not to cry. She didn’t want to scare him any more than he’d been scared already by all that had happened, all the uncertainty, all that he’d lost. ‘Oh, sweetheart…Oh, darling…’
She held out her arms, but Georgie Turner had to nudge him forward. ‘Come and hug your Auntie Janey.’ Charles Wetherby must have explained their relationship to her.
At last he came, and she felt his warm little body. Had a momentary flashback to the bus. That’s right, he’d fallen asleep on her shoulder, so warm and trusting and relaxed. Now she wanted to hold him for ever, just for the reassurance that they were both alive, that she hadn’t let him down, that they were together, so everything would be all right.
But he pulled back.
Didn’t speak, of course.
Why didn’t he speak?
He looked scared. She could see him taking in the equipment—the drip stand and bag of fluid and cannula taped to her hand, the monitor reporting on her oxygen and heart, and the imposing side rails and wheels and crank handle of the hospital bed.
Alice, she remembered. He was scared because his mother had died, and now his Auntie Janey was ill, too.
‘I’m feeling so much better, Felixx,’ she said quickly. ‘Dr Wetherby says I can probably get out of here tomorrow. I’m sitting here going woo-hoo!’
On Felixx’s face the sun came out from behind a cloud. It was the only way Janey could describe it to herself. His smile spread wide, his eyes went happy, his tense little shoulders dropped and relaxed. He looked as if there was something else he wanted to say or ask, but didn’t know how. Or didn’t dare.
‘Were you scared I was really sick?’
He nodded, cautious about it.
Oh, hell, of course he had been scared!
‘Nah,’ she said, deliberately casual and dismissive. ‘Takes more than a few bumps on the head to knock me around. We’ll be able to check into a nice motel, and—’ She stopped.
Georgie was shaking her head. ‘No motels,’ she mouthed.
The cyclone, Janey remembered. As she hadn’t seen it or heard it or even seen the damage yet, she had to take it on trust and her foggy brain kept forgetting. None of the motels in town were currently open for business apparently.
She put on a bright voice. ‘Well, we’ll have to camp or something.’
‘If you’re not feeling well enough to travel yet, Janey, we can arrange something. There’s a big house—it’s the original hospital building—where several of the doctors live, and we can usually find extra room.’ Georgie’s bright earrings bobbed as she talked. She looked like the kind of woman who could arrange emergency accommodation on an uninhabited planet if she had to. ‘We can lend you some clothes. Rowdy, here, was pretty happy to be reunited with his missing clownfish shoe, but his toes are getting squashed in those sneakers, so we’ve found him some new ones.’
‘You haven’t thrown the clownfish shoe away?’
‘Ooh, no, weren’t allowed to do that!’ Her face telegraphed the story. Rowdy must have clung to the shoe. Alice had painted the fish on it to hide the hole in the toe, Janey knew, and of course he wanted all the reminders of his mum that he could find.
‘Thanks,’ she said, her voice husky with tears.
‘To be honest, though,’ Georgie said gently, ‘getting back to the issue of where you’re staying, we’re encouraging people to evacuate if they can. Resources are pretty stretched. I think the Golden Palm will be up and running in a couple of days. It’s not exactly five-star, but they only had minor damage and they’re working on getting one block of rooms back into a fit state for guests. There’s the Athina, too, but that’ll be full. They’ve just had a big wedding. You’re from Darwin?’
‘I don’t know where I’m from right now.’ Janey closed her eyes. ‘The moon?’
The thought of finding a place to stay, tracking down Luke, presenting him with his son and saying something like, Do you want him? Alice said you didn’t, but she’s gone now, and I’m wondering if that might make you change your mind. After all, you are the only father he’s got…
Exhausting.
Too hard.
She’d asked someone about Luke, but maybe no one had passed the message on. Or, no, with services in the whole region so strapped, he’d be working around the clock, playing the hero.
He had a nice line in heroic behaviour. People loved the casual humour, the god-like reassurances and the warm fire in his amber-brown eyes, and immediately believed in him. She knew what he was like…or had known once…He wouldn’t be able to resist the opportunity to show off in all this chaos. Which was good, because she didn’t have the energy for their confrontation just yet.
‘Honey, we might take you back to play with Max, OK?’ she heard Georgie say. ‘Auntie Janey needs to rest for a while now.’
He stood there looking at her for a moment, frowning, giving off that same sense that he was about to speak, that the words were just crammed in his mouth bursting to come out, but as usual he stayed silent.
‘Bye, sweetheart,’ she managed, then the sleepy fog stole over her brain again, and hours passed.
The next time she woke up, her head had cleared, her stomach wanted food, her limbs were ready for a good stretch and altogether she felt about a hundred years better.
Until she became aware of the quiet masculine presence in the chair beside her bed—dark hair, strong shoulders, genuine, implacable fatigue written all over him—and realised it was Luke.
LUKE looked exhausted and stressed.
He had bloodshot eyes, hair yelling for a brush, even a streak of dried mud along his jaw. He looked older. There were some lines around his eyes and mouth. Janey hadn’t seen him in, what, seven years? No, just under six, if you counted photographs.
Alice had sent one from London shortly after Felixx’s birth—a casual shot of both parents and the tiny bundle of baby snuggled between them. Alice had looked tired, but Luke had glowed—the archetypical proud father. Just three months later, their marriage had shattered. Janey still didn’t know the full story, and what she did know had come only from Alice.
So how did you even start in a situation like this?
With ‘hello’ apparently.
Luke said it first, his voice low and tired and husky. Despite the changes in his appearance, he was still the man she remembered, dark and ferociously good-looking, with those trust-me-I’m-a-hero amber-brown eyes and a confident mouth that had rarely bothered to bestow its charming smile on Janey. She’d seen it quirked in annoyance or outright anger far more often.
‘Hello, Luke,’ she answered him. ‘It’s good to see you.’
His smile was strained.
