‘WAS I WRONG to ask?’
Jo and Charles were back in the kitchen, Jo washing the tea things, while Charles, having found the silver cloth in its plastic sleeve beside where the pot was kept, was polishing any suspect finger marks from the high gloss.
‘Of course not,’ Jo told him. ‘It’s the only way you’re ever going to find out anything about your mother, although—’
She spun around, excitement gleaming in her blue eyes, while the echoing excitement in his body had more to do with those eyes than his search.
‘I know she went away to boarding school, but that would only have been for her high school years, so there must be people in the town who knew her from primary school, and still saw her on holidays. Dottie will probably weaken to the extent she’ll drop bits of information here and there, but I’m sure we can find out more.’
‘We?’ Charles asked, smiling at her enthusiasm.
‘Of course, we,’ Jo told him. ‘You’d never know who to ask! How old was she when she left, do you know?’
‘She must have been twenty-two or -three. She died just before her twenty-fifth birthday.’
‘Far too young,’ Jo said quietly, before she rallied. ‘Well, come on. There’s no time like the present.’
She was about to whirl out of the room but Charles caught her shoulder.
‘Wait,’ he said, and she turned to face him, so close he could see tiny freckles on her nose, see her chest rising and falling beneath the light T-shirt she was wearing. See the swell of her breasts, feel the warmth of her...
Whatever he’d been about to say disappeared, washed away by a great wave of...
Lust?
No, surely more than that!
Although it had been far too strong to be attraction.
‘Charles?’
She was looking closely at him, and if her voice sounded a little breathy, well, that was probably nothing more than his imagination. Although the softness of her pale pink lips wasn’t.
‘I was going to say...’
He realised he still held her shoulder, and heat seared his hand.
‘Dammit!’ he muttered, stepping away from the source of his distraction, hoping that would help. ‘I think I am losing my mind!’
‘Going to the village?’ Jo prompted kindly, and he glared at her.
Then remembered where his thoughts had been before she’d—
Cast a spell over him?
‘I think it is a not good idea,’ he finally managed, the words sounding stilted—foreign—even to him.
Definitely losing his mind!
‘No?’ Jo said, stepping back, as if she, too, wanted to avoid whatever minefield they’d blundered into.
He forced himself to think, to set aside whatever it was between him and this woman, and be his normal, practical self.
‘I think if we ask around the village, it would get back to Dottie and I think that might be hurtful to her.’
There, it was out, and his relief was such that he smiled at Jo.
She wished he wouldn’t! Wouldn’t smile like that, wouldn’t touch her to catch her attention. She knew they meant nothing, the smiles and the touches—well, her head knew that. It was just that her body was having trouble coming to terms with it.
Her body seemed to think that, released of the burden it had carried for nine months, it could go cavorting about however it liked.
Her body, she knew, was looking for more smiles and touches—it was positively revelling in them.
Surely pregnancy hadn’t turned her into a wanton hussy?
Or was it simply that he was unattainable—this man who admitted he wanted to marry and have children.
A prince—but not hers.
No, her life was here in Anooka, her life dedicated to her patients, marriage and children no part of it...
But a flirtation?
Would that hurt?
‘Well, what do you think?’
The question, coming what seemed like hours after whatever they’d been talking about, threw her completely.
What had they been talking about?
‘If not hurt, maybe shamed in some way? I wouldn’t like that.’
Hurt?
Shamed?
Jo’s brain clicked into gear, and she looked at Charles, who had crossed the kitchen and was wiping at a spot on the window above the sink.
‘Of course she would be. I’m so sorry. I just didn’t think.’
And now she had her brain back on track, she added, ‘Anyway, once you start work you’ll probably be spending more time in Anooka than out here. Do you have a starting date?’
He stopped cleaning the window and leant against the bench, so he was silhouetted against the light.
‘Monday of next week. I gave myself some time to...’
Jo smiled as his broad shoulders shrugged.
‘Get to know your grandmother?’ she teased, then felt a little mean. ‘Anyway, that means you’ll get to see the surf carnival this weekend before you start work, and maybe on Thursday—oh, that’s tomorrow, isn’t it? The week’s just vanished! Anyway, tomorrow, if you like, I’ll take you into Anooka, show you around the hospital, and introduce you to the powers-that-be. I want to go in anyway, to tell them I’m available until my locum goes, if they’re short-handed.’
‘Do they get short-handed?’ Charles asked, and Jo found herself relaxing. She’d rattled off the suggestion because she’d remained uneasy—unsettled—and talking seemed the best route back to normal.
And hospital conversations she could do.
‘Here, the carnival starts the summer holiday period. In Australia, this dread custom of “Schoolies” has developed. Young people finishing their final year in high school descend on every beach in the nation—and many places overseas—to celebrate their new-found freedom. It’s chaotic, though not as bad in sleepy little places like Port Anooka as it is in the main tourist towns.’
‘They party?’ Charles asked, and Jo smiled.
‘Like you wouldn’t believe,’ she said. ‘But thankfully it doesn’t begin until after the carnival weekend and only lasts five days, after which many families arrive for their annual Christmas by the sea.’
‘Christmas by the sea? Do you have any idea how exotic that sounds?’
‘I’m afraid my main reaction to it is dread. The village trebles, or maybe quadruples, in population while, apart from casual staff in most of the shops, cafés and bars, everything else remains the same only busier.’
‘Like ski season in our mountain villages—that I understand. One doctor who might normally serve three villages finds he’s barely able to cope with his own, for these people don’t leave their colds and flu and injuries at home.’
Jo grinned at him.
‘It’s all ahead of you,’ she warned him. ‘So, tomorrow? Do you want a lift into town to meet and greet?’
Unfortunately, as she’d been doing very well, he smiled before he replied, and her body celebrated with more of those wanton flips and tingles.
‘Most certainly,’ he replied, ‘and I would like to hire a car as well, so I can get about.’
Had she been so preoccupied with her reactions to Charles that she’d failed to hear Dottie come up behind her?
But at the sound of her voice, Jo started, and possibly let out a little yelp, although she hoped that had been her imagination.
‘I have a perfectly good car you can use,’ Dottie announced, sliding past Jo into the kitchen. ‘Although, if you are working in Anooka, it’s best you stay there. Jo, too, if they offer her a job. But you can take the car so you can visit me on days off.’
Jo was laughing.
‘I imagine, Dottie, that’s your way of telling us you’re fed up with having us around. But you’re right, it will be far more convenient for Charles to be closer to his work. And so kind to offer the car.’
Something in the words must have warned Charles what he was in for, because he frowned, then assured Dottie that it would be no trouble at all to hire a car.
‘I may be based out of town for some of the time,’ he said, trying to shore up his defences, but Jo knew he was lost. He was going to spend his six weeks with Port Anooka Hospital Authority driving a large, ancient, black vehicle with a rather unfortunate resemblance to a hearse.
‘We’re going into Anooka tomorrow, Dottie, if you’d like to come. Or if you need anything in town we could get it.’
‘Anooka’s too busy, too many people all bustling about the place,’ Dottie replied, and although Jo raised her eyebrows, well aware how much Dottie enjoyed occasional jaunts into town, she said nothing.
‘But if you’ve finished all your cleaning and polishing, which, I might add, pregnant women are supposed to do before they go into labour, not after, you could take me into the village now. There’s no danger from the tides now, and I’d like to see if anyone has suffered or needs help.’
‘That’s a good idea, though I think we’d have heard if there’d been any major problems.’
‘You make it sound as if this flooding is a regular event,’ Charles said, as Dottie went upstairs to get ready for the outing.
‘Maybe a couple of times a year,’ Jo explained. ‘But it must have been happening since the village was first settled because the houses and shops are built on the hills above flood level so it’s only the roads in and out of the place and the sheds at the sporting fields that are really inundated.’
‘So why is she keen to go?’ Charles asked, and Jo grinned at him.
‘She’s a sticky beak! She might live out here in splendid isolation, but she likes to know everything that goes on in the village. She has a couple of cronies down there she’ll genuinely want to check on, but her main hope will be that some of the buildings in the playing fields have been damaged.’
Charles stared at her in sheer disbelief.
‘You’re saying she wants to see them damaged?’
Jo shrugged, and smiled again, so all the symptoms of his awareness of this woman kicked in.
‘Swept away more like. When her husband—when Bertie—was mayor, he arranged for the council to relocate some of the houses and businesses lower down the slopes—places that flooded regularly. Then he declared all the flood-prone land playing fields or parklands, so Dottie’s been very peevish since various sporting organisations built clubhouses, and stands for spectators.’
‘She hopes to see them washed away?” Charles asked, his disbelief so great he momentarily forgot that it was Jo in front of him.
Until she smiled again.
‘Bertie wouldn’t have liked it, you see.’
Charles tried to take this in, even stepping back so he wasn’t quite so close to Jo and wouldn’t be distracted.
Something about this new information deeply disturbed him, and he had to work out why.
‘Right,’ he finally said. ‘She was so besotted about Bertie she hates to see any of his good works changed in any way. But surely someone with that much love and passion must have had some for her daughter!’
He was watching Jo as he spoke, largely to make sure Dottie wasn’t coming up behind her once again, but he couldn’t miss the way Jo’s lips thinned as she clamped them shut, or the way her eyes darkened with something he couldn’t read, just before she turned away.
‘I need to get my handbag from upstairs,’ she said, then fled—or perhaps escaped would be a better word.
Something had happened and that something was connected to his mother. That was all fine and good, but if he couldn’t find out from Jo what it was, he’d just have to find out some other way.
He’d been the one who’d squashed the idea of tracking down any of his mother’s old school friends, but that might turn out to be the way to go.
Or could he persuade Jo to tell him more?
In time, when she knew him better?
Although he already knew her loyalty was to Dottie...
Dottie and Jo returned together, and Charles was amused to notice that for a visit to a village Dottie had donned a hat and gloves, while Jo had twisted her unruly hair into a knot at the back of her head, though from the wisps already escaping Charles wondered how long it would last.
But it changed her in some way, gave her an elegance he hadn’t noticed before. It added to the beauty and intensified the uproar she so unwittingly caused in his body.
‘We’ll take my car, the Prince can drive,’ Dottie decreed.
‘But he doesn’t know the village, and he’d be used to driving on the wrong side of the road. I don’t mind driving, and we can take my car.’
‘Don’t argue, Jo. If he’s going to be driving my car when he goes to work, he might as well get used to it.’
Jo shook her head, her disapproval evident, although there was a small smile playing around her lips—the kind of smile that made Charles wonder just what kind of vehicle his grandmother would deem suitable for the status she obviously felt she deserved.
Reluctance dragging at his feet, he followed Jo to the garage he’d already noticed at the back of the house.
It was worse—far worse—than he’d imagined: a great black tank of a thing, about thirty feet long.
‘It looks like a hearse,’ he muttered to Jo.
She smiled openly now.
‘I think it was, but Dottie bought it because it was the only thing she could find that fitted Bertie’s wheelchair in the back. The wheelchair folded up so she could take him to appointments—doctors, and therapy, and such.’
‘It seems impossible,’ he said. ‘She’s such a tiny woman, and the photos I’ve managed to see of him show him as a well-built man.’
Charles had opened the driver’s door and was peering cautiously into the interior of the huge vehicle.
‘It probably won’t start,’ he said, hoping that would be true so he could hire a small, convenient vehicle for his stay.
‘You’re not getting out of it that easily,’ Jo said, grinning at him across the top. ‘Dottie says there’s no point in having a car that won’t go so she has it serviced regularly.’
‘She still drives?’
And this time Jo laughed.
‘Not any more,’ she said when she’d recovered, ‘but that doesn’t alter her opinion about keeping it serviceable.’
Charles shook his head—it was all too much for him!
But as Jo slipped into the passenger seat beside him for the short drive to the front door, he was glad of the size of the vehicle for it left a good space between them. Sitting in a modern compact car, she’d have been so much closer and he had already come to the conclusion that being close to her was not a good thing.
He was pretty sure the attraction had been brought on by proximity, and had decided that avoiding it—at least until he could work out how he felt—was the best option.
‘So, are you going to start it, or just sit there staring out the window?’
As promised, the vehicle started immediately, the engine purring in neutral beneath the big bonnet.
‘Just remember the length of it when you’re backing or passing another car. The few times I’ve driven it—decreed by you-know-who—I was a total wreck.’
He backed smoothly out of the garage and drove sedately—it was the kind of car that had to be driven sedately—to the front door. Dottie was waiting for them, a colourful, Chinese parasol raised above her head.
Jo leapt out to hold the passenger’s side door for her, but Dottie shook her head.
‘If I’m going to be driven by a prince, I’ll do it in style, thank you. I shall sit in the back and you may sit with me, Jo.’
Jo cast an agonised look at Charles, who just smiled and nodded at her, as if to say if Dottie wanted to play games, it was fine with him.
But how much would he take?
Jo had no idea, although she was reasonably sure he’d put up with a lot in order to find out more about his mother.
And Jo knew Dottie well enough to guess she’d be impressed by his willingness to go along with her teasing.
Which was all very well for him and Dottie, Jo thought to herself. But as she had already made arrangements to spend the next four weeks with Dottie, so her locum could have the run of her house, it meant—
Unless she was needed at the hospital. That would be the answer. Okay, Charles would also be working there, but they wouldn’t necessarily see each other at all.
And there were four hospital flats so they wouldn’t need to share...
Share?
Nonsense—get real here!
It was pathetic to think she couldn’t work in the same place as Charles, or live close by, without going all silly over him. It was a medical fact that her hormones would still be in disarray after the pregnancy, and that explained the physical manifestations of attraction she felt when she was close to him.
Or, to be honest, when she heard his voice.
Worse, if he inadvertently touched her!
Get over it!
‘Are you listening?’ Dottie asked, bringing Jo back to the real world.
‘Sorry, Dottie, you were saying?’
‘I was saying—’ her voice was icy! ‘—that the Prince drives better than you do. The last time you drove me to the village you jammed the brakes on instead of braking gently.’
Jo didn’t have to see their chauffeur’s shoulders shaking to know that he was delighted with this reprimand.
‘You’ll keep!’ she muttered at him, then turned her full attention to their hostess, who was explaining the layout of the village to Charles, and giving him directions to turn left, or right, or sometimes both at the same time when she became confused.
The road had been cleaned, but mud from the flooded creek still lay thick on the sports field and the smell of it swept through the open windows of the non-air-conditioned car.
‘If you want to check on your place or the clinic, Jo, Charles can drop me at Molly’s and drive you around there.’
Jo had already checked that all was well at both places, but it was a good opportunity to show Charles something of the village.
‘I’ll be an hour,’ Dottie decreed, once she was sure Molly was at home.
Being a perfect gentleman, Charles was out of the car as soon as it stopped, and opened the door for her, holding it open so Jo could slip out and into the front seat.
‘She’s certainly unique, isn’t she?’ Charles said, as they set off sedately up the road. ‘Which way should we go when we reach the top?’
‘Right will take us past the school then along the main shopping street, not that it is much to look at but it has the essentials in a general store, a baker, a butcher and hardware store.’
‘And a café? Somewhere I could buy you a coffee, perhaps?
Jo was reluctant to admit to the café for all it was in a beautiful position that had views along the creek and out to sea.
And served fantastic coffee...
She was being silly, she knew. Sharing a coffee break didn’t mean a thing, no matter how lovely the view.
‘If you turn right again past the hardware shop, you can’t miss the café.’
Now she smiled to herself, for the Seagull Café came as a shock to most visitors.
‘Not the place with all the wet and miserable-looking seagulls on the roof?’ Charles asked as they turned the corner.
‘The very place! They’re not real, although the ones that come and sit on the veranda railings and pinch your food are only too real. Kate, the proprietor, heard somewhere that if you put fake seagulls all around, the live birds would think it was the fake birds’ territory and stay away.’
‘It didn’t work?’ Charles asked as they pulled up.
‘You’ll see for yourself!’ Jo told him, with a smile that brought goosebumps up on his skin.
Once he started work it would be all right, he was telling himself—when he realised Jo was racing down the path to the seagull-roofed café.
What had she heard?
Or seen?
He had no idea but he hurried after her, spurred on by the urgency he could read in her movement.
The reason lay just inside the back door of the café, a woman with a blood-soaked towel wrapped around her hand.
‘The knife slipped,’ she was whispering to Jo as he arrived on the scene.
‘Dial triple zero,’ Jo said to him. ‘Ambulance and urgent.’
Charles dialled, pleased Jo had told him the emergency numbers, spoke, listened, thanked the person on the other end, then knelt beside the injured woman.
‘Your scarf will be better than my belt,’ he said, untangling the length of filmy material from around Jo’s throat. ‘There’s so much blood it must be arterial and the person on the phone said the ambulance will have to come from Anooka so it might be a while.’
He was fastening the scarf around the woman’s arm as he spoke quietly to Jo, who was, he realised, applying pressure to the wound.
But once he had the tourniquet in place and had noted the time, he went inside and found a freshly laundered towel and returned with it to their patient.
‘Here, we’ll use this—it will give us some idea of how much blood she’s still losing.’
He spoke quietly but realised the woman was probably beyond hearing, if the pool of blood on the floor was any indication.
Jo lifted the blood-soaked rag she’d been holding, and he heard the hiss of her breath and felt his own chest tighten as they both saw the wound for the first time. No accidental slip of the knife, but a deliberate and deep slash between the tendons on the left forearm. The classic cut of a suicide who’d checked out a ‘how to’ page on the internet. And the tendons standing out either side of it would make it hard to stem the flow with a pressure pad. The tourniquet would have to stay.
Jo wrapped the clean cloth around the arm, which was seeping rather than spurting blood now, watching the woman all the time, a look of deep concern, even sadness, on her face.
‘We could move her inside, make her more comfortable,’ Charles suggested.
‘Or make her comfortable here. She lives at the back of the shop. I’ll find a blanket and pillow.’
Charles watched her go, and guessed by the slump of her shoulders her worry that, as a doctor, she should have known of the woman’s fragile mental state.
Silly really, the woman might not even be Jo’s patient, but she was certainly upset.
Be practical! he told himself, and looked around, taking in the mess of blood.
They could move the woman, maybe into one of the low-slung chairs he could see on the veranda, then they could clean up the blood.
Or Jo could watch the woman while he cleaned up the blood—put into practice some of the household skills he’d been perfecting at Dottie’s place.
He lifted the woman carefully and carried her to the front of the café. Jo had returned and followed him, draping a blanket on the chair before Charles set her down, then covering her with a duvet, even though the day was warm.
‘If you watch her I’ll go and clean up some of the blood. She won’t want to come back to that kind of mess.’
‘You stay and watch, I’ll clean up the blood,’ Charles told her firmly. ‘Just check her pulse from time to time to ensure the tourniquet isn’t too tight.’
He went back to the kitchen, found cleaning things, and started work, and although he was meticulous, his mind worried at the question of why a woman with what was apparently a decent business would sit down in the doorway of her kitchen, quite early in the morning, and slit her wrists.
There was unhappiness everywhere, he knew that, but if Australia was anything like his own country, mental health services were stretched to the limit, and many people fell through the gaps.
He heard the ambulance siren and, with the kitchen floor wet but clean, he went out to wave to it so the attendants would know where to come.
They were kind and efficient, ready to whisk their patient away within minutes. But as she was carried up to the road, she gave a cry of distress and called for Jo.
‘The café!’ she said. ‘Who’ll look after it?’
And for one frightening moment he wondered if Jo was about to volunteer his services, for she’d certainly looked his way.
‘I’ll lock it up now,’ Jo told her, ‘and then phone Rolf. He’ll know what to do.’
‘Of course he’ll know what to do,’ the woman said, bursting into tears. ‘He always knows what to do.’
The crying became sobs that they no longer heard as the stretcher was loaded into the ambulance, which then drove quietly away.
‘Rolf?’ he asked Jo as she picked up the bedding and carried it back into the building.
‘Ex-husband, and probably the cause of her cry for help, which was all it was, wasn’t it?’
Charles nodded slowly. It was only one wrist, and at this time of the morning the woman would have been expecting customers, hence doing it at the kitchen door.
But that didn’t lessen the anguish she must have been feeling to inflict that level of pain on herself.
He heard Jo on the phone, so walked around, closing and locking any open doors and windows, pausing to admire the view, regretting he hadn’t sat there with Jo, enjoying a coffee.
‘He’ll sort out the café,’ Jo told him. ‘He has keys so we’ll just pull the door shut so it locks, and leave it to him.’
He could hear how troubled she was, but didn’t like to ask if she’d known the woman was unhappy. Maybe she’d tell him anyway.
Or maybe not, for they drove in silence back to where they’d left Dottie with her friend, and he followed her lead, saying nothing to Dottie on the drive home about the small drama they’d been part of.
‘I’m going into Anooka to see how she is. I’ll give her a lift home if she’s okay to leave,’ Jo told him when Dottie had gone upstairs to rest before lunch.
Charles knew he was frowning, but he had to ask.
‘Do you really think they’ll release her?’
That won him a wry smile.
‘I’m almost sure of it. She’ll assure whatever ED doctor she sees that she’s perfectly all right, and that it was just a moment of madness, and because they really can’t offer her much at the hospital, they’ll send her home with a referral to see a psychologist.’
‘But surely the hospital would have a psychologist or psychiatrist who would talk to her there. The figures on people who make a second suicide attempt within days of their first are truly frightening.’
‘I know,’ Jo said sadly. ‘And, yes, the hospital has at least two psychologists on staff but they mainly see outpatients, or give counselling to inpatients with serious conditions, and their families.’
‘All of which is certainly needed,’ Charles agreed, ‘but still.’
‘Let’s go and see,’ Jo said. ‘If we both go then we don’t need to go in tomorrow for you to meet the bosses and have a look around. I’ll just let Dottie know.’
She was back within minutes, another bright scarf twisted around her neck.
‘We’ll take my car,’ she said, leading the way back to the garage where a compact red vehicle had been all but unseen behind the hearse.
‘We’ll drive through the village and this time you’ll get to see what sights there are,’ she told him, ‘then out along the river to Anooka itself. Originally, the port was to be the main town because in the early days goods came up from Sydney by boat, but after a couple of quite bad floods the town councillors realised that with such a narrow opening between the hills for the creek it would always flood in bad weather, and they shifted the town to Anooka.’
Was she talking like a tour guide to distract herself from sensations that being cooped up in the car with Charles was causing? She rather thought she was but what was the alternative?
No way could she follow the strong urges to rest her hand on his knee to feel his warmth, or touch the longer bit of hair that flopped onto his forehead! Was his hair a bit longer than he usually wore it, that he pushed it distractedly away, though he must know it would flop again?
She did!
Finally arriving at the hospital was a great relief, as she’d run out of tourist guide talk when he’d touched her shoulder to ask the name of the jacaranda that was in full bloom in a suburban yard.
She’d managed the word ‘jacaranda’, but the effort finished her and although she’d have been happy to have the prompt of a question, she didn’t really want him touching her again because his touch warmed her skin and sent shivers down her spine.
Surely they’d need an extra hand at the hospital. Work would bring her down to earth.
She sighed as she finally found a vacant parking spot and switched off the engine.
Then looked at the man who was causing all the problems.
‘If I told you I feel the same way, would it help?’ he said, with a smile so suggestive it should be illegal.
‘I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,’ she said crossly, and clambered out of the car.