Fairytale on the Children's Ward

She shuddered as she shook the memory away, and concentrated on what Alex Attwood, the team leader, was saying.

‘Oliver, Kate and Clare, you’ll all be working with Angus tomorrow. Clare, I know you’ve settled into your flat, so maybe you could show Oliver where his is. Did I tell you he’s taking the other flat in Rod’s house?’

Of course Alex hadn’t told her! Excited as she’d been at coming back to Australia and getting a job in such an elite unit, she’d still have remembered if someone had said, Oh, and a chap called Oliver Rankin will be living next door! Not only remembered, but packed up and left.

No, she didn’t run from men any more, but she’d have had time to at least think about this situation, to prepare herself.

To prepare Emily?

Oh, sweet reason, what was she going to do about Emily? For one crazy moment she thought of phoning the school and asking if they could take her as a full boarder rather than a weekly one, but it was hard enough on both of them to be separated five days a week.

Alex had turned to Oliver, and was explaining. ‘The flat I arranged for you is in my father-in-law’s house just down the road from the hospital. Rod Talbot, my father-in-law, is in a wheelchair so he has the ground-floor apartment and has turned upstairs into two small but comfortable flats. Of course, you don’t have to stay there. Once you get to know the area, you might find somewhere that suits you better. Because of the proximity to the hospital, the flats are easy to let—not that Rod needs the money.’

‘Rod Talbot?’ Oliver repeated, his voice stirring so many memories in Clare’s body she found herself shivering. ‘Is he the writer?’

Alex nodded, and while Oliver talked about how much he enjoyed Rod Talbot’s books—Oliver having time to read?—Clare muddled over the other information she’d received. The bit about Oliver being in the other flat in Rod Talbot’s house—the flat with the door right opposite her door. Oliver living so close, sleeping so close…

A tremor of memory ran through her body before she brought her mind firmly back to the major problem.

Oliver spending his weekends next door to her and Emily!

Once again her reaction was flight. They’d go back to the States; she’d always find work there. But she steeled herself against such weakness—flight wasn’t an option. She wasn’t an emotional young woman any longer; she was a grown-up, mature—a qualified and respected career woman with an important position in a team that saved children’s lives.

Even if she did feel like a teenager right now, with all the confusion and angst and dreadful insecurity that came with the transition from child to adult.

The meeting was breaking up, the anaesthetist from the second team taking the new surgeon off to the child-care centre. Dear heaven, had Oliver married again? Would he have children?

No, he’d been adamant about that, about never having children. That was why they’d split up. To a certain extent Clare had understood, because it had been soon after he’d found out a little about his own past, found out his life had been built upon a lie.

Thinking about that time—how hurt Oliver had been—diverted her thoughts from Oliver’s marital arrangements, although if there was a wife, what would she think about Em?

It was all Clare could do not to wail out loud. How could this be happening to her? And now, when both she and Em were so excited to be back in Australia?

She pulled herself together with an effort.

Best not to think about Em! Not here, not now…

And it was useless to be speculating about Oliver’s marital state, let alone whether he had children or not, although Rod had told Clare hers was the larger of the two flats, so a wife and children could hardly fit into the other one.

This realisation made her feel a little easier for all of five seconds, until it occurred to her he could have left his wife and kids—if he’d weakened on the children stand—in Melbourne while he settled in.

‘Clare.’

Her name in his voice, a sound she’d never thought to hear again. No-one said her name as Oliver did! And no-one else, with just that one word, could send those stupid shivers down her spine.

After ten years?

It was unbelievable.

She’d heard of muscle memory—sportspeople talked about it. Was there such a thing as nerve memory, that every nerve in her body remembered…?

He was close now, waiting for her. The composure he wore like a well-cut suit to hide the emotional Italian inside him was so familiar she wanted to reach out and touch him, to feel the warmth of the man beneath that cool facade.

Was she mad?

Touching Oliver would be disastrous—had always been disastrous!—because one touch had never been enough.

She dug through her memory for an image of that last morning, not long before Christmas, when, all composure gone, fury and resentment had flared from his body and burnt in his eyes. That was the Oliver she needed to keep in mind.

Which was okay as far as resisting his appeal went, but what about the rest? What about Emily?

Clare felt physically sick, nausea spreading through her body. How could this have happened? She pulled herself together with a mammoth effort, hoping outwardly at least she might look composed.

‘So we’re to be neighbours,’ she said, offering a polite smile, while her bewildered heart beat a wild tattoo inside her chest, and her thoughts ran this way and that like mice in a maze.

‘It seems that way.’

Were his words strained? Was Oliver feeling the same mix of disbelief, and confusion—and surely not excitement?—as she was?

Of course he wouldn’t be. For one thing, Oliver didn’t do confusion.

Her heart skittered again but this time it was nothing to do with excitement—more like dread and fear and trepidation. She had to say something.

‘I did write to you, you know.’

It sounded pathetic but at least it caught his attention.

‘When?’ he demanded, his voice hard and tight.

So hard and tight the tiny bit of courage that had prompted Clare to tell him faded, which meant the next words came out all breathless and confused.

‘End of January, and again later in the year.

‘You wrote to me at the end of January? Wasn’t that a bit late, considering it was before Christmas you walked out? I’d definitely moved on by then, physically and emotionally.’

Pain stabbed through Clare’s body at the last words, but what was he saying?

‘You didn’t get any letters from me—then or later?’

Glacial green—that’s how Oliver’s eyes could look…and were looking now.

‘No.’

He shook his head to emphasise the word and, knowing he would never lie to her, Clare felt a stab of deep resentment—not to mention pain—as she realised he didn’t know about her pregnancy. He didn’t know he had a daughter, a daughter who would be right there in the flat next door to his come Friday!

She had to tell him!

Easy enough to have the thought but how to do it?