His voice softened. ‘Well, that’s all I rang to tell you. That I’m sure I’m right. I’ve fallen in love with you and you have that love whether you want it or not. Come what may. For ever. Don’t use your mother as a shield, Ally. Let’s work it out. Let us work it out. Everyone. You, your mother, me, the people of this town… You’re not on your own any more. You’ve come home to Tambrine Creek. You’ve come home. This is your home, Ally. Now and for ever.’
And before she could say a word-if she could have thought of a word to say, which she couldn’t-the receiver went dead.
She was standing in the middle of the darkened room by herself.
‘It’s not true,’ she whispered. ‘None of it’s true.’
He loved her. The thought was insidious in its sweetness. If she could just take that step forward…
She wasn’t alone.
Darcy was right. She wasn’t alone. Her mother was asleep on the mattress on the floor. And outside, somewhere, was Darcy.
Darcy.
Her love?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
BY THE time she fell into an uneasy doze it must have been past three, and when she woke the clock said eight-thirty.
Her mother was cooking bacon. The smell was all around the little room and Ally stared up in astonishment. Then she stared at the clock. She yelped.
‘Help!’ What had happened to her alarm? ‘I have clients booked at nine.’
‘I know,’ her mother said serenely. ‘I looked at your appointment book. It’s almost full.’ She beamed down at her daughter. ‘You’ve done really well.’
Ally blinked. This was so unlike her mother that she could hardly believe it.
‘I’ll cancel them,’ she said, and Elizabeth shook her head.
‘Why should you? You have half an hour. I’ve cooked breakfast. Eat, shower, massage. In that order. There’s no problem.’
‘But you-’
‘I have things to do, too,’ she said serenely. ‘If you’ll tell me where Jerry’s people are…’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘Why should you come with me?’ Elizabeth asked, as if such an action was ridiculous.
‘I could introduce-’
‘I’ll introduce myself. Now, one egg or two?’
Eggs. She had eggs, thanks to Darcy. Ally’s thoughts were wildly tangential and they swung now to Darcy. Darcy had brought far too much breakfast for one morning.
Darcy loved her?
‘Um…one.’
‘You know, if you intend to start work at a reasonable hour, maybe you shouldn’t stay on the telephone at all hours,’ Elizabeth said, and Ally stared. She’d heard?
‘I’m asking no questions,’ her mother said, and a tiny smile hovered around the corners of her mouth. ‘Not a question at all. But that’s why I turned off the alarm. You had to sleep some time. And…did you know, when I tried to wake you just now, you called me Darcy?’
Work started dead on nine.
This was why she’d come, Ally reminded herself as she welcomed her first client. Setting up as a massage therapist anywhere but here would have entailed a long wait while the locals came to trust her. Here there was curiosity and good-will-and eagerness to beat neighbours in saying they’d been to have a massage with ‘our Ally’.
Our Ally.
She couldn’t be our Ally, she thought, and her tangential thoughts were becoming desperate. Not if it involved medicine. Medicine had propelled her mother to suicide. How could she go back and risk that again?
‘Can you give my neck a bit of an extra rub?’ Doris Kerr was her first client for the morning. She’d come in for her own massage and was practically purring on the table. ‘Don’t bother with my legs. Legs are good but, oh, my neck…’
‘You’ve got real tension knots,’ Ally told her, kneading gently through the layers of tight muscles. ‘You said you damaged a disc?’
‘I fell over my dog,’ Doris told her. ‘Ten years back. We didn’t have a doctor here then and I was in such trouble. I lay in bed for a week before my husband finally took me to the city. Then they put me in the orthopaedic ward. I lay in traction for three weeks with all these people who’d had car crashes or diving injuries or skiing accidents. Everyone kept asking what I’d done and I’d fallen over the dog. My poodle! Talk about humiliating.’
‘I’ve seen people in real trouble with damaged discs after they sneezed too hard,’ Ally told her, and Doris sighed again and sank into the kneading process with pleasure.
‘That’s what Dr Rochester said. He’s been so comforting. For a while I travelled up to Sydney to see a physiotherapist, but now…’
‘There are many things physiotherapists can do that I can’t,’ Ally told her.
‘Yes, dear, that’s what Dr Rochester told me when I asked if I should come to you.’
‘Did he?’ Ally asked slowly, and she had to force herself not to interrupt the gentle rhythm of her kneading.
‘But he still said I should come,’ she told her. ‘He said it’d do my neck good to get the muscles warmed and mobile. I do tend to get a stiff neck. If it hurts then I don’t move it, and it makes it worse.’
‘He said I could help?’
‘Well, of course he did,’ Doris told her, as if the suggestion that he wouldn’t have was astonishing. ‘I mean, you’re two professionals, aren’t you? If you can’t support each other, who can?’ She wiggled on the table and gave another sigh of pleasure. ‘Oh, my dear, that feels so good. Now…Henry says your mother arrived on the bus last night. Is that right?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, isn’t that just perfect?’ Doris gave another happy wiggle. ‘And they’re saying you can have Elspeth’s wee house, and then…’ She stilled as if wondering whether she dared say something and then decided to go ahead anyway. ‘They’re also saying Dr Rochester is sweet on you. Already. Now, wouldn’t that be something? If you could all live happily ever after.’
More of the same.
Followed by more of the same and more of the same.
The locals knew everything.
Betty must have overheard their conversation back at the refuge last night, Ally decided, and Betty had talked. As the morning wore on, more of her clients disclosed more about what was happening until she was almost ready to scream.
And then the phone rang.
While she’d been massaging she’d turned her phone over to the answering-machine. Now it was almost one and she’d finished for the morning. She washed the oil from her hands, listened to her messages and was just about to turn the machine back on so she could find some lunch-and find her mother!-when it rang.
‘Ally.’
It was Elizabeth, and with that first word Ally knew something was dreadfully wrong.
‘Mum…’
‘You need to go to the police station.’ Her mother was almost incoherent, and without thinking Ally switched into doctor mode. How to get information from someone who was panicking.
‘Three deep breaths,’ she ordered. ‘Now.’
‘I-’
‘Breathe. Calm yourself down and then talk to me.’
There was a tiny hesitation and Ally could hear the breaths being taken. ‘Sorry.’
‘What’s happened?’
‘It’s Jerry.’
‘Jerry?’
‘Kevin stabbed him.’
Ally was already shoving her feet into her outside shoes and was reaching for her keys with her spare hand. Now she paused, shocked into stillness. ‘But Kevin’s in hospital. Jerry’s in jail.’
‘That’s just it,’ he mother wailed. ‘We’re at the refuge. Dr Rochester was here. Ally, he’s so nice. But someone just ran in from the police station next door. The policeman’s wife. She’s still here. She’s so upset. She rang the hospital and they said the doctor was here and she just ran.’