Caroline, who had seen the worst things people could do to each other, would be revolted, what he feared most from her was pity.
As if to remove himself from his thoughts, he reminded himself it was only for a couple of weeks—nine days to the handover and a few more days after that to settle the new doctor into the clinic. He crossed to the front door.
‘I suppose if you insist on staying I can hardly throw you out. I’ll get your bags.’
But once outside he simply looked at the bags, not wanting to lift them, not wanting to carry them into his home, fighting the anger rising once again at Caroline’s intrusion into his life, for all it was probably justified.
Was his apparent co-operation prompted by a genuine desire to get to know his daughter, Caroline wondered, or was there some deeper ploy behind him giving in?
Whatever! At least he was gone for a while and she could breathe normally again. She gave Ella a hug and set her down, telling her she could go outside and play with the children, but not to wander off. She’d already checked she could see the children from the window, so she could keep watch unobtrusively.
A shadow darkened the doorway and she glanced across to see not Jorge but a younger man, carrying the two backpacks into the hut.
‘Jorge remembered an appointment in the city, he was already late,’ the young man explained. ‘I am Juan, his assistant, a kind of nurse now but studying medicine at the university.’
Politeness insisted Caroline cross the room to shake his hand, but she couldn’t help casting an anxious glance out the door at the same time.
‘Do not worry about the little girl,’ Juan told her. ‘My grandmother is there, she watches the children all day. Some of them, their mothers work, but others just come to play. My grandmother says it keeps her young to be with the children.’
‘I’m sure it does,’ Caroline agreed, ‘but it is a great kindness she does as well, for it’s hard for mothers to leave their children to go to work. I know it!’
Juan smiled shyly and was about to back out the door when Caroline realised that with Jorge gone and Ella happily playing, she was at a loose end.
‘Would it be all right if I visited the clinic?’
Before Juan could answer, Jorge appeared.
‘Did Juan tell you I have to go? I’m sorry, but the appointment is with a government official and I’m already late.’
‘Juan explained, and I was asking if I could visit the clinic.’
She saw the reluctance in his face but as the purpose of the article on the internet had been to attract volunteer doctors to the clinic, he could hardly refuse to let her work there.
‘Your vaccinations are up-to-date?’ he queried, impatience edging the words.
‘Hep A, Hep B, typhoid and yellow fever. We’ve both had them, as Ella was able to handle them now she’s over two, although I’m reasonably sure they were only precautionary.’
Ha! she thought, savouring a moment of triumph that he couldn’t turn them away for health reasons.
Jorge hesitated.
‘Go to your appointment, I’ll be fine,’ she told him. He frowned at her and turned away. He’d probably have liked to growl as well, although in front of Juan.
But when he and Juan had left, Caroline forgot about visiting the clinic and sank down into an armchair, taking a deep, replenishing breath. She was so far from fine she wondered if she’d ever reach such a place again. Physically and mentally exhausted, her body aching with the effort of pretending Jorge meant nothing more to her than the father of her child, she now had to wonder, seriously, if this was not the very worst decision she had ever made.
From the first moment she’d set eyes on him, all the love she’d felt for him had come rushing back. Oh, it had been there all along, in a dull ache somewhere inside her, sharper pain at times like Ella’s birth, her mother’s death, and silly times, like when Ella had taken her first faltering steps, but seeing him again, hearing his voice, watching as he moved his hands in conversation, the longing to go to him and hold him in her arms had been so great she’d only barely managed to hide it.
Or she hoped she’d hidden it.
She closed her eyes but his image was graven in her mind, chiselled as deeply as the gouges he’d made in the door. Thinking back over the encounter—surely there was a more appropriate word for such a cataclysmic moment in her life—she began to believe her doubts had been more realistic than her original excitement. Jorge had shown no sign—not a glimmer—of the kind of love she still felt for him.
So maybe the email had been the truth, not the hurtful outpouring of stupid pride!
Which left her where?
Her determination that Ella would know her father and that he should play some part in her upbringing remained. By working here with him, she, Caroline, could get a sense of the man he had become and perhaps make a feasible plan for the future. Part of her decision to come had rested on the fact that with her mother dead and her small estate finalised, she and Ella had had nothing to keep them in Australia. She’d accepted that if Jorge’s life’s work was here, then here was where they’d have to live.
Oh, she’d hoped for love, hoped she might be able to break through whatever barriers he’d built up to protect himself, but she wasn’t going to beg or plead and in doing so make a fool of herself if his love had been a lie all along.
A sense of utter helplessness brought tears to her eyes, but she’d cried enough for Jorge in the past. Now was the time for action. Ella’s future was more important than her own pathetic need for love, so she would have to focus on that—on finding a way to stay somewhere close to Jorge, so he could be a father to his child.
And you? her heart mocked. You’ll be able to see him regularly and not reveal the love you still feel for him?
She’d have to! That was all there was to it.
And having made the decision, she went to the doorway where Juan had dropped their backpacks. She heaved hers onto her shoulder, picked up Ella’s little koala pack and walked into what she assumed was the spare bedroom, blinking in surprise when she saw the elaborate, wooden, four-poster bed and the polished wooden chest of drawers squeezed in beside it.
Like the old but so comfortable leather armchair, bizarre furnishings for the simple hut Jorge and the young men had built.
Thinking of him toiling in the broiling sun, determination pushing him through the pain of tight healing muscles and recalcitrant tendons, she put her hand against the wall, feeling its warmth and with it the warmth of the man she’d loved.
Was he still there, inside the scarred skin and mended bones?
And if he was, would she be able to find him?
The cry came from behind the hut, not from the direction of the clinic, and the pain in the sound had Caroline reacting automatically. A child lay on the dry, rusty-red ground, gasping for breath, and, unable to understand what the excited children were telling her, she felt first for an obstruction in his mouth.
Juan came running from the clinic, speaking to the children, while a woman Caroline assumed was his grandmother herded the little ones together, taking hold of Ella’s hand as she kept them back from the fallen boy.
‘He just fell down, the children said,’ Juan told her.
Pleased he was there to translate for her, she asked if the boy was an epileptic—did he have a history of seizures? When the answer was no, she asked about allergies—did the children know if the boy had been bitten by something?
The child was breathing, but the harsh rasping sounds of his breath suggested it was an effort. Caroline lifted him in her arms and though Juan protested, she insisted she could carry him to the clinic, hesitating only long enough to turn