about you?’ she asked, moving on. ‘You’ve told me you have a very romantic mother and you have a wood stove. What else?’
‘Sorry?’
‘What’s the rest of the story?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘You’re not married? Gloria says you share the doctor’s house with two dogs and a bunch of chooks.’
‘Easier than a wife and kids,’ he said with mock seriousness, and she grinned.
‘I guess. OK. Why are you in Tambrine Creek?’
‘I like it.’
‘Most med students could think of nothing worse than heading straight to Tambrine Creek when there are heaps of jobs available in the cities. Gloria said you just arrived here five years ago to practise and you’ve never made any attempt to leave.’
‘I told you—I like it.’
‘But there must be a reason why you came.’
‘What’s the phrase you used?’ he demanded. ‘That’s for me to know and you to find out?’
But he wasn’t laughing. Ally looked at his hands on the steering wheel and saw his knuckles were white. There was a story here.
Yeah, well, that makes two of us, she thought wryly. Two of them running from ghosts.
There was no time for more. ‘Here we are.’ He was steering the big car along a dirt track leading from the ridge overlooking the town.
‘They live here?’ she asked incredulously, and he nodded.
‘They do.’
‘This belongs to Gareth Hatfield. Or it did.’
‘Gareth Hatfield? I’ve never heard of him.’
‘He’s…um… His son was a…a friend of my father’s,’ she said, her voice trailing off. Then, realising something more was expected, she tried again. ‘The old man was filthy rich. He bought all the land around here and then sold it off for a vast profit. The locals used to say he’d find some sucker to sell even this place to, and maybe he has. Is there water up here now?’ Tambrine Creek itself was set on a rich coastal plain, but the land up here was rough and rock-strewn. It was so dry it was almost dust.
‘They cart their water up from the river,’ Darcy told her.
She fell silent, staring about her. She could see three rough bush huts set well back into the scrub. The place seemed deserted. The huts were primitive and there were no vehicles parked where the track ended.
‘No one’s here.’
‘They’ll be inside. Between five and six o’clock, the women cook and the men meditate.’
She swallowed. Memories came flooding back. To have such a community here…now… But Darcy was still watching her, waiting for a reaction. She could see she was starting to puzzle him. What had he said? The women cook. ‘Lucky women.’
‘You’d rather cook than meditate?’ he asked, and she struggled to make her voice sound normal.
‘Of course I would. I’d rather cook than do anything. Especially when I get to eat what I cook. Where are the cars?’
‘There aren’t cars. They don’t believe in them.’
‘How do they get water up here?’
‘The women carry it.’
Her jaw dropped. ‘You’re kidding. It’s a half-mile climb.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Meditation’s looking good,’ she whispered. She’d thought, when Jerome had left the country, that such communities were a thing of the past. But maybe it was a lifestyle attractive for a lot of people.
It still horrified her. ‘I’m feeling a really strong bout of feminism coming on,’ she managed.
‘Try and keep it to yourself,’ he advised. He pulled the car to a halt and reached into the back for his bag. ‘Value judgements aren’t wanted here.’
‘Then what are you doing here?’ she demanded, shaking her sense of unreality and trying to haul herself back to the present. ‘You, the very king of value judgements.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘A greedy, money-sucking, bulimic call-girl.’
‘OK.’ He held up his hands in surrender. ‘OK. Enough. Truce. You want to come inside or stay in the car?’
‘You’d trust me with real people?’ Then, at his look, she suddenly relented. ‘I may as well. I guess I could hike off home—if the women cart water up here it seems a bit soppy to whinge about a hike of an hour or so—but…’
‘There are still people I want to talk to you about.’
‘More Ivys? More people you don’t trust me with?’
‘Ally…’
She sighed. ‘Oh, goody. It seems I’m going to be insulted all the way home again, too. OK. I’ll stay. I might have to find someone here I can insult in turn.’
‘Please.’
‘I know.’ She shrugged but then she smiled again. ‘Not appropriate. You don’t need to worry. I’ll be good. You’ll hear no value judgements from me. I won’t charge anyone for massage. I’ll do no harm. It was a truly excellent thick-shake and they were wonderful sandwiches, Dr Rochester. They were even worth being good for.’
CHAPTER THREE
THE hut they entered was a shock.
She’d forgotten how appalling it could be. Ally walked through the door and the first thing that hit her was the smell.
Smells. Plural.
There were pigs hanging round the yard, and a pile of dung by the door was attracting flies, inside and out. Smoke permeated the room, with the vague smell of hundreds of past meals—not all of them appetising. And human smells.
There was a lot to be said for deodorant, Ally thought grimly as the stench reached out to hit her. Then she amended the thought. No. There was a lot to be said for washing.
The smell was overpowering. And the sensation that the past was closing in on her.
Unaware of the vast wash of remembrance flooding over his companion, Darcy didn’t pause. Clearly he’d been here before. He didn’t knock—there was no door, just a gap in the timber slabs that made the wall.
‘How are they?’ he asked before Ally even had time to get used to the gloom. There was a fire smouldering in the centre of the hut, and smoke was wisping up toward a rough hole in the centre of the roof. Not all of it was escaping.
It looked like something out of the Stone Age, Ally thought, and had to swallow and swallow again as she fought for control. It was just like…just like…
A figure emerged from the gloom, a woman, skirt to the floor, hair braided down her back, dirty and…a little bit desperate? She’d been sitting on one of the benches that ran around the walls, and from under a bundle of blankets came a thin, despairing cry.
A sick child? It was a little girl, Ally decided as her eyes adjusted to the smoke-filled room. The child looked about six or seven. Her face was colourless and her sandy curls were a tangled mat on the hessian sack that served as a pillow.
The woman didn’t greet Darcy. She didn’t look at him. She stood, her shoulders slumped in a stance of absolute despair, and she stared at the floor. ‘Jody’s worse,’ she whispered.
Dear heaven. Ally was almost overwhelmed with disbelief. That this could be happening again…
Darcy