‘I see,’ Fern said faintly.
Quinn grinned. ‘A far cry from a city teaching hospital,’ he smiled. ‘Why don’t you join us and see how much fun it can be?’
Fun…Medicine, fun?
Fern had always taken her work so seriously-a way to escape the fears that had been with her for so long. The thought of medicine as fun was almost an anathema.
Yet…
She looked around this warm, cluttered kitchen and the thought of being part of it was so tempting that it was almost irresistible.
She looked up to find Quinn’s eyes watching her, his face creased with laughing understanding.
‘You could do it, you know,’ he said kindly. ‘It’s like jumping off the high board into a swimming pool on a hot day. So scary it makes your knees wobble but if you hold your nose and do it…Well, it’s a lot more comfortable in the water than staying for ever on the high board.’
Is that what she was doing? Staying for ever on the high board?
By marrying Sam, maybe she was. Maybe her knees were trembling almost as much now at the thought of marrying Sam and leaving…
Dear-heaven, where was her traitorous mind leading her? She had her life all mapped out. A husband. A job. When she returned to the mainland she was completing her training as a physician. A financially secure career in a huge hospital where she didn’t need to become close to people…
In her arms the little wallaby stirred and settled and his bright eyes closed in sleep. She could feel his tummy swollen with milk and for one absurd moment she had a vision that was totally crazy.
This man…this fireside, only instead of a joey a human baby-a baby with eyes the same as his father’s…
Well, that was one stupid, stupid thought. Fern gave herself a sharp mental kick. She lifted the empty bottle from the unresponsive mouth and knelt to place the joey back in his warm little pouch. No children! Sam agreed. They’d be in the way of his career path, he said, and they were certainly in the way of Fern’s need for no ties.
She stood stiffly, her eyes blank with fear. She was getting into deeper and deeper water and she wanted out.
‘Bathroom’s next door,’ Quinn said kindly, seeing her confusion and obviously deciding not to make it worse. ‘Have a wash while I do the eggs. Sunny side up?’
‘Y-yes, please.’
He smiled at her, his eyes sending out a message of reassurance as though he could read her fear.
‘Two minutes, then, Dr Rycroft. Or I’ll wolf the lot without you.’
CHAPTER FIVE
IT WAS a weird breakfast.
Fern spent the meal trying to shake off the feeling that she belonged in this kitchen.
She felt as if she’d been here all her life.
It was crazy. Aunt Maud kept her kitchen as neat as a new pin and Fern’s hospital flat was clinically clean and uncluttered. No photographs. No sentimentality or memorabilia at all.
It was different here. The kitchen was vast. The centre point was a huge slow combustion stove that almost filled a wall and sent out a soft heat into the slight chill of the morning. The stove seemed the kitchen’s heart.
Around them was the semi-organised clutter of two professionals’ busy lives. There were not nearly enough shelves to hold all the different sorts of feed mixtures Jessie seemed to need. Bags of formula stood heaped along one wall and more were stacked by the stove. To complete the impression of confusion, from the ceiling someone had hung lavender. Maybe a hundred or more bunches were suspended to dry.
‘Jess loves the smell.’ Quinn smiled. ‘And I don’t object too much either.’ He motioned across at the open window to the sea beyond. ‘Especially when it’s mixed with the salt from the ocean.’
There was the smell of more than lavender and salt-and bacon. A bright mound of cut fuchsias and roses tumbled in disarray on the floor, giving off a heady scent of their own.
Maybe Jess had cut them before going out and had not had time to put them in vases, Fern decided-and then blinked as a tiny wombat burrowed out from its pouch somewhere behind her and snuffled over to chomp at the pile.
Fern thought the flowers beautiful. The wombat thought them delicious.
‘How…how many animals does Jessie have here?’ Fern asked faintly and Quinn shook his head.
‘Too many.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘She has four littlies inside at the moment-the wallaby, this little wombat, a baby rosella she puts on the verandah during the day and there’s an echidna behind the stove…’
‘An echidna…’ Australia’s answer to the English
porcupine. ‘How…how cuddly!’
‘He is cuddly, too,’ Quinn smiled. ‘Did you know they don’t grow spikes till they’re twelve months old? Jess feeds him herself, thank heaven. Porcupines don’t use teats-they knead their mother’s belly and the milk oozes onto the surface for the baby to lick off. Feeding Oscar is therefore a messy business.’
‘R-really?’
Quinn grinned. ‘Shame on you, Dr Rycroft. What do they teach in paediatric medicine these days? Didn’t you know that?’
‘N-no.’ Fern’s feeling of unreality was growing and growing.
‘Oscar’s the most frail of the babies here so I won’t take him out of his warm pouch for show and tell,’ Quinn told her. ‘Jess has had a hard time settling his diarrhoea. With luck, next time you eat breakfast here it’ll be feed time.’
‘I won’t…’
‘Be eating with us again?’ Quinn raised disbelieving eyebrows. ‘You know, I’m very sure you will.’ He smiled. ‘Very sure, Fern Rycroft. Coffee?’
‘What, have you emptied your teapot?’ Fern quizzed in an unsteady effort to lighten what she was feeling.
‘I have coffee twice a day to wash the tea down.’ Quinn grinned. His smile faded. ‘Dr Rycroft, this partnership is a serious offer, you know. I’m sure we could work together and your aunt tells me you’ve done an anaesthetic residency. I’m a surgeon, so…’
‘A surgeon!’ Fern’s eyes widened. So she had been right. ‘But…’
‘But I’ve also specialised in emergency medicine.’ He saw the blatant disbelief in her eyes. ‘So…So, together we could provide a damned good service…’
‘But I don’t know why you came…’
Fern’s tone was almost an accusation-as though consideration of his offer was dependent on her knowing his reasons for being on the island.
‘No.’ Quinn nodded, his face thoughtful. ‘You don’t. But I had my reasons and they’re good ones. Sometimes you just have to take people on trust, Dr Rycroft.’
‘But…’ Fern stared at Quinn, baffled, and then tried a sideways tack.
‘OK,’ she said at last. ‘Jessie must have come at the same time as you. Why did she come to the island?’
Quinn’s face cleared. ‘Well, that’s easy,’ he grinned. ‘Jessie came here because cats are banned from the island, foxes don’t exist and even rats haven’t made their way to the island yet. It’s a wildlife utopia, and Jess has been looking for such a place all her life.’
‘You mean she came here because of her animals?’ ‘Jess is a vet, Fern.’ Quinn’s face grew thoughtful. ‘She loves her animals-and maybe, like you, Jess has cut herself off from people. She’s one of the few registered carers in the state allowed to both actively treat injured wildlife and then keep them to release. On the mainland she has to send them to bush shelters after treatment because there’s nowhere round the city where they can safely be released. Here…’
‘There are still dogs.’
‘That’s where our Jess is a resourceful lady.’ Quinn smiled. ‘She knew the island wanted a vet so she wrote with a few conditions when she offered to come. One is that all dogs-no exceptions-are carefully controlled and kept confined after dark and that rule is rigidly policed. The farmers here are so pleased to have a qualified vet they’d have granted her the moon. Keeping their dogs under control seemed easy in comparison.’