‘Yeah. This side of the river can act almost as a safety zone by itself-it’s been really well cleared. But if the fire turns firestorm…’

‘Firestorm?’

‘That’s what frightens us,’ he told her. ‘We can cope with a fire that comes at us fast but a firestorm is something else. If it’s burning so fast it starts sucking oxygen before it, then it creates its own energy. It becomes a vortex, consuming all. We’ll move medical supplies down to the beach and essentials to protect a crowd. If the fire looks like escalating then everyone goes there. We’ll evacuate the hospital-everyone-and we hope like hell.’

‘Won’t they send back-up from the mainland?’ Rachel asked in a small voice, and he frowned. She sounded scared. He hadn’t meant to scare her-but maybe he was a bit scared himself.

‘I’ve been lying in bed, listening to the radio reports,’ he told her. ‘With this north wind after days of such heat, half the state’s threatened. Every fire service is looking after its own, and the state troops are needed for the cities where most lives are at risk. So we’re on our own.’

And despite the dangers the town was facing today-despite the uncertainty-he was suddenly distracted.

We’re on our own.

The words jabbed deep.

He was on his own, he thought drearily as he sat on the other side of the table and ate cereal as she ate her toast. She was only feet away from him but she was so distant. So lovely.

She was married. And he had a fire to think about. Patients. Medicine. The future…

Right.

They ate on in silence, each deep in thought. And neither willing to share.


Toby arrived before they finished eating, hiking into the kitchen in his Bob-the-Builder pyjamas and blessedly breaking a tension that was well nigh unbearable.

‘Hi,’ he said.

‘Hi, yourself.’ Hugo smiled at his young son, grateful to have someone break a silence that was becoming way too difficult. Impossible. ‘Breakfast?’

Toby scorned to answer such a dumb question, but his small face lit at the sight of Rachel and he launched himself onto her knees. She hugged him round the middle and he beamed.

‘Can I have my toast here, Dad?’

‘Why not?’ Toast on Rachel’s knees. If Hugo could…

No! He needed a cold shower-and he’d just had a cold shower.

He rose and made toast and handed it to his son without saying a word, while Rachel and Toby chatted like old friends.

‘I need to go,’ he said, more to himself than anyone else. ‘Myra will be here soon.’

‘Do you want me at the hospital or down at the beach?’ Rachel asked, balancing her coffee around Toby’s breakfast.

‘Can you do standard clinic?’

She winced at that. ‘Yeah, right. As if anyone’s going to check in with coughs and colds today.’

‘Someone needs to be there.’

She looked at him for a long moment, weighing what he’d just said. She was trying to decide whether to challenge him-whether to bring to the surface the real issue here, which was that he needed room in his head. She was infringing on that, just by being. She knew it. He needed to work alone.

‘You know where to find me if you need me,’ she said at last. ‘Don’t hesitate.’

‘I won’t.’

‘Is the fire going to burn the town down?’ Toby was sitting more firmly on Rachel’s lap now, regarding his father with huge eyes. He’d claimed Rachel as his own, but he still needed his daddy.

‘The fire won’t burn the town,’ Hugo said, and Rachel put her arms around Toby and hugged him again.

‘I think today you should stay home with Myra or with me,’ she told him. ‘And I’m guessing Myra might want to stay on her own farm. Maybe we could pack a suitcase with all the most important things you and Daddy have. Hugo, give me a list and, Toby, you can make a list, too. Then if it gets really smoky we can take the suitcase down to the beach and we won’t have to worry about the smoke making everything smell.’

‘Will we take the dogs, too?’

‘Of course we’ll take the dogs.’ She looked down at the two dogs who were slumped in soggy and sandy happiness over her feet. ‘How could we let them get smoky?’ She smiled up at Hugo. ‘Off you go, then, Dr McInnes. Make a list and leave it for us, then you go and save the world and Toby and I will save Penelope and Digger and Toby’s teddy-bear and your photo albums and whatever else we can find that’s worth saving.’

‘Right.’

Whatever was worth saving? Hugo made a list, which was really-stupidly-short, then made his way to the hospital. And all he could think of was…

Save me.


Christine arrived at eight-thirty to collect Toby for school and was annoyed to find he wasn’t coming. ‘He’s staying with me for the morning,’ Rachel told her, and Christine gave her a look that was meant to turn her to stone and huffed to the hospital to find Hugo.

‘I went to collect the kid-’

‘Toby,’ Hugo said mildly. He was packing equipment into the back of his car. He needed a full operating suite. On this day he couldn’t depend on any one place to stay safe, but he could always run his car into the shallows and operate from there. If he had to. ‘The kid’s name is Toby.’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ Christine snapped. ‘I know what his name is. Hugo, what’s going on?’

‘Rachel’s offered to take care of Toby. Myra wants to stay home today-understandably. Her farm’s under threat as well as the rest of the town. Toby’s nervous about going to school and Rachel’s offered to care for him.’

‘He’ll be safe at school.’

Christine wasn’t offering to care for Toby herself, Hugo noticed. He only had half his mind on what she was saying. The rest of his thoughts were on the contents of the cooler he was packing into his car. Did it contain every drug he could need? Had he forgotten anything important?

‘So why isn’t he going to school?’ Christine’s anger was palpable and he made himself concentrate.

‘The school’s happy for every child with parents available to care for them to stay home.’

‘Rachel’s not a parent.’

Hugo paused. He straightened and looked at Christine, really seeing her. She was brittle this morning. Tight.

‘No. She’s not.’ He met her gaze full on.

‘There’s something between you and Rachel,’ Christine snapped, and Hugo shook his head.

‘No.’

‘But you want there to be something.’

‘She’s married.’

‘You still want there to be.’

There was only one answer to that. ‘Yes,’ he said gently. He paused but the thing had to be said. ‘Christine, what’s between us… It’s happened so gradually that I’ve hardly noticed but it’s there…the expectation that we’d start a relationship.’

‘We have started a relationship.’

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘Christine, what’s between us is no more a basis for a relationship than what was between Beth and I. I’ve made a mistake. Rachel… Well, it’s true she’s married and there’s no future for us but it’s made me see that you and I can never work.’

‘Because you’ll find someone like Rachel.’

‘No.’ He closed his eyes. ‘I can’t find anyone like Rachel. But even knowing there’s someone like her in the world…it makes a difference.’

‘So I’ve been hanging around in this one-horse dump for nothing.’

‘I thought you were here for your art.’

There was a long silence. Then… ‘The fire will make great pictures,’ she admitted. ‘And the publicity…it’ll give me a market.’

‘There you go, then.’ He hesitated but it might as well be said. ‘Be honest, Chris. That’s all that’s ever mattered to you-and to Beth. The art. Things. Not people.’

Silence. She half turned, ready to leave angry, but he held her with his eyes. And continued to hold.

Finally she smiled, a crooked little smile that was half mocking, half furious. ‘Damn you, you know us too well. Me and Beth…’

‘You love your art. People are second.’

‘We could have worked out a great relationship.’

‘Yeah. I practise medicine while I pay for your paints.’

She shrugged but the crooked smile stayed. ‘It was worth a try.’

He shook his head. ‘No. It wasn’t. Christine, it’s time I did things a bit differently. I think it’s even time I moved on from brocade. Meanwhile, I have a fire-ravaged community to care for.’

She looked at him for a long moment and then shrugged again. A shrug of release. ‘Fine. I have things to paint. But you know she’ll never have you. She’s married to some wealthy medical specialist in town. Why could she possibly be interested in you?’

Why indeed?

No reason at all.

Christine turned on her heel and walked away and Hugo stared after her and thought, I’ve just tossed in a future because of a slip of a doctor who has nothing to do with me. Nothing.

And everything.


The fire threatened for most of the morning, but that was all it did. Threaten. Reports coming into the town were that the line created by backburning was holding. The temperature soared but the wind seemed to rise to a certain velocity and stay. Holding.

Rachel worked through the myriad minor ailments presenting at the clinic. There were so many she had to concede that Hugo had been right in asking her to take over. Asthmatics were having appalling trouble with the smoke, and people who’d never had asthma in their lives had it now. The town’s older residents, their capacity to retain body equilibrium with sweating compromised with age, were in real trouble. Rachel admitted two elderly men to hospital, and Don rang through wanting advice for another in the nursing home.

‘The ash in the air is messing with our air-conditioning,’ he told her. ‘The oldies are suffering enough already and we need to have them fit to evacuate.’

‘You’re planning on evacuating?’

‘Hugo’s down on the beach, setting up a full medical centre in case,’ Don told her. ‘The real problems will be when this wind changes. It’ll strengthen before any change and that’s what Hugo’s most worried about. It’s what we’re all worried about.’