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  ‘I’m not trying to tell you how treat your friend, or her views of reality,’ he held his hands up defensively. ‘That’s your business. I’m just saying that we had discussed the possibility of something like this before I ever heard of Ally’s story. Most likely, it’s just an over-active imagination gone into overdrive to compensate for other problems in her life. If you first learned of it around the time her parents died, there could be a correlation there.’

  ‘She really only started talking about it after her dad passed away,’ said Sandy, remembering how troubled Ally had been after his death. ‘She claimed that she had been, oh, I don’t know, meeting her imaginary friend for years prior to that. It looks like we’re going to have to spend some time talking to her, no, listening to her, instead of trying to mend her.’ She gave a dramatic sigh. ‘Just as well I walked out on my film as this could take a while.’

  ‘The period drama?’ Lynette asked. She tried to keep up with Sandy’s film schedule and always found time to attend one of the first screenings, no matter where she was at the time.

  ‘Yep. I’m an aristocratic lady having an affair with a much younger man… I’m sure it’s never been done before.’

  Lynette laughed at the sarcastic twist to her words. ‘But it’s never been done with you in the lead role. It’ll be fantastic.’

  ‘I doubt I’ll be allowed back on set,’ Sandy screwed up one side of her mouth wryly.

  ‘They’ll have a major hissy about it, then they’ll realise you’ve never walked off before, or even been late. They’ll reorganise the shoots so that they can continue putting film in the can with scenes that don’t include you.’

  ‘In a sane world, that might happen,’ conceded Sandy, ‘but the guys doing this film don’t seem to live all that close to sanity.’

  ‘It’ll work out,’ Andrew assured her. ‘Though, I have to say, I’m glad I finished doing my report before Peter called me… I’d have come, anyway, but I’d have been under pressure about it.’

  ‘Just like the lady who walked out on the Alternative Energies Conference,’ Nick flashed his knee-melting smile at Lynette. ‘That’s going to take some explaining to your government.’

  Lynette gave him an impish wink, ‘I’ll just sleep with the right people and all the problems will go away.’

  ‘Excellent plan,’ Sandy commended her, adding dryly. ‘There’s no glass ceiling for women in politics or business while their heads are banging on the headboard.’

  ‘So I’ve heard,’ Lynette replied with a chuckle, tilting her head over so that Sandy could examine the top of it. ‘I haven’t worn a bald spot out there yet, have I?’

  Suddenly aware that Nick might not understand that they were joking, Sandy stopped the funning and favoured him with her amazing green eyes, ‘I hope you realise that I’m not serious. Lynette would be the last person to use sex to advance her career.’

  ‘That’s quite a shame, actually,’ he gave Sandy a serious look, though the spark in his eyes contradicted his tone. ‘I was hoping I could convince her to use sex to encourage me to invest in some of the alternative energies schemes she’s trying to push.’

  ‘I don’t think you’ll have a problem with that,’ Sandy rolled her eyes and snorted a laugh. ‘Flying a girl to the other side of the world in your own jet so she can meet with her friends is pretty darned sexy – a real pat-on-the-head effort.’

  Not sure of her meaning, but amused by the choking sounds coming from Lynette, Nick raised his brows enquiringly, ‘Pat-on-the-head effort?’

  ‘Yeah - pat her on the head and her pants will fall down,’ Sandy grinned and moved quickly as Lynette took a swipe at her arm.

  ‘Ignore her,’ Lynette advised as she tried unsuccessfully to dampen the laughter that Sandy ignited in her chest, ‘she just has way too much cheek for her own good, and forgets how payback works.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m scared,’ Sandy laughed, enjoying the sensation of being teenagers again, momentarily feeling free of the worries and stresses of adulthood. It was good to be with her friends.

  They spent another half hour with Peter, catching up on the news of each other’s lives and avoiding the uncomfortable subject of Ally lyingin a room down the corridor. It was Ally who had frequently told them that they should never worry - if there was something they could do about a situation, just do it, but if there was nothing they could do, don’t waste energy on worrying. Tomorrow, they would sit with her and encourage her to talk about Zo. Tomorrow, they would try to accept her altered view of reality as part of her, rather than something to cut away in order to enable healing. Try. They would try. But they had doubts that they could succeed.

  That night, Peter slept fitfully, still racked with guilt about Ally, and unsure if encouraging her to talk was the right approach. Twice, he woke with the image of Ally staring at him from a hospital bed, straps tying her down, her eyes filled with betrayal about what happened that day when she ran from them. He had thought it was the right treatment back then, so how could he decide about what was right now? There was a quantum leap between what they had done to her all those years ago because they wanted to remove her fantasies from her life, and this new approach. He hoped that letting her know that they wanted to accept everything about her, including her alternate reality, would help her, but he had little faith that it would be successful.

  A few hundred metres away in his house across the gardens, Lynette had no such trouble with sleep. She and Nick spent the first hours of the night making love before she fell asleep, feeling safer in his arms than she’d felt anywhere in her entire life. His body, wrapped around hers, kept the recurring nightmares of orphanage life and the fears of failing at bay. She had no idea where this craziness was taking her but, for now, she relished the moments with him and consigned the worrying about the relationship to the morrow. In each passing minute with him, she had a bubble of contentment around her pushing the concerns back to ‘later’. Procrastination, she smiled to herself as she drifted to sleep, the enemy of productivity but my friend in these hours.

  Marcus and Andrew lay together and talked quietly about Ally. It was interesting that Marcus had provided them with a theoretical framework for accepting her fantasy, but he doubted he’d see it as anything except mental illness. He was worried that treating it any other way would only enable her problems to grow. He went to sleep with Marcus murmuring to him about the healing power of friendship and love.

  Sandra lay awake, staring at the ceiling, remembering things Ally had told her through the years. She needed to hear Ally explain everything to her. She needed Ally. She wasn’t sure she would be able to pretend that Zo was real as she had spent too long seeing him as the sickness that stole her friend away from her. Her mind worked overtime all night before she fell into a heavy sleep as dawn arrived.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Ally Wakes

  Kamekura Private Hospital, Queensland. May, 2019

  In Peter’s house, they sat down for breakfast at eight.

  Lynette eyed the table of food laid out for them: scrambled eggs, bacon, tomato, ham, toast, cereals, jams, honey, croissants, fruit, yoghurt, milk, coffee, tea, hot chocolate, and other food and drinks, and grimaced, ‘We’re obviously not here for the weight loss treatment.’

  ‘One of my friends did the two-week course of that here last year,’ mumbled Sandy as she bit off the end of a crisp, buttery croissant. ‘Lost six kilos and won the role she was chasing.’

  ‘Bet it cost her a pretty penny,’ said Lynette as she poured a cup of freshly brewed coffee. ‘It would have been cheaper to just crazy glue her lips together with a gap for a straw.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Sandy pulled a face, her eyes twinkling, ‘I hear that’s the next diet craze to sweep LA.’

  ‘It would be if you said you’d tried it and it worked,’ Andrew smiled. It amused him that Sandy influenced trends because of her fame. ‘Remember when I bought you that hideous hat with the farmyard animals on it?’

  ‘Oh
, god, who could forget?’ Sandy covered her mouth to prevent the crumbs of croissant spraying out as she laughed. ‘It looked like all the little sheep, cows, and pigs were as high as kites on crack. They were all boogly-eyed and scared looking.’

  ‘And I dared you to wear it to the Kentucky Derby,’ Andrew’s smile spread into a grin.

  ‘And I did, and before you know it, there were people wearing the bloody Animal-Farm-on-crack hats all over the place. That was scary. How could they think it was worth wearing?’

  ‘Because you wore it and looked great.’

  ‘Erk,’ she wrinkled her nose, ‘I looked as though crazed animals were humping each other all over my head. I never took up another one of your fashion dares after that.’

  Marcus adopted a sad expression, ‘Andrew has picked out some glorious things for you over the past few years - such a shame to see them wasted.’

  ‘Like what?’ asked Lynette, her curiosity piqued. She settled next to Nick, across the table from Sandy, Andrew, and Marcus.

  ‘Magnificent high heels that look like frogs,’ Marcus told her. ‘I swear, it looks as though you have your feet stuffed in frogs. And a splendid hat covered in giant sperm-on-sticks that wiggle as you walk, giving the impression of a fallopian tube after sex.’

  ‘Well, of course I would love to wear that,’ Sandy gave Andrew a wry look. ‘What woman doesn’t want to be seen with sperm all over her head?’

  ‘I knew you’d like it,’ Andrew threw a cheeky grin at her. He knew she would detest the hideous creation, but would very likely wear it if an inappropriate occasion arose. ‘It’s not quite a Melbourne Cup hat, but I think it would be a nice addition to, say, a nautical themed outfit.’

  Trying not to spit his coffee out as he choked back laughter, Nick looked at Andrew with growing appreciation. He was learning that any prior knowledge he had of these people was just exterior information about what they did in their careers. Spending time with them revealed far more than he could have imagined. Their humour was infectious, and the love they had for each other was almost tangible, like warm silk brushing lightly over his skin.

  Being inside this circle that excluded the rest of the world, allowed him to see the essence of the actor, the banker, the politician, and the doctor, rather than just the surface glitter that everyone else saw. It was madness to walk away from his work and join this group as they gathered to help their friend, but he employed the best people and they could step up and run everything while he took a brief sabbatical. No doubt, it had them wondering what he was having treated when he’d informed them that he was staying at Kamekura, but he had faith that someone was adept enough at Google to find the connection between Lynette and their host, and realise that he was a guest, not a patient.

  One of the hospital staff rang the house after breakfast to inform them that they could visit Peter within the hour, and they made their way over to his hospital room. They caught him just as he was exiting the door, dressed in jeans, a white shirt and tie, and wearing a purposeful expression on his face.

  ‘Good morning, Dr Barker,’ Lynette grinned when he looked up to see his friends standing in the corridor.

  His face split into a broad smile, warmth lighting his eyes, ‘Good morning, everyone. Wow – it’s great to see you all here.’

  With his gaze sweeping across them, he reached for Lynette and Sandy to give them a hug. ‘Morning, my most beautiful girls.’

  ‘Hello, handsome,’ Sandy stepped up on her tip-toes to plant a light kiss on his cheek, hesitating for a fraction of a second to close her eyes and breathe in the scent of the only man she had ever loved. Lightly, ever so lightly, her lips touched his cheek, and though she knew it meant no more to him than a pat on the back from Andrew, for that brief instant she felt connected to him. She wanted to hold that moment forever. He drew away from her and smiled at her fondly. There was so much love in his eyes for her, but not the sort of love she wanted to see. Luckily, she was an excellent actor and smiled back at him, the pain shoved beneath the surface of friendship.

  ‘I was on my way to look in on Ally,’ he informed them. ‘She’s awake, apparently, and Gina has told her about the transfusion, so I’m not sure of the reception I’ll get. She hasn’t been told that you are all here, so…’ he hesitated as he considered the best approach of informing her about the presence of the Lamore crew, ‘maybe, just hang around in one of the reception rooms for a bit until I see how she is.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan,’ Lynette nodded agreement. ‘No point all of us trumping in to see her and surprising a heart attack out of her.’

  ‘Do you worry about those, too?’ Andrew asked, changing the conversation’s direction like a kid chasing a butterfly. ‘People die of them at our age all the time.’

  Peter threw him an amused look as he left to check on Ally. He had missed how conversations danced and leapt from one topic to another when the friends were together.

  ‘I know!’ Lynette exclaimed, looking at Andrew, and slapping him lightly on the arm. ‘How did that happen? How did we go from kids who walked from Highton to Queens Park, then swam back down the river to the Shannon Avenue bridge, to fifty-something people wondering if running up the stairs will give us a heart attack?’

  ‘I never think that,’ interjected Sandy in a cool voice, the spark in her eyes belying the tone of her words. ‘Of course, that may be because I refuse to run upstairs these days.’

  ‘What if a script demands it?’ queried Lynette.

  ‘Body doubles, darling,’ Sandy winked at her, and they both burst into chuckles.

  ‘Is this the place to be laughing?’ Andrew looked at them with raised eyebrows. It is a hospital.'

  ‘Pfft,’ Lynette wrinkled her nose up at him, ‘don’t be so grown up. You were the king of inappropriate laughter once.’

  Marcus raised his brows and turned to Andrew, ‘Really? Do tell.’

  ‘Don’t tell,’ Andrew grimaced at the girls, knowing full well that they were already pulling stories out of the past and sorting through for the best ones to repeat.

  ‘We could start with your neighbour and his slippers,’ said Sandy, a look of pure innocence on her face. ‘We never did get our rocket back from him after that, all because you wouldn’t stop laughing.’

  ‘At his slippers?’ Marcus asked, wondering what could be so amusing about some footwear, but already feeling the desire to laugh at the mischievous expressions on the girls’ faces.

  ‘They were pink,’ Andrew said defensively, ‘well, one was pink and fluffy and the other was a duck. It’s not the least bit funny now,’ he threw a narrow-eyed glance at the shaking shoulders of Lynette and Sandy, ‘but at the time there was an element of ridiculousness in approaching the cranky old neighbour to ask if we could fetch our rocket from his back yard, and he stood there scowling at us and telling us off for launching a rocket into his private parts while I tried not to look at the pink fluffy and the duck. Who calls their backyard their private parts? So, I laughed. And he had on a yellow satin dressing gown that contrasted dreadfully with his gnarly old skin.’

  ‘And once Andrew started giggling,’ Lynette’s voice shook at the memory, ‘and don’t try to say that it wasn’t giggling - it was. You were giggling. Once he started, we caught it like a cold and then Ally did that crazy snorting laughter of hers when she loses control, and that man just stood there glaring at us and going on about not wanting kids and rockets in his private parts. The crankier he got, the more we lost it.’

  ‘It was incredibly inappropriate of us,’ added Sandy, ‘but nothing could make us stop. That man swore at us, and people didn’t swear at kids back then, and it just made it worse. We finally ran away, still laughing like hyenas, leaving our rocket in his back yard, and we never saw it again. It had cost us over a month of pocket money. So, we are old hands at laughing in places and at times that aren’t really suited to that response.’

  ‘He had a duck on his foot,’ pointed out Andrew once more, trying to co
nvince Marcus that there was an excellent reason for losing control in front of the neighbour. ‘Don’t tell me that seeing a slipper shaped like a duck on the foot of the crankiest man who ever lived isn’t hilarious. And he said we’d stuck a rocket in his private parts. He was one sick puppy, that man.’

  Marcus wobbled his hand back and forth non-committedly, ‘Perhaps I needed to be there.’

  ‘It was funny,’ Andrew insisted, before shrugging and offering Marcus a crooked smile, ‘maybe not in the retelling, but at the time it was worth laughing about.’

  They continued the light talk, avoiding the heavier issues that weighed on their minds, as they made their way back to the Daintree Room where they met the day before. Lying unspoken under the surface of the chitchat was the worry about how Ally would react to their presence. Each of her friends believed that they had let her down with their past actions and they wanted to atone for the mistake that had left her looking at them with sad eyes that only saw their treachery. They didn’t want to see that expression again.

  After Peter had left them, he walked slowly to Ally’s room. Normally, he walked briskly and with purpose but his thoughts were folding over on each other, layer after layer, as he tried to find the right things to say to her. All that he’d said to her in previous weeks since she’d arrived at Kamekura had failed. As Ally had been drowning in her ocean, he had been throwing her lifelines hoping that she would grab one so that he could pull her to safety. Ultimately, all the lifelines he threw were ropes hitting her head and driving her further under.

  What could he say to her now to drag her from that ocean? How could he save her when he felt the undertow pulling at his own legs, threatening to take him under? He was lost. He was the small boy in the school ground waiting for the bullies to destroy him, and, this time, Ally was not in the position to help him. He had to fight to save her.