When Lizzie had walked into this place a week ago she’d found it had been spartan to the point of coldness. The place had been designed for functionality rather than beauty.

It wasn’t any more, though. Lizzie looked down at the man in the wheelchair, noted his look of incredulity and thought, Whoops. There was only one thing to do here. Move straight to the offensive.

‘It was horrible,’ she told him.

‘Pardon?’

‘Your decor. It was horrible.’

He stared some more and appeared to consider what she’d said. ‘You know, if you invited me to stay in your home I wouldn’t have thought the first thing I’d say to you about it was that the decor was horrible,’ he remarked thoughtfully.

‘You might if it was awful.’

‘I mightn’t if it was rude. As it is. As you are.’

‘Don’t tell me you liked it?’

‘It mightn’t have been much,’ he said, his tone wounded, ‘but it was home.’

She cast him a suspicious look. She didn’t know him well enough yet to know whether he was joking. He stared at her, deadpan, and she still didn’t know.

‘Oh, come on. It’s not your decor. It’s some hospital administrator’s idea of decor. This is much better.’ She paused, suddenly doubtful. Maybe some people liked beige walls. ‘Isn’t it?’

And thankfully he decided to concede. ‘It is,’ he said slowly, wheeling himself forward so he can see. ‘It’s…amazing.’

It was. Relieved, Lizzie gazed about her, smugly satisfied by what she’d achieved in six short days.

‘How on earth did you get this done?’

‘Miss Morrison came in to get her flu shot,’ she said.

He stared. ‘Pardon?’

‘Miss Morrison, Birrini’s third-grade teacher.’

‘I know who Susan Morrison is.’

‘Then you’ll know she has lists.’

‘I know.’ Harry uttered a groan, obviously remembering. Susan Morrison’s lists were the bane of any doctor’s life. She believed in getting her money’s worth at each consultation. She’d save up complaints until she had a list full of her problems-and sometimes those of her students for good measure-and then book in for a short consultation and expect the doctor to solve everything in one hit. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be,’ Lizzie told him, feeling immeasurably better now that the accusation had gone out of his tone. ‘I like Sue Morrison. Old school, but nice. Anyway, she was having a whinge so I thought I’d whinge right back.’

Lizzie was feeling really strange here and the easiest thing to do was concentrate on patients. Neutral ground. Medicine. After all, that was the only thing she had in common with this man. Wasn’t it?

‘You whinged right back?’ He sounded bemused.

‘I told her how cold it was in Birrini and how much I was missing Queensland and how awful this apartment is. How…beige.’

‘I like beige.’

‘Really?’ She gave a dramatic shudder. ‘Beige is awful.’

‘Awful?’

‘There wasn’t one single picture on the wall,’ she said accusingly, and he looked around him in increasing wonder.

‘There is now.’

‘Well, of course. Miss Morrison decided right there and then that she’d fix things for me. So she marched back to her third-graders and announced the Great Queensland Painting Competition. She had each of them draw their impression of Northern Queensland.’ Lizzie paused for breath as she gazed around the apartment. It looked great, she thought as she surveyed the once beige walls plastered with posters. ‘What do you think?’ she asked. ‘Aren’t they wonderful?’

He had to agree, she thought. How could he not? The pictures were as varied as the kids who’d drawn them. There were huge yellow suns, palm trees, stick-figure surfers sweeping shorewards on crests of blue, blue waves. There were crocodiles and octopuses and crowds on beaches and fun fairs and yachts and…

And summer.

‘It warms me up just to look at them,’ she told him, deeply satisfied. ‘And, as well as that, it’s fixed another thing on Miss Morrison’s list.’

‘Yeah?’

He was starting to sound off balance, Lizzie thought. Good. He had her off balance just looking at her. It was about time the tables were turned. ‘Yeah,’ she agreed. ‘Amy Dunstan is eight years old and she’s being bullied.’

Harry frowned at that. ‘I know Amy,’ he told her. ‘Her family’s had a really tough time.’

‘I gathered that. Miss Morrison told me. It must be so dreadful to lose a child to meningitis.’

‘It happened two years ago.’ Harry had parked his chair under the table and was still staring at the posters. But he was obviously thinking of the Dunstans. ‘Scott died just before the family moved here. They came here to try and break with the past. Break with shadows.’

‘It hasn’t worked,’ Lizzie said bluntly. ‘Scott was a year older than Amy and that house is set up as a shrine to him. Still. Two years on.’

‘You’ve been there?’

‘Of course I’ve been there. Amy’s problems were on Miss Morrison’s list. I had to do something.’

‘She asked you to do a house call?’

‘No, but I just happened to be walking Phoebe past the Dunstans’ and she needed a drink of water.’

‘You just happened…Where is Phoebe?’ he asked, fascinated, but she shook her head.

‘Don’t you want to know about Amy?’

‘Yes. Yes, of course I want to know about Amy.’

‘Well.’ Lizzie beamed. She was deeply satisfied at the way things were working out here and she couldn’t quite keep the smugness from her face. ‘We-Amy’s mother and I-talked about Amy’s lack of self-esteem and the way it seems to be the cause of the bullying. Kids are cruel and they’ll always pick on someone who’s down already. That’s what Miss Morrison thinks and as Miss Morrison’s been teaching for thirty years I dare say she’s right.’

‘I dare say.’

She cast him a suspicious look. His tone was too bland. But she decided to overlook it. This once.

‘Well, she is. I’m sure. Oh, Harry, the Dunstan house is appalling. You walk in and there’s this huge picture of Scott right in the entrance hall. There are pictures of him right through the house with candles that seem to be lit all the time. It’s awful. Like a funeral parlour, only worse. Mrs Dunstan can’t talk about him without crying.’

‘I’m sorry but I don’t see…’

‘There’s not a single picture of Amy,’ she told him, and her tone was accusing.

Which was hardly fair.

‘Isn’t there?’ Harry’s smile had faded completely now. ‘I haven’t seen it-the family has never invited me in-but I can imagine. I know the family is in distress but what to do about it…’

‘I did something about it.’

‘You did?’

‘I told her she had two children,’ Lizzie said bluntly. ‘I said if she didn’t want to lose Amy as well as Scott then she needed to think about her daughter for a bit as well as her son.’

‘Just like that.’

‘It sounds easy.’ Lizzie hesitated, then shrugged and crossed to the kitchenette to fill the kettle. ‘You want some coffee?’

‘Please.’

It was easier with her back to him. She didn’t feel so self-conscious. So aware that he might be judging her.

‘I showed Mary Dunstan the figures of adolescent depression linked to suicide,’ she told him, and was aware of a deep silence behind her.

‘You told her…’

‘Someone had to.’ Lizzie turned and faced him. ‘I told her any eight-year-old living in that house would figure the only way to get love and attention was to be dead. I asked Mary if that’s what she and her husband intended Amy to believe.’

‘My God, Lizzie…’

‘I was horrible,’ Lizzie said with a faintly embarrassed laugh. ‘But someone had to be. Anyway, I talked for ages and Mary had a bit of a cry but I told her that wasn’t any use either and then I offered them a puppy.’

‘A puppy.’ He sounded stunned. ‘Not…one of Phoebe’s?’

‘Of course one of Phoebe’s.’ She was more sure of herself now. Going to the home of one of Harry’s patients and putting her oar in where she wasn’t sure she was welcome had seemed a bit…intrusive? But surely he couldn’t object to this.

‘Actually, I didn’t give the puppy to Amy straight away,’ she admitted. ‘I told her mother she was going to win it in my drawing competition. If she agreed. By the way, that’s Amy’s picture up there.’ She pointed over the sink to a vast painting of a kid on a surfboard. ‘Isn’t it good?’

‘They’re all good.’

She beamed. ‘They are, aren’t they? They’re all fantastic. So I asked Lillian if she’d do it and Lillian agreed with me straight away.’

‘Whoa.’ Harry looked like a man right out of his depth. He put up his hand to stop her. ‘Lillian?’ The anorexic teenager he’d just seen giving him cheek? ‘What’s Lillian got to do with this?’

‘Lillian is acting as our judge. Did you know, she got first prize for art last year and she won a state-wide competition? The Avis Baxter watercolour competition. I’m told it’s really prestigious. May tells me her parents wouldn’t even let her go to Melbourne to collect the award-they belittle her talent-but she’s really good.’

He nodded, bemused. ‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘I did know that. Her parents disapprove-which I have a huge feeling is one of the reasons she’s anorexic-but she’s very good.’

‘Well.’ She regarded him with satisfaction. ‘There you go, then. I brought Lillian in some paints the other day and she’s redecorating the walls in the kids’ ward. Which is keeping her mind off her neurosis nicely. But meanwhile I had a talk to Lillian about Amy’s depression and she says she feels just like that sometimes, only blacker. She’s so sympathetic. The art prize was a big thing for her, she reckons, so we’ve rigged this…’

‘You’ve rigged this?’

‘Did you know you sound very like a recording?’ she said kindly. ‘Or a parrot. No. Don’t apologise. You’ve been sick. You’re forgiven.’ She paused, giving him space to answer back-but he looked too stunned to even try.