‘Ginny, this is a-’

‘There’s no need to swear,’ she broke in. ‘I know exactly what it is.’

His hand reached out and took hers. It was a strong grasp, warm and reassuring. It was his bedside manner, she thought, and she was suddenly angry. She might as well be angry as anything else, she thought, and tried to haul her hand away.

He didn’t release it.

‘I’m fine,’ she said unnecessarily, but still he didn’t release it.

‘You’re not fine,’ he said softly. ‘You were sick back there.’

‘Reaction.’

‘Of course it was reaction. How long have you been with Richard?’

‘This time?’

‘This time,’ he said, and his face grew a little grim, hearing the years of commitment behind those two words.

‘Since he came out of hospital. They wanted to move him into a hospice but it was better that he came back here.’

‘Better for who?’

‘I’ve learned the hard way,’ she said softly, ‘that it’s easier to do what’s asked rather than live with regrets afterwards.’

‘So it’s as hard as I think it is, coming back here?’

Her eyes flew to his. With shock. He knew.

‘I…’

‘Did your brothers die here?’ he asked. ‘And your mother? I’m thinking you’d never want to be back here.’

Silence.

‘You were here for them?’

More silence.

‘And Richard? Was Richard there when the rest of your family died? Did you have any support?’

‘Richard’s been ill,’ she said defensively, and she knew by the look on his face that he understood the story behind that, too. Or part of it. Richard hadn’t wanted to spend his limited life caring for dying siblings or distraught parents. He’d turned off at an early age, making every excuse to be away from home.

Ginny didn’t blame him. He had been ill and young, and the fact that she’d been given no choice didn’t mean she had to resent Richard.

‘Let’s think of a plan here,’ Fergus said, and she managed to haul her hand from his and glare.

‘There’s no plan.’

‘There has to be,’ he said. ‘I’ll come back after evening clinic and see what Richard has decided to do.’

‘Richard won’t decide to do anything.’

‘He must.’

‘You can’t put the responsibility for-’

‘For his daughter on him?’ All of a sudden Fergus sounded grim, sympathy fading. ‘Yes, I can. But it’s not me doing it. Like it or not, this little one is his daughter and, no matter how sick he is, he needs to face that. Sure he’s shocked…’

‘Fergus, this afternoon he tried to kill himself.’

‘Did he?’ He looked down at her, and she could no longer read his face. ‘You know, even a dying man can read a fuel gauge, Ginny.’

She gasped. ‘What are you saying? He wouldn’t have staged it. What possible reason-?’

‘I suspect he’s wanting more help than he thinks you’re prepared to give.’

She didn’t understand. ‘He knows I’m prepared to give whatever’s needed. He refused to go to a hospice and he asked me to be here for him. I said I would and I will.’

‘Which fits with my theory,’ Fergus said evenly. ‘Why go to all this trouble to come back here if just to kill himself? If he’d really wanted to die he could have killed himself back in the city. Why come here?’

‘I don’t have a clue. But it’s taken me so much work to get this place back into habitable state. To organise equipment here…’

‘That’s what I mean. Ginny, what would you have done just now if I hadn’t been here?’

‘Exactly the same as if you had. Pulled him out. Got him back to bed. Been sick.’

‘And not left him alone again,’ he said gently. ‘Tomorrow…you’re not going to leave him for more than a few minutes, are you?’

‘I… How can I?’

‘Which means he’s got what he needs. He’s asked you to come back here and you’ve come. This afternoon you were away for several hours and I suspect he hated it and it made him fearful. Now he’s fixed it so that you can’t leave him. It’s called emotional blackmail, Ginny, and you need to see it for what it is. We need to organise you some help.’

She stared at him, incredulous. ‘I don’t need help.’

‘You do,’ he said, and smiled.

Which made her insides twist. Why did his smile affect her like this? she wondered wildly. She shouldn’t be emotional. She mustn’t be. She’d been through too much in the past to fall to bits now.

‘I can cope,’ she muttered.

‘Sure you can. But you needn’t.’ He glanced at his watch and grimaced. ‘I have patients waiting. I need to go. But expect me back at eight tonight.’

‘I don’t want you back.’

‘Sure you do,’ he said, and grinned. ‘You and your brother both need me and, like Batman, I always turn up when I’m needed. When the world needs saving.’

‘Wearing your jocks on the outside?’ she managed, bewildered, and he smiled.

‘That’s better,’ he told her. ‘Much better.’ Then, before she could guess what he was about to do, he lifted his palm to her cheek. His hand rested against her face-just for a moment. It was a gesture of warmth and strength and solidarity. It was a gesture that said she wasn’t alone.

She didn’t need such a gesture. She didn’t.

She backed away from him, and he let her go.

But then, as his car drove out of the driveway, as he headed off back to his medicine, back to his hospital, back to his outside world, her hand came up to retrace the path of his fingers.

There was still warmth there.

She didn’t need help.

But she stood and held her hand against her face for a very long time.


Richard slept. He woke briefly to eat the dinner Ginny prepared but he said little.

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ he said when Ginny raised the matter of the letter, and when he saw she intended to push he simply turned back over on his pillows and slept some more.

How could you hit a dying man? She couldn’t. But the flare of anger behind her panic refused to disappear completely.

It was all very well for him, cocooned in his pillows, knowing he was leaving, accepting that any problems were hers and not his.

Emotional blackmail? Maybe.

She washed up, went outside and stared down at the lake. The sun set late here. It was still a tangerine ball behind low-lying clouds on the horizon.

It was an hour before Fergus was due back.

If she left and Richard woke up…

She walked across to his bed and stared down at him. Fergus’s words came back to her. Even a dying man can read a fuel gauge.

He wasn’t dying this week. He’d survived petrol fumes and fear without his oxygen.

‘You’re alive until you’re dead,’ she said softly, not knowing whether he could hear her or not but not really caring. ‘Richard, don’t do this to me.’

Silence.

Of course there was silence.

What to do?

There was no television in this place. No radio. It was all very well staring out over the lake until you die, she thought bleakly but she wasn’t dying.

She actually felt ever so slightly more alive at the moment than she’d felt for a while.

Was that something to do with a pair of caring grey eyes and the touch of fingers against her face?

Oh, yeah, let’s fall in love with the doctor, shall we? she said to herself, mocking. She’d do no such thing.

She very carefully kept herself free of relationships and Fergus was no exception. This feeling she had was nonsense.

She should sit and watch the sunset.

She stared at the sunset for three or four minutes. It was a very nice sunset.

Enough.

She turned back to the bed, to her sleeping brother.

‘I’m going over to Oscar’s to check his lambs and make sure his dogs have been fed,’ she told his non-responsive form. ‘I’ll be back in three-quarters of an hour. Don’t die while I’m away.’ She bit her lip and then added, ‘And if you do, it’s not my fault.’

CHAPTER FIVE

OSCAR should never have been permitted to farm. She should never have agreed to let him use their land to graze his cattle. She knew that as she trudged back over the paddocks. It was yet another burden on her heart, but at least the walk over the hills got a bit of air into her lungs and gave her a chance to take a little time out from the impossibility of what lay ahead.

And at first it seemed things were OK. Ginny checked the house paddock where she’d left her lamb who’d been stuck in the cattle grid. Everything there was great. The sheep there were surrounding the trough, as if not brave enough to leave it in case it drained again. Her rescued lamb was suckling from his resigned mother, his tiny tail wagging with the ferocious intensity of an avid eater.

One happy ending. Great.

She walked back behind the house, up to the paddock where Oscar kept his lambing ewes. She’d been there earlier that afternoon and had found six sad mounds of disintegrating wool, stories of lambing gone wrong.

There were ewes and lambs everywhere here. Lambing was almost at an end. She ran her eyes over the flock. Searching for trouble.

And, of course, she found it. There was one ewe down.

Why had she looked for trouble? she demanded of herself. Oscar had left his flock to their fate, letting nature take its course. So should she.

She couldn’t. She walked over and knelt by the ewe. The animal had gone past straining, lying on her side and panting, gazing ahead with eyes that were starting to dull with pain.

‘I’m not an obstetrician,’ she told the sheep, but she checked what was happening and winced. ‘Ouch.’

She couldn’t leave her. A bucket of hot soapy water might help Very soapy water. And a bit of luck…

She rose and Fergus was standing by the paddock gate, watching her.

‘Medical emergency,’ she said briefly, and walked across to meet him. He held the gate open for her and she passed him, aware that she smelt like sheep again and he didn’t. Aware that he was six inches taller than her. Aware that he had great eyes…