‘But-’
‘You concentrate on yourself,’ Dorothy told her. ‘You concentrate on your future. On your romantic dinner under the stars. That’s an order.’
And the phone went dead.
Great.
She stared at it. Her link with home.
She should be back in the hospital right now. Why wasn’t she? Craig…
Don’t think about it. Think about now.
Now what?
If there was no dinner to be had in Cowral then she needed to think about her next need. Sleep. Accommodation.
Cowral Bay’s only motel-the place where Michael-the-rat had slept last night-was on the other side of the river.
She’d walk back over the bridge, she decided. She’d leave Penelope in her dog box in the pavilion and book herself into the motel. Hey, maybe the motel even had room service.
By the time she reached the motel her feet, in her borrowed sandals, were screaming that she had blisters. She’d bother with taking Penelope back to the pavilion later, she decided, so she tied the dog to a tree and walked into Motel Reception. To find no room at the inn.
‘Sorry, love,’ the motel owner told her, casting a nervous glance at Rachel’s dubious apparel. ‘There’s fire crews from the other side of the peninsula trapped here now and they’ve booked us out.’
‘Do you have a restaurant?’ Rachel asked with more hope than optimism, and was rewarded by another dubious look and another shake of the head.
‘Everyone’s closed. The Country Women’s Association are putting on food twenty-four hours a day for the firefighters in the hall over the bridge but you don’t look like a firefighter.’
Rachel swallowed. ‘No. No, I don’t.’
‘Are you OK, love?’ the woman asked. Her eyes narrowed. ‘You don’t need one of them women’s refuge places, do you? I could call the police for you if you like.’
Great. That was all she needed. A girl had some pride but Rachel was really struggling to find it here. She took a deep breath and pulled herself together.
Maybe women’s refuges had food?
Good grief. What was she thinking?
‘Um, no. Thank you.’ She fished in her purse and found a couple of coins. There was a candy dispensing machine by the counter and the sweets looked really inviting. ‘I’ll ring a friend, but meanwhile I’ll just buy a couple of these…’
‘I’m sorry, love,’ the woman told her. ‘The machine’s broken. The technician’s due tomorrow-if he can get through the fires.’
Rachel walked outside and untied Penelope. Then she considered, trying really hard not to panic.
Panic seemed an increasingly enticing option.
She’d go back to the hospital, she decided. Hugo had said he needed her. How much? He was about to be put to the test. ‘If you need me you’ll have to house and feed me,’ she’d tell him.
‘No. Feed me first,’ she corrected herself.
And Penelope?
Maybe she couldn’t expect Hugo to take on Penelope. She’d take her back to the pavilion.
Bad idea. It had been almost an hour now since Rachel had collected Penelope. Penelope had been the last dog to leave and the showground caretakers had done their duty. At some time while Rachel had walked into town and back again, the high wire gates had been bolted closed.
The caretaker’s residence was in the centre of the grounds, well out of shouting distance.
Rachel put her head against the cyclone wire and closed her eyes. Great. Just great. The whole situation was getting farcical.
Where was this women’s refuge?
‘This has to go into the record books as the most romantic weekend a girl has ever had,’ she told Penelope, but Penelope looked at her with the sad eyes of an Afghan hound who hadn’t been fed.
‘You ate my hamburger,’ Rachel told her. ‘Don’t even think about looking at me like that.’
She sighed. Her stomach rumbled a response. She put her hand on Penelope’s collar and started trudging toward the hospital.
There was the sound of vehicle behind her-a big one. She moved onto the verge.
A fire truck came around the bend on the wrong side of the road. It veered onto the grassy verge and she had to jump for her life.
If she’d been one whit less angry she might have been hit, but her reflexes were working fine. Rachel was tired and hungry and worried, but there was still a vast well of anger directed at Michael and herself and her circumstances. When the fire truck swerved around the bend on the wrong side of the road it was almost as if she expected it.
She yelped and leapt, and as the truck screeched to a halt she found herself sprawled ignominiously in the grass at the side of the road with Penelope somehow sprawling on top of her.
Great. What else could possibly happen to her? She lay and addressed herself to a clump of grass right under her nose.
‘Beam me up, Scottie. Where’s a spaceship when you need one?’
‘Are you OK, miss?’ The horror in the voice above her had her pushing herself up from the road. She might be mad as fire but no one here deserved to think they’d squashed her.
‘I’m fine.’ She rolled over, shoved a startled Penelope off, hauled her Crimplene down to something akin to decency and tried to look fine. ‘Honest.’
‘Oh, heck…’ The man had reached her. He’d been driving the truck. Behind him his fellow firefighters were climbing down from the cab to see what was wrong. The engine was still running and the truck lights were illuminating the road. ‘I could have killed you.’
‘It’s your lucky day. You didn’t.’ She tried a smile and the muscles almost worked. Sort of.
They were gathering round her now, a bunch of men and women with black-grimed faces, fire uniforms and hard hats. They looked exhausted. They were looking at her with concern.
She must look a real candidate for her women’s refuge, she thought, and the concept was looking more and more appealing. If there was a women’s refuge somewhere around here that would take her with an Afghan hound, she’d be in there like a shot.
Or maybe… She gave Penelope’s backside another shove… Maybe even without an Afghan.
‘We’re really sorry,’ the fireman told her, and she tried focusing on the man before her. He looked scared to death.
‘I guess you weren’t expecting hikers,’ she told him. ‘It’s too dark to walk off the road.’ She hauled herself upward. Someone gave her a hand which she accepted with gratitude. Then she looked more closely at the man before her. Under the soot there were cuts and scratches, blood as well as grime. He looked dreadful. ‘Are you OK?’
Stupid question, really. It was absolutely obvious that he wasn’t. ‘I just…’ He wiped his hand across his eyes. ‘My eyes… The smoke…’
And he’d been driving.
‘You need to go to the hospital,’ she told him.
‘That’s where we’re going. There was a shed-the farmer told us it was used for storing hay so we made an attempt to save it. What he forgot to tell us was that he stored fuel in there as well. The thing went up with a bang that scared us almost as much as we scared you. But that’s all the damage, thank God. There’s a few of us with sore eyes, but we’re thinking that we’ve been lucky.’
Lucky or not, they looked shocked and ill. Rachel’s personal problems were set aside in the face of these peoples’ needs. ‘You should have been treated before you drove.’
‘Doc’s been busy,’ someone said. ‘We heard up on the ridge that he couldn’t come up. He’s been caught up with a dogbite or something.’
Of course he’d been caught up. And there was no one else, Rachel thought. He was on his own.
Except for her. Hugo had her, whether he liked it or not. And a fat lot of use she was, she thought ruefully, hiking round the country with her crazy Afghan hound, looking for food and for shelter as if she were destitute. It was time she hauled herself together and started being useful.
‘Tell you what,’ she said, brushing gravel from her knees and trying to stop her knees from doing the shaking they were so intent on. ‘Let’s all go to the hospital. I’m a doctor and I’m needed there. But if it’s OK with you…’ She managed a shaky grin as she looked around their smoke-filled eyes which were now tinged with disbelief. A doctor in Crimplene… But she wasn’t going down that road. Explanations could take hours.