expecting.
She turned and gave him a smile, a big, bright, Ruby smile, and he didn’t return it because he knew it was false.
‘You don’t go that fast to happy.’
‘I do,’ Ruby said. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t mope about.’
‘I don’t need entertaining,’ came Cort’s response.
He took her to a place near his flat, which was a suburb further than hers from the hospital, and, yes, he hoped no one from work would see them and, yes, it felt strange to be out with a woman who wasn’t his wife.
‘Just water for me.’ She beamed when the waiter handed him the wine menu. ‘You go ahead, though.’
‘Just water, thanks,’ Cort said, because he needed all his wits about him tonight. As he stared at the menu he told himself he was being stupid. He’d been out with friends, with his sister, with colleagues, but that had been different. Then he looked over his menu to where she sat and knew why. He hadn’t been out in a very long time with a woman he’d made love to and he was clearly rubbish at one-night stands because as much as she insisted she wasn’t, she felt a whole lot like his problem.
He just couldn’t read her.
He knew she was bleeding inside yet those brown eyes smiled up at the waiter.
‘Mushroom tortellini, and I’ll have some herb bread, please.’
‘I’ll have a steak.’ Cort glanced through the cuts available.
‘Actually,’ Ruby said, ‘I’m a vegetarian.’
‘Well, I’m not,’ Cort said. He glanced up and was about to select his choice and add ‘Rare’ to the waiter, but in an entirely one-off gesture, because there would be no more dinners, because this wouldn’t happen again, because, after all, she hadn’t even wanted to come, he revised his choice. ‘I’ll have the tortellini, too, thanks.’
He waited for her to interrupt, to say no, go ahead, it didn’t bother her, he should have what he wanted, but she didn’t, and as he handed back the menu she smiled again.
‘Thanks.’
‘What do your friends say about it?’
‘Well, we don’t go out for dinner much, but if they bring home lamb curry or something I just tend to …’
‘I meant about today.’ He would not let her divert him and he saw the tensing of her jaw, felt her reluctance to talk about it. ‘What did they say when you told them about today?’
‘That it’s understandable—I mean, anyone would be upset about a child …’
‘About you running off?’ Only then did it dawn on him that she was being deliberately evasive. ‘You haven’t told them?’ Cort frowned as she blushed. ‘I thought you were close.’
‘We are!’ Ruby leapt to the defence of her housemates. They were together in everything, there for each other through thick and thin … Except Cort was right, she hadn’t told anyone how she was feeling. She lifted her eyes and looked at the one person that she had told and couldn’t fathom why she’d chosen to reveal it to him.
‘I hate it, Cort,’ Ruby admitted. ‘I feel sick walking to work.’ She waited for his reaction, for his eyebrows to rise, for him to frown or dismiss her, but he just sat there, his lack of reaction somehow encouraging. ‘I spend the whole time I’m there dreading that buzzer going off or the emergency phone ringing … I was going to run off yesterday before we spoke to the relatives …’
‘But you didn’t.’ Cort tried to lift her up.
‘I wish I had.’ Ruby was adamant. ‘I wish I had, because then I wouldn’t have gone back, then I’d never have seen what I did today.’
‘What do you think your friends would say?’ Cort asked. ‘If they knew just how much you’re struggling right now?’
‘They’d be devastated,’ Ruby said, and that was why she felt she couldn’t do it to them. ‘I don’t want to burden them, I don’t want …’ She didn’t want to talk about it and luckily the waiter came with their tortellini and did the cheese and pepper thing, and by the time he’d gone, thankfully for Ruby, Cort had changed the subject.
‘Are you Adam’s sister?’
Ruby nodded and saw his slight grimace. ‘He bought the house and I guess I’m the landlady.’ She grinned at the thought. ‘I rent it out for him, drive his car now and then, he comes back once in a while and …’ Her voice trailed off. She’d been about to make a light-hearted comment about how every time Adam returned and didn’t notice Jess he broke her heart all over again, but that would be betraying a confidence, a sort of in-house secret, and she looked over at the man who had taken her out for dinner on the worst of nights, and wondered how he made it so very easy to reveal things she normally never would.
‘What’s he doing now?’
‘He’s doing aid work.’
‘Still for Operation New Faces?’
Ruby nodded. ‘He’s in South America, I think. Don’t worry, I’m not going to say anything to him about what happened.’ She smiled at his shuttered features. ‘Anyway, you’ve treated me very well. We’ve been out for dinner and everything …’ There was almost a smile now on his lips. ‘He’s hardly an angel himself.’
‘Still,’ Cort said, and then looked at her lovely red hair and remembered something else. ‘I worked once with your dad.’
She winced for him.
‘Before I moved to Melbourne I did a surgical rotation. I worked with him in plastics—he was Chief.’
‘He’s Chief at home too.’
It was a shame he didn’t have a steak because he’d have loved to stick his knife into it, because he could suddenly well remember the great Gregory Carmichael, holding court in the theatre, throwing instruments if a nurse was a beat too late in anticipating his needs. He remembered too how he had regaled his audience as he’d worked with the dramas in his home life, the wild teenager who answered back and did everything, it would seem, any normal teenager would, just not a teenager of Gregory’s, because, as he told his colleagues, he was once and for all going to sort her out.
‘What does he say about you doing nursing?’
‘He doesn’t like it, especially that I want to go into mental health. I used to work in a little shop on the beach, selling New-Age stuff …’
‘He’d have hated that.’
‘Not really,’ Ruby said. ‘They had no problem with me working at the shop, they gave me an allowance as well.’
‘It’s nice that they can.’
‘It’s all or nothing with them. I had to follow in his grand footsteps or have a little job while I waited for a suitable Mr Right. A psychiatric nurse
