ROWENA carried the coffee and biscuits into David’s consulting room. He was sitting at the desk, elbows on the pile of files, head resting on his hands.
‘Here, drink this,’ she said brusquely. ‘I can cancel the afternoon patients. I don’t think you’re fit to see anyone.’
He lifted his head and looked at her, as if trying to place where the noise was coming from, then his eyelids drifted down over his eyes and he dropped his head to his hands again.
The pain she’d seen in that telling moment made Rowena wince.
The agonising depth of it made her wonder if he would ever get over the death of his wife—ever recover enough to love again!
Though she’d once thought she wouldn’t…
‘Thanks for the coffee,’ he said at last, raising his head again, only this time looking past her towards the door. ‘A hot drink—panacea for most ills. Give me five minutes to drink it, then show the Carters in. I’d better see as many people as possible before word gets around. They sure as hell won’t want to see me afterwards, and Sarah could be caught up with the police.’
His voice was harsh, like talons scraping across wood. Much as Rowena longed to offer words of comfort or support, she couldn’t think of any to fit the situation. She nodded and walked away, so heart-sore she was surprised to find she could still function normally—to all outward appearances anyway.
‘David will only be a few minutes longer,’ she told the Carters. ‘He’s taking over for the afternoon as his locum was called away.’
‘Someone sick somewhere, was there?’ Mrs Carter asked.
It was a predictable question. With only one doctor on the island, the patients were used to having to wait, or even come back later, when David was called to an emergency. But now Rowena found herself unable to answer. Even nodding would be tantamount to a lie, and as the news would undoubtedly spread like wildfire, the couple would soon know it for what it was.
Rejecting total honesty as an option—unsure what story might spread—she simply smiled at the elderly pair and said, ‘I’m afraid I can’t talk about it—though, no doubt, everyone will know soon enough.’
Wrong move! she realised as they immediately began speculating, casting sidelong glances in her direction with each guess to see if they could catch a reaction. It was obvious from some of the comments that they knew Mary-Ellen was back on Three Ships and inevitably tied her into things.
‘Though,’ Mrs Carter said, ‘if it was to do with her and her sister, it would be David gone, not the new lady.’
‘Stop right now!’ Rowena told them. ‘Heavens! Gossip in this place must fly through the air. With two thousand people and seven hundred households, I’m sure it couldn’t be communicated so quickly by word of mouth.’
The pleased look on Mrs Carter’s face told Rowena she’d made a mistake, interrupting at that stage, but behind her she heard the consulting-room door open and knew David was ready.
‘Go on in,’ she said, biting back an urge to warn them not to ask questions—to beg them to be nice to him.
However, knowing it would only provoke more speculation, she held her tongue, closed the door behind them and turned to greet the next patient, who’d come in, late, with Bessie Jenkins from the school tuckshop.
‘Thought if you wanted to do your vampire thing on me I might as well get it over and done with straight away,’ Bessie said, while Margo Ryan, the policeman’s wife and heavily pregnant with her first child, waddled to a chair and settled into it.
‘Sorry I’m late but I was asleep,’ Margo explained. ‘My back’s been aching and I couldn’t get comfortable last night.’
Rowena looked at the young woman and wondered if she’d have the same difficulties this coming night, though for different reasons.
After offering Margo a drink of water, which was refused, Rowena took Bessie into the treatment room where she took two vials of blood. If the plane came in the following day, they would be sent away to test for hepatitis—if not, they would have to wait. Although David could and did do his own simple blood tests here on the island. Would Sarah continue the practice during her tenure?
Rowena chatted to Bessie as she worked, although her heart wasn’t in the conversation. Too busy worrying about David, and how he was handling the Carters’ curiosity.
‘Whatever the tests show, would you mind asking all the parents who help at the tuckshop to wear gloves all the time they’re handling food? And make sure there’s someone appointed to handle the money and nothing else. Let the kids queue up to pay at the cash register like you do in a cafeteria.’
‘But it takes far longer than having whoever serves them handling the money,’ Bessie pointed out. ‘And we all know enough to take a glove off for the money.’
‘Maybe your helpers don’t all follow the rules,’ Rowena suggested, though she suspected it might be Bessie herself, used to the way she’d always done things, who occasionally ‘forgot’ the gloves.
‘Are you going to test all the helpers?’ the older woman demanded, when Rowena failed to agree and reassure her.
‘I only take the blood,’ she said, using delegation of responsibility as an excuse. ‘It’s up to the doctors to decide who to test.’
‘Hmmph!’ Bessie muttered, although she obediently held the cotton ball over the needle puncture, then held out her arm for Rowena to tape the dressing in place.
They were just leaving the treatment room when Margo gave a loud cry and slid into an uncomfortable crouch on the floor.
The Carters, who had timed their departure to perfection, reached her first, Mrs Carter bending down as if to help Margo to her feet.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Bessie said, hurrying out so the ringing of the bell punctuated Margo’s distress.
‘Let her be for a minute,’ Rowena warned the older couple, crossing the room and kneeling on the opposite side of the young woman.
‘Was it a strong pain or just unexpected?’ she asked when the sheen on Margo’s upper lip confirmed it had been a pain-generated cry.
‘Oh, it hurt!’ Margo moaned.
‘Has it gone now?’ Rowena asked, glancing up in time to see David take in the scene then cross to the phone.
‘Yes, but I don’t want to move in case it hurts again,’ the young woman said.
Rowena hid a sigh. With some women, all the childbirth lectures and exercises in the world wouldn’t prepare them for the pain and discomfort of giving birth.
‘OK, let’s have a look,’ David said, crossing the room with his long, confident stride.
‘I’ll just get you to sign a Medicare form,’ Rowena said to Mr Carter. ‘If you could both come over here.’
She led the interested onlookers away, though her thoughts were with the man who now squatted beside Margo, murmuring soothingly to her, assuring her she’d be all right.
‘I’ve phoned Nell and left a message on her answering machine to let her know you’ve started labour,’ he told her, mentioning the midwife who had delivered the island’s babies for the last three decades. ‘But this pain is probably only an early warning, so how about I help you up, then have a look at you? Once we know what’s happening, you can decide whether you want to go home and wait for a while or go straight to the hospital.’
‘I want Barry,’ Margo said tearfully. She was standing now, clutching David’s arm as if he were the only thing keeping her afloat in a sea of confusion.
‘We’ll let him know what’s happening and I’m sure he’ll be here as soon as possible.’
‘Do you know where he is?’ Mrs Carter asked, far too eagerly. ‘We could go and tell him.’
She stepped towards Margo as if to shake the truth out of her.
‘He went out to—’ Margo began, but Rowena stepped between them.
‘I think it’s best if we tell him,’ she said to the Carters. ‘If he’s not within mobile range, we can get him on the two-way. Now, Mrs Carter, do you want me to put you down for another appointment? Did David say he wants to see you again?’
She hustled the inquisitive pair away, and was relieved when David helped Margo to her feet and led her towards the consulting room.
‘We have to come again next week,’ Mrs Carter said. ‘I do hope the lady doctor’s back here by then.’
‘I’m sure she will be,’ Rowena assured her.
She waited until they’d departed, then followed David into the consulting room.
Margo was sitting on the examination table, and though her eyes were now relatively free of tears, Rowena guessed it wouldn’t be long before she was crying again.
‘I think I’ll go to the hospital,’ Margo told David. ‘I’ll feel better there. Safer.’
‘Well, just bear in mind you won’t be in true labour for many hours yet and you might get bored at the hospital,’ David said. His face was pale, and his voice tight with tension, but the hand he rested on Margo’s shoulder was gently comforting.
The patient’s eyes brimmed again, and he added, ‘But if it’s what you want to do.’
He turned towards Rowena and she felt actual pain when she read the depths of the despair in his usually gentle brown eyes. His life was in turmoil but his compassion for his patients remained. She wanted to hold him, to warm him with her body and protect him with her arms, but she had no rights as far as he was concerned.
None but her love, which he’d already rejected.
‘Are you busy or could you go back to Margo’s place with her while she gets her things?’ he asked, and Rowena realised he was acting far more professionally than she was, although he’d had by far the greater shock.
She switched her mind back to ‘nurse’ mode.
‘No problem. There are three more patients due, but you can let them in yourself.’ She moved forward, but the switch hadn’t worked properly because she couldn’t resist an urge to touch him, to rest her hand briefly on his forearm.
‘You’ll know where I am,’ she told him, hoping he’d remember the words she’d spoken the previous afternoon when she’d promised to do whatever she could. Hoping he’d realise they still applied.
She felt his muscles tense beneath her fingers, and the air between them seemed to hum with tension. Then David moved his arm away—a slight shift in body angle, nothing more—and she took the hint, hid her hurt and turned to their patient.
‘Come on, Margo. Have you got your hospital bag packed? Were you ready for this?’
Margo immediately launched into a long explanation which began with the information that her mother had always gone over her due dates, drifted through the welter of indecision she’d suffered over whether she’d have the babe at the hospital or at home, before she finally admitted she’d bought some new nightdresses last time she’d been on the mainland but, no, hadn’t exactly packed anything for hospital.
David walked behind them, watching the way Rowena moved, wondering how the human psyche worked, that he could be thinking how attractive she was while his world was falling apart. His next patient was helping himself to a glass of water from the fountain in the corner.
David recognised him with a feeling of relief.
‘Ted. I didn’t know you were on the list for today. What brings you here?’
He crossed the room to shake hands with his friend, then led him back to the consulting room.
Ted drained the small paper cup and tossed it into David’s waste-paper basket. He ignored the chair David offered and did a turn around the room, showing sufficient agitation for David to forget a little about his own problems while he worried about Ted’s.
‘Actually, I didn’t think you’d be here,’ Ted finally admitted.
‘You didn’t want to see me about a medical problem? You’d prefer to see a woman?’
‘No way—not for me, mate,’ Ted assured him, then he added, ‘It’s Kelly.’ He turned and paced one more length before finally deciding he could do this sitting down.
David propped himself against the desk and waited.
‘I think she’s sick of the island—well, I hope it’s the island and not me. She’s restless and not herself at all. Not unhappy if you gauge unhappiness on tears—she doesn’t sit around and cry all day. It’s more like she’s distracted. As if she’s distancing herself from me, and I can’t seem to get her back.’
David pictured Kelly Withers in his mind—saw the rich dark red hair flowing in waves across her shoulders, and the bright, red-brown eyes which sparkled with wit and wisdom.
‘Kelly unhappy?’ It seemed impossible. ‘Why now? Has something happened recently? Something changed in your lives?’
Ted shook his head.
‘Nothing! We’re doing well, we didn’t suffer any damage in the fires, the eco tours Kelly’s been running kept her busy through summer, and the plans for next season’s tours are under way. She’s thinking of including Barrett’s Beach but, though she usually gets excited about the new plans, even that’s not giving her much pleasure.’
He paused, then said in a doom-laden voice, ‘I think she’s fed up with the island. People get that way, you know. Especially city-bred folk like Kelly.’
‘Nonsense!’ David said. ‘I’m city-bred, yet after three years I can’t imagine living anywhere else.’
Though I may have to after this, common sense reminded him. But Ted was seriously rattled, which was enough to concern David about the situation. Sufficient, even, to divert at least part of his mind from his huge personal problems.
‘I thought a woman doctor might have some insight into what’s happening with Kelly,’ Ted added lamely.
‘Not without seeing the patient,’ David told him. ‘It’s OK for you to come in and lay the groundwork, but how were you going to get Kelly here?’
Ted lifted his broad shoulders in a heavy shrug.
‘I hadn’t figured out the next move. In fact, I knew you and this Sarah were friends, so I’d thought maybe…’
‘We could do it socially? Sunday afternoon barbecue at the Withers’?’
‘Something like that,’ Ted admitted.
‘We could probably still do it but you’d be better off talking to Kelly. She’d kill you if she found out you’d set this up behind her back. Talk to the woman, ask her what’s wrong.’
‘You ever tried that with a woman?’ Ted asked. ‘First they say, “nothing”, in a voice that suggests it’s far worse than you imagined, then if you persist they launch into the kind of explanation Freud himself would have found frightening, losing you about the fourth sentence so you haven’t a clue what they’re talking about, though you’re fairly sure it’s all your fault.’
David found himself smiling.
‘Kelly’s not like that,’ he protested. ‘In fact, I’ve rarely met a person, male or female, more able to speak her mind. She wasn’t selected as head of the island’s tourism board for nothing.’
‘Well, she’s changed!’ Ted said forcefully.
‘Physically, is she well? I mean, does she look well? Or is she tired, run down? Couldn’t you persuade her to see a doctor? Sarah should be here tomorrow…’
He didn’t feel any different, but something must have shown in his face as his mind flashed back to where Sarah was now, for Ted stood up again and reached out to clasp his shoulder, muttering an oath against his own stupidity at the same time.
‘Here I am, blathering on, and you’re obviously out of it yourself. Rough night with a patient? Some tragedy that hasn’t hit the gossip lines yet?’
David rubbed his hands across his face.
‘You’ll hear soon enough. Sue-Ellen’s body has been found.’
‘Out at the farm? At your place?’
David gave a huff of helpless mirth.
‘Where else?’ he said, shaking his head in a weary denial of the impossible fact. ‘It’s as if some malign fate is determined I’ll never be happy again!’
‘Nonsense!’ Ted repudiated this gloomy assumption, then swore to himself, adding aloud, ‘Oh, man! I’m so sorry! Sorry I ever got you involved with the Merlyn family! But for you to have to go through this! Where was she? Had she fallen somewhere? Down a well? Did the place have wells?’
Ted was thinking about accidents—which David himself had assumed when Sue-Ellen had disappeared. But he could no longer hide behind such a contrarily comforting thought.
‘She was in a trunk—it has to be murder.’
Ted’s fingers tightened on his shoulder.
‘David! Oh, mate! What can I say? But you shouldn’t be here, listening to people tell their tales of woe. You’ve said yourself people mostly want reassurance, not doctoring, so go home—let their wives or husbands, their mothers, anyone else, reassure them.’
‘I’m better off at work,’ David told him. ‘Though once word gets out I probably won’t even have that to cling to.’
‘Nonsense. Islanders judge people for themselves. They’d already decided you were an innocent party in Sue-Ellen’s disappearance long before you came back here to practise. In fact, they found your return quite touching—as if you needed to be close to your memories of her.’
David considered this for a moment. He’d given up paediatrics and left the city because the gossip had hurt and saddened him, but he’d never fully analysed his reasons for choosing Three Ships as his future home.
He’d simply come.
‘Close to where the happy memories were, perhaps,’ he told Ted. ‘Back when I came over for a holiday at your place and first met Sue-Ellen. I thought she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen—the most precious. Like a Dresden figurine.’
‘But tough as teak beneath the fragile beauty,’ Ted put in. ‘I imagine you discovered that somewhere along the way.’
‘Like on our honeymoon!’ David admitted. ‘She was flabbergasted to think I’d expected her to ski on a skiing holiday. Soon put me right.’
‘I tried to tell you,’ Ted reminded him. ‘Lovely to look at but lethal as hell, both those girls—or women, I should say. They matured very young—knew all the tricks to drive a man wild. Leading him on then turning away. I dated Mary-Ellen—though I was never entirely sure which one I was going out with—one summer when I was still at school. I thought I’d die from the pain she caused with her teasing.’
‘But, whatever they were, it doesn’t alter the fact Sue-Ellen’s dead,’ David said. ‘And no one has the right to take another person’s life. No one had the right to deny Sue-Ellen her life. Especially not Sue-Ellen, who was so essentially alive, if you know what I mean.’
‘You’re not talking like a murderer,’ Ted said, homing in on the real problem with a friend’s accuracy.
‘I’ve never thought or acted like one either,’ David assured him, ‘though I doubt many people will believe it. I’m afraid it’s going to be hard to prove I didn’t do it—and without proof people will make up their own minds.’
Ted gave him a little shake.
‘In your favour! OK, the proof might be hard to come by, but the islanders’ll stand by you. They judge the person they know, not what they hear about him.’
‘Oh, come on!’ David said, but he smiled, albeit grimly. ‘The islanders are just the same as people everywhere. They’ll roll out all the clichés like “There’s no smoke without fire” and discuss it ad nauseam, at the same time casting dubious glances my way to see if somehow I’ve developed a mark of Cain.’
Ted made a muted noise of disagreement, but David knew he was right. Unless whoever had killed Sue-Ellen was found, his life on the island was over.
And just as dead as his lost wife were his hopes of wooing and winning Rowena.
Which reminded him, he’d promised Margo he’d contact Barry.
Beyond the window he could see kids coming home from school, shoving each other and laughing.
How could everyday life go on as if nothing had happened? Was personal disaster so insignificant it had no effect on the rest of the world?
‘Let’s consider a physical cause first, as far as Kelly is concerned. Talk her into coming in to see Sarah. Tell her you’re concerned about her health, that you think she’s doing too much, and ask her to come for your sake—just to set your mind at rest.’
‘I’ll try,’ Ted said, sighing deeply, but whether over the problem of getting his wife to a doctor or David’s tenuous hold on islander loyalty, David couldn’t tell.
He saw Ted out, greeted Mrs Smythe, one of the island’s two centenarians, then glanced up as the doorbell tinkled again. His heart did its lurching thing as Rowena walked in. Obviously the brain and heart must operate on different wavelengths where emotions were concerned. Far from disappearing, the physical manifestations of his attraction to Rowena seemed, if anything, to have increased in strength.
She smiled at him, making things worse internally, and murmured, ‘When you’ve seen Mrs Smythe, maybe you could pop across to the hospital. Barry’s already there, but no one’s told him about Margo yet. He’ll probably be more panicky than her and, as there could be another twelve to eighteen hours before Junior Ryan arrives, I thought he might be best left in ignorance for a short time, anyway.’
She paused, then went on, ‘And it turns out Nell’s on the mainland, due back on tomorrow’s flight, if it comes, so it looks like you’ll be it as far as the delivery is concerned.’
‘Me? Both the sisters at the hospital can deliver babies, so can you—you’ve had the training and must have done some prac. work when you trained.’
‘A hundred years ago!’ Rowena said, exaggerating tenfold. ‘And anyway, I don’t think Margo would be happy with any of us. As far as she’s concerned, it’s Nell or you—preferably both!’
‘Margo’s at the hospital?’ David asked, but although the conversation must have seemed quite normal to Rowena, and no doubt to Mrs Smythe had she been able to hear it, to him it seemed unbelievable—removed to a distance by the thoughts churning in his head.
Foremost of which was how he felt about the woman to whom he was talking, how precious she’d suddenly become to him, how attractive her tall, lissom figure, the long blonde hair casually pulled back into its customary loose knot at the nape of her neck. But jostling attraction from centre stage was the desire to protect her, to distance her from all of this—or himself from her lest he taint her with its mire.
Then, of course, were the even more unwelcome thoughts. Barry’s presence at the hospital meant Sarah must also be there—with a trunk and the pitiful remains of what had once been a vital, vibrant woman.
A woman he had loved, then lost, even before she’d disappeared.
‘I’ll see Mrs Smythe then pop across. Who else is on the list? Can you remember?’
‘Sally Jenkins—young Harry’s second lot of shots. I’ll phone her and ask her to come tomorrow instead. If I can’t get hold of her, I’ll do the immunisation and she can see you about any other problems or worries she might have some other time.’
‘Bless you,’ David said, and he smiled at her, though he knew he shouldn’t because smiles drew people closer, and he was supposed to be doing a distancing thing!
Rowena carried the smile with her as she turned away. She tucked it into the cold place in her heart where the previous evening’s rejection had turned heat to ice in a split second. Felt the arrival of the smile thaw a little of the ice.
Behind her, David was helping Mrs Smythe to her feet and supporting her arm as she headed, in her slightly tipsy fashion, towards the consulting room.
Like the Carters, Mrs Smythe would have come to check out the new doctor so she, too, would be disappointed. Normally, David went to see her when she needed a consultation, while a roster of women, including Rowena, called on a daily basis to see to her housekeeping and shopping.
‘Tough!’ Rowena murmured to herself, then was dismayed at the lack of sympathy in her reaction.
But this afternoon, the inquisitiveness of the local population seemed irritating, while imagining how they’d react to the news of Sue-Ellen’s murder made Rowena’s stomach churn.