Kate, some hours later, was in the surgeons’ lounge checking the operating list for the following day, baby Bob now in Clare’s care.
Kate turned towards him, but though looking at him usually produced a smile, this time it was forced.
‘That’s a strange question,’ she told him, still puzzling over the man who’d asked it. ‘I would think anyone would feel empathy for someone with a sick child.’
‘Perhaps!’ He shrugged off her assertion with that single word, as if to say he didn’t, but she’d seen glimpses of an empathetic man behind the cool detachment he wore like a suit.
Or maybe armour?
‘Not “perhaps” at all,’ she argued. ‘I bet you feel it or have felt it. In fact, I’d like to hazard a guess it’s because of the children you see with problems that you’ve decided not to have more children.’
‘You couldn’t be more wrong.’
The blunt statement struck her like a slap and she felt the colour she hated rising in her cheeks. He must have seen it, for his next question was conciliatory, to say the least.
‘But on that subject, you see these infants yourself, yet you still want to have children. Why’s that?’
He’d asked the question to turn the conversation back on her, Kate knew that, but it was something she’d been thinking about since talking to the nurse earlier at the monitors. She’d locked the memory of her unborn child back into that dusty closet where it belonged, but the other issue was, and always had been, family.
How could she explain the loneliness she’d experienced as a child, and the ache for family, accentuated this time of year as Christmas drew near? Oh, she had friends who always welcomed her, but Christmas was for families, and since she was a child, she’d dreamed that one day she’d be the one cooking the turkey—she’d be the one with the children…
Pathetic, she knew, so she answered truthfully—well, partly truthfully.
‘It’s more a family thing,’ she admitted. ‘I was—I was an only child of parents who had no siblings living in Australia so I had no cousins or aunts or grandparents. Then one day—’
‘When you were eleven,’ he interrupted, and she nodded.
‘—I was staying with a friend and we went to her grandmother’s sixtieth birthday party and I saw a family in action and knew it was what I wanted.’
She kept her eyes on him as she spoke, daring him to laugh at her, wondering why the hell she was pouring out these things to a virtual stranger when she’d held them close inside her lonely heart for all these years!
He didn’t laugh, but nor did he respond, the silence tautening between them.
‘Besides,’ she said, determined to get back to easy ground, ‘why wouldn’t I want to pass on the genetic inheritance of pale skin and red hair—so suitable to a hot Australian climate.’
Now he did respond, even smiling at the fun she was poking at herself.
‘Ah, selective breeding. I do agree with that, but you could do that with one child—even be a grandmother with one child—so why children plural.’
Now Kate’s smile was the real deal, and she shook her head as she replied.
‘You’re a persistent cuss, aren’t you? We barely know each other and you’re asking questions even my best friends don’t ask. They just accept—Kate, yes, the one who wants kids. They usually emphasise the want and sigh and roll their eyes because they already have children and are often wondering why on earth they thought it was such a good idea.’
‘Which gets you very neatly out of answering my question,’ Angus said, but he didn’t persist and Kate was happy to let the subject drop, as memories of her father’s long illness and eventual death when her aloneness really struck home—no-one to share the caring, or share the pain and loss—came vividly to mind, bringing back the surging tide of grief she thought she’d conquered years ago.
Had her colleague seen something in her expression—a change of colour in her cheeks—that he held out his hand?
‘Come on, baby Bob is fine, and we’ve a full day tomorrow. I’ll walk you home.’
Kate considered arguing, making the excuse that she wanted to check the children on the next day’s operating list, but weariness was seeping through her bones and, dodging the hand he’d offered to guide her through the door, she led the way into the corridor.
Why did she intrigue him? And why so suddenly was he attracted, he who didn’t believe in instant attraction? Angus pondered this as they walked down the leafy street towards their houses. The summer sun was still hot, although it was late afternoon, and sweat prickled beneath his shirt, but that was nothing to the prickling in his skin when he saw this woman unexpectedly, or an image of her flicked across his inner eye.
‘Does it get much hotter?’ he asked, thinking an innocuous conversation about the weather would distract him from considering his reactions to his companion.
‘Much,’ she said cheerfully. ‘It’s only late November. Summer doesn’t officially begin until December, and February can be a real killer, but at least you’ve got a nice olive skin. You can go to the beach to cool off and not risk turning as red as a lobster and coming out in freckles the size of dinner plates.’
‘Dinner plates?’ he queried, smiling, but more, he feared, because she’d said he had nice skin than at her gross exaggeration.
‘Well, very freckly,’ she countered.
‘Ah, the great genetic inheritance you want to pass on to your children!’
She sighed and ran a hand through her tangled red curls.
‘I’m very healthy—surely that’s important,’ she pointed out.
It was a silly conversation but the children thing nagged at Angus. He could accept that it was natural for a woman to want children, but Kate’s desire seemed slightly out of kilter—more like determination than desire.
And he was obsessing about this, why?
Because he was attracted to her, of course!
Stuff and nonsense, as his mother would say. It was jet lag, not attraction—attraction didn’t happen this fast.
‘Can Hamish swim? He’ll need to learn if he can’t. There are learn-to-swim classes for children in every suburb.’
Had Kate been talking the whole time he muddled over attraction or had she just come out with this totally unrelated question?
Either way, he’d better answer her.
‘Need to learn?’ he repeated.
Her easy strides hesitated and she looked towards him.
‘I think so! There are far too many drowning fatalities of small children in Australia each year. No matter what safety measures are put in place, and what warnings are issued, the statistics are appalling.’
