He shook his head. ‘Maybe not.’ He looked up. ‘She’s remarried. Her new husband’s a widower with three kids. I dunno…’
‘You don’t know where you fit?’
He shook his head. ‘I know Dad seems a selfish bastard,’ he said directly. ‘But Mum…well, she left and maybe if she really wanted to contact me she could have. And here…well, here at least I know the people and I know I’ve got a job.’
‘On your father’s boat.’
‘Yeah, well, maybe I’ll go back to working for him and maybe I won’t,’ Jim said uncertainly. ‘There’s other boats. But fishing’s all I know.’
‘It’s going to be quite a change, living with Sandra.’
‘It is and all,’ Jim said happily. ‘Those kids…’ He shook his head. ‘They’re great kids, Doc Russell, and do you know, the boys have never even been taught to kick a football?’
‘No!’ Nikki breathed in mock-horror and Jim grinned.
‘Well, I’m going to teach them,’ he said resolutely. He took a deep breath. ‘Sandra’s taken a risk taking me in. I know this town and I know it’ll talk even more about her. But we talked it over and reckoned we could ignore it and maybe make it work.’
Nikki sat back on her heels and looked thoughtfully at the young fisherman. He sounded as if he was taking on more of a responsibility than a decision to rent a room for a few weeks. And when the door opened for Jim to leave the surgery and Nikki saw Sandra and the two youngest children in the waiting-room she saw what was happening.
A family was forming out of mutual need. The children came forward to greet Jim as their personal property and he took a hand of each and turned to go. ‘Thanks a lot, Doc,’ he told Nikki over his shoulder. ‘Thanks for everything.’
Nikki watched them walk away-Sandra at twenty-two with the lilt of a girl back in her step and Jim at nineteen playing the father. For heaven’s sake…
She smiled suddenly. It might…it just might work. Crazier things had happened.
And then her receptionist handed her the next card and Nikki turned her attention to Mrs Alphington’s neuralgia. She didn’t have time for reflection-and that was the way she wanted it.
The days dragged on. Nikki found herself staring stupidly at the calendar, as though it had some meaning. Three weeks since she had seen Luke…Four…
‘When will he come back?’ Amy asked for the hundredth time and Nikki strove for patience.
‘Luke isn’t coming back,’ she said gently.
‘He will,’ Amy said stubbornly. ‘Even if it’s just for a visit. Maybe he’ll come for Christmas?’
‘Don’t count on it.’ Nikki winced at the thought of Christmas. She hated it. Christmas-the time of families. Beattie left them every Christmas, flying down to Brisbane for her once-a-year visit to her daughter, and there would only be Amy and Nikki. Some Christmas!
Maybe she should employ another locum-get right away for a few weeks. If she could get somewhere cooler, maybe this awful cloud of oppression would lift.
Summer had arrived with a vengeance-the real tropical rainy season. It rained unceasingly, the rain turning to steam in the blistering heat. Nikki never enjoyed the rainy season and now-it was as if the sky were crying in sympathy with her.
‘It’s real cyclone weather,’ Beattie said darkly as the first week of December neared its end. ‘We’re in for one, you wait and see.’
‘Don’t say so,’ Nikki groaned. The last cyclone near Eurong had passed five years before, cutting a swath of damage. There were still scars in the rainforest from its passing.
Beattie sniffed. ‘Well, there’s no warnings yet. But it’ll come soon.’
She was wrong. For the next few days Nikki worked with her eye on the weather and her ear constantly tuned to the local radio. Cyclone Hilda threatened them for a little, but swerved right away from the coast and blew harmlessly out to sea. There were no other warnings.
Finally Nikki ceased worrying and her thoughts went back to Luke. Where was he? How would he spend Christmas? As she and Amy put up their little Christmas tree she thought of Luke’s family gathering in Melbourne. Would he visit them this year?
What would his reaction be if he knew that a child of his was on its way? That next year he would be a father…
A father in absentia, she reminded herself, and then winced. What if he demanded access? How would she cope seeing him every time he wanted to visit their child?
It didn’t bear thinking of. She made herself concentrate on the silver baubles she was tying to the tree.
‘It’s lovely, Mummy,’ Amy said in satisfaction, and then paused as Beattie hurried into the room. The housekeeper had been packing her suitcase ready for her afternoon flight south.
Something was wrong. The elderly housekeeper’s face was pale and she was obviously distressed.
‘I knew it,’ she said tremulously. ‘It’s a cyclone.’
‘Oh, no.’ Nikki rose, her eyes creasing in sympathy. Beattie had been filled with excitement at the thought of seeing her newest grandchild for the first time. If a cyclone was threatening between here and Brisbane then flights would be cancelled. ‘How close?’ Nikki asked. It wouldn’t have to be too close for the plane to be cancelled.
‘We’re dead centre,’ Beattie said grimly. ‘I just heard it on the radio.’
Dead centre.
Nikki stared at Beattie in dawning horror. Dead centre of a cyclone…The damage cyclones did was enormous, but Eurong had never been directly in one’s path. The destruction caused by being close to the cyclone path was bad enough.
‘But…but there’s been no warning of one imminent. There’s only been Cyclone Hilda, and it’s right out to sea, hundreds of miles north.’
‘That’s the one.’ Beattie was practically wringing her hands. ‘It’s swung inland for some reason and there’s a red alert. They say…they say it’ll hit here in three hours.’
Three hours! Instinctively Nikki looked out of the window. The palms were swaying in a rising wind, but there was nothing to suggest an impending disaster.
This was no time for panic. Amy was watching with enormous eyes, and if Nikki showed she was frightened it would communicate fast to the child.
‘OK,’ Nikki said evenly, striving for calm. ‘Let’s get the storm covers up.’
‘Does this mean you’re not going away for Christmas, Beattie?’ Amy asked, and Beattie and Nikki looked at each other. If that was all it meant they would be lucky.
‘I guess it does. I…I think I’ll take some things down to the storm cellar,’ Beattie said nervously, and Nikki nodded. They hadn’t used the storm cellar for anything but storage for years. Nikki’s father had installed it as a safety precaution and Eurong had decreed him mad. Totally unnecessary, they’d said, but now…Now, it made Nikki feel that there was at least one safe place where she could leave her daughter.
‘We need to open the windows on the lee side a little,’ Nikki said quietly, trying to remember the precautions she’d been taught. ‘If the pressure builds up…’
‘I know.’ Beattie nodded, putting her personal disappointment aside. ‘I’ll do that now.’
‘I’m going to have to go down to the hospital.’
‘I know that too,’ Beattie said grimly. She took a deep breath and looked down at Amy. ‘Come on, then, young lady. You and I have got work to do.’
‘Can we telephone Karen and her mum and ask them to share our cellar?’ Amy bubbled. The cyclone sounded like a wonderful adventure from a four-year-old’s angle.
Nikki nodded slowly. ‘It’s not a bad idea. Sandra’s house is fibro-cement with no protection. Our cellar’s big enough…’
‘I’ll telephone,’ Beattie told her. She nodded decisively at Nikki, and Nikki silently blessed her good fortune at having such a competent housekeeper.
‘OK.’ She stooped to give Amy a quick hug. ‘You promise you’ll both be in the cellar an hour before the storm’s due to hit-whatever happens?’