by Ford, Holly
‘It’s not all I’ve got.’ Lennie raised her eyebrows at him. ‘You know what else I miss about general practice? The holistic thing. Being there the whole way. I might see an animal maybe two or three times, and that’s it. There’s no real relationship. Where’s the heart in that? It can make you hard, I think, not having the whole picture.’
‘Yeah,’ Sam said. ‘You’ve really hardened up these last eight months. Everybody’s noticed. I gave Pesh her shots today, by the way.’
‘Thank you.’ Lennie gave him a guilty smile. It was a source of great amusement to her colleagues at the Royal that she couldn’t bring herself to so much as stick a needle in her own dog. ‘Has she been okay?’
‘Good as gold. I’ve kept the house chilled to twenty-two degrees just how she likes it.’
Lennie’s smile grew. ‘You’re a star.’
Sam bent to retrieve his car keys from the coffee table. ‘What’s that on your shirt?’ He peered at it. ‘Is that blood?’
‘Wine stain.’ Lennie got up, dislodging Pesh from her feet. ‘Rough flight. Speaking of wine, can you stay for a drink?’ She headed for the stairs. ‘I’ll just get changed.’
‘Thanks, but I’d better get going.’ Sam patted Pesh. ‘I’ve got a date tonight.’
•
‘No way.’ Deliarna stared at Lennie across the café table. ‘You’re joking, right? You can’t move back to Kimpton. That’s insane.’ Below them, a lazy wave lapped the ferry pier.
‘Thanks.’ With a wry glance at her best mate in Sydney, Lennie ripped off a chunk of brioche. ‘I’m feeling pretty good about it, actually.’
‘You’re not telling me something.’ Deliarna gave Lennie her best police sergeant glare. ‘Something happened to you.’ She inspected Lennie again. ‘You met someone, didn’t you?’
The ghost of a kiss trailed its fingers down Lennie’s spine. ‘I meet people every day,’ she said.
‘Not people who put a look like that on your face. Come on, who is he? What does he do? What’s his name?’
‘Okay.’ Lennie gave in. ‘I kind of did meet someone, I guess. His name was Mitch.’ For a second, she was looking into those old-soul brown eyes again, watching that long cheek muscle work the corner of his mouth, feeling the touch of his fingers on her ruined shirt…
‘Hello? Lennie?’ Deliarna waved a hand at her. ‘More information, please?’
Lennie hesitated. ‘He was some kind of forestry worker, I think.’
‘You think?’
‘Look, could you put your police notebook back in your pocket, please? We didn’t really get a chance to talk. I didn’t find out much about him.’
‘We use a tablet these days.’ The corner of Del’s mouth curled. ‘So no talking, huh? What did the two of you do, exactly?’
‘Nothing,’ Lennie said. ‘I mean, nothing really…It was kind of weird.’
Del’s eyes widened further. ‘Weird good, or weird bad?’
‘No, nothing like that. God…’ Looking at Del’s expression, Lennie could feel herself starting to laugh. ‘I mean it was strange. He had this cut on his head and—’
‘Whoa, hold up there. How did he get a cut on his head?’
‘A guy headbutted him in a fight.’
‘A fight? He was fighting?’ Del looked like she really was thinking of getting her police tablet out.
‘He didn’t start it,’ Lennie said. ‘It wasn’t his fault.’
Del gave a cynical snort. ‘It never is.’
‘No, really. A couple of kids in the pub were giving me a hard time, he came over to help me, and one of them just went for him.’
‘Ah,’ Del said, amusement flashing in her eyes. ‘I’m starting to get the picture. Honestly Len, I let you out of my sight for two minutes and you pick up a lumberjack and start a bar fight.’
‘It wasn’t funny.’ Lennie said. ‘Not at the time. It was awful.’
‘I bet it was.’ Del was still grinning. ‘But I take it your Mitch-the-forestry-worker handled himself okay?’
Lennie nodded. ‘He was pretty impressive, actually.’
‘You mean like maybe he did it a lot?’ Del was looking suspicious again.
‘Like…’ Lennie strove to put what she’d seen into words. ‘Like he’d trained for it or something.’ She shook her head. ‘He didn’t look like he enjoyed it, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Okay.’ Del checked her phone quickly. ‘So there you are with your wounded hero, the adrenaline’s flowing—then what?’
‘I took him back to my room—’
‘Of course you did.’ Del grinned. ‘Attagirl.’
‘—to clean up his head wound.’ Lennie rolled her eyes.
‘Naturally. And?’
‘And we…’ Lennie shrugged. ‘We had a moment.’
‘A moment,’ Del repeated dubiously. ‘I’m feeling I need more details. On a hot-meter of one to ten, this moment was…?’
Lennie blew out her cheeks. ‘About a twelve.’
‘Twelve?’ Abandoning what little attempt she’d been making not to laugh, Del leaned forward. ‘Jesus, Lennie, the guy was that cute?’
‘No.’ Lennie found herself laughing too. ‘I mean, yeah.’ She thought back to the hawkish bone structure under her hands. ‘Yes, he was, in a stalking-the-moors sort of way, but it wasn’t just that. We started to kiss, and there was just this amazing—god, I don’t even know what to call it.’
‘Spark?’ Del suggested.
‘That, yeah…’ Lennie thought hard. ‘And this kind of connection.’
‘So then what happened?’ Del waved the waiter away.
Lennie blew out her breath again. ‘I guess he hung up on me.’
‘He did what?’
‘He apologised for kissing me,’ Lennie said, ‘and he got up and left.’
‘He walked out? Just like that?’
‘Yeah.’ She sighed. ‘Pretty much.’
‘Ouch.’ Del wasn’t smiling anymore. ‘He didn’t even say why?’
‘He said it was “complicated”.’
‘Right.’ Del pulled a face. ‘One of those.’
Lennie pushed at her brioche. ‘He’s probably back home with the wife and kids right now.’
‘Probably,’ Del said gently.
Concentrating on her plate, Lennie could feel her friend’s continued scrutiny.
‘But you don’t really think so,’ Del said, ‘do you?’
‘I don’t know,’ Lennie admitted. ‘Something about it doesn’t seem right. He didn’t seem like the type.’
‘Too honest a face?’ Del joked. ‘You know, we get a lot of those down at the station.’
Lennie managed a smile. ‘More than that. There was just something about him, like…like he’d know better than to get himself into something like that. Like he knew himself down to the bone.’
‘A man with all the answers? I went out with one of those. It didn’t last too long.’
Lennie shook her head. ‘A man who’d figured out the important questions to ask, maybe.’
Del gave her a sympathetic look. ‘This guy really got to you, didn’t he?’
‘How stupid is that?’ Lennie downed a mouthful of brioche. ‘I only knew him for five minutes.’
‘Lennie, why do you keep talking about the guy like he’s dead?’
‘Because I’m never going to see him again.’
‘You won’t, or you don’t want to?’
Lennie finished chewing. ‘Both, I guess.’
‘You don’t sound too sure.’
‘I couldn’t find him again if I tried. I wouldn’t even know where to look.’
‘The hotel probably has his address,’ Del pointed out. ‘You want me to make some inquiries?’
‘You know, I’ve always wondered how you do that from the top of a horse,’ Lennie teased her. ‘But I’m pretty sure New Zealand is outside your jurisdiction.’
‘I can still make a quick call.’
‘And what, tell the Glenmo
re Hotel that the New South Wales Mounted Police want to know Mitch Stuart’s whereabouts? Tempting,’ Lennie said, narrowing her eyes at Del, ‘but I think I’ll pass on that, thank you very much.’ However much her poorer judgement might want it, what possible good could come of her seeing a guy like that again? Lennie’s gaze wandered to the harbour, watching a couple of sailing skiffs cut through the gleaming water. ‘Some things are better left alone.’
‘He’d be one person you know over there,’ Del said. ‘That’d be something.’
‘Glenmore’s nowhere near Kimpton. And anyway, I still know lots of people. There are all Grandma and Grandpa’s friends for a start.’
‘Uh-huh,’ Del said. ‘Anybody under sixty?’
‘Yes. As a matter of fact, the business manager of the company trying to buy Grandpa out is a guy I went to school with.’
‘And this would be the company your grandfather hates?’
‘I don’t think he hates them.’ Lennie shifted in her chair. ‘He just doesn’t trust them all that much.’
‘So how does he seem, this guy you know?’ Instantly, Del was back in interrogation mode. ‘Oh my god, Lennie, you’re blushing…What? Did you go out with him or something?’
‘God, no.’ There’d been a long queue for that role. Although for an hour or so at Stacey Kendrick’s party, she’d thought she might be about to get her turn at the top. Right up until Benji disappeared with Natalie Porter. ‘Benji was way out of my league,’ Lennie told Del. ‘But the two of us were kind of friends. We sat together in chemistry.’
‘How cute.’ Del wrinkled her nose. ‘I bet he’s in your league now. Is he single?’
Lennie laughed. ‘I have no idea.’ Although she had happened to notice, as Benji casually laid his left hand on the lunchroom table beside her, that his ring finger was bare. ‘I doubt it, unless he’s run out of girls in the Kimpton Valley to date.’
‘Da-da!’ Del waved her hand. ‘Enter a new one. Although I guess with you and him playing for opposite teams that could get tricky.’
‘You know, I’m not so sure Benji’s really my type anymore.’
‘What, he doesn’t carry a chainsaw?’
‘Oh ha-ha. You’re so funny.’ Lennie checked her watch. ‘I’d better get back to work.’
‘Yeah.’ Del sighed. ‘Me too. I’ve got riot shields to order.’ She paused, giving Lennie a more serious look. ‘I can’t believe we won’t get to do this anymore.’
‘I know.’ Lennie felt a sudden prickle of tears. ‘But I’m still here for another five weeks. And hey—’ she gave herself a shake ‘—it’s only a short-term contract. I’ll be back in six months. I just need to get Grandpa through this deal, that’s all.’
•
In the park across the street from her mother’s flat, Lennie watched the ibises strut while she waited for Pesh to finish investigating a Moreton Bay fig root. Between the tree’s branches she could see the dormer window that lit Julia’s tiny attic pied-à-terre, home on the rare occasions her marine biologist mother wasn’t flitting from fellowship to residency, research vessel to base. The window was open, coaxing in whatever breeze it could extract from the muggy Saturday afternoon.
‘Come on,’ she told Pesh, ‘let’s get out of this heat.’
At the top of four flights of stairs, across from the cage of the vintage elevator Pesh always flatly refused to enter, Julia’s door stood open for them, offering a glimpse of the DIY bookshelves that lined the attic’s oddly angled walls. Lennie let herself and Pesh in as she always did. Her mother, she knew, would be making their ritual green tea, a tradition that dated back to her grandparents’ house and the fascination she and Julia had shared with Lois’s Japanese tea set.
‘I’m in the kitchen,’ Julia announced, as Pesh’s claws clacked over the terrazzo.
The blades of the window shutters were angled against the light, and the flat was dim but thankfully cool—for Sydney in summer, anyway.
‘It’s a good thing you’re doing,’ her mother said, in her quiet, certain way, when the tea had been poured. On the wall behind her, the precarious shelves sagged under the weight of scientific journals and textbooks, not a few of the spines bearing Julia’s name. ‘Lennie, thank you for this. I mean it. I’d go over there myself, but…’
They exchanged a look. But Jim hadn’t asked her.
‘It’s your help Dad wants,’ Julia said.
Lennie nodded. Her mother knew a lot about a great many things, but running a veterinary practice wasn’t one of them.
‘Has the Royal agreed to let you take a sabbatical?’
‘Kind of,’ Lennie said. Sam had done his best. ‘It’s not formal, but they’ve said they’ll try to hold the job for me.’
‘That’s good,’ Julia said thoughtfully. ‘You’ve made an impression on them, obviously.’
‘Yeah. I guess it’s a positive sign.’ So long as they didn’t find a locum they liked better.
‘How did Mum and Dad seem?’ Julia’s big green eyes—the eyes all the O’Donnell women had in common—fixed on Lennie’s face in the way that so many people found disconcerting.
Lennie shrugged. ‘Oddly fine,’ she said. ‘You were there last month. How did they seem to you?’
‘Strangely normal,’ her mother agreed. ‘Your grandfather acted like nothing had happened.’ She sighed. ‘Mum was spitting tacks about him—’
‘She still is,’ Lennie broke in.
‘But all she really seemed to care about…’ Julia frowned.
‘Was The Lion King,’ Lennie finished. ‘I know. I mean, it’s crazy, right?’
Her mother held up a hand in defeat. ‘It’s the straw that broke the camel’s back, I suppose. She’s been waiting for Dad to retire for so long now.’
There was a long pause, the sounds of the busy street drifting in on the breeze.
‘The two of them will sort it out, though,’ Lennie said. ‘Right?’
‘Of course they will,’ Julia said.
As her mother’s gaze shifted to the Moroccan rug underpinning the coffee table, Lennie, too, looked away. Lois and Jim, the Kimpton house—they’d always been the anchor points in the wandering gypsy lives she and Julia led.
‘It’s just a spat,’ Julia said.
Lennie chewed the inside of her lip. A spat that had seen Lois O’Donnell pack her bags and sign a lease on a townhouse?
‘All couples have them now and again,’ Julia said. ‘It’ll blow over.’
‘Sure,’ Lennie said, echoing her mother’s tone. ‘Of course it will. I mean, who gets a divorce after fifty-one years?’
There was another small silence in which Lennie hoped her mother wasn’t running through names. They sipped their tea.
‘Have you talked to your father lately?’ Julia said.
Lennie nodded. ‘He checked in yesterday.’
But of course you must go to Kimpton, tesoro, Stefano had declared as Lennie angled her phone screen, trying to make out the view behind her father’s navy epaulettes. It is your grandfather. Family.
‘Is he back in Campania?’ Julia asked.
‘No, his ship’s still out. He was somewhere off the coast of Tunis, he said.’
Thirty-two years ago, Julia had met Italian navy guard Stefano Tempestini not, as might be expected, on the deck of a frigate, but in a bar off Collins Street. Lennie strongly suspected that neither of them had planned to see the other again until she came along. But finding themselves with an unexpectedly permanent role in each other’s lives, they’d always gotten along pretty well, and Stefano and his rowdy extended family had played as large a part in Lennie’s life as geography and navy orders allowed.
Julia nodded meditatively. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I’m a bit jealous of you. I’d kill for six months in Kimpton right now.’
‘Yeah?’ Lennie looked at her in surprise. ‘It’s a long way from a port.’
‘It might have to wait till I retire,’ Julia agreed, with her warm, sudden smile. ‘But I do
think about it sometimes. Getting myself a place there.’ She glanced around at the press of the attic’s walls. ‘A proper house. You know?’
Lennie nodded.
‘You’ll be there to see the leaves turn,’ Julia said. ‘The frost.’ Her eyes moved to the window. ‘I miss the cold.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Lennie said.
Space, time, the turn of the seasons…Driving home through the early evening traffic, the crowds coming back from the beach, the shops, from galleries and cafés, Lennie tried to cling to her mother’s positivity.
In another couple of hours, there’d be a new wave of people heading into town, to bars and clubs and restaurants, movies and shows, to the Opera House, to Saturday night in the big city. Pulling up to the queue for the lights, Lennie shook her head. Come on. When was the last time she’d been to a gallery? The only time she ever went to the Opera House was when a friend from out of town came to visit, and even then they only went to the bar. As for a club, she couldn’t spare the sleep. Or the cash, if she was ever going to join her friends on the bottom rung of the property ladder and mortgage her soul for the privilege of living somewhere smaller, grungier and further from work than she did now.
The truth was that at the end of a sixty-hour week, all she really wanted to do was lie on the sofa with Pesh and close her eyes. Wash the tough cases—the sad cases, the ones she couldn’t help—out of her mind with some feel-good TV. And that she could do anywhere. They had Netflix in Kimpton, didn’t they?
As the traffic lights cycled through a second time, Lennie glanced at Pesh in the rear-view mirror. Julia was right. Six months in the country was just what they both needed. A break, a working holiday, time to think about the bigger picture. For years she hadn’t been able to see further than passing her board exam, achieving that hard-won specialist certification. Then it had been all about getting a permanent job. Now she’d done those things, what was next?
Maybe she should be thanking her grandfather for a timeout. Maybe it was a stroke of luck, Jim needing her now. This was her chance to recharge her batteries, reconnect with what had started her on the path to an internship in Atlanta and beyond instead of back to her grandfather’s clinic. The feeling, when she’d hung her first veterinary degree on the wall, that she’d only scratched the surface of what there was to learn—things that the Kimpton Valley with its walking commodities was never going to teach her.