some time someone must have come in and put a light cover over her because when Isobel woke her gently, she was clutching it tightly around her body like the ultimate security blanket.
‘Do you have somewhere to go?’ Isobel asked, handing Alex another cup of tea and a healthy-looking muffin.
Alex shook her head.
‘Would you know of someplace?’ she asked, and heard her voice crack as the reality of the situation nearly overwhelmed her again.
‘Well, I’ve one idea,’ Isobel told her. ‘Do you like kids?’
‘Love them,’ Alex replied, and to her surprise she even found a smile. ‘I’ve done a lot of babysitting. I started when I was fourteen because I’ve been saving money to get a car—a red car! And I volunteer at a pre-school play group at the community centre on Saturday mornings.’
‘I thought you looked familiar!’ said Isobel. ‘I sometimes take my twins to that play group.’ She thought for a moment. ‘I know this sounds daft and it’s a bit sudden, but would you like to come home with me? I’ve got two monsters so I can promise they’ll take your mind off your troubles for a while. I’ll be in the house but I’ll need to sleep at some time, so if you’re there I can. My husband’s also a doctor and he’s due at work any minute and one of the twins has a cold so they can’t go to kindy. Dave, that’s my husband, and I have been talking about getting an au pair for some time, but neither of us has ever had time to do anything about it. You need a home—and ours might not be it—but just for today at least, would you like a job?’
This time it was Alex who hugged her!
SHE’D COME HOME to Heritage Port with plenty of misgivings, but within hours of her arrival Alex had known she’d done the right thing. Although her childhood had been happy, her best memories of the place were of the three and a half years she’d spent with the Armitage family, minding the rambunctious twins, finishing school and even starting her pre-med studies at university, she and the twins’ parents juggling their timetables so everything ran smoothly.
Well, as smoothly as could be expected with two little mischief-makers in the house!
It wasn’t that the horror of the rape and the humiliation of the trial that had followed it didn’t occasionally still disturb her dreams—her ex-fiancé had blamed it for what he’d termed her inability to respond to his kisses, let alone anything more intimate—but she found herself pleased to be home in one of the most beautiful places in the world.
As the taxi carried her from the airport, bright sun shone on the rolling ocean, white-fringed waves crashed on the rocks at the headland, and shushed up the beach. The river was as green and peaceful as she remembered it, and, best of all, somehow, in the intervening years, the hard knot in her heart had loosened.
Now, sitting beside the hospital bed, she was able to look at her father and remember the man who’d first taught her to bait her fishing hook—the father she’d loved …
‘So, where have you come from?’ one of the nurses in the ICU asked as Alex, her luggage stacked in a corner of the room, held her father’s hand, and talked to the sleeping man about fishing in the dark shadows of the mangroves that arched over the little inlets off the river.
‘Here,’ she told him. ‘I’ve just been away for a while.’
Away when the girls she’d been at school with had been marrying and having babies …
Away when her mother had died without forgiving her for ‘making a fuss’ …
Away, but always waiting for a letter that said two simple words, ‘Come home.’
‘How long’s a while?’ the nurse asked, making conversation, Alex knew, but welcoming it in the sterile room, the silence broken only by her voice and the machines.
‘Sixteen years.’
‘Long time!’
And it had been.
When the Armitage family, with their darling twins, had shifted to Melbourne so Isobel and Dave could continue specialist careers, Alex had chosen to go north to Brisbane to finish her medical training.
From there, on Isobel’s advice, she’d contacted her parents, writing to them to tell them where she was and what she was doing. Although she’d received no response, she’d continued writing—birthdays and Christmas—always somehow hoping …
Then, three weeks ago, in far-off Glasgow, she’d received a letter from her father. Her mother was dead, Rusty, the dog, was dead, Mr Spencer had died, and he, her father, was going into hospital for open-heart surgery to replace a wonky valve.
The letter hadn’t asked her to come home, but here she was, sitting in the intensive care unit in the new modern hospital at Heritage Port, talking quietly to her heavily sedated father, and remembering happy times.
Will Kent, head intensivist, doing a round of the ICU, was surprised to see the woman there, her arms cradling her head on the bottom of the bed, apparently deeply asleep. Mr Hudson might be his patient in this unit, Will’s fiefdom, but the man had been unconscious since he’d arrived.
‘Who’s the woman in with Mr Hudson?’ he asked one of the nurses.
‘His daughter—Alexandra, I think she’s called—just arrived from Scotland. Apparently hasn’t been home for years. Some daughter!’
Alexandra Hudson—Alex!
Of course she hadn’t been home for years—banished as she’d been at sixteen. Ending up with his next-door neighbours, Isobel and Dave Armitage, as a nanny for their twins.
He peered more closely at the patient.
There didn’t seem to be anything familiar about the man—old now, and grey with illness—but he did remember the day Isobel had asked him to accompany her and Alex back to the Hudson home so Alex could get some clothes. Dave had been working, and Will had felt enormously proud that Isobel had chosen him to go along. He’d seen himself as the protector of the two women—a tall, lanky, bespectacled, twenty-two-year-old protector!
Mrs Hudson had thrown Alex’s clothes from an upstairs window, ranting all the time about ‘whores’ and ‘sluts’, while Mr Hudson had barred the door, standing there like an ancient biblical prophet, his only prophecy doom.
Poor Alex had been scarlet with humiliation and hurt, tears leaking from behind the big dark glasses she’d worn even inside in those days. He’d wanted to put his arm around her—to give her a hug—but he’d known she’d shy away, as she had from all but the twins’ hugs and kisses.
Not that he’d have kissed her—she’d been, what? Fifteen? Sixteen?
He couldn’t remember—remembered only the deep pity he’d felt for the so obviously damaged teenager.
Was this patient, here in the ICU, recovering from an operation for a heart valve replacement, that Mr Hudson?
Was
