could easily find her if there was a problem on theatre days and she hated even the possibility of distractions when she was operating. Hearing the chime of an incoming message, she glanced at the screen, expecting it to be the message Simon had left about the invitation to the gala tomorrow, but it wasn’t. It was a voicemail that had been left a couple of hours ago. From an unknown number.
Curious, Olivia keyed in her code as soon as she was sitting behind the wheel of her car, turning on the ignition as the message started to play.
‘My name is Isaac Cameron,’ a male voice said. There was a hint of an accent there. An Irish lilt, maybe? ‘I’m a doctor at Cutler’s Creek Hospital.’
Olivia gasped. Hearing the name of that small Central Otago township was disturbing, to say the least. She had a sudden urge to cut the call and delete the message but it was too late. She had been captured by the sound of the stranger’s voice.
‘I don’t suppose you want to hear this, Olivia Donaldson, but—you know what? I’m going to tell you anyway.’
She could hear the indrawn breath, as if the caller was about to start a lengthy story. And there was something about his tone that sent a shiver down Olivia’s spine. Without thinking, she turned off the engine of her car and slowly leaned back into her seat, touching the speakerphone icon on the screen. She had no idea what this was about but it felt like it was going to be something significant. Potentially life-changing?
‘I thought you should know that your father’s dying,’ the voice continued. ‘He’s got pancreatic cancer, which is what killed his father about twenty years ago. Not that that bothered you, from what I hear, seeing as you apparently refused to come to your grandfather’s funeral.’
She could hear a judgemental note in his voice and that put her back up. For heaven’s sake, Olivia thought, I was only thirteen years old. I’d never even met my grandfather that I could remember. I hadn’t seen my father since he’d walked out on his family. Why would anyone think I was expected to travel from the other side of the world to go to a funeral for a stranger?
‘I wouldn’t have known anything about you,’ Isaac was saying now, ‘but I found your father crying over a box of old letters. And parcels. All the things that you’d sent back to him over the years without even bothering to open them.’
Olivia’s jaw dropped. He was accusing her of something she knew nothing about. Letters? Parcels? She’d never seen anything from her father. He’d never even made a phone call. She could remember being in floods of tears that first Christmas after he’d gone and her mother trying to comfort her.
‘I know it’s difficult, Olivia, but you wouldn’t want to grow up in a place like Cutler’s Creek, believe me. I don’t think there’s even a proper school there. My new job in London is going to give us both the most amazing opportunities, you just wait and see. We can even think about getting you that pony you’ve always wanted.’
Did her mother know something about that mail? Had she thought that cutting any links Olivia had to a small country town would help her embrace a new life in a huge city? She could imagine her mother being that determined. Convincing herself that she was doing the best thing for her daughter, even.
She tuned back into the continuing voicemail. ‘He loves you. He wants the chance to tell you that before he dies. I have no idea how long he’s got but I imagine it’s not that long because he’s refusing to seek treatment.’
Why would he do that? Olivia could feel the frown line between her eyes deepen. Pancreatic cancer could kill in a matter of weeks in some cases if nothing was done. Why didn’t he want to fight? Did he not have people in his life who could persuade him it was worth fighting?
As if to answer her question, Isaac was talking at the same time. There was a rising note of something like anger behind his words now.
‘You probably don’t know and maybe you don’t even care but there’s a whole community here in Cutler’s Creek that thinks a great deal of your father. He’s a good man and I think it’s a crying shame that you turned your back on him.’
‘I didn’t,’ Olivia said, her tone shocking her with both its volume and the outrage it contained. ‘It was totally the opposite…’
‘Maybe the past shouldn’t matter now,’ Isaac said, and it almost felt as if they were having a real conversation. ‘If the people around here knew about this, they’d move heaven and earth to grant any last wish he might have but your father doesn’t want anyone to know and, anyway, there’s only one person who can do that, and that’s you. You could stop him dying with that regret on his mind.’
There was a long moment’s silence, then, as if the speaker was taking a long breath. Trying to control his emotional outburst, perhaps? Yes…when he spoke again, it was at a much slower pace. In a much quieter tone.
‘I don’t know you, Dr Olivia Donaldson,’ he said. ‘And I’m not sure I’d want to know someone who could turn their back on someone who loves them that much but I thought you should know. Before it’s too late. Because…because if you’ve inherited even a fraction of the compassion for others that your father has, you wouldn’t want to refuse to give him the one thing that would mean so much to him.’
Olivia could hear a breath being released as a sigh. ‘You never know…one day it might be your dying regret. That you never gave him a chance…’
The click told her the call was ended. Another voice was giving her the automatic options of saving, deleting or listening to the message again. Olivia simply turned her phone off and, for the longest time, she sat there without moving a muscle. She was stunned. Shaking, even.
It shouldn’t matter this much. It was ancient history. Maybe she was just feeling angry that a stranger was blaming her so unfairly. Telling her that it was her behaviour that had caused someone grief. Enough grief that, after all these years—decades, in fact—this father that she hadn’t seen since she was a young girl had been crying? She tried to shake off the unpleasant knot that was trying to form in her stomach. She didn’t care about this man. She hated him, in fact. He’d walked out on her without a backward glance.
Or had he?
Was it true? About the mail? What had been in those parcels? Books, maybe. The thought slid into her head uninvited. Unwelcome. Her father had always given her books. He’d been the one to read the bedtime stories when she was too young to read for herself. She could remember the way he’d lounged on the edge of her bed, his elbow propped on her pillow so that she could snuggle into the crook of his arm as she listened.
Olivia closed her eyes tightly. She recognised that prickly sensation that was tears trying to form. She hadn’t shed any tears over her father for longer than she could remember. But remembering him reading to her had unlocked so many things that she’d buried. There had been a time when she’d missed him so much… She’d missed his hugs, that gleam in his eye that told her he was proud of her, that rich chuckle that was his laughter and…and even his smell, which came from that old-fashioned aftershave he insisted on using.
That knot in her stomach was tightening enough to be painful. Olivia felt like she was being attacked on all sorts of emotional fronts. She’d only lost her mother a matter of months ago and she was going to become an orphan now? With no close family at all? There was a possibility that her mother had betrayed her long ago but even if that was the case, why hadn’t her father tried harder? How unfair was it that he had given up and then blamed her? Okay,
