A Secret Shared...

HE COULDN’T BELIEVE it. Kate Martin, physiotherapist and counsellor, medical director of Dolphin Bay Healing Resort, had transformed into Cathy Heineman who’d shared his undergraduate student life.

Cathy had been his friend, and in truth he wouldn’t have minded if she’d been more than that. She’d been vibrant, fun and beautiful. But she’d also been a little aloof. She hadn’t talked about her private life and she’d laughed off any advances. Friendship only, she’d decreed, though sometimes he’d wondered … When they’d stayed back late, working together, he’d thought there had been this attraction. Surely it had been mutual.

But it obviously hadn’t been. In fourth year she’d turned up after the summer holidays sporting a wedding ring.

‘Simon and I have been planning to wed since childhood,’ she’d told him, and that was pretty much all she’d said. He’d never met her husband—no one had. Neither had the student cohort seen much of Cathy after that. She’d attended lectures but the old camaraderie had gone.

She hadn’t even attended graduation. ‘She requested her degrees be posted to her,’ he’d heard. Someone had said she’d moved to Melbourne to do her internship and that was the last he’d heard of her.

And now … His head was spinning with questions, but overriding everything else was the knowledge that he would not expose his nephew to treatment by anyone who was dishonest.

The Cathy he’d known had been brilliant.

The Cathy he’d just seen had been helping a dead child from the water. She was in a suspect place doing suspect things, and his nephew’s welfare was at stake.

Get out of here now.

His phone rang. It’d be Helen, he thought. The road here had been almost completely lacking phone reception. There was only the faintest of signals now. Helen wouldn’t have been able to ring him for hours. She’d be frantic.

‘Where are you?’ Her tone was accusatory.

‘I’m at the dolphin sanctuary, of course.’

Helen’s breath exhaled in a rush. ‘You made it? Is it good? Oh, Jack, will it make a difference?’

‘So far I’ve seen a dead child and a doctor who’s not who she says she is,’ he said bluntly. ‘Helen, do you remember Cathy Heineman? She was a med student with Don and me. She faded from the social scene after fourth year. Remember?’

‘The clever one you did your lab work with,’ Helen said. Helen had five children under ten. She was still mourning her brother’s death, but her mind was like a steel trap. She’d done dentistry while her brother, Arthur, had done medicine with Jack. Arthur and Jack had been mates, and in turn Helen had become best friends with Jack’s sister, Beth. Arthur and Beth had married, bringing them even closer. They’d all been at university together and they knew each other’s friends.

So she knew Cathy. Kate.

‘The whisper was that the guy she married was possessive,’ she said, turning obligingly thoughtful. ‘He wouldn’t let her out of his sight. No one saw much of her after her wedding and not at all after we graduated.’

‘She’s here. She’s practising as a physiotherapist and counsellor. The whole place smells fishy.’

‘Well, it is a dolphin sanctuary.’

‘Helen …’

‘Look, you promised to give it a go,’ Helen said bluntly. ‘Kate, Cathy, who gives a toss what she calls herself if it has a chance of working? You know I’d be there with him myself but I’d have had to bring the babies with me.’

She would. That was what this whole disaster was about. Helen was an earth mother, parent of five noisy, exuberant children, generous to a fault. She and her amiable husband had been more than ready to take their newly orphaned nephew into their expanding brood.

It had seemed the perfect solution. Helen was Harry’s aunt, she loved him to bits, she was married and stable and able to take care of him.

Jack was Harry’s uncle but he was single. He was a rising star in his chosen field of oncology, he had little intention of settling down, and there was no reason that he should take on his seven-year-old nephew.

Except …

Except that one wounded little boy had been failing to thrive within Helen’s noisy throng. Harry had always been quiet and a little introspective, and the loss of his parents, plus the shocking injuries to his leg, had seen him withdraw into himself.

The last time Jack had gone to see him he’d refused to come out of the bedroom he’d been sharing with one of his cousins. Helen had shown him literature on this place. ‘It can’t do any harm,’ she’d told him. ‘I’ll farm the three eldest out and the babies can come with us. Doug won’t mind, will you, darling?’ She’d smiled fondly at her long-suffering husband. ‘We do what we must for each of our children and Harry’s the same.’

Only Harry wasn’t the same. Jack had watched him that night, pushing his food from side to side on his plate, mentally absent from the noise and jostling about him, and he’d made a decision.

‘Let me take care of him for a while. I’ll take a few weeks off work. Maybe he’ll be happier with me.’

Afterwards he hadn’t been able to believe he’d said it. He knew nothing about children—zip. His current girlfriend, Annalise, had been appalled.’

‘Well, don’t expect me to help. Children and me … Darling, I’m a radiologist, not a childminder.

He was an oncologist, not a childminder either, but for the last two weeks he’d been doing his best.

But not getting through.

‘But you will take him to this place,’ Helen had decreed, flourishing the literature at him. ‘I swear, Jack, it sounds just what he needs.’

‘He needs time, not quackery.’

‘If you don’t take him, I will. Jack, I’ll fight you for this. I should make the decisions. You’re not capable of caring for him and I am.’

And there it was, out in the open. They were joint guardians. On the surface they had equal claims to guardianship, but Helen had the home, the experience, the love.

He should stand aside and leave her to it. Only Harry’s desolation prevented it.

Taking him to the dolphin sanctuary had been a test, he thought. Helen—and others—wanted proof he was serious about this parenting role.

The problem was that he wasn’t sure that he was serious about parenting himself, especially as he’d been sole carer for two weeks now and made not one dint in the little boy’s misery.

Until this afternoon, when one bear of a dog had made Harry giggle.

‘I’ll find out about Cathy,’ Helen offered, speaking urgently now. ‘I’ll make enquiries. But unless it’s really awful, you should still give the place a chance.’

‘I told you, Helen, I’ve been here half an hour and already there’s a child dead.’

‘There must be a reason.’

‘A brain tumour,’ he conceded.

‘They do palliative care work as well. You’d expect—’

‘I’d expect resuscitation efforts on a four-year-old.’

‘Give it more than half an hour,’ Helen said urgently. ‘It’s taken me all the contacts we have and then some to get him into the place. Believe it or not, there’s a queue months long. Don’t you dare walk away.’

‘And if it’s dangerous?’

‘You stay with him all the time. Bond. This is what you wanted, Jack. Now’s the time to step up to the mark.’