Loe raamatut: «The Australian's Desire: Their Lost-and-Found Family / Long-Lost Son: Brand-New Family / A Proposal Worth Waiting For»

MARION LENNOX is a country girl, born on an Australian dairy farm. She moved on—mostly because the cows just weren’t interested in her stories! “Married to a very special doctor”, Marion wrote for Mills & Boon under a different name for a while—if you’re looking for her past romances, search for author Trisha David as well. She’s now had well over ninety novels accepted for publication.

In her non-writing life Marion cares for kids, dogs, cats, chickens and goldfish. She travels, she fights her rampant garden (she’s losing) and her house dust (she’s lost!). Having spun in circles for the first part of her life, she’s now stepped back from her “other” career, which was teaching statistics at her local university. Finally she’s reprioritised her life, figured out what’s important and discovered the joys of deep baths, romance and chocolate. Preferably all at the same time.

PROLOGUE

THE bus trip took a day—thirteen hours with occasional stops for refuelling. All that time Max sat in the far corner of the bus’s rear seat, trying to make himself invisible. He stroked Scruffy—Scruffy should be in the cargo hold but the driver had relented—and sang a tiny song into the dog’s lopsided ears.

‘We’re going to Georgie. We’re going to Georgie.’

There was another kid on the bus, younger than Max’s seven years. He didn’t seem to speak, not to the lady he was with or to anyone else. Every now and then, as if drawn, the kid would slip away from the lady and come up to Max’s hidey-hole to share in the Scruffy stroking.

‘What’s your name?’ Max asked once, but the kid didn’t answer. No matter. It was enough that he was cuddling Scruffy.

Was the kid going to Crocodile Creek, too? Maybe he and the lady he was with knew Georgie. The lady seemed nice, Max decided. She’d bought Max a sandwich and a drink at the last stop, and an extra sandwich and water for Scruffy. Dad hadn’t left him with any money for food. The more Max thought about it, the more he thought he’d been lucky Dad had paid his bus fare.

Maybe he’d had to. Dad was on the run and if Max had been left alone on the streets of Mt Isa, Georgie might have got on her Harley and come and murdered Dad. Georgie’s anger was great. She’d never yelled at him, but she’d yelled at Dad. Dad had punched her once and Georgie had punched him right back.

He was going to Georgie.

How much longer?

‘Soon we’ll be there,’ he told Scruffy and the silent kid. ‘Soon we’ll be with Georgie and she’ll punch anyone who’s mean to us. If Dad comes and gets us, she’ll punch him again.’

But she’d never been able to stop Dad taking him away every time he’d wanted to.

‘Dad won’t want me any more,’ he told his disreputable little dog and his silent friend. ‘We’ll be safe. Georgie can be our mum.’

The little dog nuzzled into Max’s windcheater, infinitely comforting.

‘Yeah, Georgie can be your mum, too,’ he whispered to the little dog. ‘There’ll be you and me, and Georgie can be Mum to both of us. She’s waiting.’

CHAPTER ONE

‘GINA, you can have Alistair Carmichael or you can have me. But not both.’

Gina chuckled.

‘I mean it.’

‘No, you don’t.’ Dr Georgie Turner’s reputation was that of drama queen—wild girl of Crocodile Creek Hospital. Georgie’s favourite party gear consisted of close-fitting leather pants, which showed every curve of her neat, trim body, and low-cut tops displaying an excellent cleavage. Her cropped curls were jet black and shining, and her lips were always glossed dramatic crimson. Her beloved Harley Davidson for normal travel and an off-road bike for the rough stuff completed the picture.

Georgie. Ready for anything.

Georgiana Turner, obstetrician extraordinaire.

Georgie was Gina’s best friend. Gina loved her to bits. Underneath that admittedly really brash exterior Georgie had a heart as soft as putty.

‘To know you is to love you,’ Gina said simply. ‘I love you. All your patients love you. Let Alistair know you and he’ll love you, too.’

‘Right. Like he got to know me last time. He’ll use the occasion to lecture me on morals while you guys are signing the register.’ Georgie took a deep breath and glowered for added emphasis. ‘No. There are some things up with which I will not put.’

Gina sighed. She and Georgie were doctors at Crocodile Creek, base for Air Sea Rescue and the Flying Doctor for most of far north Queensland. Gina was engaged to Cal, another Croc Creek doctor. Six months ago Alistair, Gina’s only cousin, had flown in from America to see what sort of set-up his baby cousin was getting herself into.

Unfortunately his visit had coincided with a ghastly patch in Georgie’s life. Georgie’s stepfather had just dragged her small half-brother away to join him in the seedy life Georgie knew he led. Max was seven years old. Their mother had disappeared into the limbo of drug addiction soon after giving birth to him and Georgie had become Max’s surrogate mum. She loved him so fiercely it was as if he was hers.

But he wasn’t hers. Half-sisters had fewer rights than fathers, no matter how creepy Georgie’s stepfather was. She’d had to let him go.

So Georgie had waved Max off, and then she’d gone to Gina’s engagement party. She had been off duty. She’d been trying desperately not to cry. She’d hit the bar, and then Alistair-Stuffed-Shirt Carmichael had asked her to dance.

Which had been … unfortunate.

Alistair had a great body. He was big and warm and strong, and she’d had too much to drink, too fast. She’d seen him earlier in the day and had thought—vaguely—that he was gorgeous. Now, at the party, battered with shock and grief, she’d let her hormones hold sway. She’d let him hold her as she’d needed to be held. She’d flirted unashamedly, and then …

He’d half carried her from the hall and they’d both known what his intentions had been. She hadn’t cared. Why the hell should she care when her life was going down the drain?

Only Gina had intercepted them at the door. ‘Georgie,’ she’d said in that soft voice, the one that said she cared, and suddenly Georgie had pushed away from Alistair, then sat down on the hall steps and sobbed her heart out, while the rest of Crocodile Creek had streamed in and out around her.

‘What the hell …?’ Alistair had demanded.

And Georgie had looked up at him and said, through tears, ‘I’m sorry, mate. It’s not that I don’t fancy you. I’m just drunk.’

He’d turned, just like that. From the big, gentle man he’d seemed to the prissy, disapproving toad he really was.

‘This is your best friend, Gina?’ He’d said it incredulously.

‘Yes. She’s just—’

‘I’ve just had too much to drink,’ Georgie had said, cutting across his question and glaring daggers at Gina, sending visual refusal for Gina to tell him more. ‘Gina’s right. I gotta go to bed.’

‘I’ll take you,’ Gina had said.

‘But it’s your engagement party,’ Alistair had objected, staring at Georgie as if she’d been some sort of pond scum.

‘That’s OK,’ Gina had said. ‘I’ll come back soon, but I’m taking my friend home first.’

‘You don’t need to take me. I have wheels. Hey, you want a ride on my bike?’ Georgie had asked, veering off on a tangent and motioning to her beloved Harley parked nearby.

‘I think we might leave your bike where it is, don’t you?’ Gina had said, and had smiled and tugged the decidedly wobbly Georgie to her feet. ‘I know you take risks on that thing but we don’t want to push it.’

So that had been Georgie’s introduction to Alistair. The next day Gina had taken him for a tour of the hospital and he’d been flabbergasted to find Georgie was an obstetrician.

‘She’s a really good one,’ Georgie had heard Gina tell Alistair as they’d disappeared from sight. They’d thought she’d left the ward but she’d forgotten something and returned just in time to hear them talk about her. ‘We’re lucky to have her.’

‘I know you’re desperate for doctors,’ Alistair had said. ‘But I sure as hell wouldn’t let her within a mile of any patient of mine.’

So that had been that. Alistair had left the day after, flying back to his very important career as paediatric neurosurgeon in a prestigious US hospital. Georgie had been delighted to see the end of him. But now …

‘He’s giving you away,’ she moaned to Gina. ‘We’ll have to be in the same church as each other.’

‘It’s not like he’s best man. You won’t have to partner him.’

‘He thinks I’m a slut.’

‘Hey, he was taking you to bed. His behaviour wasn’t exactly above reproach.’

‘He was taking me to bed because he thought I was a slut.’

‘Exactly.’

‘So two sets of appalling behaviour cancel each other out?’ She flopped onto the bed and groaned theatrically. ‘Agh, agh, agh.’

‘You could always turn over a new leaf,’ Gina said cautiously. ‘Greet him in twin set and pearls.’

Georgie choked. ‘Yeah. I could.’

‘That’s what his fiancée wears.’

Georgie lifted her head from the pillows and gazed at Gina in astonishment. ‘He has a fiancée?’

‘Eloise. He’s been engaged for years.’

‘So he was engaged when he carted me off the dance floor?’

‘See what I mean? Two sets of bad behaviour, and yours is the lesser.’

‘Twinset, eh?’ Georgie said, and looked thoughtfully at her reflection in the mirror. Her soft black top had crept up a little. She tugged it down to make it more revealing. Which was very revealing.

‘Don’t you dare,’ Gina said nervously. ‘Behave.’

‘I don’t have to wear twinset and pearls as bridesmaid?’

‘I was thinking you might like to wear purple tulle.’ And then, as Georgie stared at her in horror, Gina giggled and threw a pillow at her friend. ‘Gotcha.’

‘Cow. Purple tulle?’

‘Wear what you want,’ Gina said. ‘You’re my only bridesmaid so the choice is yours. Leathers if you want.’

‘Sleek black,’ Georgie said, and grinned. ‘Not trashy.’

‘Trashy if you want.’

‘I only do that—’

‘I know. When you’re angry. But, Georgie …’ She hesitated. ‘Do you know where Max is now?’

Georgie’s smile faded. She picked up the pillow Gina had just tossed at her and hugged it, like it was a baby.

‘I have no idea. I had a phone call five months ago, saying he was in Western Australia, but they were moving on that day. My stepfather’s always one step in front of the law.’

‘Oh, Georg …’

‘I wish he’d get caught,’ Georgie said fiercely. ‘I know he’s involved up to his neck in drugs. I want him to go to prison.’

‘Because then you’d get Max back?’

‘I’m all he’s got.’

‘Your stepfather must love him to keep him with him.’

‘Don’t you believe it,’ Georgie said fiercely. ‘He’s just using him. Last time he was here—last time Ron spent time inside—Max told me he does the running. He acts as lookout. Max shops for them when Ron doesn’t want to get recognised. Ron even used him for drops. When he was six years old!’

‘Oh, Georg …’

‘Ron’s rotten,’ Georgie muttered. ‘My whole family’s rotten. That’s why I’m here in Crocodile Creek—I’m as far as I can get from any of them. Except Max. My one true thing. Max—and I can’t do a thing about him.’

There was a long silence. Gina stared at her friend in real concern. Georgie, who’d hauled herself up the hard way, who’d fought her way through medical school, who’d come from the school of hard knocks and was tough on the exterior, but underneath …

‘If you really don’t want to be my bridesmaid …’ she said tentatively, and Georgie’s eyes flew up to meet hers.

‘Who said I didn’t want to be your bridesmaid?’

‘But Alistair …’

‘I can cope with Alistair Carmichael,’ she said grimly. ‘He’s the least of my worries. Engaged, huh? I can cope with Alistair Carmichael with my hands behind my back.’

‘Georgie …’

‘Nothing outrageous,’ she said, and threw up her hands as if in surrender. ‘I agree.’

And then she added, under her breath, ‘Or nothing outrageous that you’re going to know about.’

It had been some flight. Alistair emerged into the brilliant sunshine of Crocodile Creek feeling almost shell-shocked. He’d been coping with sleepless nights before he’d left. They were setting up a new streamlined process to move patients from Theatre to Intensive Care—not such a difficult process when you said it like that, but in reality, with paediatric problems the transfer was too often a time of drama. He’d orchestrated a whole new method of processing transfers, and he’d hoped to have it securely in place before he’d left, but there’d been last-minute glitches. He’d spent the days before he’d left going through the procedures over and over, supervising mock transfers, timing, making sure the team knew exactly who was doing what.

In the end he’d been satisfied but Eloise had driven him to the airport and even she had been concerned.

‘You’re pushing yourself too far.’

‘Says the youngest ever professor of entomology.’

‘I know my limits, Alistair.’

‘I know mine, too. I can sleep on the plane.’

But as it had turned out, he hadn’t. There’d been turbulence and the plane had been diverted to New Zealand. There he’d endured eight hours in an airport lounge and finally clearance to fly on. More turbulence—this time so severe that some passengers had been injured. Apparently there was a cyclone east of Northern Australia.

Luckily it was southeast of Crocodile Creek and the last short leg had been drama free. Thank God. He descended the plane steps, looking forward to seeing Gina. Trying not to look exhausted. Trying to look as if he was eager for this visit to begin.

Gina wasn’t in the small bunch of waiting people. Instead …

His heart sank. Georgie. Dr Georgiana Turner.

He’d hoped she’d have left town by now. What Gina saw in this … tramp, he didn’t know.

‘Hey, Alistair.’ She waved and yelled as he crossed the tarmac.

She was chewing gum. She was wearing tight leather pants and bright red stilettos. She had on a really tight top—so tight it was almost indecent. She was all in black. The only colour about her was the slash of crimson of her lips, her outrageous shoes and two spots of colour on her cheeks.

‘How’s it going, Al?’ she said, and chewed a bit more gum.

‘Fine,’ he said, trying to be polite and not quite succeeding. ‘Where’s Gina?’

‘See, she was expecting you yesterday. So today she and Cal are running a clinic out on Wallaby Island. The weather’s getting up so they thought they ought to go when they could.’

‘You couldn’t have taken her place?’

‘Hey, I deliver babies. Gina’s the heart lady. There’s not a lot of crossover. You got bags?’

‘One. Yes.’

She sniffed, in a way that said real men didn’t need baggage. She turned and headed for the baggage hall, her very cute butt wiggling as he walked behind her.

It was some butt.

OK, that’s what he couldn’t allow himself to think. That was what had landed him into trouble in the first place. She was a tart. Somehow she’d gained a medical degree but, no matter, she was still a tart.

But even so, he shouldn’t have tried to pick her up.

Now they stood side by side at the luggage carousel, waiting for his bag. It took for ever. There were other doctors there from the plane.

‘There’s some other wedding happening here,’ he ventured for something to say, and Georgie nodded, looking at the baggage carousel as if it was she who’d recognise his bag.

‘Yep. One this Saturday, one next. Planned so those going to both needn’t make two trips. We were starting to think there’d be no guests for the first one.’

‘It’s some storm down south,’ he said reflectively. ‘That’s how I met these guys. The trip from New Zealand should have been cancelled. We hit an air pocket and dropped what felt like a few thousand feet. Anyone who wasn’t belted in was injured.’

‘You got called on as a doctor?’

‘A bit. I was asleep at first.’

‘Off duty,’ she said blankly, and he winced. There was no criticism in her voice. It was a simple statement of fact, but she knew how to hurt. When he’d woken to discover the chaos he’d felt dreadful. He’d helped, but other doctors had been more proactive than him.

‘Look, I—’

‘Is this your bag? It must be. Everyone else has theirs.’

‘It’s mine,’ he said, and she strode forward and lugged it off the conveyor belt before he could stop her. She set it up on its wheels and tugged out the handle, then set it before him. Making him feel even more wimpish.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘My wheels are in the car park.’

‘Your car?’

‘My wheels.’ She was striding through the terminal, talking to him over her shoulder. He was struggling to keep up.

He was feeling about six years old.

‘Hey, Georg.’ People were acknowledging her, waving to her, but she wasn’t stopping. She was wearing really high stilettos but still walking at a pace that made him hurry. She looked like something out of a biker magazine. A biker’s moll?

Not quite, for her hair was closely cropped and cute—almost classy. The gold hoop earrings actually looked great. She was just … different.

‘Doc Turner.’ An overweight girl—much more your vision of a biker’s moll than Georgie—was yelling to get her attention. ‘Georgie!’

Georgie stopped, spinning on her stilettos to see who was calling.

The girl was about eighteen, bottle-blonde, wearing jeans that were a couple of sizes too small for her very chubby figure and a top that didn’t cover a stomach that wobbled. She was pushing a pram. A chubby, big-eyed toddler clung to a fistful of her crop top, and a youth came behind, lugging two overstuffed bags. The youth looked about eighteen, too, as skinny as his partner was chubby.

They were obviously friends of Georgie. ‘Lola,’ Georgie said with evident pleasure. ‘Eric. How goes it?’

‘Eric’s mum’s paid for us to go to Hobart,’ Lola said with evident pride. ‘She’s gonna look after us for a coupla weeks till all me bits get back together.’

‘Lola had a lovely little girl last week,’ Georgie told Alistair, looking into the pram with expected admiration. ‘It was a pretty dramatic birth.’

‘Had her on the laundry floor,’ Lola said proudly. ‘Eric had gone to ring the ambos and there she was. Pretty near wet himself when he came back.’

‘Lola, Eric, this is Dr Carmichael,’ Georgie said. The rest of the passengers from the plane were passing them on the way out to the car park. Nice ordinary people with nice ordinary people meeting them. Not a tattoo in sight.

Lola had six tattoos that he could see. Eric … Eric was just one huge tattoo.

‘Doc Carmichael is Gina’s surrogate father, here to give her away at the wedding,’ Georgie said.

‘He’s Gina’s surrogate father?’ Lola checked him out. ‘What’s surrogate?’ Then she shrugged, clearly not interested in extending her education. ‘Well, he’s older than my old man so I guess he’ll do.’ She surveyed him critically. ‘That silver in your hair. Natural?’

‘Um … yes,’ Alistair said, discomfited.

‘Looks great. Love a bit of silver. Looks real distinguished. Eric, you oughta get some put in. Next time I get me tips done you come, too.’ She moved forward a bit to get a closer look and smoothed Alistair’s lapel in admiration. ‘Cool suit. Real classy. Anyone ever told you we don’t do suits in this town?’

‘You taking him into town?’ Eric asked.

‘Yeah,’ Georgie said.

‘You got a spare helmet?’ Lola demanded. ‘He’s gonna look real dorky in that suit on the back of your bike. And what about his bag?’

‘I’ve got a spare helmet and I hooked up the trailer.’

‘Sheesh,’ Eric said. ‘Rather you than me, mate. She rides like the clappers.’

‘I’m not going on a motorbike,’ Alistair said, feeling it was time he put his foot down. ‘Georgia, I’ll get a cab.’

‘Ooh, listen to him,’ Lola said, admiring. ‘Georgia. Is that your real name?’

‘Georgiana Marilyn Kimberly Turner,’ Georgie said, grinning.

‘Sheesh,’ said Lola.

‘We gotta go,’ Eric said, looking ahead at the security gates with a certain amount of trepidation. ‘Lola, you sure about the—?’

‘The baby stuff,’ Lola corrected him, far too fast, and reached over and gave her beloved a wifely cuff. ‘Yeah, it’s packed. Shut up.’

Georgie chuckled. It was a good chuckle, Alistair thought, low and throaty and real.

‘They’re in for a rough flight,’ he said, watching the little family head off toward Security. By mutual unspoken agreement they stayed watching. Lola picked the baby up out of her pram, handed her to Eric, lifted the pram and dumped the whole thing sideways on the conveyor belt. Then she grabbed all the bags they were carrying and loaded them on top. Bags, bags and more bags.

A security officer from the far end of the hall had strolled down to where they were tugging their gear off the belt. The officer had a beagle hound on a leash.

The beagle walked up to Lola, looked up at her and sat firmly at her feet.

‘Hey, great dog,’ Lola said, and fished in her nappy bag. ‘You want a peanut-butter sandwich?’

‘Don’t feed the dog, ma’am,’ the officer said curtly, and Lola swelled in indignation.

‘Why the hell not? He’s too skinny.’

‘Can we check the contents of the bag you’re carrying, please?’

‘Sure,’ Lola said, amenable. She walked back to the conveyor belt with her nappy bag, lifted it high and emptied it. She put the baby on top for good measure.

‘She’s carrying the contents of a small house,’ Alistair said, awed, and Georgie grinned.

‘That’s our Lola. She’s one of my favourite patients.’

‘I can see that,’ he said morosely, and she shrugged, starting to walk away.

‘Yeah, it’s a long way from the keep-yourself-nice brigade I’d imagine you’d prefer to treat. But we need to be flexible up here, mate. Nonjudgmental. Doctors like you wouldn’t have a chance in this place.’

He bit his lip. She was being deliberately provocative, he thought. Dammit, he wasn’t going to react. But …

‘About the bike …’

‘Yeah?’ she said over her shoulder as she headed outside.

‘I’ll get a cab.’

‘Someone’s already taken the cab. I saw it drive off.’

‘There must be more than one cab.’

‘Not today there isn’t. It’s the northern waters flyfishing meet in Croc Creek. The prize this year is a week in Fiji and every man and his dog is fishing his heart out. And everyone else from the plane left while we were talking to Lola. You’re stuck with me.’

They were outside now, trekking through to the far reaches of the car park. To an enormous Harley Davidson with an incongruous little trailer on the back.

‘I can usually park at the front,’ Georgie said. ‘But I had to bring the trailer.’ Once again that unspoken assumption that he was a wuss for bringing more than a toothbrush.

‘I’d rather not go on the bike,’ he said stiffly.

She turned and stared. ‘Why not?’

‘I don’t—’

‘Like the feel of the wind in your hair? It’s not a toupee, is it?’ She kicked off her stilettos and reached into her saddle bag for a pair of trainers that had seen better days. ‘Go on. Live dangerously. I’ll even try to stay under the speed limit.’

‘I’d rather not.’

‘I brought you a helmet. Even the toupee’s protected.’

‘No.’

There was a moment’s silence. Then she shrugged. Before he knew what she was about she’d hauled his suitcase up and tossed it onto her trailer. Then she shoved her helmet over her curls, clipped it tight and climbed astride her bike. The motor was roaring into life before he had time to say a word.

‘Fair enough,’ she yelled over the noise. ‘It’s your toupee after all, and maybe I’d worry myself. You can’t take too much care of those little critters. I’ll drop the case off at the hospital. It’s three miles directly north and over the bridge.’

‘You can’t—’

‘See ya,’ she yelled, and flicked off the brake.

And she was gone, leaving a cloud of dust and petrol fumes behind her.

‘You dumped him.’

‘I didn’t dump him. I went to collect him and he declined my very kind offer to be my pillion passenger.’

‘Georgie, it’s hot out there. Stinking hot.’ On the end of the phone Gina was starting to sound agitated.

‘That’s why I couldn’t understand why he didn’t accept my offer. He’s wearing a suit. A gorgeous Italian suit, Gina. With that lovely hair, his height, those gorgeous brogues … Ooh, he looks the real big city specialist. You wouldn’t think someone like that would want to walk.’

‘He won’t have realised … He’ll have thought there were taxis.’

‘I told him there weren’t.’

‘Georgie, I want you to go back and get him.’

‘No way.’

‘In a car. You could have taken a hospital car.’

‘What’s wrong with my bike?’

‘Georgie Turner, are you my very best friend and my bridesmaid or what?’

‘I might be,’ she said cautiously.

‘Then your job as my bridesmaid is to make sure that the man who’s going to give me away doesn’t turn into a grease spot while hiking into Crocodile Creek.’

‘He shouldn’t—’

‘Georgie.’

‘He thinks I’m some species below bedbug.’

‘You wore your leathers?’

‘So what?’

‘And your stilettos?’

‘I dressed up. I thought it was important to make a good impression.’

‘Georgie, go fetch him.’

‘Won’t,’ Georgie said, but she grinned. OK, she’d made her point. She supposed the toad could be fetched. ‘Oh, all right.’

‘In the car,’ Gina added.

‘If I have to.’

‘You have to. Tell him Cal and I will be back at dinnertime.’

‘Sure,’ Georgie said, and grimaced. ‘He’ll be really relieved to hear that higher civilisation is on its way.’

The kid was sitting in the middle of the bridge. He’d be blocking traffic if there was any traffic, but Crocodile Creek must hunker down for a midday siesta. Alistair hadn’t passed so much as a pushbike for the last mile.

He’d abandoned his jacket, slinging it over his shoulder and considering losing it altogether. It was so hot if he’d really been wearing a toupee he’d have left it behind a mile ago. He was thirsty. He was jet-lagged to hell and he was angry.

There was a kid in the middle of the bridge. A little boy.

‘Hi,’ he said as he approached, but the child didn’t respond. He was staring down at the river, his face devoid of expression. It was a dreadful look, Alistair thought. It wasn’t bored. It wasn’t sad. It was simply … empty.

He was about six years old. Indigenous Australian? Maybe, but mixed with something else.

‘Are you OK?’ Alistair asked, doing a fast scan of the riverbank, searching for someone who might belong to this waif.

There was no one else in sight. There was no answer.

‘Where’s Mum or Dad?’

‘Dad’s fishing,’ the child said, breaking his silence to speak in little more than a quavering whisper. Alistair’s impression of hopelessness intensified.

‘And you’re waiting for him to come home?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Maybe you could wait somewhere cooler,’ Alistair suggested. The middle of the bridge was so hot there was shimmer rising from the timbers.

‘I’m OK here.’

Alistair hesitated. This kid had dark skin. Maybe he wouldn’t burn like Alistair was starting to. If his dad was coming soon …

No. The child was square in the middle of the bridge and his face said he was expecting the wait to be a long one.

He squatted down beside the boy. ‘What’s your name?’

‘I’m not allowed to talk to people I don’t know.’

‘I’m a doctor,’ Alistair said. ‘I’m here to visit the doctors at the Crocodile Creek Hospital. I know them all. Dr Gina Lopez. Dr Charles Wetherby. Dr Georgie Turner.’

The kid’s eyes flew to meet his.

‘Georgie?’

‘You know Georgie?’

‘She helps my mum.’

‘She’s a friend of mine,’ Alistair said gently, knowing he had to stretch the truth to gain trust. ‘She’ll be at the hospital now and that’s where I’m going. If I take you there, maybe she could take you home on the back of her motorbike.’

The child’s eyes fixed on his, unwavering.

‘You’re a doctor?’

‘I am.’

‘You fix people?’

‘Yes.’

‘Will you fix my mum?’

His heart sank. This was getting trickier. The sun was searing the back of his neck. He could feel beads of sweat trickling downward. ‘What’s wrong with your mother?’

The child’s expression had changed to one of wary hope. ‘She’s sick. She’s in bed.’

What was he getting himself into? But he had no choice. ‘Can you take me to your mum?’

‘Yes,’ the little boy said, defeat turning to determination. He climbed to his feet, grabbed Alistair’s hand and tugged. ‘It’s along the river.’