where to go next, needing time to think before he said anything more—needing, more than anything, to get away from the woman who had reawoken sensations he’d never thought to feel again—he turned to see where the child, Ella, no, he couldn’t call her that—not yet—had gone.
Although staying within sight of her mother, she had wandered closer to where the Toba children played. She watched the game, probably unaware of the sensation she was causing among the locals—a small stranger in their midst.
A child?
His child?
No! There was no time for wonder!
‘You have done this deliberately,’ he said to Caroline, letting his anger run free now the child was out of earshot. ‘You have come here on some mad whim, dragged a child all this way, when a letter and a photo would have sufficed. So why, Caroline? To punish me for not loving you?’
She stepped back as if he’d struck her, then straightened for the fight. He’d seen her fight before, but usually with him, not against him, fighting for the rights of others, fighting for what she called a ‘fair go’ for people who couldn’t fight for themselves.
‘And you’d have opened the letter as you did all the others, including the one I sent telling you I was pregnant?’ Sarcasm curled like wisps of smoke around the heated words. ‘Or should I have written “Photo of your child” on the envelope so you didn’t just scrawl “Return to sender” on it and pop it back into the mail?’
She paused then stepped closer, her voice softer, the faint hint of the lemon shampoo she must still use moving in her silvery hair, floating in the air towards him.
Momentarily distracting him.
‘You, of all people, know how I felt growing up without my father,’ she continued. ‘You were the first person I ever opened up to about how inadequate I’d felt all through my teens, and the foolish things I’d done to win boys’ attention. This is not about punishment, Jorge, neither is it about you and me, or about the past. I’ve come because I thought you should know Ella exists, but more for her sake than for yours, because the one thing I don’t want for her is to grow up without knowing her father.’
She took a deep breath, as if the words, and perhaps the emotion behind them, had emptied her right out.
And remembering, he knew it could have, for he’d known her for six months before she’d talked about not having a father.
Yet even sympathy for her didn’t stop the disappointment that had seeped into him as he’d listened to the honesty of her explanation. Could he possibly have been thinking she’d come because she still loved him?
How likely would that be when his farewell email had been so deliberately cruel?
‘You should have written!’
It was weak, pathetic even, but all he could come up with as he struggled to regain some mental poise, even to find renewed anger, anything that would turn her away from here.
But in place of an objection, what flew into his mind was something she’d said earlier—something about staying here!
With him!
She intended to invade his home so she’d not only be working near him but living near him as well, her body a constant reminder, a constant distraction, a constant tease.
Now the anger came.
‘It’s impossible that you should stay here. Find a hotel in the city. I will visit you both there. You spring this on me with no warning, but I’ll not deny my child. I will make arrangements, speak to lawyers, see she is—’
‘Financially secure?’
She spat the words at him, her fury a palpable force.
‘Do you think for one moment that’s what I want? Your money? As it happens, Ella is already financially secure. The father I never knew died and left me more than enough money to keep her in luxury for her entire life, but I want Ella to have a father, Jorge, and I thought, by coming here, maybe over a month we could work out some way for that to happen.’
She stopped for breath again then added even more fiercely, ‘She needs your love, Jorge, not your money. Would that be too hard for you to offer her?’
Would it?
He looked towards the child—Ella—who was laughing as one of the children kicked a tattered ball towards her. One small foot lifted and a shiny purple shoe kicked the ball back. The Toba children all waved their arms and yelled their approval of the young, curly-headed stranger in their midst.
Jorge found his heart was hurting again.
Was the wall he’d built around his feelings crumbling so easily?
Even considering it heralded danger.
‘This is impossible! We cannot stand here, arguing. Come inside, not the clinic but my—my home.’
He emphasised the last word in the invitation to convince himself there was no shame attached to inviting guests into his rough adobe hut, but picturing it in his mind as he’d left that morning—an unwashed breakfast bowl and spoon on the sink; piles of books like mini-skyscrapers all over the floor; his bed unmade should anyone peer through the curtain that served as a bedroom door.
The child—Ella—surely would, though an unmade bed should mean little to her.
‘We’ll have mate, a kind of tea. Have you had time to try it?’
Now he sounded like a tourist guide, and though she was walking behind him, little Ella at her side, he knew Caroline had heard the falseness in his voice and was smiling as she replied, ‘We’ve come straight from the airport so we’ve not had time, although I’ve heard of it.’
She’d answered like a polite tourist, although when she added, ‘Of course, you used to tell me about it, Jorge, and long for a taste of it,’ her voice was soft and he could almost believe.
Believe what?
That after four years she still felt something for him?
Imbécil! Was he so stupid that he was thinking this way?
They’d reached his hut. His hut? He’d thought of it that way since the project had begun but it was never destined to be his for ever, or even for much longer. Soon it would house volunteer doctors.
Volunteer doctors! The board set up to run the clinic had agreed they would still accept volunteer help when it was offered, as well as paying a permanent doctor. Caroline must have made the arrangement through the board and somehow dates had become mixed up, which would explain why he hadn’t received notification.
He shook his head at the bureaucratic bungling that had thrust him into this situation and continued towards the hut.
At least now it had a front door, though not much of one, cut from a bigger, thick timber door one of his helpers had found in a second-hand yard. Cutting the door, like the other tasks he’d undertaken in building his hut, had reminded him how little
