The decision made, she felt better. She stopped walking and searched in her purse for her phone.

It wasn’t there.

Damn, she could see it, her phone, sitting on the charger on the bedside table in her apartment. She’d left it there when she’d gone swimming and she’d been in too much of a rush when she’d left with Max to think about taking it.

Don’t panic. Don’t panic!

She had no phone here, but she could get to her apartment and phone from there.

She could phone Max?

Or not. What could Max do that an ambulance couldn’t?

She kept walking. She could see the glimmer of the moon over the sea. The sea was where her apartment was. Great. Two minutes’ walk and she’d be there. She’d let herself in, make herself a cup of tea, ring the ambulance and then watch the moonlit sea while she waited.

No power. She wouldn’t be able to make tea.

Oh, for heaven’s sake, she was crying again! She wasn’t a hussy-she was a total wuss.

CHAPTER TEN

MAX spent the night with his thoughts returning again and again to Maggie. Uneasy, and getting worse.

As the city’s traffic became more and more gridlocked, the hospital became quieter. Apparently people were abandoning their cars and walking, or finding accommodation where they could. Once the traffic was truly gridlocked, accidents lessened, and even when they happened ambulances couldn’t get through the blocked roads.

‘Contact your local medical centres if you need to,’ radio announcers were telling those with battery-operated radios. Suburban doctors were operating emergency clinics. The population was coping as best it could.

Tomorrow there’d be questions asked in parliament, Max thought. Heads would roll over this unprecedented mess. Only…

Only Maggie.

Dammit, Maggie.

He needed to know that she’d got home safely, but he rang her apartment block between patients, at ten and again at midnight, and got no answer. He fretted about it to Anton as they worked together on what they hoped would be their last surgical case for the night, and Anton provided an answer.

‘Most small apartment blocks don’t man their front desks at night,’ he explained patiently, as he monitored their patient’s air supply. ‘Phone in the morning when the concierge comes back on duty.’

‘There should be an after-hours emergency number.’

‘Every apartment will have its own number,’ Anton said, staying patient. ‘Maggie will be able to ring out if she needs to.’

‘I need to ring Maggie.’

‘You don’t have her cellphone number?’

‘No!’ he snapped, so harshly the nurses looked at each other and thought whoa, tread lightly here, surgeon annoyed.

He just needed to know she’d got home. The radio was reporting total gridlock. Even when he finished here he wouldn’t be able to drive and find out.

In desperation, when he finally finished in Theatre-after two in the morning-he rang John and Margaret at the farm. Woke them. Frightened them.

For nothing.

No, Maggie’s apartment number didn’t work at night but if he rang in the morning the concierge would put him through. Her cellphone number? Actually, she’d given her usual phone to John because the locals used it at need. She’d said she’d buy another for private use but, no, she hadn’t given them that number either.

Why hadn’t they asked her for it?

Why hadn’t he asked her for it?

‘So what’s the problem?’ Margaret asked sharply.

Max caught himself and said, no, it’s only that the city’s in the grip of a blackout, and he was probably worrying unnecessarily.

He left the ward and walked slowly across the quadrangle to his apartment. Thanks to the hospital generators everything seemed normal. He felt stupid.

But he also felt increasingly apprehensive, and the feeling wouldn’t go away.

Maggie.

This was not how it was supposed to be.

And as he stood there he thought… They were supposed to be together. One man and one woman and one baby.

The knowledge was suddenly so strong it was almost primeval, kicking in where any pretence at intelligence left off. Maggie and her baby weren’t here, so why was he here?

He stopped and stared southward, toward Coogee. Three miles or so as the crow flew. How long would that take him to walk?

How long would it take him to run?


The pain wasn’t too bad if she lay still.

She lay still.

The backache grew. It seemed to be coming in waves.

The apartment was dark.

She was not afraid of the dark.

She was afraid.

Okay, get sensible. Yes, the contractions were indeed contractions. Yes, they seemed to be getting stronger and closer together.

She rang the ambulance yet again.

‘There’s a massive traffic jam,’ a sympathetic operator told her. ‘I’m trying as hard as I can to get a car to you. Can someone take you to your local medical centre? Can you call a neighbour?’

‘I’ll call a neighbour,’ she agreed, sweating.

She staggered up from the settee. Went to the door, unlocked it-just in case the ambulance could get here. Looked out into the pitch-black hallway.

Tried to remember seeing any of her neighbours. Tried to figure which door she could knock on.

Thought again she was being stupid.

This was her first baby. She was hours away from delivery. Maybe a day.

No, she decided as the next contraction hit. Not a day. But hopefully hours. It was stupid to stumble about in the dark waking neighbours she didn’t know.

She groped her way back into her darkened living room and collapsed back onto the settee.

Dammit, she wasn’t going to lie here in the dark and be terrified. She wasn’t!

Max…

‘Don’t think of Max,’ she told herself between gasps. Between contractions. ‘Max has less chance of getting here than an ambulance does, so there’s no use even thinking of him. Think of your daughter instead. Do you want her to meet you sweating with fear in the dark?’

‘No!’

‘So do something about it.

She took a deep breath, which was supposed to be steadying but wasn’t. ‘This isn’t a scary time,’ she told herself, trying hard to believe it. ‘It’s looking more and more like it’s your daughter’s birthday, so put your party hat on. When the ambulance arrives I want to look brave.’

As if…

At least light some candles.

‘Okay. I think I can do that,’ she gasped, clutching at her back and trying not to cry out. ‘Maybe. If I don’t have something else happen first.’


Three miles wasn’t very long as far as marathons went, but this wasn’t a marathon, this was a sprint. Max was fit but he kept fit by working out between cases in the hospital gym. He had strength training. He didn’t run. He especially didn’t run in the dark without benefit of streetlights.

It’d be a sight easier if his heart hadn’t been hammering in his chest before he’d started. The more he ran the more it kept right on hammering.

He was being dumb, he told himself, over and over again. He was imagining problems when there weren’t any. There was no reason at all for a sane doctor to run across a darkened city, growing more fearful by the minute. But the mantra had started in his head and once started it wouldn’t go away.

Maggie, Maggie, Maggie.

He’d let her go home. Of all the stupid, criminal, irresponsible…

It wasn’t stupid, the sane part of him said. He’d assumed the electricity would come back on as it had come back on last night and the night before.

He’d never imagined this totally irrational certainty that he’d lose her.

She wasn’t his to lose, the sane portion of his brain reminded him, but the sane portion of his brain was getting smaller by the minute, replaced by raw emotion. Maggie was his woman. His heart was telling him that, with every sound of his feet hitting the pavement. And his woman was having his baby.

His? Irrational? Maybe but it didn’t matter. He knew truth when he heard it and he was running.


And in an apartment in Coogee… ‘I will not have my baby in the dark. I will not have my baby in fear. I will not have my baby lying on a rented hotel apartment settee with no beauty. Not!’


Her apartment block loomed solid and black in the night. There was a faint light coming from one of the terraces above his head, but none of the windows were lit.

Maggie hadn’t lit her candles, then?

Of course not. Maggie would be asleep. She wouldn’t thank him for barging in and waking her. Terrifying her for nothing.

He made himself slow. Made himself catch his breath. Went into the foyer. Wondered why the door into the foyer was unlocked. Then thought maybe it was attached to some electrical security system that wasn’t working. If the concierge had faced the choice of locking tenants out or letting the foyer stay unguarded overnight, that’s what he would have done.

So he could climb up the stairs to Maggie’s apartment.

Just walk up and knock?

That’s what he was intending to do. Walk up and knock. It’s three in the morning. Wake up, Maggie, I’m here.


Breathe.

Breathe.

Breathe.

Surely the books hadn’t said it hurt this much.

Breathe…

You can do this.

‘I can’t…’


He knocked on the door and the impact of the knock had the door swinging inward. What the…? She hadn’t locked it? She hadn’t even closed it properly?

The corridor he felt his way down was in complete darkness. So was the apartment through the door. Maybe stopping to fetch a torch would have been sensible.

He wasn’t feeling sensible.

He swung the door wide and called. ‘Maggie?’

Nothing.

Did he stumble round in the dark and see if he could find her? Hell, he’d scare the living daylights out of her.