Fergus was making phone calls. Ginny found him in the office marked ‘Medical Director’, though the letters were faded and the ‘D’ looked more like a ‘C’. He was talking to someone about what had just happened.

Ginny entered the room, leaned against the wall and waited for him to finish. She felt drained of all energy. Where to go to from here?

‘I’m not sure whether we need a social worker or not,’ Fergus was saying into the phone. ‘For tonight we’ll keep her in hospital. But there’s family here.’

Family. That would be…her?

Richard was supposed to be the end, she thought. The end of family for ever. How could she keep giving?

She couldn’t.

Fergus replaced the receiver and looked at her. For a moment nothing was said. He simply…looked.

Clear grey eyes, calmly assessing. Maybe seeing more than she wanted him to see.

‘We need to talk to Richard,’ he said. ‘How sick is he?’

‘He’s really sick. We can’t tell him this.’

‘Why not?’

‘He’s dying,’ she said desperately. ‘How do you think it’ll make him feel?’

‘If you were dying, would you want to know you had a daughter?’

‘No! It’d complicate my life.’

‘But it’s part of life, and an important part,’ Fergus said gently. ‘Richard’s not dead yet. Is he mentally impaired?’

‘No.’

‘Then he has the right to be treated as alive while he is alive. He has to know.’

‘Oh, God, how can I tell him?’

‘Let me do it for you.’

She stiffened, trying to protect herself with anger. ‘I don’t need you to tell me how to treat my own brother.’

‘I’m not telling you how to treat him. I’m offering to help.’

Anger wasn’t going to work. So what was new? She paused and tried to think what to say.

Nothing came.

Helplessly she crossed to the window, staring down through the bushland to the lake beyond. Most of the buildings in this valley were built to face the lake. The lake itself was teardrop-shaped, a couple of miles across, blue and glistening in the ring of dense bushland around it.

Cradle Lake.

When she had been small, she and her family had spent every summer’s day they could manage on this lake. They’d swum, they’d built moats on the shore, they’d had fun. She had a glistening memory as a six-year-old, of swimming triumphantly from the shore to the buoy marking the start of deep water. It had been her first real swim. She remembered turning to see her father with nine-year-old Richard cheering her on. Her mother, with toddler Chris in the shallows, was clapping and laughing as well, then yelling at them to come and get their picnic tea.

It was her last good memory.

Richard had taken longer than most cystic fibrosis sufferers to get dangerously ill. He’d had bowel problems as a baby, and infection after infection during childhood, but the diagnosis hadn’t been picked up. Chris had become bad first, diagnosed soon after that day at the lake, their local doctor finally coming up with the answer. One sibling sick had meant there was a likelihood more could be. So Richard’s diagnosis had been made as well, and Ginny’s parents had been advised to have no more children.

But, of course, Toby had already been on the way. There had been no going back.

Richard was the last of her family. The end. Finished.

But…

‘This means I’ll have family again,’ she whispered to the lake.

‘You don’t want family?’

‘I’ve had family. Parents. Three brothers.’

‘And?’

‘Chris died when he was eight. Toby died when he was ten. My father disappeared. After Chris’s death, when it seemed Toby would soon follow, he simply walked out and never came back. Then after Toby’s death my mother drank herself into oblivion.’

His face didn’t change. ‘Leaving you.’

‘To what was left of my family,’ she whispered. ‘But that’s finished and now you’ll make me take on Madison.’

‘No one’s making you take on anyone.’

‘Are you kidding?’ She whirled on him, furious. ‘You’ve seen her. She’s Richard’s daughter. She even looks like us. When I saw her… She looks familiar and it’s how they all looked. My little brothers. Chris and then Toby. Do you know what sort of a childhood I had? I was six when it all started to fall apart and I’ve nursed them all since. And now… You’ll tell Richard he has a daughter and he’ll accept her-of course he’ll accept her-and of course he won’t ask me to take her on. He knows how much it’ll hurt. But he doesn’t have to ask. He’ll just look at her and it’ll be done.’

‘Maybe it’s already done,’ he said gently. ‘Maybe it was done from the time she was conceived. You just didn’t know about it until now.’

‘Have you any idea how much it hurts?’ Her voice cracked on a sob. She swallowed it and made herself continue. ‘You sit there and you have no idea…no idea at all. What you’re asking me to do.’

‘Ginny, she’s not your daughter.’ He hadn’t moved. It was like he was locked into position. ‘You can arrange foster-care or adoption for her after Richard dies, or there might be other family on Judith’s side who you can give her to.’

‘Oh, sure.’

‘You can, Ginny,’ he said softly. ‘It’s possible to walk away.’

‘How the hell would you know?’

‘I’ve watched it done. It’s possible to stay detached.’

‘Yeah, and go crazy.’

‘You need to keep things in perspective.’

‘There’s no perspective,’ she flung at him. ‘I don’t want this.’

‘So walk away now.’ He was watching her dispassionately, his voice curiously calm. ‘This is Richard’s daughter. Not yours. He may be dying but he has the right to sort things out. He has no right to include you in those plans.’

‘As if he couldn’t. As soon as he knows of her existence, then she’s part of my family. Part of my responsibility. He mustn’t… He mustn’t.’

‘You’re suggesting we don’t tell him?’ He rose, circling the desk to join her at the window.

‘I don’t know what to suggest,’ she said, and her voice was dull, bleak and accepting already that what she wanted had little to do with the way things would pan out. ‘I can’t do this. I’ve had enough.’

‘You’re tired of caring?’

‘I want out. I don’t want to love anything, anyone, ever again.’ Her voice trailed off and she lifted her hands to her face, hiding…hiding from what?

There was no place to hide. She knew it and so did Fergus.

He took her hands in his, drawing them down, gripping them with a warmth and strength that said he knew what she was going through. That he understood.

Which was an illusion. No one knew what she was going through. She didn’t understand it herself.

‘You just do what comes next,’ he said softly, drawing her in and hugging her. She felt herself be drawn. She had no strength to fight him.

She’d been fighting to be solitary for so long-to stay aloof. Richard’s death was to be the final step in her path to independence.

She didn’t need this man to hug her. She didn’t need anyone.

But she didn’t fight him. For this moment she needed him too much. Human contact. That was all it was, she thought fiercely. Warmth and strength and reassurance. It was an illusion, she knew, but for now…

For now she let herself be held. She let her body melt against his, letting him take a weight that had suddenly seemed unbearable. He was strong and firm and warm. His lips were touching her hair.

She should pull away, but she couldn’t. For now she needed this too much.

No one had held her like this. Not ever, she thought. Or maybe…maybe when she had been tiny, when she’d still been a child, when she hadn’t had the weight of the family firmly on her shoulders.

Had her parents ever held her like this? They must have, but that had been so long ago that she’d forgotten.

‘I don’t do…relationships,’ she muttered, and his hands shifted so he was holding her by the waist.

‘Good. Neither do I.’

‘You’re holding me.’

‘It’s a medical massage,’ he said, and she heard a lazy smile in his voice. ‘When all else fails-hug.’

She liked it, she decided. In times of crisis-hug?

Who was she kidding? You needed someone to be permanent to hug, and people weren’t permanent. You needed to let yourself close to find that degree of security but with that closeness came…peril.

If she lost anyone else…

‘Don’t do it,’ she whispered. ‘I’m not getting close to you, Fergus Reynard.’

‘I think you already are,’ he said, chuckling and holding her closer. ‘But I know what you mean. You needn’t worry. This is for now, because I suspect it’s what we both need. But it’s only for now. I’m here for twelve weeks and then I’m out of here.’

‘Why did you come?’

‘Maybe I knew how much I was needed,’ he told her, but she could tell by the tone in his voice that it was much more than that.

‘You’re running,’ she said, and he shook his head and put her away from him. She looked into his face and what she saw there…

This was no young medic taking a locum job to save for the next overseas jaunt, she thought. There was a recognition here…

Theirs was a shared journey, she realised bleakly. She didn’t know the details but she knew she was right, and she also knew… What he said was the truth. He could hold her as much as she needed but there was no fear of further commitment. She’d built her fences and so had he.

Two levels of razor wire around their hearts. Maybe his was impervious. She’d thought hers was, too, but out there…

Out there in the ward was a little girl called Madison, and the only way for her to survive was for Ginny’s barriers to come down.

No. There must be some other way.

‘Madison will sleep for hours,’ Fergus said softly into her hair. ‘Miriam and Tony will care for her. Oscar’s stable and there are no other patients in this place except nursing-home residents. Can I take you home to meet Richard?’