‘We evacuated a kid from Petrel Island twelve months back,’ Grady said. ‘It’s a weird little community-Kooris and fishermen and a crazy doctor-cum-lighthouse-keeper keeping the whole community together.’
‘That’s Beth.’
‘That’s your sister?’ His tone was incredulous and she knew why. There seemed no possible connection between the placid islander Beth and the sophisticated career doctor he was looking at.
But there was. Of course there was. You couldn’t remove sisterhood by distance or by lifestyle.
Beth was her sister for ever.
‘Beth’s the island doctor,’ she told him, finding the courage to meet his eyes. ‘She’s also the lighthouse caretaker. It’s what our father did so she’s taken right over.’
‘Beth’s the lighthouse-keeper? And the doctor as well?’
‘Yes.’
‘But…why?’
‘It’s a family thing,’ she told him. Seeing his confusion deepen, she tried to explain. ‘Dad was born on the island, and inherited the lighthouse-keeping from my grandad. He married an island girl and they had Beth. Then the lighthouse was upgraded to automatic-just as Dad’s first wife died. She was seven months pregnant with their second baby, but she collapsed and died of eclampsia before Dad could get her to the mainland.’
Grady was frowning, taking it on board with deep concern. ‘She had no warning?’
‘There was no doctor on the island,’ Morag said bleakly. ‘And, no, he had no warning. Everything seemed normal. She was planning on leaving for the mainland at thirty-four weeks but she didn’t make it. Anyway, her death meant that within a few weeks Dad lost his wife, his baby son and his job. All he had left was two-year-old Beth. But the waste of the deaths made him decide what to do. He brought Beth to the mainland, and managed to get a grant to go to medical school. That’s where he met my mother. They married and had me, but the marriage was a disaster. Everyone was miserable. By the time Dad finished med school, the government decided that leaving the lighthouse to look after itself-even if it was automatic-was also a disaster. The island was still desperate for a doctor, and the caretaker’s cottage was still empty. So Dad and Beth went home.’
Grady’s face was thoughtful. ‘Leaving you behind with your mother?’
‘Of course.’ She shrugged. ‘Can you see my mother living on Petrel Island? But I did spend lots of time there. Every holiday. Whenever I could. Mum didn’t mind. As long as she wasn’t seen as a deserting mother, anything I did was OK by her. She’s not exactly a warm and fuzzy parent, my mother.’
‘I have met her.’
He had. They’d moved fast in four weeks. Morag’s eyes flickered again to his face. Maybe this could work. Maybe he…
But the eyes he was looking at her with were wrong, she thought, confused by the messages she was receiving. He was concerned as he’d be concerned for a patient. He was using a ‘Let’s get to the bottom of this’ kind of voice. He was gentleness personified, but his gentleness was abstract. For Morag, who’d had a childhood of abstract affection, the concept was frightening.
‘So you spent holidays with your father and Beth,’ Grady was saying, and she forced herself to focus on the past rather than the terrifying future.
‘Yes. They were… They loved me. Beth was everything to me.’
‘Where’s your father now?’
‘He died three years ago. He’s buried on the island. That’s OK. He had a subarachnoid haemorrhage and died in his sleep, and it wasn’t a bad way to go for a man in his seventies.’
‘But Beth?’
‘As I said, she’s a doctor, like me.’ Still she couldn’t say what was wrong. How could she? How could she voice the unimaginable? ‘My dad, and then Beth after him, provided the island’s medical care. Because there’s only about five hundred people living on the island, and the medical work is hardly arduous, they’ve kept on the lighthouse. too. Lighthouse-keeping’s not the time consuming job it was.’
‘I guess it’s not.’ Grady was watching her face. Waiting. Knowing that she was taking her time to say what had to be said, and knowing she needed that time. He lifted her hand again and gripped her fingers, looking down at them as if he was examining them for damage. It was a technical manoeuvre, she thought dully. Something he’d learned to do. ‘So Beth’s the island doctor…’
‘She’s great.’ She was talking too fast, she thought, but she couldn’t slow down. Her voice didn’t seem to belong to her. ‘She’s ten years older than me, and she was almost a mother to me. She’d turn up unexpectedly whenever I most needed her. If I was in a school play and my mother couldn’t make it-which she nearly always couldn’t-I’d suddenly, miraculously, find Beth in the audience, cheering me on with an enthusiasm that was almost embarrassing. And when she decided to be a doctor, I thought I could be, too.’
‘But not like Beth?’
‘Beth wanted to go back to the island. It tore her apart to leave to do her medical training, and the moment she was qualified she returned. She fell in love with a local fisherman and the island’s her home. She loves it.’
‘And you?’ he probed.
‘The island’s never been my home. I love it but I never thought of living anywhere but here.’ She attempted a smile but it was a pretty shaky one. ‘I guess I have more than a bit of my mother in me somewhere. I like excitement, cities, shopping…life.’
‘Like me.’
‘My excitement levels don’t match your excitement levels,’ she told him ruefully. ‘I like being a surgeon in a bustling city hospital. I don’t dangle out of helicopters in raging seas, plucking-’
But Grady wasn’t to be distracted. The background had been covered. Now it was time to move on. ‘Morag, what’s wrong?’ His deep voice cut through her misery, compelling. Doctor asking for facts, so he could treat what needed to be treated.
Her voice faltered. She looked up at him and then away. His hand tightened on hers-just as she’d seen him do with distressed patients. For some reason the action had her tugging away from him. She didn’t want this man treating her as he’d treat a patient. This was supposed to be special.
This was supposed to be for ever.
For ever?
The prospect of for ever rose up, overwhelming her with dread. Somehow she had to explain and she had to do it before she broke down.
‘Beth has renal cancer,’ she whispered.
She’d shifted her hand back to her side of the table. Grady made a move to regain it, but she tucked it carefully under the table. It seemed stupidly important that she knew where her hand was.
He didn’t say anything. She swallowed while he waited for her to go on. He was good, this man. His bedside manner was impeccable.
And suddenly, inexplicably, his bedside manner made her want to hit him.
Crazy. Anger-anger at Grady-was crazy. She had to force herself to be logical here. To make sense.
‘I haven’t been back to the island for over a year,’ she managed. ‘But last time I went Beth seemed terrific. She had a bad time for a while. She married a local fisherman, and he was drowned just after Dad died. But she was recovering. She’s thirty-nine years old and she has a little boy, Robbie, who’s five. She seemed settled and happy. Life was looking good.’
‘But now she’s been diagnosed with renal cancer?’ His tone was carefully neutral, still extracting facts.
‘Mmm.’
‘What stage?’
‘Advanced. Apparently she flew down to Melbourne last month and had scans without telling anyone. There’s a massive tumour in the left kidney, with spread that’s clear from the scans. It’s totally inoperable.’
And totally anything else, she thought bleakly as she waited for Grady to absorb what she’d told him. He’d know the inevitable outcome just as clearly as she did. If renal cancer was caught while the tumour was still contained, then it could be surgically removed-removing the entire kidney-but once it had spread outside the kidney wall, chemotherapy or radio-therapy would make little difference.