A Secret Shared... (12 page)

CHAPTER EIGHT

T
HEY
SPENT
A
ridiculous hour researching ant farms. ‘I can put it on my CV now,’ Kate said proudly at the end of it. ‘Doctor, physiotherapist, counsellor, dolphin expert and now ant-farm advisor.’

‘Is there no end to your skills?’ Jack demanded, and she grinned.

‘Nope.’

‘Do you take an active hand in caring for the dolphins?’ he asked.

‘We all do,’ she said simply. ‘This place runs with a team of committed professionals, and every one of us can turn their hand to anything. Even Bob, the groundsman, is expected to interact with the kids, and he loves it. We don’t have a full-time vet—that’s a gap—but we get online help. Usually injured dolphins don’t come straight to us. They’re found in more populated areas so the initial vet work is done there. They’re brought to us to give them time and space to heal. There’s not a lot of hands-on work to do for a healing dolphin. Dolphin heal pretty magically anyway.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean if a shark took a chunk from your backside you’d be remembering it for the rest of your life, but for some amazing reason dolphins regenerate torn flesh. They arrive looking gruesome, yet as soon as we get them non-stressed, their regenerative power takes over. This place has released hundreds of dolphins, slightly scarred but ready to fish another day.’

‘To the local fishermen’s displeasure.’

‘There is that,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘But when the founders of this place set it up they chose a place well away from any fishing harbour. We do get locals complaining that we’re ruining their sport. Someone even shot a dolphin last year, but he got such appalling local press that he’s not been heard of since. Gotta love a dolphin.’

He smiled, feeling the pride she so obviously had in this work. And for a stupid moment he felt...jealous?

Jealous of this slip of a girl, burying herself at the edge of nowhere, passionate about her patients and her dolphins but nothing else.

He thought of the life he lived back in Sydney. He was in charge of a large, modern cancer centre, but it was part of a huge teaching hospital. He spent so much of his time fighting for funding, organising support for patient care, dealing with the requirements to hold a large medical team on focus, that his contact with patients was becoming less and less.

This might be so much more rewarding.

‘It’s not all it looks,’ Kate said, and he glanced at her sharply. She could guess his thoughts? She’d done psychology, he thought. Dangerous. He should stop thinking immediately.

‘I need to fight for my patients, too,’ she said. ‘Every one of them has special needs, and those needs often can’t be held in abeyance while they’re here. I have two kids who are still on chemotherapy. I have to fight to get the drugs, fight to be given the knowledge how to administer them. If your Harry had come here with cancer, I’d have done my homework before he came. I’d have been onto his doctors, and I’d have pleaded with them to give me the resources to keep him safe.’

‘You didn’t have those resources with Toby Linkler.’

‘He’d run out of options,’ she said bleakly. ‘If he’d stayed in Melbourne, if the family had wanted it, he might have been given another round of chemo, but the medical team who looked after him knew it was the end.’

‘So this is partly a hospice.’

‘It isn’t,’ she said hotly. ‘Toby and his mother came here to heal, and that’s what they did.’

‘He died.’

‘Yes, he did, but he didn’t spend his last few days dying. He died with the sun on his face and dolphins swimming around and not a ventilator or IV line in sight. Jack, if anyone thought a last round of chemo was anything more than a forlorn hope, I’d have fought tooth and nail to get it for him. I’ve refused kids who need ongoing treatment if their doctors won’t agree to let me administer it. I can’t take kids sometimes because I don’t have the skills to treat them.’

‘You need me here long term,’ he said, joking, and she looked at him in the moonlight and there was no answering smile.

‘You’re here to be treated,’ she said simply. ‘And then I’ll let you go.’

‘Me? Treated?’

‘You’re figuring yourself out. For instance, the importance of one ant farm, for you and for Harry.’

‘I would have worked that out back in Sydney.’

‘You might not have if you hadn’t taken this time out.’

‘So what about you?’ he asked. ‘When do you consider yourself healed?’

‘I am healed.’

‘Says the woman who spends her nights watching soaps.’

‘I’m happy here, Jack,’ she said, but she knew it sounded defensive. She knew she didn’t sound like she meant it.

But she did mean it. The work she was doing was important. She was making a difference to people’s lives. What else could she ask for?

Release from fear? A release from the knowledge that she was still hiding?

Release to start again, with someone like...someone like...

‘You’re doing an amazing job,’ Jack said gently. ‘Will you do it for ever?’

‘Why wouldn’t I?’

‘Would they have trouble finding a replacement?’

‘What are you suggesting? That I walk away? Why would I want to?’

‘You might get tired of
Sunrise Babes
.’

‘How could anyone tire of
Sunset Babes
?’ she demanded in mock indignation. ‘We have a divorce, a sex scene and at least one catastrophe a week. That’s much more exciting than real life.’

‘Would you like to go back to real life?’

His tone was gentle, and suddenly she stopped fighting to keep barriers in place. He was a friend, she thought suddenly. He’d been a friend when she’d been a student. Why shouldn’t she say it like it was?

‘I’ve been hiding for so many years I’ve lost count,’ she said simply. ‘I don’t know any other way. This place makes me feel safe as nowhere else does. I’m like Hobble with his malformed tail. This is my home.’

‘You don’t have a malformed anything,’ he said, even more gently.

‘But when I hear a car arriving, I still flinch,’ she said. ‘How stupid is that? When I was at university in New Zealand every time I heard a door slam in the night I’d wake in terror. I’m worse than Hobble.’

‘Just how badly did he treat you?’

She gazed at him for a long moment. She didn’t talk about her relationship with Simon. Talking about him brought back the fear, brought back the terror. But Jack was asking. Jack was her friend.

She tugged up the sleeve of her shirt, rolling it to the shoulder, and held out her arm for him to see.

They’d done a great job repairing her elbow. All that was left was a long incision scar. The scar was neat. The scars from the cigarette burns were not so neat.

Jack stared down at the scars for a very long time. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.

‘This isn’t the extent of it?’ he said at last, and her silence was answer enough.

He swore. The oath was almost under his breath but its savagery was so intense it frightened her.

‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Please... It’s over.’

‘It’s not if you’re still terrified.’ He reached out and grasped her arm before she could pull the sleeve down. No. He didn’t grasp, she thought. He simply held. This wasn’t a man who grasped.

‘It’s not over while that bastard walks the planet,’ he said, quite lightly but the venom underneath was frightening all by itself. ‘Did he go to jail for this?’

‘He went to jail for fraud.’

‘So you never had him face justice for abuse?’

‘I... There was no need.’ How to say she’d have never had the courage?

‘There’s no statute of limitations on abuse charges,’ he said. ‘I imagine you received decent medical treatment?’

She nodded, remembering lone visits to emergency departments over the years, trying to choose hospitals where she knew no one. Young doctors with shocked faces. Counsellors who’d told her to go to the police, to break free.

But it would have been his word against hers in a criminal court, and she hadn’t had the courage to face him down. If there’d been outsiders who’d witnessed the beatings, if she’d been sure the charges would stick and she wouldn’t have to face him afterwards, then maybe. But it would have killed her parents to know this about the man they’d thought was wonderful, and if the charges hadn’t been proved, what then? Only when he’d robbed her mother had the cycle finally been broken.

Jack’s expression had grown even more grim. ‘Then we can still nail him,’ he was saying. ‘Put him back in jail. Kate, you need to face this head on.’

‘No!’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t want to face him ever again. He made me feel...worthless.’

‘While you’re running you’re still a victim.’

‘I’m not running. I’m safe.’

‘With your dolphins and your soaps.’

‘Jack, don’t. Please...’ She hesitated, trying to get rid of the feeling she had every time she thought of her ex-husband. He still made her cringe. He still made her feel as if she’d been a coward and a fool, and she didn’t want to go there.

‘What about you?’ she asked, in a desperate attempt to deflect the conversation, and she saw Jack’s brows hike.

‘What do you mean, what about me?’

‘What are you running from?’

‘Nothing.’

‘So you’re a normal heterosexual male in his mid-thirties who just broke up with his current girlfriend with apparently barely a touch of emotion.’

‘I’m a seething mess of conflicted emotion inside.’

She smiled at that, but she was watching his face and saw that maybe he wasn’t joking. But this man wasn’t carrying a broken heart.

‘Even at uni,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘you went out with the most beautiful women, the most popular, the women who were self-contained. The women who’d never cling. I saw you go through at least half a dozen girlfriends during med school and I can’t remember any of them who seemed like they needed you. Or you needed them. And here you are, breaking up with Annalise and hiding your mess of conflicted emotion extraordinarily well.’

‘That’s ’cos I’m a guy.’ But he seemed uneasy. ‘You know guys don’t show emotion.’

‘There were lots of couples formed during med school,’ she said, still thoughtful. ‘Friends to lovers. It made sense, we got to know each other so well, but looking back...did you and I get on so well as lab partners because we knew the boundaries? I had Simon stopping me from getting close to anyone. You had your humour and your intellect and you used them as a shield.’

‘Is this your psychology training talking?’

‘Maybe it is,’ she said, striving to keep it light. But it seemed to her that strain was starting to appear around Jack’s eyes. Her faint suspicion that he had his own ghosts was starting to crystallise into full-blown surety.

‘So tell me about your mum and dad,’ she said lightly. ‘Were they a happy-ever-after story?’

‘This is hardly appropriate.’

‘It’s not, is it?’ she agreed. ‘It’s just that you now know all about me and I know nothing about you. Except I know your parents were wealthy. The other med students used to talk about your dad with awe. He was a QC, wasn’t he? And you had a little sister called Beth who I know you adored. You want to fill in the gaps?’

‘No.’

‘Why not? Are you running from shadows, too?’

‘No!’

She didn’t talk back. She simply hiked her eyebrows in a mock mirror image of his own gesture, folded her hands, looked out to sea—and waited.

* * *

What was going on? One minute he was probing about her past, pushing her to do something, being proactive. He was playing the male role, the protector, acting as he would have if it’d been Beth in the role of the abused.

Suddenly she’d turned the tables.

She was no longer pushing. She was simply...waiting.

She was an extraordinarily restful woman, he thought, and then he reconsidered. No, she was just extraordinary.

But she was asking him to reveal personal stuff. He didn’t do personal stuff.

Was that why it didn’t hurt that Annalise had agreed to move from their apartment with minimal fuss? Was that why he always chose girlfriends who saw him as a useful accessory rather than the love of their life?

Did he see them the same way?

He’d barely thought about it until now. But maybe he had, he acknowledged. Maybe he’d thought about it and blocked it out.

He remembered how he’d felt when Beth had met her Arthur.

She’d come home glowing, she’d wafted round in a mist of happiness, and he remembered being...fearful. That she’d left herself exposed.

She’d married, Harry had arrived and for the first time then she’d revealed to him how frightening it was.

‘If anything happened to them, I’d die,’ she’d told Jack simply. ‘Arthur and now Harry...I love them so much, they’re my whole heart.’

‘How can you do this?’ he’d asked. It had been a rare moment of truth between the siblings. Normally they’d avoided talking about their home life. ‘How can you expose yourself to what Mum and Dad put up with?’

‘Because it’s worth the risk,’ she’d said simply, and smiled down at her sleeping baby. ‘Oh, Jack, I hope you find that out for yourself.’

And then Beth herself had died and every single one of his fears had crystallised. He’d stood at the graveside and felt empty. Dead himself. Annalise had stood beside him but he hadn’t held her hand and she hadn’t tried to take it. They’d respected each other’s space.

Kate was still waiting. She was still watching the sea, giving him space. She was a woman who’d seen it all.

Why not tell her?

‘My parents...overdid the love thing,’ he said, keeping his voice neutral. After what Kate had been through, this was no big deal. Poor little rich boy? What was he on about?

‘How can you overdo love?’ Kate asked, and then hesitated. ‘No, that’s a dumb question. My parents manipulated me through love. Simon swore he loved me. Love has weird guises.’

‘Theirs was passion,’ he said, suddenly grim. ‘They married in a storm of passion—a two-week courtship and then off to Gretna Green, for heaven’s sake, because my mother thought that was the most romantic place on earth to be married. Only it rained and the hotel had lumpy mattresses so they fought at the top of their lungs, they broke up, and then they came together again and headed for another romantic “wedding” in the Seychelles. And that was the entire foundation of their marriage. My father was a lawyer at the top of his game. My mother was an interior designer, a good one. Both of them had enormous professional respect.