He thought that over. ‘So you’re broke.’
‘Yes. Absolutely. It costs a fortune to keep this place.’
‘Maybe you could take in lodgers.’
‘Lodgers don’t come to live in Iluka.’ She hesitated and then sighed. She sat leaning forward, cradling her mug as if she was gaining warmth from its contents. As indeed she was. The house was damp and chill. It needed heating…
‘Don’t even think about it,’ Amy told him, seeing where he was looking. The central-heating panels almost mocked them. ‘Have you any idea of what it costs to heat this place?’
‘Why don’t lodgers come to live in Iluka?’
‘The same reason no one comes to live in Iluka. Except for retirees.’
‘You’ll have to explain.’
‘The town has nothing.’
‘Now, that’s something else I don’t understand,’ he complained. ‘My father’s married Daisy and seems delighted with the idea of coming to live here. There’s a solid residential population…’
‘On half-acre blocks which are zoned residential. We have a general store, a post office and nothing else. No one else has ever been allowed to build here.’
‘Why?’
‘My stepfather owned the whole bluff and he put caveats on everything.’
‘So?’
‘So there’s no land under half an acre available for sale. Ever. That means this strip along the beach has been bought by millionaires and it’s used at peak holiday times. The rest has been bought by retirees living their rural dream. But for many it’s turned into a nightmare.’
‘How so?’
‘There’s nothing here.’ She spread her hands. ‘People come here and see the dream-golf courses, bowling clubs, miles and miles of golden beaches-so they buy and they build. But then they discover they need other services. Medical services. Entertainment. Shops. And there’s nothing. There’s no school so there’s no young population. No land’s ever been allocated for commercial premises. There’s just nothing. So couples retire here for the dream and when one of them gets sick…’ She hesitated. ‘Well, until I built the nursing home it was a disaster. It meant they had to move on.’
‘That’s something else I don’t understand,’ he complained. ‘You built the nursing home? How did you do that when you can’t even afford a decent teacup?’
Amy rose and crossed to a kitchen drawer, found what she was looking for and handed it over.
He read in silence. ‘To my stepdaughter, Amy Freye, I leave my home, White-Breakers.
‘I also leave her the land on Shipwreck Bluff and sufficient funds to build a forty-bed nursing home…’
He read to the end, confusion mounting. Then he laid it aside and looked up to find her watching him.
‘Now do you see?’
‘I do-sort of.’
‘This place was desperate for a nursing home. There’s been huge numbers of couples for whom it’s been a tragedy in the past, couples where one has ended up in a nursing home in Bowra because they were too frail to cope at home but the other was stuck here until the end. And each time, as isolation and helplessness set in, my stepfather would offer to buy them out of their property for far less than they’d paid. He did it over and over. He found it a real little gold mine.’
He was struggling to understand. ‘Surely they didn’t have to sell their properties back to him. Surely they could have sold on the open market?’
‘With the restrictions on the place? No. It’s better now, but then… Then it was impossible.’
‘So where do you fit in?’
‘I don’t.’
That made Joss raise his eyebrows. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘My stepfather and I…didn’t get on.’
‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’
Amy gave a mirthless laugh, then stooped to give Bertram a hug. Like she needed to hug someone. Something.
She hadn’t had enough hugs in her life, Joss thought with sudden insight and he put a hand out as if to touch her…
It was an instinctive reaction and it didn’t make sense. She looked at his hand, surprised, and he finally drew it away. It was as if he’d surprised himself. Which he had.
‘So tell me why he’s left you this-and tell me why you’re in trouble.’
She blinked and blinked again. The concern in his voice was enough to shake her foundations.
No one was concerned for her. No one. Not even Malcolm.
‘I…I need to get back.’
‘No.’ He stood and lifted the mug from her hands, placed it on the sink and then put his hands on her shoulders. Gently he pressed her into the opposite chair, then sat down himself. His eyes didn’t leave hers. They were probing and caring and kind-and she felt tears catch behind her eyes. Damn, she never cried. It must be the pressure and the emotions of the morning, she thought. Or…something.
But Joss was still watching her. Waiting.
‘I… It’s just… I’m fine. The terms of the will…’
‘Are draconian.’
‘I guess.’ She shook her head. ‘You have no idea.’
‘So tell me.’
She shrugged and then settled in for the long haul. ‘My mother married my stepfather when I was nine years old. We came here. But we soon learned that my stepfather was a control freak. He was…appalling. My mother’s health was precarious at the best of times. He bullied her, he manipulated her-and he hated me.’
‘Because you were feisty?’
‘Feisty?’ Amy looked startled and then gave a reluctant chuckle. ‘Well, maybe I was. I only know that my own father had taught me that the world was my oyster, and here was my stepfather drilling into me that I was only a girl, and I wasn’t even to be educated because that was such a waste. There wasn’t a school here so I had to do my lessons by correspondence but he took delight in interrupting. In controlling, controlling, controlling.’
Joss thought it through-to the obvious, but dreadful next step. He thought about it for a moment and then decided, hell, he’d risk it. In his years as a doctor he’d learned it was better to confront the worst-case scenario head on. So he asked.
‘He didn’t abuse you?’
That shocked her out of her introspection. She took a deep breath and shook her head. She might be shocked by the bluntness of his question, but the idea wasn’t incredible. ‘No,’ she told him. ‘Apart from hitting me-which he did a lot-he didn’t touch me. But…’ She shuddered then, as if confessing something that had been hidden for a very long time. ‘The awful thing is that it’s not such a stupid question. I’m sure he wanted to. The way he looked at me. It was only…that was the only matter in which my mother stood up to him. If he ever touched me-like that-she’d have gone straight to the police, she told him, and she meant it. So he hated me from a distance. Oh, he hated me.’
‘So you left?’
‘As soon as I was fifteen I was out of here. Somehow I ended up in a city refuge, I met some great people and I managed to get myself educated. There’s help if homeless kids want it badly enough. Which I did. I would have liked to have done medicine but that was impossible so I made it nursing. But my mother…she wasn’t allowed to contact me, and she was getting worse. Medically there was nothing here for her. So my mother and many more of the population here were being screwed by my stepfather for everything they had, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. I wasn’t allowed home unless I promised I’d give up nursing and stay here permanently.’
‘The man was a megalomaniac,’ he said, stunned, and she nodded.
‘He was.’ She shrugged. ‘Maybe I should have come home but I didn’t know-couldn’t guess-how ill my mother was. When my mother died I was so angry… But at least, or so I thought, I’d never have to have anything more to do with my stepfather. But my independence still rankled. It must have, because when he died he left this crazy will.’
‘Leaving you the lot.’ Joss frowned. ‘Maybe because he felt sorry for the way he treated you.’