‘Hell, you’ve done enough.’

‘No.’ Tess shook her head. ‘I haven’t done nearly enough.’ She clasped her hands with the same restfulness he’d seen the night before on the ambulance trip to the fire, and her face grew earnest.

‘Mike, the more I see, the more I know this is my sort of medicine,’ she said seriously. ‘In the States, medicine’s so specialised. Even if I choose to do family medicine, I won’t get to see anything like I saw this morning. I won’t get to see surgery or gynaecology or trauma. But here I see so much. In one short morning I’ve seen it all.’

‘It can be pretty mind-deadening,’ he told her flatly. ‘And it can be frightening. And sometimes it can be both. You’re coping with coughs and colds and people’s personal problems and life-threatening trauma all in the same day…’

She bit her lip and thought this through, and when she nodded he knew she was sure. ‘I know. I know it can be dreadful and I know it can be dreary,’ she said finally. ‘But this is what I want. Probation or not, I want to work here, Mike. Regardless of Grandpa. This is where I want to be.’

‘Tessa…’ He stared at her, troubled. He didn’t know the first thing about this woman. She seemed so sure, but he wasn’t sure at all. All he did know of this woman scared him stupid.

‘I’m rushing you,’ she said softly, standing up again. ‘Finish your breakfast, have another cup of coffee and think about it. You’re on call for the hospital for the next couple of hours. That’s another reason I’m waking you now. I’ve been invited to a football match this afternoon, and before that I’m off to do an obstetrician’s house call.’

‘An obstetrician’s…’

‘To Doris the pig,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Doris should be up to receiving visitors by now. I’m taking the Polaroid to get baby snaps for Grandpa. I’ll pass on your regards, shall I?’

‘Tess…’

‘Of course I shall,’ she said warmly. ‘After your help in delivering all those babies, it’d surprise me if Doris hasn’t named one of her sons Mike.’

She left him to his breakfast, and she left him feeling as stunned as he’d ever felt in his life before.


The day passed in a dream.

For the first time in Mike couldn’t remember how long, he had little to do. He checked Tessa’s medical records and found nothing to complain of. She’d been thorough and competent and careful, and there was nothing that he wouldn’t have done himself. Baffled, he took Strop for a stroll down to the pharmacy to countersign Tessa’s prescriptions.

‘Your new partner’s a damned fine girl,’ Ralph, the town’s pharmacist, told him. ‘Our Wendy went in this morning all stirred up because her periods are irregular. She’s getting ’em every two months and she jumped at the chance of seeing a lady doctor.

‘Well, she’s come home happy as a lark. Dr Westcott told her she’d have to be the luckiest fourteen-year-old girl in the district to get a period only every two months. It’s what her mother’s been telling her over and over, but do you think Wendy’d listen? But your Dr Westcott did the trick.’

The pharmacist sighed and dug his hands deep into the pockets of his white coat. ‘A woman doctor,’ he said in satisfaction. ‘That’s what this place needs. Plus…’ He grinned. ‘I can read her handwriting. A woman doctor with legible handwriting. Make her sign on the dotted line this minute.’

Yeah, right…

Mike came out of the pharmacy still troubled by a sense of unreality. This wasn’t happening.

There were the sound of car hooters from down by the river and he glanced at his watch. It was mid-afternoon. The local football game would be in full swing.

Football… ‘I’ve been invited to a football match,’ Tess had said.

He paused in indecision. He had his mobile phone on his belt. The locals played rough and there were always one or two minor injuries, so any minute now the phone would buzz into life.

He didn’t want to go back to the surgery.

‘I’ve been invited to a football match…’

‘What do you reckon, Strop? Do you feel like a football match?’

So Mike strolled the two blocks to the football field, telling himself all the time it was just to save the players the trouble of coming to the surgery. Not that he believed it for a minute.

The football competition here was a low-key, Australian Rules game. The ground had been marked out on the river flat, which meant whenever the river rose the games had to be cancelled. Four white posts were stuck in at each end of a roughly painted oval, and a players’ tent had been erected for each team. There was also a beer and pie tent. That was it. As a stadium it left a bit to be desired, but what the locals lacked in facilities they made up for in enthusiasm.

There were cars parked all around the playing field. Saturday afternoon football here was a town ritual. The women watched from the cars, with Thermos flasks and picnic baskets wedged between them on the front seats. Many had travelled in from outlying farms, and this was their social contact for the week. The only way anyone knew they were watching football was when a goal was scored. Then the hooters blared out from every second car in the place.

The men were made of sterner stuff, though, than to stay in the cars. They didn’t need the warmth-they left that to the women. Bellanor’s male population spent the game clustered around the beer tent-a hundred or so males spread no further than carting distance for the next round.

The rest of the boundary was left to the kids and the teenagers.

First off, Mike released Strop from his lead. From past experience, Strop would either spend the match hauling Mike’s arm off, trying to reach the pie tent, or he’d spend the match staring soulfully at pie tent customers, so as far as Mike could figure there was no choice. ‘Don’t eat too much,’ he told Strop. ‘Any more than one pie and you’re out of the car for a week.’

Strop gave his tail a majestic wave and departed at a waddle.

Strop-less, Mike made his way slowly around the ground toward the training tents. This was where he’d be needed, he told himself, trying hard not to keep a weather eye out for Tess.

But somehow he found her. Tess was right in the middle of a huddle of teenagers. And what she was wearing… It was just plain extraordinary.

Or maybe it wasn’t plain at all. Tess wore bright purple leggings, a brilliant yellow jacket and a purple cap with a yellow pompom. Oh, and purple Doc Martens on her feet for good measure.

He blinked. The colours of the teams on the ground were red and black stripes and black and white stripes respectively so, in this sea of red and black and white, Tess stood out like a sore thumb.

She was sublimely oblivious. Tessa was perched on the bonnet of Alf Sarret’s FJ Holden. Alf was a nineteen-year-old car fanatic who polished his car twice a day and wouldn’t let anyone look sideways at it much less sit on it, but Tessa was definitely sitting on it and she was talking and laughing as if she was nineteen years old and had known these kids all her life.

She saw him from ten yards away and a brilliant purple arm shot upwards in a wave.

‘Mike. Come over here. Isn’t this the craziest game? The kids have been teaching me the rules-or rather trying to teach me the rules. I think you need to be a third-generation Australian to understand them. Why aren’t you wearing team colours? And who are we barracking for?’

‘Who are we…?’

‘The kids say I need to choose, and I need to choose now,’ she said. ‘Apparently I can’t stay in this town without swearing allegiance to a Bellanor football club. The only trouble is-do I swear allegiance to Bellanor South Football Club or Bellanor North Football Club?’ She looked around at her crowd of bemused teenagers. ‘The camp here appears to be evenly divided,’ she said. ‘And I know Grandpa hates football. So I figure…if you and I intend to be partners then I’d better barrack for who you barrack for.’ She grinned. ‘The kids say otherwise we’ll fight.’

If you and I intend to be partners…

He thought fleetingly of what he’d always imagined a partner might be. He’d thought of a sober, conscientious middle-aged doctor with whom he could share the load. Not this…this…this pompommed purple and yellow apparition!

‘Jancourt,’ he said faintly. It was all he could think of to say, and the word was met by a howl of derision from the teenagers.

‘Yeah?’ Tessa wasn’t put off by the teenagers’ reaction. Her eyes rested on Mike’s face and she twinkled down at him. She dug her hands deep into the pockets of her extraordinary yellow jacket and nodded. ‘OK. If you say so, Mike, then I’ll barrack for Jancourt. Tell me about our team.’

‘But Jancourt’s hopeless,’ Alf interrupted. He had nobly allowed Tess to sit on his car and was now acting as if he was in charge of her. ‘Don’t do it, Doc. Jancourt’s the lousiest team. They lose every week.’

‘Jancourt’s more a name than a place,’ Mike agreed. ‘It’s all they can do to scratch eighteen men. In fact, sometimes they play with up to half a dozen men short, and their back line has an average age of about sixty.’

‘It sounds just my sort of team,’ Tessa said with aplomb, and Mike grinned.

‘It is,’ he told her. ‘If you barrack for North or South Bellanor, then every Monday morning you’ll be looked at by half the population as if it’s all your fault that they’re feeling ill. If you barrack for Jancourt…well, every Monday morning all you’ll get is sympathy.’

‘Very wise.’ Tess seemed perfectly satisfied with the logic. ‘And what are our colours?’

‘Sorry, Tessa. Not purple and yellow.’

‘Rats. These are the colours of my very favourite football team at home. The Vikings.’

‘They’re a bit loud,’ Mike said faintly, and Tessa’s smile widened.

‘Loud! You want loud? The true Vikings uniform has a hat with horns! Or I could be a fan of the Green Bay Packers. My mom follows the Green Bay Packers and she gets to wear cheese on her head. This is sedate in comparison.’