And she read that emotion too, chuckling, more to herself than to him, then explaining.
‘I deal with women who are past masters at hiding their emotions behind the blankest of expressions. Reading their faces, the slightest changes in their expressions, helps me to know when I’ve pushed too far, or reached ground too delicate to tread.’
It was the simple truth, for he too could read people, but the mystery remained.
‘And why do you do the job you do?’
She slumped down in a chair and picked up her coffee, which by now must be lukewarm as well as revolting.
‘Because I love it?’
‘You make that a question. Are you not sure, or are you asking me if I’d believe that answer?’
She glanced his way then shrugged her shoulders.
‘I do love it, but it wasn’t because I doubted you’d believe me. I think the question you were asking was more than that, because how could I possibly have known how much pleasure it would give me before I began the centre?’
‘Yet it gives you grief, as well,’ Yusef persisted, although he was coming close to personal ground—ground he rarely trod with either men or women, particularly not with women he didn’t know. ‘I saw your face as you examined Aisha.’
Gemma studied him in silence and he could almost hear the debate going on inside her head. Would she answer him or brush him off? In the end, she did answer, but perhaps it was a brush-off as well.
‘Terrible things happen to innocent people, we all know that, our news broadcasts are full of it every day. A war here, a famine there, floods and earthquakes and tidal waves—these things we can’t control, but what we can do is help pick up the pieces. Some of those pieces wash up on the shores of my country, and it gives me more joy than grief if I can help them.’
Yusef heard the truth of what she said in every word and although what he wanted back at home was not someone to pick up scraps left by disasters, well, not entirely, he did want someone with the empathy this woman felt and the understanding she had for marginalised people. His country was changing, and many tribal groups that had once roamed freely over all the desert before those lands had had borders and names were now having to live within the boundaries of a particular country—many of them in his country.
These people saw the money flowing into his country, and the life it could provide, and wanted some of it for themselves, but their arrival was putting stresses on basic infrastructure like hospitals and clinics. This, in itself, was causing difficulties and unrest, something Yusef wanted to put a stop to as early as possible. He knew the tribal women made the decisions for the family, and that it would take someone special to help them settle comfortably in his land. He’d suspected, from the first time he’d heard of this women’s centre in Sydney that the woman who ran it might be the person he was seeking.
‘You are committed, but your staff? Do they also feel as you do?’
She smiled at him, and again it seemed as if a light had gone on behind the fine, pale skin of her face, illuminating all the tiny freckles so she shone like an oil lamp in the desert darkness. Something shifted in his chest, as if his heart had tugged at its moorings, but he knew such things didn’t happen—a momentary fibrillation, nothing more. Stress, no doubt, brought on by the task that lay ahead of him.
‘I could walk out of here tomorrow and nothing would change,’ she assured him proudly. ‘that is probably my greatest achievement. Although everyone likes to believe he or she is indispensable, it’s certainly not the case here. My staff believe, as I do, that we must treat the women who come here without judging them in any way, and that we must be sensitive to their cultural beliefs and customs and as far as possible always act in ways that won’t offend them.’
She paused then gave a rueful laugh.
‘oh, we make mistakes, and sometimes we let our feelings show—I must have today for you to have picked up on my anxiety when I examined Aisha. But generally we manage and the women have come to trust us.’
‘Except when it comes to a Caesarean birth?’
She gave a little shrug.
‘You’re right. No matter how hard we try to convince them that they can have more children after a Caesarean, they don’t believe us.’
She sighed.
‘There’s no perfect world.’
Yusef took a deep breath, thinking about all she had covered in not so many words. He knew the trauma many women suffered in the refugee camps. Of course this woman—Gemma Murray—would feel their pain, yet she continued to do her job.
He now reflected on the other thing she’d said. She could leave tomorrow and the centre’s work would continue.
Was this true?
What was he thinking now? Gemma wondered.
Had she made a fool of herself talking about the centre the way she had?
Been too emotional?
Gemma watched the man across the table, his gaze fixed on some point beyond her shoulder, obviously thinking but about what she had no clue for his face was totally impassive now.
‘Would you leave tomorrow?’ he asked.
Chapter Two
THE question was so totally unexpected, Gemma could only stare at him, and before she could formulate a reply, he spoke again.
‘And your second house, would you be equally confident leaving it?’
She could feel the frown deepening on her forehead but still couldn’t answer, although she knew she had to—knew there was something important going on here, even if she didn’t understand it.
Think, brain, think!
‘None of your money has gone into the second house,’ she said, then realised she’d sounded far too defensive and tried to laugh it off. ‘Sorry, but I wasn’t sure you knew about it.’
He had a stillness about him, this man who had virtually saved their service, and perhaps because he’d let emotion show earlier and had regretted it, his face was now impossible to read.
‘I know of its existence,’ her visitor said, ‘but not of how it came to be. It seems to me you had enough—is the expression “on your plate”?—without taking on more waifs and strays.’
Was it his stillness that made her fidget with the sugar basin on the table? She wasn’t usually a fidget, but pushing it around and rearranging the salt and pepper grinders seemed to ease her tension as she tried to explain. Actually, anything was preferable to looking at him as she answered, because looking at him was causing really weird sensations in her body.
She was finding him attractive?
Surely not, although he was undeniably attractive…
She moved the pepper grinder back to where it had been and concentrated on business.
‘The sign on our front door, although fairly discreet, does say Women’s Centre, and with our inner-city position, I suppose it was inevitable that some women who were not immigrants would turn up here. Not often, in the beginning, but one in particular, an insulin-dependent diabetic, began to come regularly, and sometimes bring a friend, or recommend us to another woman.’
‘These are women of the streets you talk of?’
The pepper grinder was in the wrong place again and Gemma shifted it, then looked up at her questioner.
‘I don’t know about your country—or even what country you call home—but here a lot of people with mental health problems or addictions end up living on the streets. The government, church and charity organisations all do what