Marion Lennox: A Secret Shared...

‘What nonsense is this?’ He’d read the blurb for the dolphin sanctuary. The healing part of it was run by one Dr Kate Martin, this woman. According to the blurb she had qualifications in physiotherapy and counselling. Deeply suspicious, he’d checked, but the qualifications had been conferred by one of the most prestigious universities in New Zealand.

That didn’t fit at all with what he was seeing here now, with what he knew. This woman was in her early thirties maybe. He’d last seen Cathy in her early twenties but it didn’t stop him knowing her.

‘You’re Cathy,’ he said again, and he saw her flinch.

‘I can explain.’

She’d better. Counsellor with training in psychology? Physiotherapist? Had she abandoned her medical degree and retrained in another country? Under another name? Why? Had she been struck off the medical register?

He stared at her and saw shadows. She was five feet eight or so, and a bit too thin. At university he’d thought her attractive. Very attractive. Now she looked … gaunt? Her chestnut hair was tugged into a practical knot. Her blue all-in-one stinger suit was deeply unflattering. Her green eyes, which had flashed with laughter when he’d messed up a lab trial or someone had made a joke, didn’t look like they did much laughing now.

Unregistered? Hiding? Why?

Drugs? Drug-taking was the most common reason for doctors being deregistered and instinctively his gaze fell to her arms, looking for track marks. The sleeves of her stinger suit were pulled up. Her forearms were clean, but she saw where his gaze went and stepped back as if he’d struck her.

‘It’s not what you think. I can explain.’

‘You’d better.’ If he’d dragged Harry all the way across the country to have him treated by an unregistered doctor …

‘I can’t now.’ She closed her eyes for a millisecond, that was all, but when she opened them she seemed to have recovered. The look she gave him was direct and firm. ‘I need to stay with Amy and Toby. Yes, I’m Cathy but I’m also Kate. I’d ask that you keep that to yourself until you hear my explanation.’ She ran her fingers wearily through her hair and the formal knot gave a little, letting a couple of chestnut tendrils escape. It made her look younger, and somehow more vulnerable. ‘Could you bring your nephew and Maisie down to the beach? Build a sandcastle. Give me some time. Please?’

And then she was gone, heading back to the woman and her child, stooping to help the mother lift the lifeless body of her son. Together they carried him up the beach and away.

Jack was left staring after her.

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.’