She put a hand up to her face in a gesture of distress. Her heavy glasses were a token of her defence against the world, but they were a comfort to her. Charlotte had thought she was doing her friend a favour depriving her of them. If she had known how distressed it was making Nikki feel…
‘How exposed, you mean,’ Nikki whispered, and then shook her head angrily. She wasn’t exposed. There wasn’t the slightest reason to believe that Luke Marriott was the least bit interested in her. ‘I can wear what I like,’ Nikki muttered, looking down uneasily at the attractive dress she was wearing. Still…
Still, she would just go and change before Luke Marriott came home for dinner. After all, she had to go to her bedroom to find her contact lenses anyway…
Two minutes later she was back in the kitchen.
‘Beattie, where are the rest of my jeans?’ she asked softly. The housekeeper looked up, startled, from her cooking and turned a becoming shade of pink.
‘Oh, Nikki, dear, you startled me…’
‘Beattie, where are my jeans?’ Nikki’s voice was dangerously quiet. She stood with her hands linked behind her, staring at the elderly Beattie.
‘All of them?’ Beattie asked. She sounded flustered.
‘All of them.’
‘Well, I sent them to Charlotte, of course.’ Beattie’s expression of innocence didn’t quite come off. ‘Like she asked me to.’
‘Beattie-’
‘Now, I know you’ll think we’re interfering,’ Beattie said, paying minute attention to the pastry she was crimping, ‘but Miss Charlotte rang and said you’d bought the most lovely clothes and you wouldn’t be game to wear them if you didn’t get some encouragement.’ She flushed even redder. ‘So she told me to burn them. And I wouldn’t, of course,’ she said virtuously as she saw Nikki’s jaw drop. ‘So then she told me to pack them all up and put them on the aeroplane back down to Cairns. Said she’d look after them until you wanted them again.’
‘So…’ Nikki. stared, speechless.
‘So I did. I asked your new locum to give them to the pilot when he met you from the plane.’
‘Beattie-’
‘And Miss Charlotte said you were to yell at her and not me.’ And then Beattie smiled a cheeky smile. ‘But you can yell at me if you like. My shoulders are broad enough to take it.’ She left what she was doing, folded her floury arms and fixed her young employer with a hard stare. ‘Miss Charlotte thinks it’s time you started living again and I’m not disagreeing.’
Nikki sank on to a kitchen chair. Her anger was palpable. ‘So you take my clothes…’
‘Those things weren’t clothes,’ Beattie said harshly. ‘They were a disguise, is what Miss Charlotte reckoned, and she’s right. You’re pretty as any girl in Eurong, Nikki Russell, and you’re too darned young to be as bitter and reclusive as you’ve been.’ She sniffed defensively. ‘So we’ve taken a hand.’ She buried her hands in her pastry again. ‘And if you don’t like it you can sack me, but I’ve done no more than my Christian duty or what your mum would have done if she’d been alive.’ She sniffed again. ‘I was that fond of your mother! And I’ve a duty to her too-’
The telephone broke across her words. It was just as well, Nikki thought grimly. In another minute Beattie would be in tears. Flashing a look of frustrated fury at her housekeeper, she crossed to the bench to answer it. It was the last person she wanted to speak to. Luke Marriott…
‘OK, I said I wouldn’t disturb you.’ From the other end of the line his voice was clipped and efficient. ‘But I’ve a child here I’m unhappy about. Karen Mears.’
Karen…Nikki’s anger was placed aside. ‘What is it?’ she asked quietly.
‘It’s a greenstick fracture of her arm. But am I right in worrying?’
Nikki sighed. ‘Yeah,’ she said grimly. ‘We’ll have to get her to hospital. I’ll be right there.’
‘No.’ The voice was firm and authoritative. ‘I just wanted my suspicions confirmed. I can deal with it.’
‘But Mrs Mears will never let you-’
‘She’ll let me.’
‘Luke, Mrs Mears has problems…’
‘None that justifies this. Her problems can wait. For now, all we need to do is make sure Karen’s protected. Then we act.’
‘But-’
‘Nikki, I don’t need you. Go back to your study. I’ll see you tonight.’ The line went dead. Nikki was left holding the useless telephone. She stared down. Karen…
At least this showed that Luke Marriott was thinking as he worked. Most children presenting with a greenstick fracture would not excite attention. Karen, though…
Karen was eight years old-the eldest of a family of four children. Her father had walked out a year ago, and Nikki was sure Mrs Mears wasn’t coping. Karen seemed to be bearing the brunt of it. She’d been a quiet child to begin with but now she was withdrawn to the point where Nikki worried. She had grown thinner, her pinched little face pale and haunted, with her two huge hazel eyes a mirror of misery. The child had one cold after another, but the only time Nikki saw her was during routine school check-ups. The teacher had drawn Nikki aside and confided her worries.
‘She’s often bruised,’ the young teacher had whispered. ‘And she “forgets” her lunch most days. I’m sure she’s not getting enough to eat.’
Nikki had gone over the little girl thoroughly. There were bruises over the child’s body-enough to make her approach Mrs Mears.
‘She’s just clumsy,’ Sandra Mears had said defensively. ‘She’s always knocking into things.’
Nikki had watched the young woman’s hands tremble as she talked. Sandra Mears was younger than Nikki-much younger. To have to cope with the burden she was facing…
‘Sandra, can I organise you some help?’ Nikki had said gently. ‘I can get council child care one day a week-some time to give you a break. The four children must make you tired.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ Sandra had snapped. ‘I don’t want your charity.’
‘Sandra, it’s not charity-’
‘Well, I don’t want it,’ the girl had repeated, rising. ‘Now butt out of what’s not your business.’
‘Karen’s health is my business.’
There’s nothing wrong with Karen and if she says there is then she’s a liar.’ The girl had thinned her lips in a gesture of defiance, but still the lips had trembled. ‘Now let me get Karen and I’ll go home.’
And Nikki had been able to go no further. She’d talked to Karen’s teacher again and then, reluctantly, had contacted the state’s children’s protection services. The social worker had travelled from Cairns but, like Nikki, she had hit a blank wall.
‘There’s not a lot I can do,’ she’d told Nikki unhappily. ‘I’m sure Karen’s taking the brunt of her mother’s unhappiness. Sandra seems deeply depressed, but neither will admit there’s a problem.’
At what point should the authorities step in and remove children from a parent’s care? Nikki didn’t know. Unhappily she stared now at the telephone and accepted that the point might be now.
It took all her self-control not to go back to the hospital. ‘I don’t need you,’ Luke Marriott had said. If he could get Sandra to agree to the little girl’s going to hospital…
Well, he had as much chance as she did, if not better, Nikki thought bitterly. An autocratic male might succeed where she had failed so dismally. Maybe even egocentric surgeons had their uses! With this cheerless thought she buried her head again in her books, the hated contact lenses in place. If only she could concentrate!
Somehow Nikki managed to do some useful study. She left her books when Beattie called her for dinner, once more uneasily conscious of her new appearance. Her dress felt odd around her bare legs-like a forgotten memory. She wished she could go back to work. A white coat now would be comforting.