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CHAPTER ONE

DR RACHEL TILDING enjoyed treating kids. If they couldn’t speak it was often up to Rachel to figure out what was wrong, but in general kids’ needs were uncomplicated. They didn’t intrude on her personal space. If all Rachel’s patients were kids—without parents—she might well be looking at a different career path.

As it was, her aim was to be a radiologist, interpreting results from state-of-the-art equipment and having little to do with patients at all. But the terms of her scholarship specified she had to spend her first two years after internship as a family doctor in Shallow Bay. She’d geared herself to face it.

What she hadn’t prepared herself for was living next to a house full of kids. Their noise was bad enough, plus the yips of excitement from their dog. Then, a mere two hours after she’d moved in, a ball smashed through her window, almost making her drop the carton of glassware she’d been unpacking. The ball landed in a spray of shattered glass in the kitchen sink.

Count to ten, she told herself. These are kids. Don’t yell.

She’d been telling herself that since she’d arrived. These were her new neighbours. It wasn’t their fault that she valued privacy above all else. Someone would call them in for dinner soon. They’d go to bed and she’d have the silence she craved.

But kids as such close neighbours…

Shallow Bay’s nurse-manager had sent her pictures of this little house, a pretty-as-a-picture cottage surrounded by bushland. A five-minute walk took her up to the Shallow Bay Hospital, and five minutes in the other direction took her down to the beach.

What the pictures hadn’t shown, however, was that it was one of three cottages, huddled together in the dip before the bay. Hers was the smallest. The largest was the middle one and that seemed to be filled with boys.

She wasn’t sure how many yet. The noise they were making could have denoted a small army. She’d been trying to figure how she could intervene without turning Shallow Bay’s new doctor into Dragon Lady.

Now she had no choice. A cricket ball was sitting in her kitchen sink, surrounded by a spray of glass.

But before she could react, a shock of curly red hair appeared at the shattered window. Underneath the hair were two huge green eyes, fear-filled. The window was high for a child, so he’d obviously hoisted himself up to see where his ball had landed.

The head disappeared and a hand appeared in its place. And groped into the sink. Through shattered glass.

‘No!’ She’d been standing behind packing boxes on the far side of the table. She launched herself across the kitchen, but the groping hand reached the ball before she did.

There was a yelp of pain and then hand and ball disappeared.

She hauled the back door open, raced down the steps and cut the child off before he could back away. He’d lurched back from the window and was staggering.

‘Don’t move!’ Her order contained all the authority of a doctor who’d spent her two years of internship working in emergency medicine. The child froze, staring down at his hand in horror.

Their little dog, a black and white terrier—a ball of pseudo-aggression—came tearing across the lawn and barked hysterically, as if it was Rachel who was the intruder on her own lawn.

It had…three legs?

‘Tuffy! Tuffy, back. He won’t bite. Please… Kit’s just getting our ball.’ The voice from the far side of the hedge sounded terrified. The oldest child?

They were all redheads. The two on the far side of the hedge looked about ten and six. The child under her window was maybe eight.

They all had huge green eyes. Pale skin with freckles. They all looked rigid with fear.

Maybe her voice had done that to them. Even the little dog was backing away.

Was she so scary?

Rachel had little to do with kids except as patients, but the middle child was now definitely a patient. He was still clutching the ball, but he was holding it out in front of him. A line of crimson was dripping onto the garden bed.

‘Don’t move,’ she said again, because the child was looking in panic across to his brothers—they had to be brothers—and she knew his instinct was to run. ‘I’m not angry.’ Okay, maybe she was, but this wasn’t the time to admit it. There’d be an adult somewhere, responsible for leaving this group unsupervised. They deserved a piece of her mind, not this child. One thing Rachel was very careful about—a lesson learned from the long years of an unjust childhood—was that fairness was everything.

‘You’ve cut your hand on the glass,’ she told the little boy as she reached him. She took his arm and raised it, applying pressure around the wrist. ‘You need to stay still.’

The eyes that looked up at her were huge. He looked terrified. There’d be pain. With this much blood, it had to be deep. The blood wasn’t pumping—the radial artery must surely be intact—but the gash from multiple glass shards tentacled out from wrist to palm. In a child, this amount of bleeding could well lead to collapse.

‘I’m a doctor,’ she told him, gentling her voice. ‘The glass has cut your hand, but we can fix it. Right now, though, it’s looking messy, so we need to stop it bleeding. You’ll feel better if you don’t look at it until we’ve cleaned it up. Look at your brothers, or look at the hole in my window. That’s quite a hole.’

She was manoeuvring his hand upward, edging her body to block his gaze. The ball fell to the ground as she lifted his hand high, curling his palm in slightly so the hand created its own pressure on the pierced palm. There could well be shards of glass in there but now wasn’t the time to remove them. She needed a surgery, equipment, help.

‘Can you run inside and get your mum or dad?’ she called to the two boys on the far side of the hedge. ‘Ask them to bring out a towel. Run!

‘Tell me your name,’ she asked the little boy.

She got a blank look in response. Fear.

‘He’s Christopher,’ the elder of the pair behind the hedge called. ‘But we call him Kit. Are you really a doctor?’

‘I am. Could you fetch your parents please? Now! Kit needs your help.’

‘We don’t have parents. Just a stepfather.’

Just a stepfather.

Why did that make her freeze?

The wave of nausea that swept through her was as vicious as it was dumb. Her past was just that—past—and it had no place here, now. Somehow, she managed to fight back the bile rising in her throat, to haul herself together, to become the responsible person these boys needed.

She needed a plan.

She needed a responsible adult to help her.

Her phone was inside. Where had she put it? Somewhere in the muddle of unpacked goods?

She daren’t let Kit’s arm go to find it herself. He was too big for her to pick up and carry. He was also looking increasingly pale. Had these kids been left on their own?

‘Where’s your stepfather now?’ she asked, and stupidly she heard the echoes of her dumb, visceral response to the word in her voice.

‘At work,’ the eldest boy told her.

‘Is there anyone else here?’

‘Christine’s inside, watching telly.’

‘Then fetch her,’ she ordered. ‘Fast. Tell her Kit’s hurt his hand and he’s bleeding. Tell her I need a towel and a phone. Run.’

‘Can you just put a plaster on it?’ the older boy asked. ‘We don’t want to tell Christine. She’ll tell Tom.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Marcus. And this is Henry. Please don’t tell. If we misbehave, Tom’ll make us go back to our grandparents.’

‘You haven’t misbehaved. The ball broke my window, not you,’ she told him. She’d tell him anything he liked to get help right now. ‘Marcus, this cut is too big for a plaster. Kit needs Christine. I need Christine. Run.’

He shouldn’t have left the boys with Christine. Normally Tom Lavery used his next-door neighbour, Rose, as childminder. Rose was in her seventies, huge-hearted, reliable. The boys loved her, but this morning she’d fallen and hurt her hip. It was only bruised, thank heaven, but she needed rest.

This weekend was also the annual field-day-cum-funfair at Ferndale, two hours’ drive across the mountains. For the isolated town of Shallow Bay, the Ferndale Show was huge. Practically the entire population took part, with cattle parades and judging, baking competitions, kids’ activities. As Shallow Bay emptied, Christine, Rose’s niece, had become his childminder of last resort.

‘Worrying?’ Roscoe, Shallow Bay’s hospital nurse administrator, was watching Tom from the far side of the nurses’ station. Tom was supposed to be filling in patient histories. Instead he’d turned to the window, looking down towards the cottage.

‘Go home and check,’ Roscoe said. For a big man—make that huge—Roscoe was remarkably perceptive. ‘You’ll be writing Bob up for antacids instead of antibiotics if you’re not careful.’

‘I’m careful.’ He hauled his attention back to his job. ‘Christine can cope.’

‘As long as there’s no ad for hair curlers on telly. You know she’s a dipstick,’ Roscoe said bluntly.

Roscoe’s smile was half hidden by his beard, but it didn’t hide the sympathy. ‘Go home, doc,’ he told him again. ‘I’ll ring you if I need you, and I’ll drop these charts off for you to fill in after the boys go to sleep tonight. I wish you could be taking the boys across to Ferndale, but hey, you have another doctor here on Monday. All problems solved, no?’

No, Tom thought as he snagged the next chart and started writing. It was all very well for Roscoe to say he could do these tonight, but if he fell behind in his paperwork he’d never catch up.

Another hour…

But he glanced at the window one last time. The boys were capable of anything.

For what was maybe the four thousandth time over the last two years he thought, What have I let myself in for?

How long’s for ever?

And then his attention was diverted. There was a car speeding up the track from the bay. A scarlet roadster. A two-seater.

Tom’s cottage was one of only three down that road. Few people used it except for Tom, Rose and Rose’s occasional visitors.

And the new doctor? He’d been told she’d collected the key from Reception a couple of hours back. Poppy, the junior nurse who’d given her the key, had been frustratingly vague when asked for a description. ‘Quite old, really,’ she’d said, which in Poppy’s twenty-two-year-old eyes meant anything over twenty-three. ‘And ordinary. Just, you know, dullsville when it comes to clothes. Didn’t say much, just took the key and said she’d be at work at nine on Monday. She drives a cool car, though.’

If this was it, it certainly was cool, a streamlined beauty, the kind of car Tom used to love to drive—in another life.

So this would be Rachel Tilding, the new doctor, the latest of the Lavery Scholarship recipients, here to pay her dues with two years’ service. He imagined she’d be heading to the shops to buy supplies or a takeaway meal for dinner. He should drop over tonight to say hi.

But tonight he didn’t have his normal backup of Rose, who was always ready to slip over and mind the kids whenever he needed to go out. He could scarcely go over bearing wine and casserole and say, Welcome to Shallow Bay. Plus, he was dead tired. If he had the energy to make a casserole there’d be no way it’d leave his house.

He sighed and started to turn back to the desk—but then he paused. The car had turned off the road and was heading down the hospital driveway.

He could make the driver out now. The woman seemed slight, fair-skinned, with brown curly hair tumbling to her shoulders. Leaning against her was a child.

A child with his arm raised, caught in some sort of sling. An arm which was bright crimson.

Kit!

Running in hospitals was forbidden. From training it was instilled into you. No matter the emergency, walking swiftly gets you there almost as fast, with far less likelihood of causing another emergency.

Stuff training. Dr Tom Lavery ran.

She’d collected this gorgeous little car three weeks ago and she still practically purred every time she looked at it. Two years of internship, living in hospital accommodation and being constantly tired, meant that she’d spent practically nothing of her two years’ wages. The condition of the scholarship which had funded her training meant she was now facing two years of ‘exile’ in the country. This car would be a gift to herself, she’d decided, to celebrate being a fully qualified doctor with her internship behind her. It’d also be something to remind her of the life she’d have when she could finally return to the city.

She’d driven it to Shallow Bay with a beam on her face a mile wide, blocking out the thought that she’d had to hire a man with a van to bring her possessions, as nothing bigger than a designer suitcase would fit in with her.

But now she wasn’t thinking of her car. She had a child in her passenger seat, a little boy so white she thought he was about to pass out. She’d put as much pressure as she dared on his arm, slinging it roughly upward before somehow managing to carry him to her car. Her cream leather was turning scarlet to match the paintwork. Any minute now Kit could throw up. Or, worse, lose consciousness.

Please, no. She loved this car but if she had the choice between vomit or coma…

‘Hold on, Kit,’ she muttered. The decision to get him to the hospital rather than calling for an ambulance had been instantaneous. He still had glass in his hand. The blood he’d lost was frightening and the hospital was so close…

‘I want Tom,’ he quavered.

Tom? His stepfather? That was the name the kids had used. And Christine? The overblown, overpainted woman had emerged from the house, taken one look and fled back inside, saying, ‘I’ll ring Tom.’ So much for practical help. Rachel had hauled off her own windcheater and used that as a pressure bandage and sling.

‘Tell Christine—and Tom—I’ve taken him to the hospital,’ she’d told his terrified brothers, and then she’d left. There was time for nothing else.

‘We’ll find Tom,’ she told Kit now, as he slumped against her. ‘But first we need to stop your hand bleeding. We can do this, Kit. Be brave. Isn’t it lucky I’m a doctor?’

The sight that met him as he emerged from the Emergency entrance was horrific. All he could see was blood. And one small boy.

For a moment he felt as if his legs might give way. Kit’s face, his hair, his T-shirt, were soaked with blood. The T-shirt was a treasured one, covered with meerkat cartoons. Tom couldn’t see a single meerkat now, though. All he could see was blood.

Kit.

‘Mate, you’re doctor first, stepdad second.’ It was Roscoe, placing a huge palm on his shoulder as they both headed for the car. ‘Right now, Kit needs a doctor.’

The words steadied him but only a little. He reached the car and hauled the door open.

Kit was leaning heavily against the driver. Had she hit him? A car accident? What…?

‘Lacerated hand.’ The woman’s voice cut across his nightmare, her voice as incisive, as firm as Roscoe’s. ‘From a broken window. No other injury, but severe blood loss. I suspect there’ll still be glass in there. His name’s Kit and he’s asking for Tom.’

‘Kit.’ His voice sounded as if it came from a long way away. Kit was struggling to look at him, struggling to focus. ‘T-Tom…’ he managed—and then his eyes rolled back and he lost consciousness.

Kit!

It was Roscoe who took over. For those first appalling seconds—and it must only have been seconds—Tom froze, but Roscoe’s voice boomed across the entrance, calling back into the Emergency ward behind. ‘Trolley,’ he boomed. ‘IV. Blood loss, people. Move.’

And then as Barry, their elderly hospital orderly, came scuttling out with the trolley, and Jenny, their second most senior nurse, appeared with the crash cart, Tom recovered enough to scoop Kit out of the car.

Somehow Tom’s years of training kicked in. Triage. Look past the obvious. Get the facts and get them fast.

The woman had been wedged between Kit and the driver’s door. She looked almost as gory as the child. Thirtyish. Jeans. Long shirt, bloodstained. A smear of blood on her face.

‘Are you hurt yourself?’ he managed.

‘No,’ she snapped, hauling herself out of the car. ‘Just the child.’

Jenny had the crash cart beside him. With this amount of blood loss, cardiac arrest was a terrifying possibility.

‘I’m a doctor,’ the woman said. ‘Rachel Tilding. Who’s senior here?’

She was asking because he wasn’t acting like a doctor. Roscoe, Barry, Jenny all looked in control. Not him.

He made a huge effort and hauled himself back into his professional self. Terror was still there but it was on the backburner, waiting to surface when there was time.

‘IV,’ he managed, laying Kit on the trolley. The little boy’s hand had been roughly put in a sling to hold it high.

A doctor…

What had she done to Kit?

‘It’s only his hand.’ She was out of the car now, moving swiftly around to the trolley. ‘He smashed my window with a cricket ball, then reached in to try and get it.’

Only his hand…but this amount of blood?

‘Straight to Theatre?’ Roscoe demanded.

‘Yes,’ she snapped back at Roscoe. ‘I’ll help if there’s no one else. I don’t know about parents. I didn’t have time to find out. Just this Tom…’

‘I’m Tom,’ he said heavily. ‘I’m his stepfather. He’s my responsibility.’

‘Stepfather…’ She glanced at him in stupefaction. ‘What sort of a…?’ And then she collected herself. ‘No matter. Kit needs a doctor, now.’

‘I’m a doctor. Tom Lavery.’

‘What the…you’re working as a doctor and employing that…that…’

She obviously couldn’t find a word to describe Christine. Neither could he. Maybe there wasn’t one, but he and Christine were obviously grouped together. Dr Tilding’s look said Tom’s position in the hierarchy of life on earth was somewhere below pond scum.

‘Never mind,’ she snapped. ‘You can give me all the excuses in the world after we’ve seen to Kit’s hand. Let’s get him to Theatre. Now.’