MIRACLE ON KAIMOTU ISLAND/ALWAYS THE HERO (5 page)

‘We’d love some help,’ Ben said. ‘Wouldn’t we, Abby?’

‘And you know, Ginny, it might help Button settle,’ Ailsa said softly. ‘She’ll find it strange just the two of you. Ben seems to think she’s been used to babysitters, so maybe stretching the care might help her adjust. Hannah looks after Abby’s little boy, Jack, after school. The little ones played really well tonight. It might help you, too, and as Ben says, we need all the medical help we can get.’

They were all looking at her. The pressure...the pressure...

‘No,’ she said, and seven lots of eyebrows went up.

‘Whoops, sorry,’ she said, realising how petty her ‘no’ had sounded. ‘It’s just...’

‘It’s very fast,’ Ailsa said, and came round the table to give her a hug. ‘Ginny, we all know your husband died and we’re very sorry. We should give you space. It’s just...we know how hard Ben’s pushed.’

‘When I’m qualified, I can help,’ Hannah said, and Ginny glanced at the girl and saw how much she meant it.

They all wanted to help—and she could.

‘I’m sorry,’ she managed. ‘It’s just...I can’t.’

‘Then you can’t,’ Ailsa said solidly, and glared at Ben. ‘If she can’t then she can’t, so don’t ask it of her. Ben, I know Ginny and I know she’s been through a bad time. You’re not to nag and you’re to leave her alone until she’s ready. Thank her very much for this afternoon and let her be.’

‘Thank you very much for this afternoon,’ Ben said gravely, and then he smiled at her.

It was the smile she remembered. It was the smile that had twisted her seventeen-year-old heart.

It was a white-mists-and-orchestra smile.

Enough.

She focussed on her dumplings and the talk started up again, cheerful banter as there always was around this table. As she’d always remembered.

People didn’t look at her at this table. They didn’t focus on her manners, they didn’t demand she join in politely, they simply...were.

She glanced up and Ben was still watching her. His smile was faintly quizzical.

He wouldn’t push. This whole community wouldn’t push. They’d settle for what she was prepared to give.

How mean was it of her not to help?

She...couldn’t.

‘Call yourself a doctor... Stupid cow, you can’t even give an injection without shaking...’

It wasn’t true. She’d been okay until James...until James...

‘Call yourself a doctor...’

‘It’s okay, Ginny,’ Ben said gently. ‘No pressure.’

She flushed and tried to look at him and couldn’t. She’d been a doctor that afternoon, she told herself fiercely. Why couldn’t she keep going?

Because Button needed her, she thought, and there was almost relief in the thought. In one day she’d become a stepmother. It was scary territory, but not as scary as stepping back into...life?

The chatter was starting up again around the table. No pressure.

This family was full of friends, she thought ruefully, and maybe...maybe that was what she needed. She could accept friendship.

Without giving anything in return?

It had to wait, she thought. If she said yes... If she got her New Zealand registration, she’d be expected to be a real doctor again.

‘Call yourself a doctor...’

‘No pressure at all,’ Ailsa said gently beside her. ‘The island can wait. Your friends can wait. We can all wait until you’re ready.’

She smiled at Ginny, a warm, maternal smile.

Friends, Ginny thought, and tried to smile back. Friends felt...good.

So much for isolation, she decided as she tried to join in the cheerful banter around the table, but at least she’d left the white mists and orchestras behind her.

* * *

Ben walked her out to the car. He helped her buckle the sleeping Button into her newly acquired child seat, and then stood back and looked at her in the moonlight.

‘We tried to blackmail you,’ he said softly. ‘The lawyer and then me. I’m sorry.’

‘I... You didn’t.’

‘I manipulated you into helping this afternoon.’

‘I did that all by myself.’

‘Sort of,’ he said wryly. ‘I know how conscience works. Mrs Guttering met me in the supermarket last week and started complaining about her toe. Before I knew it she had her boots off and I was inspecting her ingrown toenail between the ice cream and frozen peas. How do you say no? I haven’t learned yet.’

‘And yet I have,’ she said, trying to smile, trying to keep it light, as he had, and he put a hand out to cup her chin.

She flinched and moved back and he frowned.

‘Ginny, it’s okay. Saying no is your right.’

‘Th-thank you.’

The lights were on inside. The kids were still around the table. Someone had turned the telly on and laughter sounded out through the window.

Kids. Home.

She glanced away from Ben, who was looking at her in concern. She looked into the car at Button and something inside her firmed. Button. Her stepdaughter.

Out of all of this mess—one true thing. She would focus on Button. Nothing else.

‘You want her,’ Ben said on a note of discovery, and she nodded, mutely.

What had she let herself in for? she thought, but she knew she wanted it. The moment she’d seen that clause in James’s will...

When she and James had married, a baby had been high on her list of priorities, but James hadn’t been keen. ‘Let’s put it on hold, babe, until our careers are established. The biological clock doesn’t start winding down until thirty-five. We have years.’

But for Ginny, in a marriage that had been increasingly isolating, a baby had seemed a huge thing, something to love, something to hold, a reason to get up in the morning.

As medicine wasn’t?

It should be, she thought. There’d never been a time when she hadn’t thought she’d be a doctor. Her parents had expected it of her. She’d expected it of herself and she’d enjoyed her training.

She’d loved her first year as an intern, working in Accident and Emergency, helping people in the raw, but it had never been enough.

‘Of course you’ll specialise.’ That had been her father, and James, too, of course, plus the increasingly ambitious circle of friends they’d moved in. ‘You’d never just want to be a family doctor. You’re far too good for that, Ginny.’

She was clever. She’d passed the exams. She’d been well on the way to qualifying in anaesthetics when James had got sick.

And after that life had been a blur—James’s incredulity and anger that he of all people could be struck down, James searching for more and more interventionist cures, the medical fraternity around them fighting to the end.

‘I should have frozen some sperm,’ James had told her once, but she’d known he hadn’t meant it—he’d never considered it. The idea that he was going to die had been inconceivable.

She’d watched as medical technology had taken her husband over, as he’d fought, fought, fought. She’d watched and experienced his fury. At the end he’d died undergoing yet another procedure, another intervention.

She remembered standing by his bedside at the end, thinking she would have liked to bring him here to this island, to have him die without tubes and interventions, to lie on the veranda and look out to sea...

James would have thought that was crazy.

‘Can you tell me why you’ve decided to give up medicine?’ Ben asked, and she shrugged.

‘It couldn’t save James.’

‘Is that what you hoped? That you could save everyone?’

‘No.’

‘Then...’

‘There was too much medicine,’ she said flatly. ‘Too much medicine and not enough love. I’m over it.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, as the silence stretched out and she stared out at the moonlight to the sea beyond—the sea was never far away on this island—and tried to figure where her life could go from here.

‘We will find another doctor,’ he said gently. ‘This need is short term.’

‘Are you still saying I should help?’

‘I don’t see why you can’t. You were great today.’

‘I need to look after Button.’

‘That’s not why you’re refusing. You know it’s not.’

‘I don’t need to give you any other reason.’

She looked into the back seat again, at the little girl curled into the child seat, sucking one thumb and hugging Ben’s disreputable Shuffles with her spare arm. Ailsa and Abby had presented her with a dozen soft toys, from glossy teddies to pretty dolls, and Button had considered with care and gone straight for Ben’s frayed turtle with one eye missing.

She looked like James, a little, and the thought was strange and unsettling, but even as she thought it Button wriggled further into her car seat and sighed and she thought, no, she looked like Button. She looked like herself and she’d go forward with no shadows at all. Please.

Ben was smiling a little, watching her watch Button hugging Shuffles. ‘Mum never throws anything out.’

‘You’d never have let her throw Shuffles out?’ she asked incredulously, and amazingly he grinned, tension easing.

‘Maybe not. Actually not. Over my dead body not.’

‘Yet you let Button have him.’

‘Button will love him as Shuffles needs to be loved,’ he said, and then he looked at her—he really looked at her. ‘Will you love her?’ he said, and she stared at Button for a long, long moment and then gave a sharp, decisive nod.

‘Yes.’

‘And if her parents reclaim her?’

‘They won’t.’

‘If they do?’

‘Then I’ll cope,’ she said. ‘Everyone copes. You know that. Like us thinking we were in love when we were seventeen. You move on.’

‘Button needs a greater commitment than we were prepared to give,’ he said, and she flushed.

‘You think I don’t know that?’

He gazed at her gravely, reading her face, seeing...what? How vulnerable she felt? How alone? How terrified to be landed with a little girl she knew nothing about?

Kids with Down’s had medical problems to contend with, as well as learning difficulties. Heart problems, breathing problems, infections that turned nasty fast...

She’d cope. Out of all the mess that had been her relationship with James—his betrayal, his fury that she be the one to survive, his death—this little one was what was left.

James’s death hadn’t left her desolate but it had left her...empty. Medicine was no longer a passion. Nothing was a passion.

If she could love this child...

But nothing else, she told herself fiercely. Nothing and no one else. She’d seen how fickle love was. Her parents’ relationship had been a farce. James’s professed love had been a lie, leading to bleakness and heartbreak. And even Ben... He’d said he loved her at seventeen but he’d found someone else that same summer.

‘You moved on, too,’ he said mildly, which brought her up with a jolt.

‘Don’t do that.’

‘I don’t know how not to,’ he said obtusely, but she knew what he meant. That was the problem. She’d always guessed what he was going to say before he said it and it worked both ways.

‘Then don’t look at me,’ she snapped, and then caught herself. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean...’

‘I know what you mean.

‘Ben...’

He smiled wryly and held up his hands in surrender. ‘Okay, I’m mentally closing my eyes here. Tomorrow afternoon, then? One o’clock?’

‘No.’

‘Ginny...’

‘No!’ She hesitated, feeling bad. Feeling trapped. ‘In an emergency...’

‘Isn’t a host of panicked islanders an emergency?’

‘Tell the islanders Squid has something obtuse like delusional encephalitis. Lock him in your quarantine ward until he starts prophesying untold riches instead of earthquakes.’

He grinned at that. ‘It’d need back-up medical opinion to confine him. You’ll sign the certificate?’

She smiled as well, but only faintly.

‘I can’t sign,’ she said gently. ‘I don’t have New Zealand registration and I don’t intend to get it.’

‘Not if...?’

‘No.’

He gazed at her for a long, long moment, reading her face, and she shifted from foot to foot under his gaze. He knew her too well, this man, and she didn’t like it.

‘Ginny, if I’d known you were having such an appalling time...’ he said at last.

‘I wasn’t. Don’t.’

‘I should have written.’

‘I told you not to.’

‘And I listened,’ he said obtusely. ‘How dumb was that?’ He shrugged. ‘Well, you’re home now. There’s no need for letters, but I won’t pressure you. I’ll cope. Meanwhile, just see if you can open up a little. Let the island cure you.’

‘I’m not broken. I’ve just...grown up, that’s all.’

‘Haven’t we all,’ he said, and his voice was suddenly deathly serious. ‘Even Button. Cuddle her lots, Guinevere Koestrel, because growing up is hard to do.’

* * *

It was a night to think about but Ginny didn’t think. She didn’t think because she was so tired that by the time she hit the pillow her eyes closed all by themselves, and when she woke up a little hand was brushing through her hair, gently examining her.

It was morning and she was a mother.

She’d taken Button with her into her parents’ big bed, fearful that the little girl would wake up and be afraid, but she didn’t seem afraid.

She was playing with Ginny’s hair and Ginny lay and let the sensations run through her, a tiny girl, unafraid, sleeping beside her, totally dependent on her, bemused by her mass of red curls.

She hadn’t had a haircut since James had died—she hadn’t been bothered—but now she thought she wouldn’t. James had liked it cropped, but Ben...

She’d had long hair when Ben had known her. Ben had liked it long.

Ben...

It was strange, she thought. She’d been such good friends with Ben, but she’d barely thought of him for years.

She didn’t want to think of him now. The sensations he engendered scared her. She’d fought so hard to be self-contained, and in one day...

It wasn’t his fault she’d been landed with Button, she told herself, but she knew the sensations that scared her most had nothing to do with Button.

Button...Button was here and now. Button was her one true thing.

She found a brush and they took turns brushing each other’s hair, a simple enough task but one Button found entrancing. Ginny enjoyed it, too, but she didn’t enjoy it enough to stop thinking about Ben. To stop feeling guilty that she’d refused to help.