hugged her tight as she’d left, and it had been all she could do to leave her. If her mum hadn’t been there … But Adrianna adored being a gran. ‘Get into work, girl, and leave Gretta to me. Toby and I will watch Play School while Gretta has a nap. I’ll ring you if she’s not better by lunchtime. Meanwhile, go!’
She’d practically shoved her out the door.
But there was something wrong—and she knew what it was. The cardiologist had been blunt and she remembered his assessment word for word.
It was all very well, hearing it, she thought bleakly, but seeing it … At the weekend she’d taken both kids to their favourite place in the world, the children’s playground at the Botanic Gardens. There was a water rill there that Gretta adored. She’d crawled over it as soon as she could crawl, and then she’d toddled and walked.
Six months ago she’d stood upright on the rill and laughed with delight as the water had splashed over her toes. At the weekend she hadn’t even been able to crawl. Em had sat on the rill with her, trying to make her smile, but the little girl had sobbed. She knew what she was losing.
Don’t! Don’t think about it! Move on. Or she’d move on if she could.
‘Come on.’ She was inwardly yelling at the car in front. The car turned the corner ponderously then—praise be!—turned into a park on Level Four. Em sighed with relief, zoomed up the last ramp and hauled the steering wheel left, as she’d done hundreds of times in the past to turn into her parking space.
And … um … stopped.
There was a car where Harry’s bike should be. A vintage sports car, burgundy, gleaming with care and polish.
Wider than a bike.
Instead of a seamless, silent transition to park, there was the appalling sound of metal on metal.
Her wagon had a bull bar on the front, designed to deflect stray bulls—or other cars during minor bingles. It meant her wagon was as tough as old boots. It’d withstand anything short of a road train.
The thing she’d hit wasn’t quite as tough.
She’d ripped the side off the sports car.
Oliver Evans, gynaecologist, obstetrician and in-utero surgeon, was gathering his briefcase and his suit jacket from the passenger seat. He’d be meeting the hospital bigwigs today so he needed to be formal. He was also taking a moment to glance through the notes he had on who he had to meet, who he needed to see.
He vaguely heard the sound of a car behind him. He heard it turning from the ramp …
The next moment the passenger side of his car was practically ripped from the rest.
It was a measure of Em’s fiercely practised calm that she didn’t scream. She didn’t burst into tears. She didn’t even swear.
She simply stared straight ahead. Count to ten, she told herself. When that didn’t work, she tried twenty.
She figured it out, quite quickly. Her parking spot was supposed to be wider but that was because she shared the two parking bays with Harry the obstetrician’s bike and Harry had left. Of course. She’d even dropped in on his farewell party last Friday night, even though it had only been for five minutes because the kids had been waiting.
So Harry had left. This car, then, would belong to the doctor who’d taken his place.
She’d just welcomed him by trashing his car.
‘I have insurance. I have insurance. I have insurance.’ It was supposed to be her mantra. Saying things three times helped, only it didn’t help enough. She put her head on the steering wheel and felt a wash of exhaustion so profound she felt like she was about to melt.
His car was trashed.
He climbed from the driver’s seat and stared at his beloved Morgan in disbelief. The Morgan was low slung, gorgeous—and fragile. He’d parked her right in the centre of the bay to avoid the normal perils of parking lots—people opening doors and scratching his paintwork.
But the offending wagon had a bull bar attached and it hadn’t just scratched his paintwork. While the wagon looked to be almost unscathed, the passenger-side panels of the Morgan had been sheared off completely.
He loved this baby. He’d bought her five years ago, a post-marriage toy to make him feel better about the world. He’d cherished her, spent a small fortune on her and then put her into very expensive storage while he’d been overseas.
His qualms about returning to Australia had been tempered by his joy on being reunited with Betsy. But now … some idiot with a huge lump of a wagon—and a bull bar …
‘What the hell did you think you were doing?’ He couldn’t see the driver of the wagon yet, but he was venting his spleen on the wagon itself. Of all the ugly, lumbering excuses for a car …
And it was intact. Yeah, it’d have a few extra scratches but there were scratches all over it already. It was a battered, dilapidated brute and the driver’d be able to keep driving like the crash had never happened.
He wanted to kick it. Of all the stupid, careless …
Um … why hadn’t the driver moved?
And suddenly medical mode kicked in, overriding rage. Maybe the driver had had a heart attack. A faint. Maybe this was a medical incident rather than sheer stupidity. He took a deep breath, switching roles in an instant. Infuriated driver became doctor. The wagon’s driver’s door was jammed hard against where his passenger door used to be, so he headed for its passenger side.
The wagon’s engine died. Someone was alive in there, then. Good. Or sort of good.
He hauled the door open and he hadn’t quite managed the transition. Rage was still paramount.
‘You’d better be having a heart attack.’ It was impossible to keep the fury from his voice. ‘You’d better have a really good excuse as to why you ploughed this heap of scrap metal into my car! You want to get out and explain?’
No!
Things were already appalling—but things just got a whole lot worse.
This was a voice she knew. A voice from her past.
Surely not.
She had to be imagining it, she decided, but she wasn’t opening her eyes. If it really was …
It couldn’t be. She was tired, she was frantically worried about Gretta, she was late and she’d just crashed her car. No wonder she was hearing things.
‘You’re going to have to open your eyes and face things.’ She said it to herself, under her breath. Then she repeated it in her head twice more but her three-times mantra still didn’t seem to be working.
The silence outside the car was ominous. Toe-tappingly threatening.
Maybe it’d go away if she just stayed …
‘Hey, are you okay?’ The gravelly voice, angry at first, was now concerned.
But
