Chapter 11
Viv was on the phone when Nel got back to the clinic, so she didn’t need to explain the missing tea bags. She shut the door of the consult room and sat down at her desk to eat the soup, but she’d lost her appetite.
She rested her head in her hands. She was so tired of all this.
For so long she’d been trying to outrun the past. It’s why she went to Sydney, and then when that wasn’t far enough, to Dublin.
But what good had it done? All that running, to get where?
Back here in Carrinya, hiding from Faye Marshall.
Right where she was all those years ago.
‘Your one thirty’s here, Doctor Foley,’ Viv said over the intercom.
Nel took a deep breath and went out to the waiting room where a blonde woman sat with a large child straddling her, his head resting on her shoulder.
‘Harvey?’ Nel said.
Harvey’s mum stood up, struggling to hold the boy who looked about six.
‘Hi, I’m Nel. I’ll get your bag,’ Nel said, picking up the tote bag from the floor.
‘Thanks.’ She gave Nel a strained smile. Her eyes were the colour of faded denim. ‘I’m Sophie.’
‘Hey, mate,’ Nel said gently, once they’d sat down in the consult room. ‘You’re not feeling too good, hey?’
He regarded her with suspicion, then buried his face in his mother’s neck.
Sophie stroked his blond curls. ‘He’s had a cough and a cold for a couple of weeks, but it’s getting worse.’ She put a hand on his forehead. ‘He feels hot to me.’
‘Let’s take a look. Harvey, can you open your mouth nice and wide for me?’
He reluctantly did as she asked, allowing Nel to examine his throat and ears.
She held up her stethoscope. ‘Do you know what this is?’
He nodded slowly, his face still stern and untrusting.
‘Let’s have a listen to your chest. This might feel a bit cold at first. Can you take three big deep breaths for me?
In and out, in and out, in and out. That’s it, good boy.
You can cuddle Mum again now.’ Nel spoke to Sophie.
‘He’s got an upper respiratory infection.
I’ll give you some antibiotics to clear it up.
We’ll swab him too, just to check it’s not any of the other nasty stuff going around.
’ She took a cotton bud from a drawer. ‘Head back, mate. That’s it.
This will tickle a little bit. Good boy. Now the throat. Perfect.’
She put the cotton bud into a tube for pathology and opened Harvey’s patient record on the computer to write up the script. Her heart skipped a beat as her eyes landed on his last name. Warner. Harvey Warner. Was he Ryan Warner’s son?
Nel looked at Sophie, who was rubbing Harvey’s back. Was she Ryan’s wife? Nel cast her mind back. He’d started going out with a bubbly blonde girl not long after Maddie died. A friend of Lauren’s. Was that girl now this world-weary woman?
Nel tried to refocus. ‘Is Harvey allergic to anything?’
‘No, nothing,’ Sophie said. Nel turned back to the computer. ‘You’re Doctor Foley’s daughter?’
‘That’s right,’ Nel replied, her eyes still on the screen.
‘How long are you in town?’
‘Just for a week or two to keep things running,’ Nel said, as she pressed print.
‘Handy for your mum, having another doctor in the family.’ Sophie smiled. ‘We’ve been seeing your dad for years, since our oldest was a baby. I’m sorry. For your loss, I mean.’
‘Thank you,’ Nel said with a polite smile, taking the page from the printer tray.
‘So where’s home?’
‘Sydney. The inner west.’
Sophie nodded vaguely, as though that meant nothing to her. ‘This must be a change of pace, compared to Sydney.’ She rubbed Harvey’s back. ‘Do you think you’ll stay long?’
Nel looked at Sophie again. Was this small talk, or something else? ‘I’m just taking it week by week,’ she said, keeping her answer vague.
‘Well, I hope you enjoy your time here.’ Sophie gave her a kind smile.
‘I’m sure I will,’ Nel said, chastising herself for being paranoid. The poor woman was just being friendly. She handed Sophie the script and explained the dosages. ‘He should start improving in a day or two.’
‘Great, thanks, Doctor Foley.’
‘Please, call me Nel. Less confusing.’ She reached for the jar of jelly beans on the back of the desk. ‘Hey, Harvey, what’s your favourite colour?’
‘Green,’ he whispered with a shy smile.
She found a green one and used the tongs to pass it to him.
‘What do you say?’ Sophie said.
‘Thank you.’ He popped the lolly in his mouth.
Sophie put her hand on the arm of the chair, wincing as she pushed herself up.
Nel frowned. ‘Are you okay?’
Sophie raised her eyebrows, confused. Nel glanced towards her wrist.
‘Oh. Yeah, it’s fine,’ Sophie said. ‘It’s nothing.’
Nel didn’t say anything.
‘I fell off a bar stool in the kitchen,’ Sophie added, ‘trying to get something from a high cupboard. Stupid really.’
There was something inauthentic about the way she said it.
It sounded rehearsed, as though she was a bad actor delivering a line in a play.
Nel knew this lie. The neat explanation.
The self-deprecation. The casual, offhand delivery.
She’d heard it plenty of times before, as a resident at St Vincent’s in Dublin, at the women’s health practice where she’d done her GP training, at the medical centre in Sydney, from women with split lips, broken ribs, black eyes.
‘How are things at home?’ Nel asked gently.
‘Fine,’ Sophie said, but the tears that welled in her eyes told a different story.
‘Do you ever feel unsafe?’
Sophie ran a hand through her hair and shook her head, as though she didn’t understand the question.
Nel held her gaze. ‘It’s just’—she gestured to Sophie’s wrist—‘when I see an injury like this, I wonder if it might have—’
‘Please,’ Sophie interrupted, ‘please don’t. I’m fine. I can handle it.’ She repositioned her grip on Harvey, struggling with the weight of him. ‘I’ve got to go. Would you mind putting my bag over my shoulder?’
Nel reached for the bag. ‘Do you need a hand getting to the car?’
Sophie shook her head. ‘I’ll be fine.’
Nel watched her walk down the corridor and stop at the reception desk.
Nel was typing up patient notes when Viv stuck her head around the door at the end of the day. She’d changed into leopard-print leggings and an oversized t-shirt that said, Give me chocolate and no one gets hurt.
‘Doll, I’m heading off. I’ve got a pickleball game at five thirty down at the netball courts. Anything you need before I go?’
‘Did you speak to the recruitment company?’ The locum interviews had been a dismal failure. One candidate was so shy they’d been unable to hear most of his answers. The other one didn’t show up.
‘They’re lining up a few more for tomorrow.’
‘Okay, good. Actually, there is one other thing,’ she said, remembering Sophie. ‘What can you tell me about Harvey’s mum, Sophie?’
‘She’s Ryan Warner’s wife. Remember Ryan?’ A shadow crossed Viv’s face as she must have remembered the connection. ‘Funny girl.’
‘Funny how?’
‘She’s a bit … aloof. She struggles with her mental health, I think.’ There was empathy in Viv’s tone rather than judgement. ‘And I don’t know what she does with her money, but her card was declined.’
‘Really? But Ryan works at Warner Property, doesn’t he?’
Viv nodded and shrugged. ‘I bulk-billed her to save us both the embarrassment.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I better get moving. Don’t stay too long, will you? Big day tomorrow.’
When Nel was alone again, she typed Sophie’s name into the database and scanned her clinical history for any previous injuries, but she’d only seen Rob for standard things like chest infections and contraceptive prescriptions. There was no record of a mental health diagnosis.
Nel clicked back to her personal details.
Sophie was thirty-five, the same age as Lauren.
The address listed was 21 Cliff Street, which Google Maps located on the south side of Deception Bay where there had previously been bushland.
Streetview showed a sprawling Hamptons-style mansion behind a picket fence and a concrete driveway.
Lauren must be right about Warner Property.
Nel tried to imagine Ryan living there, but in her mind he was still a cocky nineteen-year-old with a Holden station wagon and an inflated opinion of himself.
She needed to get a sense of him now. She typed his name into Google, along with ‘real estate’, and clicked on his Facebook business page.
When the page loaded she inhaled sharply, unprepared for the sight of his smug face.
He sat on a cream outdoor sofa with Millers Beach in the background.
He’d thickened up and sported well-groomed stubble and a collared shirt, but the smirk was a bang-on match for the one on the face of the nineteen-year-old in her mind.
She scrolled down. There he was again, posing in front of a SOLD sign, flanked by an elderly couple clutching a champagne bottle.
‘Sea-changers from Sydney’, according to the caption.
Next was a testimonial from another satisfied client, his accompanying text peppered with words like ‘humbled’ and ‘honoured’ and ‘grateful to be of service’.
The next post was a Canva creation, a photo of a rainbow over Deception Bay with a quote: You have to look through the rain to see the rainbow. Caption: #motivationmonday.
Nel groaned, thinking it couldn’t get any worse, but then she saw the next photo. Ryan had one shirtsleeve rolled up and a tourniquet around his upper arm as he gave blood. The caption read, Giving back. Jesus.
She clicked the tab shut. If you asked AI to design an upstanding small-town real estate agent, he would look just like Ryan Warner.
And yet.
Nel closed her eyes and pictured Sophie’s face, wincing in pain, replaying their conversation, trying to recall her exact words.
I can handle it.
That was what she’d said. It wasn’t a denial. It was almost a confirmation.
Wasn’t it?