She gave a faint smile. ‘Sorry. I guess I’m not up for awards for good manners right now. But I am grateful. I’ll come to the clinic when I need to. Thank you, Ben, and goodbye.’
She watched him go and she felt…desolate.
Desolate was how she’d been feeling for six months now. Or more.
Once upon a time her life had been under control. She was the indulged only daughter of wealthy, influential people. She was clever and she was sure of herself.
There’d been a tiny hiccup in her life when as a teenager she’d thought she’d fallen in love with Ben Mc-Mahon, but even then she’d been enough in control to figure it out, to bow to her parents’ dictates.
Sure, she’d thought Ben was gorgeous, but he was one of twelve kids, the son of the nanny her parents had hired to take care of her whenever they had been on the island. At seventeen she’d long outgrown the need for a nanny but she and Ben had stayed friends.
He had been her holiday romance, welcoming her with joy whenever her parents had come to the island, being her friend, sharing her first kiss, but he had been an escape from the real world, not a part of it.
His proposal that last year when they’d both finished school had been a shock, questioning whether her worlds could merge, and she’d known they couldn’t. Her father had spelled that out in no uncertain terms.
Real life was the ambition her parents had instilled in her. Real life had been the circle she’d moved in in her prestigious girls’ school.
Real life had become medicine, study, still the elite social life she’d shared with her parents’ circle, then James, marriage, moving up the professional scale…
But even before James had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma she’d known something had been dreadfully wrong. Or maybe she’d always known something had been wrong, she conceded. It was just that it had taken more courage than she’d had to admit it.
Then her father had died, dramatically, of a heart attack. She’d watched her mother, dry eyed at the funeral, already gathering the trappings of rich widow about her.
The night of the funeral James had had to go out. ‘Work,’ he’d said, and had kissed her perfunctorily. ‘Go to bed, babe, and have a good cry. Cry and get over it.’
Like her mother, she hadn’t cried either.
She’d thought that night…She’d known but she hadn’t wanted to face it. If she worked hard enough, she didn’t have to face it.
‘Lemonade or raspberry cordial?’ she asked Button. She sat her at the kitchen table and put lemonade in front of her and also the red cordial. Button looked at them both gravely and finally decided on red. Huge decision. Her relief at having made it almost made Ginny smile.
Almost.
She found herself remembering the day of James’s funeral. It had been the end of a truly appalling time, when she’d fought with every ounce of her medical knowledge to keep him and yet nothing could hold him. He’d been angry for his entire illness, angry at his body for betraying him, at the medical profession that couldn’t save him, but mostly at Ginny, who was healthy when he wasn’t.
‘—you, Florence Nightingale.’ The crude swearing was the last thing he’d said to her, and she’d stood at his graveside and felt sick and cold and empty.
And then she’d grown aware of Veronica. Veronica was the wife of James’s boss. She’d walked up to Ginny, ostensibly to hug her, but as she’d hugged, she’d whispered.
‘You didn’t lose him. You never had him in the first place. You and my husband were just the stage props for our life. What we had was fun, fantasy, everything life should be.’
And then Veronica’s assumed face was back on, her wife-of-James’s-boss mantle, and Ginny thought maybe she’d imagined it.
But then she’d read James’s will.
‘To my daughter, Barbara, to be held in trust by my wife, Guinevere, to be used at her discretion if Barbara’s true parentage is ever discovered.’
She remembered a late-night conversation the week before James had died. She’d thought he was rambling.
‘The kid. He thinks it’s his. If he finds out…I’ll do the right thing. Bloody kid should be in a home anyway. Do the right thing for me, babe. I know you will—you always do the right thing. Stupid cow.’
Was this just more? she thought, pouring a second glass for the obviously thirsty little girl. Guinevere doing the right thing. Guinevere being a stupid cow?
‘I’m not Guinevere, I’m Ginny,’ she said aloud, and her voice startled her, but she knew she was right.
Taking Button wasn’t doing something for James or for Veronica or for anyone, she told herself. This was purely between her and Button.
They’d move on, together.
‘Ginny,’ Button said now, trying the name out for size, and Ginny sat at the table beside this tiny girl and tried to figure it out.
Ginny and Button.
Two of a kind? Two people thrown out of their worlds?
Only she hadn’t been thrown. She’d walked away from medicine and she’d walked away from Sydney.
Her father had left her the vineyard. It had been a no-brainer to come here.
And Ben…
Was Ben the reason she’d come back here?
So many thoughts…
Ben’s huge family. Twelve kids. She remembered the day her mother had dropped her off, aged all of eight. ‘This woman’s looking after you today, Guinevere,’ she’d told her. ‘Your father and I are playing golf. Be good.’
She’d got a hug from Ben’s mother, a huge welcoming beam. ‘Come on in, sweetheart, welcome to our muddle.’
She’d walked into the crowded jumble that had been their home and Ben had been at the stove, lifting the lid on popcorn just as it popped.
Kernels were going everywhere, there were shouts of laughter and derision, the dogs were going nuts, the place was chaos. And eight-year-old Ben was smiling at her.
‘Ever made popcorn? Want to give it a go? Reckon the dog’s got this lot. And then I’ll take you taddying.’
‘Taddying?’
‘Looking for tadpoles,’ he’d said, and his eight-year-old eyes had gleamed with mischief. ‘You’re a real city slicker, aren’t you?’
And despite what happened next—or maybe because of it—they’d been pretty much best friends from that moment.
She hadn’t come back for Ben; she knew she hadn’t, but maybe that was part of the pull that had brought her back to the island. Uncomplicated acceptance. Here she could lick her wounds in private. Figure out where she’d go from here.
Grow grapes?
With Button.
‘We need to make you a bedroom,’ she told Button, and the little girl’s face grew suddenly grave.
‘I want Monkey in my bedroom,’ she said.
Monkey? Uh-oh.
She flipped open the little girl’s suitcase. It was neatly packed—dresses, pyjamas, knickers, socks, shoes, coats. There was a file containing medical records and a small box labelled ‘Medications’. She flipped this open and was relieved to find nothing more sinister than asthma medication.
But no monkey.
She remembered her mother’s scorn from years ago as she’d belligerently packed her beloved Barny Bear to bring to the island.