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‘It’s not just that.’ Meredith bit her lip. ‘A friend of ours was badly injured in a car accident about ten days ago. I wanted to tell her. I tried ringing, but I didn’t realise mobile phones wouldn’t work out here, and when I didn’t get a reply to any of my messages, of course I began to worry.’
‘So you’ve come all this way just to give Lucy some bad news?’ Hal frowned. ‘Couldn’t it have waited till she got home? I dare say she’ll be sorry, but there’s not much she can do about it out here.’
‘But there is,’ said Meredith. She turned her head slightly, as if looking out of the window so that he couldn’t see her face. ‘Richard needs her.’
Lucy. He needed Lucy, not her.
If she had expected Hal to be sympathetic, she was due for a disappointment. ‘Richard’s the guy who had the accident?’ he said. ‘Sounds to me as if he needs good medical care. Lucy’s not a nurse. I don’t see what she can do.’
‘She can help him out of a coma.’ Meredith had hoped to be able to explain all this to Lucy first, but Hal was going to have to know why her sister was leaving. ‘Richard’s been unconscious ever since the accident and the doctors suggested that familiar voices might help.’
Swallowing, she stared straight ahead, one hand clutching at the window, the other the bare metal dashboard, but she wasn’t seeing the outback. Instead she was in the intensive care ward, looking at Richard lying terrifyingly still in that bed, and the white, strained faces of his parents.
‘Richard’s parents are distraught,’ she went on. ‘They’ve been with him continually and the rest of his family have been talking to him too, but nothing seems to be working. They’re convinced that Lucy’s voice is the one that will help him regain consciousness.’
‘It sounds to me as if they’re grasping at straws,’ Hal commented and Meredith turned slightly to look at him, suddenly desperate to make him understand how important it was for Lucy to go back.
‘No, I’m sure they’re right,’ she said. ‘Richard adores Lucy.’ There, not even a betraying wobble in her voice, she thought, relieved. Hal wouldn’t know how much it had once cost her to acknowledge that truth.
‘She’s the most important person in the world to him,’ she went on. ‘He was devastated when she left for Australia. All he wanted was for her to come back to him. If anyone can bring him back,’ she assured Hal, ‘Lucy can.’
‘If he’s going to regain consciousness he will, regardless of whether Lucy’s there or not,’ said Hal. ‘And if he doesn’t, there’s not much point in her haring back to London, is there? I gather that’s what you want her to do?’
Meredith nodded. ‘We have to try, at least.’
‘I don’t see why. It sounds a lot of sentimental nonsense to me. Your Richard may “adore” Lucy, but she clearly doesn’t adore him. She wouldn’t have come out to Australia if she had, and I have to tell you that she hasn’t been showing any signs of pining. She’s been consoling herself very nicely with one of my ringers.’
Meredith wasn’t entirely sure what a ringer was, but she guessed that it was probably someone who worked for Hal. She might have guessed that Lucy would have found someone else, she thought with an inward sigh. Her sister was always in love with some man or other. She had even been in love with Richard for a while, until Meredith had somehow given herself away one day.
If only she’d kept a closer guard on her expression! Richard had never guessed how she felt, and Lucy wouldn’t have either if she hadn’t happened to catch sight of Meredith’s face in that mirror.
‘Why didn’t you tell me that you loved him?’ she had demanded, stricken.
But how could she have said anything when it was obvious that Richard was head over heels in love with Lucy?
With an effort, Meredith dragged herself back to the problem in hand, all grim-featured, six-foot male of it.
‘Lucy may well have found someone else, but she’s still very fond of Richard,’ she said. ‘I’m sure she’ll want to help him.’
‘Maybe she will, but she’s not jaunting back to London to do it,’ said Hal flatly. ‘She’s got a job to do here.’
‘You can’t stop her going!’ protested Meredith.
‘Can’t I? She’s on a six-month contract, and so far she’s only done two. If she wants to leave when her six months are up, that’s up to her, but until then she’s committed herself to staying at Wirrindago.’
Meredith stared at him in disbelief. ‘But you can’t mean to hold her to that when Richard’s so ill! Couldn’t you at least give her some compassionate leave?’
‘Look, it might be different if you’d come to me and said that a member of your family was dangerously ill but, from what I can make out, this guy is just an ex-boyfriend,’ said Hal callously. ‘Presumably Lucy had her reasons for breaking off that relationship. I don’t see why she should be expected to drop everything now and rush back to some man she’s already decided she doesn’t want to be with. The whole thing stinks of emotional blackmail!’
‘It isn’t blackmail!’ How could he be so unfeeling? wondered Meredith furiously. If he could only see how ill Richard was…! But he probably wouldn’t care. He obviously didn’t have any feelings at all. ‘I’m sure Lucy won’t think that, anyway,’ she told him with a defiant look that bounced right off him.
‘It doesn’t matter what she thinks,’ he said in an uncompromising voice. ‘She’s not going anywhere. The men need feeding and someone’s got to look after the children. Who’s going to take care of them if she goes?’
‘Well, let’s see…’ Meredith put her head on one side and pretended to consider the matter, too cross with him to care about the fact that he was evidently married after all. Or had been. ‘I know! What about you?’ she suggested acidly.
‘I’ve got a million acre property to run,’ he said. ‘I haven’t got time to look after two children.’
‘Perhaps you should have thought of that before you had them!’
‘They’re not mine,’ said Hal, effectively taking the wind out of her sails. ‘They’re my sister’s kids.’
‘Oh.’ Ready to be outraged at the way he was prepared to shrug aside his responsibilities as a father, Meredith was left feeling a little foolish. ‘Do they live with you all the time?’
‘No—thank God!’ he added with feeling. ‘Lydia—my sister—grew up at Wirrindago with me, but she married a city type and has been living in Sydney ever since.’
His tone made it clear what he thought about ‘city types’, thought Meredith, who couldn’t help thinking that Lydia had probably made a good decision. If she had to choose between this godforsaken place and the buzz of a city like Sydney, she knew which direction she would be heading.
‘Lydia and Greg have been having some problems,’ Hal went on, a tinge of distaste in his voice. ‘Greg travels a lot on business, and Lydia thinks it would help if they were able to spend more time together, so she’s arranged to go with him on a two month trip to Europe.’
‘So you get to look after the kids while they’re away?’ And she thought she’d been asking for a big favour when she’d begged a lift to Wirrindago! Meredith reflected. Hal’s sister must be a brave woman.
Hal nodded, but it was clear that the prospect of having nieces and nephews to stay left him less than enthralled. ‘Lydia couldn’t wait to leave Wirrindago for the city herself, but she likes the idea of an outback property, and she decided this trip was an ideal opportunity for the kids to connect with their “outback heritage”, as she calls it, and for me to get to know them properly.’
The stern mouth was turned down at the corners and Meredith felt sorry for the two children sent off to stay with a grim uncle in the back of beyond. Poor kids!
‘My sister and I spent a lot of time with our aunt when we were kids, so I guess she’s hoping that I’ll have the same kind of relationship with her children,’ Hal added wryly.
‘And do you?’
He lifted a shoulder. ‘They’ve only been here a couple of days. It’s obvious they don’t want to be in the outback any more than I want to run a crèche but beyond that I don’t really know what they’re like. It’s a busy time for us too, so I haven’t had the chance to spend much time with them.’
‘It doesn’t sound very suitable,’ said Meredith disapprovingly. ‘Why didn’t you just say no?’
‘It’s what I should have done,’ Hal conceded, ‘but once my sister gets an idea in her head, it’s hard to shift her. She can be difficult, but she hasn’t had an easy time of it and…well, I guess I just didn’t know how to refuse,’ he admitted in what Meredith imagined was a rare moment of weakness. ‘I was the eldest, so I always had to look after her when we were growing up, and I think she’s fallen into the way of relying on me.’
Meredith could sympathise with that, at least. She had been the eldest too, and had got used to protecting Lucy.
‘How old are these children?’ she asked.
‘Emma’s nine and Mickey—Michael, I’m supposed to call him—is seven.’
Meredith frowned. ‘Shouldn’t they be at school?’
‘They’re going to do School of the Air while they’re here, and Lucy’s going to do some lessons with them. I made it clear in her contract that she would have to be a governess as well as a cook once the children arrived.’
‘Lucy? A governess?’ Meredith couldn’t help laughing. ‘Really?’
Damn, there was that smile again. Hal wished she wouldn’t do it. It made her look vivid and interesting and much, much harder to ignore.
‘What’s so funny?’ he demanded gruffly.
‘It just seems so unlikely,’ she tried to explain. ‘Governess makes me think of a Jane Eyre figure, all prim and proper, and Lucy’s certainly never been that!’ When you thought about Lucy, you thought about warmth and fun and laughter and a sparkling zest for life. She paused, not wanting to drop her sister in it. ‘Did she tell you about her teaching experience?’ she asked carefully and Hal cast her a dour smile.
‘You don’t need to worry; she was very open about the fact that she’d never done any. That doesn’t matter to me. She doesn’t have to teach them anything, just make sure that they do the work and help them with their reading and so on. It’s not hard, but someone’s got to be there with them. You can’t leave two kids on their own all day.’
‘Of course not,’ said Meredith, wondering if he was expecting her to disagree.
‘So you see, I can’t let Lucy go now,’ said Hal firmly. ‘Lydia and Greg won’t be back for another couple of months.’
‘Couldn’t—’ Meredith broke off and winced as the truck went over a particularly nasty bump that shot her up in the air and then slammed her back down on to the seat. ‘Couldn’t you find someone else?’ she tried again when she had got her breath back.
‘Where?’ he asked. ‘It’s not that easy to find people who are prepared to live on an isolated property, away from their family and friends.’
Meredith couldn’t say that she was surprised. There was no way she would come and live out here, no matter how fat a salary was offered.
‘I was lucky to find your sister,’ Hal told her. ‘Lucy’s got a romantic idea about what life is like in the outback, but that’s fine by me. I needed a cook anyway, and once I knew Lydia was going to dump the kids on me about now, I made sure I tied her to a contract that would cover the whole time they were here. Lucy was perfectly happy to sign it,’ he added.
That sounded like Lucy, thought Meredith wearily. Her sister had always been prone to wild enthusiasms, throwing herself into things with abandon before her interest waned and she was enthralled by something else entirely. It was a characteristic that exasperated Meredith even while a secret bit of her envied Lucy’s ability to live for the moment.
‘Lucy’s never been a believer in wait and see,’ she said to Hal. ‘It would never occur to her to suggest a trial period before she committed herself to six months.’
‘Is that what you’d have done?’
‘In the unlikely event that I’d be applying for a job I’d never done before in a place I couldn’t easily leave and living with people I’d never met…yes, I would certainly have insisted on a trial!’
‘Then perhaps it’s just as well it’s Lucy who wanted the job and not you. She’s certainly not regretting it, so even if she had been sensible like you, she would be long past the trial period by now. I think you’ll find that Lucy is more than happy to stay. She’s a grown woman and she can make own decisions without her big sister telling her what to do.’
Meredith flushed. She had always hated that bossy big sister image, but if even Hal Granger could see it, perhaps it was true.
But she wasn’t bossy, she reminded herself. She wasn’t always trying to tell other people what to do. She just wasn’t someone who sat around waiting for things to happen. She certainly wasn’t going to simply sit back and hope that Richard got better if she could make a difference by taking Lucy back to him.
‘Well, let’s see what Lucy has to say first,’ she said, lifting her chin.
She couldn’t give up now, not when she’d got this far!
Meredith stole a glance at Hal. He wasn’t someone you’d want to cross if you didn’t have to, she acknowledged to herself. He was toughly built and there was a competent, purposeful air about him that, as a practical person herself, she couldn’t help appreciating. The trouble was that you really wanted someone like Hal on your side, rather than squaring up for a battle of wills.
Still, what could he do? He could hardly keep her and Lucy prisoners…could he? Meredith shook off the sudden doubt. Of course he couldn’t. And if he did, they would just have to think up an escape plan.
Looking at the inhospitable terrain around her, Meredith wasn’t quite sure what that would be—they certainly wouldn’t be walking!—but she would just have to cross that bridge when she came to it.
Beside her, Hal saw her chin set at a stubborn angle and his eyes narrowed slightly. Meredith West seemed like someone who was used to getting her own way, and she clearly hadn’t given up. If she thought she and Lucy would be able to talk him round, she was in for a disappointment, though. She had come all this way for nothing.
He felt a bit sorry for her, in fact.
‘There must be other people who can talk to your Richard,’ he offered. ‘Why not you?’
Meredith looked at him. ‘If you were longing with all your heart to see Lucy, don’t you think you’d be a bit disappointed if I turned up instead?’
‘But he’s in a coma, you said. He won’t know. He’ll just be aware that there’s someone there.’
‘Exactly,’ said Meredith. ‘That’s why it has to be Lucy. Richard wants to see her so much, I’m quite sure that as soon as he senses she’s there, it will give him the strength to come round. If he wakes up and sees me sitting there, he would be so disappointed he’d probably have a relapse, and that’s not what we want at all!’
She was making it into a joke, but Hal wondered about the underlying note of bleakness in her voice. He wasn’t a particularly perceptive man, but it was obvious that this Richard meant a lot more to her than she was letting on.
‘I’m sure you underestimate yourself,’ he said.
‘No, I don’t.’ Meredith shook her head firmly. ‘Richard’s not interested in me.’
She was protesting a bit too much, Hal thought. ‘You seem to be going to a lot of trouble for someone who’s not interested in you,’ he commented mildly.
Meredith averted her face. ‘He’s a friend,’ she said.
‘Would you fly all the way out to Australia for all your friends?’
‘I would if they needed me.’ She turned back to him, pulling a stray strand of brown hair distastefully from her face. ‘And if I could afford it. To be honest, Richard’s parents paid for my ticket. They’re desperate for anything that will help Richard get better, and they’ve pinned all their hopes on me finding Lucy.’
Hal’s mouth turned down disapprovingly. ‘It was a lot to ask you to do that.’
‘They didn’t. I offered,’ said Meredith. ‘I’m self-employed—I’m a freelance translator—so as long as I’ve got my laptop and can connect to the Internet, I can go wherever and whenever I want.’ She patted the computer by her side. ‘I couldn’t stand sitting around waiting for news about Richard, and told them I’d rather be doing something. I was worried about not hearing from Lucy too, and it seemed a good opportunity to find out if she was OK.’
‘So this is all your idea, in fact?’
She looked away again. ‘Richard’s parents kept saying how much they wished Lucy was there and it seemed like something useful I could do,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I would have paid for the tickets, but they insisted, and I let them pay because it made them feel that it was something they could do too, and obviously they can’t leave Richard at the moment.’
‘I see,’ said Hal.
He thought he did. Meredith West was obviously one of those managing women who always thought they knew best and who decided what everyone else wanted without ever bothering to actually ask. He wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that it was Meredith who had put the idea of bringing Lucy home into Richard’s parents’ minds.
Well, she wasn’t going to manage him.
They drove on in silence. Meredith was so tired by this stage that her eyeballs seemed to be revolving in her head and her eyelids were so heavy that it was a huge effort to keep them from clanging down on to her lower lashes, and even that wasn’t enough. Incredibly, given all the jolting and bouncing, her head kept lolling to one side until a rough lurch of the truck jerked her awake again.
To Meredith it was as if they had been driving for ever. Every now and then, they would come to a creek bed and Hal would pause, shift gears and then bump cautiously down one side and up the other. It was funny to think that sometimes these creeks would be full of water. Meredith couldn’t imagine it at all. She had never been anywhere so brown and dry.
‘Nearly there,’ said Hal at long last, and Meredith shook herself awake and looked around her.
The landscape had changed, she realised. The dust was still that strange reddish-brown, the light still glaring, but it was rockier around here and there were sparse, spindly trees on either side of the track which made it look positively lush compared to the flat emptiness they’d been travelling through earlier.
After a while the trees thinned again and they came out on to more open land. ‘That’s the homestead up ahead,’ said Hal, pointing into the distance.
Meredith squinted, but couldn’t make out much more than a smudge of green and she was suddenly overwhelmed by the realisation of just how isolated they were, how far she was from home. This wasn’t a place you could just walk away from. If Hal stuck by his refusal to allow Lucy to break her contract, how on earth would they be able to get away?
It was almost impossible to judge distances here. One minute the homestead was no more than a shimmering mirage, the next, it seemed, they were bowling past fenced paddocks and a motley collection of what seemed to Meredith to be little more than sheds with corrugated iron roofs but which Hal told her were the stockmen’s quarters.
He had intended to drive through the yards and round to the side of the homestead where they could unload the stores in the back of the truck directly into the kitchen, but Meredith’s expression was so unimpressed that on an impulse he changed his mind and headed round to the front of the house instead where there was a little patch of grass, lovingly irrigated to an almost startling green.
This was the best view of the old homestead, with its deep veranda and the elegant lace ironwork that was left from a less practical age, but Meredith didn’t seem particularly impressed.
