here for a blink of an eye. Chippy will far outstay you.’
The blink of an eye? Who was she kidding? ‘I’m here for seven hundred and twenty very long hours.’
Her blue eyes rounded. ‘You actually counted them?’
He shrugged. ‘It seemed appropriate at three a.m. when the hiss of fighting possums wearing bovver boots on my roof kept me awake.’
She laughed and unexpected dimples appeared in her cheeks. For a brief moment he glimpsed what she might look like if she ever relaxed. It tempted him to join her in laughter but then her tension-filled aura slammed back in place, shutting out any attempts at a connection.
He crossed his arms. ‘It wasn’t funny.’
‘I happen to know you could just have easily been kept awake by fighting possums in the leafy suburbs of Melbourne.’
Were they comrades-in-arms? Both victims of the vagaries of the Melbourne Victoria Hospital that had insisted on sending them to the back of beyond? A bubble of conciliation rose to the top of his dislike for her. ‘So you’ve been forced down here too?’
She shook her head so quickly that her thick and tight French braid swung across her shoulder. ‘Turraburra is my home. Melbourne was just a grimy pitstop I was forced to endure when I studied midwifery.’
He thought about his sun-filled apartment in leafy Kew, overlooking Yarra Bend Park. ‘My Melbourne’s not grimy.’
Again, one brow quirked up in disapproval. ‘My Turraburra’s not a poor excuse for a town.’
‘Well, at least we agree on our disagreement.’
‘Do you plan to be grumpy for the entire time you’re here?’
Her directness both annoyed and amused him. ‘Pretty much.’
One corner of her mouth twitched. ‘I guess forewarned is forearmed.’ She turned to go and then spun back. ‘Oh, and a word to the wise, that is, of course, if you’re capable of taking advice on board. I suggest you do things Karen’s way. She’s run this clinic for fifteen years and outstayed a myriad of medical staff.’
He bit off an acidic retort. He hadn’t even met a patient yet but if this last fifteen minutes with Ms Lilia Cartwright, Midwife, was anything to go by, it was going to be a hellishly long and difficult seven hundred and nineteen hours and forty-five minutes in Turraburra.
‘I’M HOME!’ LILY CALLED loudly over the blare of the TV so her grandfather had a chance of hearing her.
A thin arm shot up above the top of the couch and waved at her. ‘Marshmallow and I are watching re-runs of the doctor. Makes me realise you don’t see many phone boxes around any more, do you?’
Lily kissed him affectionately on the top of his head and stroked the sleeping cat as Chippy settled across her grandfather’s feet. ‘Until the mobile phone reception improves, I think Turraburra’s phone box is safe.’
‘I just hope I’m still alive by the time the national broadband scheme’s rolled out. The internet was so dodgy today it took me three goes before I could check my footy tipping site.’
‘A definite tragedy,’ she said wryly. Her grandfather loved all sports but at this time of year, with only a few games before the Australian Rules football finals started, he took it all very seriously. ‘Did you get down to the community centre today?’
He grunted.
‘Gramps?’ A ripple of anxiety wove through her that he might have driven to the centre.
Just recently, due to some episodes of numbness in his feet, she’d reluctantly told him it wasn’t safe for him to drive. Given how independent he was, he’d been seriously unhappy with that proclamation. It had taken quite some time to convince him but he’d finally seemed to come round and together they’d chosen a mobility scooter. Even at eighty-five, he’d insisted on getting a red one because everyone knew red went faster.
It was perfect for getting around Turraburra and, as she’d pointed out to him, he didn’t drive out of town much anyway. But despite all the logic behind the decision, the ‘gopher’, as he called it, had stayed in the garage. Lily was waiting for him to get sick of walking everywhere and start using it.
‘I took the gopher,’ he said grumpily. ‘Happy?’
‘I’m happy you went to your class at the centre.’
‘Well, I couldn’t let Muriel loose on the computer. She’d muck up all the settings and, besides, it was my day to teach the oldies how to edit photos.’
She pressed her lips together so she didn’t laugh, knowing from experience it didn’t go down well. He might be in his eighties but his mind was as sharp as a tack and he was young at heart, even if his body was starting to fail him. She ached when she thought of how much he hated that. Losing the car had been a bitter blow.
The ‘oldies’ he referred to were a group of frail elderly folk from the retirement home. Many were younger than him and made him look positively spry. He was interested in anything and everything and involved in the life of the town. He loved keeping abreast of all the latest technology, loved his top-of-the-range digital camera and he kept busy every day. His passion and enthusiasm for life often made her feel that hers was pale and listless in comparison.
He was her family and she loved him dearly. She owed him more than she could ever repay.
‘Muriel sent over a casserole for dinner,’ he said, rising to his feet.
‘That was kind of her.’ Muriel and Gramps had a very close friendship and got along very well as long as she didn’t touch his computer and he didn’t try to organise her pantry into some semblance of order.
He walked towards the kitchen. ‘She heard about the Hawker and De’Bortolli babies and knew you’d be tired. No new arrivals today?’
Lily thought about the tall, dark, ill-tempered surgical registrar who’d strode into her work world earlier in the day.
You forgot good looking.
No. Handsome belongs to someone who smiles.
Really? Trent smiled a lot and look how well that turned out.
She pulled her mind back fast from that thought because the key to her mental health was to never think about Trent. Ever. ‘A new doctor’s arrived in town.’
His rheumy, pale blue eyes lit up. ‘Male or female?’
‘Sorry, Gramps. I know how you like to flirt with the female doctors but this one’s a difficult bloke.’ She couldn’t stop the sigh that followed.
His face pulled down in a worried frown. ‘Has he done something?’
Since the nightmare of her relationship with Trent, Gramps had been overprotective of her, and she moved to reassure
