Jerome Hatfield was our personal tragedy.’

  ‘Yet…’

  ‘Enough,’ she said, almost roughly. ‘My foot’s fine.’ He’d taped the dressing in place and her foot was as good as it was going to get. �
��Take me home, Dr Rochester. Even a tea bag’s looking good.’

  ‘How up to date are you with your tetanus shots?’

  ‘I’m fine. I had a booster two years back.’

  ‘Try to keep the weight off your heel.’

  ‘I’ve been doing that all evening. I’m an expert.’

  ‘Right.’ He hesitated. He should drive her home. But he couldn’t let her go home to a tea bag. Could he?

  No.

  ‘Let me find you a steak,’ he said, and there was a short silence. ‘You could do that?’

  ‘I have half a dozen steaks in my freezer. My microwave can defrost them in minutes.’

  ‘I thought you had a wood stove.’

  ‘Yep. A wood stove and a microwave. How about that?’

  ‘You want me to go to your place?’

  ‘My dogs make great chaperones. And…’ he ventured a smile ‘…I hear you know karate.’

  ‘And two other Japanese words. That makes me bilingual. Or trilingual. Something.’

  He grinned again. She was stunning, he thought. He was appropriately stunned. ‘OK. If all your patients are asleep, let’s go.’

  ‘They’re not my patients.’

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ he said faintly. ‘I’m starting to feel superfluous.’

  ‘Not when you have six steaks in your freezer. You’re not superfluous at all.’

  ‘There you go, then.’ His smile faded. ‘Not completely superfluous. But definitely completely confused.’ He hesitated. ‘You gave Robert paracetamol?’

  ‘Let’s check him,’ she told him, meeting his concern before he’d voiced it. ‘I can wait that long. Of all of them, Robert’s the one who’ll be awake. That carcinoma is almost bone-deep.’

  He cast her an odd look. ‘You know your medical stuff.’

  ‘We get it in massage school.’

  ‘How to treat carcinoma?’

  ‘How to recognise one.’

  ‘Massage school’s changed since my day.’

  ‘You’re how old?’ She shrugged. ‘OK, Dr Greybeard. Let’s check Robert. My tummy’s rumbling.’

  Robert was asleep, but not deeply. Ally pushed open his bedroom door and he stirred a little, whimpering with pain.

  ‘He hasn’t even had an aspirin before tonight,’ she whispered in sudden anger, moving across to stare down at him in the soft light cast by the hall lamp. ‘His face… It would have been a tiny thing to get rid of a couple of years back, but now…the mess…’

  Darcy crossed to stand beside her. She was right. He’d only seen Robert’s face in the distance before this. Social Services had forced Jerry to accept him examining the children but the adults had the right to refuse treatment and none of them had come near him.

  And now what must have started off as a tiny basal cell carcinoma had spread, covering Robert’s forehead and half his cheek. Horrid.

  But as far as he could see it hadn’t invaded his eye. And it looked clean.

  ‘I washed it and put a mild antiseptic on it,’ Ally told him. ‘I hope it isn’t too deep-that the eye is OK. Even now, he must be facing major surgery. He’s so afraid. I talked to him about skin grafts, though. I told him I’m sure there are things that can be done to help.’

  Here it was again. Her knowledge of medicine.

  Was she a med-school dropout? he wondered. Or somehow trained and deregistered? If so, her use of the word ‘doctor’ was not only illegal but dangerous.

  But this wasn’t the time to question it. Robert moaned softly again and Darcy came to a decision.

  ‘I’ll wake him. He’s only sleeping now because he’s exhausted. That pain will wake him up as soon as the exhaustion eases.’

  ‘Morphine and a sedative?’

  He raised his brows and she raised hers back.

  ‘Right,’ he said, deciding not to take it further.

  ‘I thought Lorraine and Penny might need sedatives to help them sleep,’ she told him. ‘But a massage worked better. I can’t see Robert accepting a massage, though.’

  ‘No,’ he said dryly, and he put his hand on the man’s shoulder.

  ‘Robert.’

  The man woke as if someone was striking him. There was pure terror in his eyes, and he hauled back, cringing. He was a little man, in his mid-forties maybe, but so emaciated he might be much older. His ginger hair was thinning. It had been roughly cut, as if done by himself without the help of a mirror. He wouldn’t be out of place in a shelter for homeless men, Darcy thought as he moved swiftly to reassure him.

  ‘It’s OK, Robert,’ he told him. ‘I’m the doctor.’

  The man’s eyes moved past him and found Ally-and he visibly relaxed. How had this woman achieved their trust in such a short time?

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I thought it was…’

  ‘You thought it was Jerry,’ Ally finished for him. ‘He’s in jail, Robert. You know that.’

  ‘I should have gone with him.’

  ‘No,’ Ally said fiercely. She sat on the bed and took the little man’s hands between hers, her hold compelling. ‘There’s no “should” about it. Jerry tells everyone what to do, and because he’s so big and loud and compelling everyone just does it without asking questions. But you’ve been in agony for months. Jerry hasn’t let Dr Rochester help you. Now he can. He’s here and he can stop the pain and let you have a decent night’s sleep.’

  ‘The bed’s pretty good,’ the man whispered, and Ally gave him a smile brimming with encouragement.

  ‘Yep. And so was dinner. And so’s the treatment Dr Rochester can give your face. I cleaned it but I’ve probably made it hurt even more.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ the man faltered, but Darcy looked at the lines of strain around his eyes and knew he was lying.

  ‘Will you let me give you something for the pain?’

  ‘Ally gave me tablets.’

  ‘Did they help?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘I can give you something stronger. And if you’ll let me,’ Darcy said softly, not wanting to bring the terror back into the man’s eyes, ‘in the next couple of days I’ll arrange for you to be transported to one of the big Melbourne hospitals. That face needs a top surgeon to treat it.’

  ‘It’s too late. It’s spread too far.’

  ‘No.’ Darcy made his voice flat and absolutely definite. Ally moved to let Darcy take her place, and he stooped to have a really good look. ‘Robert, I don’t know how deep it is, but it certainly looks like basal cell carcinoma. That’s skin cancer normally caused by sun damage. It’s close to the eye but it’s not so close that it’s going to interfere with either the eye or the eyelid. If we move now, we can fix it. What the surgeon will need to do is cut away the damaged surface. Because it’s big, he’ll need to do a skin graft. That’ll involve taking a piece of skin, probably from somewhere like your thigh, and stitching it over your face so the wound will heal.’

  ‘Ally told me that. But it’ll never heal.’

  ‘It will,’ Ally said. ‘Believe us. You must believe us, Robert. We can make this better.’

  ‘But I can’t afford-’

  ‘The public health system will cover this,’ Darcy told him. ‘Because it’s so close to your eye you’ll be treated as a priority patient. If I send you to Melbourne in the next couple of days, you’ll be operated on almost immediately.’

  ‘And…and after that?’

  ‘You can be brought back here to recuperate if you wish,’ Darcy told him. ‘We’ll put your residence down as care of this place, and take it from there. Our social worker will talk to you tomorrow about appropriate housing, and whether you want to stay with the others or not.’ Then, as Robert’s eyes grew confused, he put his hands on his shoulders and pressed him back on the pillows.

  ‘Enough,’ he told him. ‘Too much has happened too fast. But will you allow me to give you an injection? Something that will have you pain-free and let you sleep for the rest of the night?’

  ‘Pain-free? All night?’
<
br />   ‘Magic,’ Darcy said with a wry grin. He gave a sideways wink at Ally. ‘You know, even though massage therapists can solve most of the problems of the world, there’s still a use for us doctors. Can I give you the injection, mate?’

  Robert looked from Ally to Darcy and back again. His face said he was confused beyond belief. But the terror had faded.

  He’d been given hope. It had been worth waking him up, Darcy thought. He’d have woken in the small hours to pain and to the knowledge that the cancer was spreading. He must have been doing so for months. Waiting for the cancer to reach his eyes, and then…

  That was the way of madness.

  But instead of madness, now there was hope. He gazed at the two of them and then his weary face broke into the ghost of what might once have been a smile.

  ‘Maybe you’re crazy, the pair of you,’ he muttered. ‘And why don’t I care? Go ahead, Doc. Give me the injection. Work your magic.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ALLY felt like she was floating. Not in a good way, though, she decided as Darcy ushered her once more into his luxurious car. Too much had happened to her this day for her to take it all on board.

  Her hatred of Jerome Hatfield had built over the years to a point where she hadn’t been able to handle it. She’d taken drastic steps in her life and moved on. She’d thought. Then today the memories had slammed back with such force that she felt as if everything had been sucked out of her. Her feet were no longer grounded. She felt…ill.

  ‘How’s your foot?’

  ‘It’s fine,’ she whispered. ‘Just fine.’

  ‘You can’t take this all in,’ Darcy said gently, and she stared across at him as if she didn’t recognise him.

  ‘It doesn’t change anything,’ she murmured. ‘To be given the opportunity to stop Jerry doing more damage… That’s fine but he’s done so much damage already.’

  ‘To your family?’

  ‘To everyone.’ She hesitated. ‘Thank you, though, for taking me up there this afternoon. Of all the lucky breaks.’

  ‘If the police have been looking for him for so long, I can’t believe they didn’t look here.’

  ‘He went overseas years and years ago,’ she said. ‘The trail was cold. The police couldn’t check every one of his father’s properties all the time on the off chance that he’d come back.’