MELANIE MILBURNE - Top-Notch Doc, Outback Bride

The sudden wave of homesickness that assailed her was almost overwhelming. A house was meant to be a home but it couldn’t be that without people in it and she—for the next few months—was going to be the only person inside this house.

It was a daunting thought, Kellie realised as she wandered into the kitchen. The layout was modern but very basic, as if Tim and Claire Montgomery had not wanted to waste money on top-notch appliances and joinery.

The rest of the house was similar, tasteful but modestly decorated, the furniture a little dated though comfortable-looking.

Matt came back in with the last of her bags and put them in the largest of the three bedrooms before he came back out to the sitting room where she was trying to undo one of the two windows. ‘What’s the problem?’ he asked.

‘I want to air the house but I think this window is stuck,’ she said giving it another rattle.

‘Here, let me have a go.’

Kellie stepped back as he worked on the latch and pushed the window upwards with his shoulder, the timber frame creaking in protest.

‘It needs to be shaved back a bit,’ he said, inspecting the inner section of the window. ‘I’ll send someone around to fix it for you.’

‘Thanks, I’d appreciate it.’

He reached into his back pocket and took out his wallet. Flipping it open, he pulled out a business card and handed it to her. ‘Here are my home and mobile and the clinic numbers.’

Kellie caught a brief glimpse of a photograph of a young woman just before he closed his wallet. ‘Who is that?’ she asked.

His expression closed down and his tone was guarded and clipped as he responded, ‘Who is who?’

‘The woman in your wallet,’ she said.

His brows moved together in a frown. ‘Do you make it a habit of prying into people’s wallets?’ he asked.

‘I wasn’t prying,’ she protested. ‘You had it open so I looked.’

‘Would you like to count how much money I have in there while you’re at it, Dr Thorne?’ he asked with a sardonic curl of his lip.

Kellie glared up at him. ‘If that is your girlfriend in your wallet then I don’t know what on earth she sees in you,’ she said. ‘You’re the most obnoxiously unfriendly man I’ve ever met and let me tell you I’ve met plenty. I just didn’t realise I had to travel quite this far to meet yet another one.’

Blue eyes battled with brown in a crackling-with-tension silence that seemed to go on indefinitely.

Kellie was determined not to look away first. She was used to the stare-downs of her brothers but something about Matthew McNaught’s midnight-blue gaze as it wrestled with hers caught her off guard. She found herself blushing and averted her head in case he saw it. ‘Thank you for the lift and bringing in my bags,’ she said in a curt tone. ‘No doubt I’ll see you at the clinic some time.’

‘Yes, I expect you will.’ His tone was equally brusque.

Kellie listened as his footsteps echoed down the hall. She heard the screen door squeak open and close and then the creak of the weathered timber of the verandah as he stepped on it before going down the three steps leading to the pathway to the gate. She heard his car start then the grab of the wheels on the gravel as he backed out of the driveway and the growl of the diesel engine as he drove back the way they had come, turning right, away from town at the corner.

And then all Kellie could hear was the sound of her own breathing. It seemed faster than normal and her heart felt like it was skipping every now and again just to keep up.

She turned from the window and looked at the space where moments before Matt had been standing, frowning at her, those incredibly blue eyes searing and yet shadowed at the same time…

A sudden knock on the front door made her nearly jump out of her skin but when she heard Ruth Williams’s friendly voice calling out, her panic quickly subsided. ‘Dr Thorne? I managed to get some milk and bread for you. I rang Cheryl Yates who runs the general store and she made up a survival pack for you. You can pay her later.’

Kellie pushed open the screen door. ‘That was very thoughtful of you both.’

‘Not at all,’ Ruth said, handing over the basket of groceries.

‘Please come in,’ Kellie said. ‘I’m still finding my way around but I can rustle us up a cup of tea if you’d like one.’

‘I would love one,’ Ruth said, puffing slightly. ‘I think Cheryl’s even put some of those fancy teabags in here somewhere and some chocolate biscuits. You’d better put them in the fridge, though, as this heat would melt stone.’

‘Yes, it is rather hot, isn’t it?’ Kellie answered as she led the way to the kitchen. ‘But I’m sure I’ll get used to it in a day or two.’

‘You know when you first stepped off the plane with Dr McNaught I thought I was seeing a ghost,’ Ruth said as she started to help unpack the groceries.

Kellie turned and looked at her. ‘A ghost?’

Ruth’s smile had a hint of sadness about it. ‘Yes. Although your hair is a different colour, you reminded me a bit of Madeleine,’ she said, ‘Dr McNaught’s fiancée.’

Kellie felt her eyes widen in surprise. No wonder he’d said he wasn’t looking for a wife, although she couldn’t imagine who would be brave enough to take him on. ‘Dr McNaught is engaged?’ she asked.

‘Was engaged,’ Ruth corrected. ‘She was killed in an accident two days before their wedding.’

‘Oh, dear…’ Kellie said, a wave of sympathy washing over her, followed by a rising tide of insight into why Matt was so standoffish and formal. She mentally cringed at his dislike of her prying into the photograph in his wallet.

‘He doesn’t talk about it much, of course,’ Ruth went on. ‘But that’s the male way, isn’t it?’

Kellie nibbled at her lip. ‘Yes…yes, it certainly is…’

Ruth handed her a carton of milk. ‘It was her birthday on Saturday,’ she said. ‘That’s why he went to Brisbane—to visit her parents.’

‘That was nice of him,’ Kellie offered, still feeling utterly wretched about her rapid judgement of him.

Ruth gave her another sad smile. ‘Yes, he does it every year.’

Kellie put the milk in the fridge and filled the kettle before she sat down opposite the older lady. ‘Dr McNaught told me about your daughter,’ she said. ‘It must be very hard for you…you know, not knowing where Tegan is or what happened to her.’

Ruth let out a little sigh. ‘It is hard,’ she said. ‘The hardest thing after all this time is that no one is actively searching for her any more. I feel that I’ll go to my grave without knowing what happened to her.’

‘The police keep most missing-person files open, though, don’t they?’ Kellie said. ‘I’ve seen a few news stories about old cases that have been solved, using DNA to match perpetrators to crimes.’

‘That’s true,’ Ruth said, ‘but out here there isn’t the manpower to do any more than maintain law and order. Doctors aren’t the only people who resist remote country appointments— police are pretty thin on the ground out here, too.’

Kellie met the older woman’s brown eyes. ‘You don’t believe she’s dead, do you?’ she asked.

Ruth held her gaze for several moments. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I feel it in here.’ She placed a hand over her heart. ‘She’s out there somewhere, I just know it.’

Kellie felt deeply for the poor woman. She had a pretty clear idea of the process of denial—she had witnessed it in her father for the last six years. He still acted as if her mother was going to walk in the door. He even occasionally spoke of her in the present tense, which made the job of getting on with his life so much harder for him and his family, not to mention Aunty Kate.