A Bride and Child Worth Waiting For. Marion Lennox

of yourself. So we’ve decided to get married so your Uncle Tom will let us keep you.’

      She regarded them both, her eyes wide and interested.

      ‘So you’ll look after me all the time?’

      ‘Yes,’ Jill said firmly. ‘If it’s OK with you we’ll sign papers that say no one can take you away from us.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And, Lily…if you wanted to call us…well, maybe you wouldn’t want to call us Mum and Dad. Your mum and dad were your special, real parents. But if you feel you’ll like to maybe call us something like Mama and Papa…’

      ‘Your names are Jill and Charles,’ Lily said flatly.

      ‘That’s right,’ Charles said, and he flicked a strand of Lily’s hair back behind her ear. ‘We’re Jill and Charles, or whatever you want to call us. And you’re Lily. But we’re family from now on. Right?’

      ‘OK,’ Lily said obligingly, and hugged her teddies and closed her eyes. ‘Goodnight.’

      And that was that. A mammoth, life-changing decision converted to a few simple sentences. They returned to Jill’s living room and Jill felt deflated.

      The door from her living room led through to Charles’s living room. This was what they did every night. They said goodnight to Lily. Charles wheeled through to his apartment. He closed the door behind him.

      Contact over.

      ‘You know, we could knock this whole wall out,’ Charles said thoughtfully, and she stared at him.

      ‘What?’

      ‘This used to be an old homestead before the hospital was built. It was too big for me so I cut it into two apartments. But this room… It was the original sitting room. It had huge French windows looking over the cove. I had to sacrifice the windows to convert it into two rooms. We’ve knocked a door through. Why not go the whole hog, knock the entire wall down and put the windows back in? You know we almost always have the televisions on the same channel. Or we could have stereo televisions. Or,’ he said, warming to his theme with typical male enthusiasm, ‘one really big television.’

      ‘I might have known,’ she said tightly. ‘Boys with technology. Is this the entire motivation behind the proposal?’

      ‘Hey, you get an opal,’ he said, aggrieved. ‘I reckon I ought to get a big screen. How big do you think, if we make it one room?’ He hesitated. ‘A family room,’ he said cautiously. ‘Where we can be a family.’

      ‘But I need my privacy.’

      His smile died. ‘I’m not talking combining bedrooms, Jill.’

      ‘No,’ she said, and faltered.

      ‘So marriage doesn’t mean watching telly together. It doesn’t mean family?’

      How to explain that that was dangerous in itself? Closeness? Familiarity? She didn’t do it.

      As it was, it sometimes felt too close. Lily popped back and forth between the apartments. She slept in her bedroom on Jill’s side, but if Jill was caught up at the hospital Charles would check on her. Jill would occasionally get home and discover Charles on her side of the beige door.

      It shouldn’t matter. But she’d spent so long building her defences that to breach them now…

      Kelvin was there. He was still in her head. A shadow, waiting to crash down on her. She should see a therapist, she thought dully, but then a therapist would tell her she was imagining her terror, and she knew she wasn’t.

      She was risking enough with this marriage. If she could just keep it…nothing, maybe the sky wouldn’t fall on her head.

      ‘OK, we won’t knock down the wall,’ Charles said wearily. ‘We go on as before.’

      ‘Maybe I could buy you a bigger television,’ she said, striving for lightness.

      ‘I guess I can make that decision on my own,’ he said flatly. ‘I need to get over to the hospital.’ He hesitated. ‘Jill, I’m intending to be on the island for two weeks. I’ve agreed to take Lily and she’s looking forward to it. But Cal’s right. You could come over. Come to the opening ceremony at least.’

      The opening… Half the press in the country would be converging on the island. Photographers. Media. No and no and no.

      ‘I said I’d take over here.’

      ‘We can cover you. Hell, Jill, you can organise the roster for you to be gone. You’ve done half the planning for the new rehabilitation centre anyway. You’ve cut all the red tape. You’ve negotiated with the Health Commission. It’s your baby.’

      Should she explain it was because she was still afraid of Kelvin? After eight years? He’d say it was crazy.

      It was crazy.

      ‘It’s your dream, Charles,’ she said at last.

      ‘We’re allowed to share dreams,’ he snapped, and she blinked at the anger in his voice.

      ‘I… Yes,’ she whispered. ‘But there’s no need for me to be there.’

      ‘You can stay in the damned resort if you want,’ he snapped. ‘It’s on the far side of the island from my bungalow.’

      ‘That’s dumb.’

      ‘It is dumb, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘But it’s what you seem to want. Jill, I’m not going to pressure you, but if you act like I’m an ogre…’

      ‘You kissed me.’

      ‘So what?’ he said explosively. ‘You’re an attractive woman, you’ve just agreed to marry me and I kissed you. Obviously it was a mistake. I’ve agreed it won’t happen again. But Lily needs a mother and a father. As far as I can see it, that’s not going to happen if we live on separate planets.’

      ‘Charles—’

      ‘Just work it out,’ he said wearily. ‘Figure out the rules and let me know what they are. Meanwhile I have patients to check. Go to bed. I’ll see you in the morning before I leave.’

      He spun his chair and pushed it through the dividing door, back into his side of the house.

      He closed the door behind him.