‘It all sounds a bit dodgy to me,’ Maureen said, ‘and I’m sure it will to him. I think it might be time to tell him the truth, dear.’

Violet shook her head adamantly.

‘You’re going to have to some day, Violet. It can’t stay a secret forever.’

‘Not just yet,’ Violet waved a hand airily, not wanting to think about it, ‘in the New Year.’

It was Cam they were discussing, and the problem of Christmas. Violet’s mother and father expected her to spend the festive season at the property, the Campbell Christmas was always a family affair. But Violet had other plans: she and Pietro were going to Sydney.

‘I shall spend Christmas with my husband,’ she’d grandly announced. Violet loved saying the word ‘husband’, and as Maureen was the only person to whom she could say it, she used the term whenever possible.

‘He’s taking me to Sydney, Auntie Maureen.’ She’d dropped the grand manner in her childlike excitement. ‘And he’s promised we’ll stay at the Australia Hotel, and we’ll catch a Manly ferry and go to the zoo and do all the things we did last time. It’ll be like our honeymoon all over again! And I’ll be able to wear my wedding ring.’ It irked Violet that she had to keep her wedding ring hidden away in the drawer of her bedside table. ‘And everyone will know I’m married to the handsomest man in the world.’

‘And what will you tell your mum and dad?’ Maureen had expected her question to bring Violet crashing back to earth, but it hadn’t.

‘I’ll tell them that Trish from the store won a magazine competition and the prize was a trip for two to Sydney.’

‘What if they check with Trish?’

‘They can’t. She’s got three whole weeks off – her grandma’s dying in Adelaide.’ There had been a triumphant ring to Violet’s voice. ‘She left yesterday and she won’t be back until the New Year.’

‘A magazine competition?’ Maureen had been highly dubious, and that was when she’d said it all sounded a bit dodgy.

Violet, however, remained unfazed. ‘They have them, you know, competitions like that, in magazines, I’ve seen them.’

‘Well, you’d better get your facts right, is all I can say.’

Apparently Violet did. She went home for her brother’s birthday the following Sunday, told her parents of her plans, and upon her return, announced to her aunt that it was all sorted out.

‘And he fell for it, your dad?’ Maureen asked in amazement.

‘Not at first. He wanted to know all about the competition, who was running it, what magazine and all that.’

‘So what did you do?’ She couldn’t help it, she was fascinated.

‘I showed him that.’ Violet dumped a copy of The Women’s Weekly on the kitchen table. ‘Short Story Competition’ it said on the cover. ‘Win a trip for two to Sydney’. ‘That’s what gave me the idea in the first place,’ she admitted.

‘Good heavens above.’

‘Dad got really snaky,’ Violet continued. ‘He said I was letting down the family and I was too young to go to Sydney, and then Mum jumped in. She said the family could live without me for Christmas and I was nearly nineteen years old and it was the chance of a lifetime. All downhill after that.’ She laughed, obviously suffering no pangs of conscience.

‘What a clever little liar you’ve become,’ Maureen remarked, a mixture of admiration and censure.

‘I know,’ Violet said with great pride. ‘I should have been an actress.’

 

Pietro hadn’t been able to get a suite at the Australia Hotel. He’d tried to book the same one as last time, he told her, but there were no suites left. Christmas was a very busy time, they’d said when he’d telephoned, and he was lucky to get the last room available. It was a pleasant room, they’d told him, on the third floor, and it looked out over Martin Place.

‘I am sorry, Violetta,’ he said as she peered from the window enthralled.

‘I don’t mind, it’s cosier. Crikey, Pietro, just look at all the people!’

As he’d promised, they caught a Manly ferry and visited the zoo and The Rocks, where this time he bought her a pretty silk scarf. They did everything they’d done on their previous visit – Violet was obviously a creature of habit when it came to Sydney – and her energy was boundless.

Upon their return to the hotel, Pietro felt unnaturally tired and his head was aching, but he said nothing to Violet, not wanting to spoil things for her.

‘We shall have room service?’ he suggested hopefully; he didn’t relish the thought of dining in the restaurant.

‘Of course.’ To Violet it was a foregone conclusion: ‘Toasted sandwiches, lots and lots of them, and chocolate milkshakes.’

They showered together and she wriggled sensually as he soaped her body, giggling at the effect she knew she was having on him. They towelled each other dry, and by the time they reached the bed Pietro’s lethargy was forgotten.

After they’d made love, she dozed off in his arms, and Pietro, whose head was once again throbbing, felt himself drift thankfully into a deep slumber.

Violet, her energy finally depleted, slept more soundly than she’d expected, and it was pitch dark when she awoke. She sat up startled, wondering what it was that had awoken her so abruptly and, for a moment, wondering where she was. Then she heard it again and realised it was his call that had awakened her.

‘Pietro …’ And a second or so later, ‘Pietro …’

She was in the hotel room and, in the bed beside her, Pietro was calling out his own name. But it didn’t sound like him.

‘Pietro …’ He called out again. ‘Pietro …’

It was as if someone was calling to him, she thought. Someone else. From far away. The sound was rhythmic, repetitive, the way a person might call for a lost dog.

She leaned over to look at him – he’d rolled away from her in sleep. Was he having a nightmare?

Violet didn’t know what to do. He’d never talked in his sleep before. But then this was only the third weekend they’d spent together in the few months of their marriage; perhaps he often talked in his sleep. Should she wake him or not?

‘Pietro …’ The call again, not loud, but unsettling. ‘Pietro …’

Well, she certainly wouldn’t be able to sleep with that going on all night, she thought. Besides, it was time to order the toasted sandwiches.

She jumped out of bed and turned on the light.

‘Pietro, wake up,’ she said, shaking him by the shoulder, not too roughly, but firmly enough. Then she jumped back, startled, as he sat bolt upright, staring ahead, apparently not seeing her.

‘I’m sorry, sweetie,’ she said soothingly. He was alarmed and she regretted having woken him so brutally. ‘You were having a nightmare.’

It was Violetta, he realised. He’d wondered what had happened and where he was. He looked blinkingly around the room, the light seemed dazzling.

‘Was I?’

‘Yes. You were talking in your sleep, yelling out your name.’

‘My name?’

‘Well, not yelling really. Calling. You were calling out “Pietro”, over and over.’

He could hear it now, the voice that used to come to him sometimes after a seizure. ‘Pietro! Pietro!’ But it hadn’t been him. Someone else had been calling his name. Then he saw the shiny shoes standing on the wooden steps. Nothing else. Just the shoes and the steps, and he heard a man’s voice calling his name. But it wasn’t a nightmare, he thought. It was a memory.

His headache was still with him, and he put his fingers to his temples trying to ease it away.

‘Violetta,’ he said excitedly, ‘there is something I remember.’

True to her promise, Violet had tried to help him recall the past. She’d talked of her childhood, encouraging him to think of his, hoping it might trigger some memory. Once when she’d talked about her first pony and her love of riding, he’d thought that he could remember a wooden horse. ‘No, no, a wooden donkey,’ he’d corrected himself.

Violet had considered it a breakthrough. ‘Like a rocking horse,’ she’d said. ‘And a rocking horse would be inside a house, Pietro. Try to think of the house.’

But it hadn’t worked. If anything her encouragement had had an adverse effect. The memory of the wooden donkey had disappeared, and only the goats remained.

Violet was now once again on a mission.

‘What do you remember, Pietro? Tell me everything, quickly, before it goes away.’

He told her about the shoes and the wooden steps. A man’s shoes, he said, standing on the steps, and a man’s voice calling his name.

‘Wooden steps,’ she said. ‘That’s a house – try to remember the house.’ If he could remember the house, Violet thought, then he might remember his parents, or his brothers and sisters, and everything else that went on inside a house. A house was a home – it meant family.

‘Wooden steps leading where?’ she asked. ‘A front door? A back door?’

He kept rubbing his temples, trying to ease away the pain; if the ache in his head went, then perhaps he would remember. But all he could see was the light through the steps and the man’s shoes as they stood there.

‘I am beneath the house,’ he said. ‘I cannot see the door.’

‘It’s a cubby,’ Violet said excitedly. As a child he’d had a cubby under the house, just like she had, she thought. ‘Come out of the cubby and walk up the steps,’ she urged, but he didn’t seem to hear her.

‘I see floorboards above me,’ he said, ‘and light.’ He concentrated hard on the gaps in the floorboards and, through them, he thought that he could see feet. He was about to tell Violetta, but he stopped, horrified as his body started to tremble and he felt the familiar flicker of his left eye.

‘Go on,’ Violet urged.

His heart was pounding, he was overcome with dread. That Violetta should see him! Did he have time to get away? Perhaps he could lock himself in the bathroom. He tried to remain calm; the more agitated he became, the quicker the seizure would be upon him. He climbed out of the bed; he was shaking now, and beads of sweat had formed on his brow. He ferreted through the pockets of his jacket slung over a chair and found the piece of leather strap.

‘Pietro, what is it? What’s wrong?’ She was alarmed.

He fell, his body already beyond his control – there was no time to get away.

She screamed and knelt beside him, then grabbed at her clothes on the chair, prepared to run for help. But he stopped her.

‘No, Violetta,’ he said, through teeth already chattering. ‘Stay with me.’ Resigned to the awful fact that she would witness his fit, he was determined that no-one else must see him. ‘Do not be frightened, it will not last long.’ And, as his jaw started to clench, he placed the leather strap between his teeth.

Pietro was right; the seizure did not last long, but to Violet it went on forever. Naked and helpless, she hugged her knees to her chest, drawing herself into a ball, rocking backwards and forwards and sobbing hysterically as she watched the violent convulsions of her husband’s body, convinced that Pietro was dying.

When it was over and she realised that he wasn’t dead, she tried to pull herself together. She must do something. She fetched a wet flannel from the bathroom and, cradling him to her, she wiped away the sweat and spittle from his face.

‘I’m here, Pietro,’ she whispered, tears coursing down her cheeks, ‘I’m here.’

Someone soft and gentle was holding him, whispering words of comfort, and for a moment Pietro thought it was Sister Anna Maria. But the words were in English and Sister Anna Maria did not speak English. Then, as the world slowly came back into focus, he realised it was Violetta, and she was crying.

‘Sssh.’ He tried to sit up, to wipe away her tears, but his energy was sapped and he lay back exhausted. ‘A moment,’ he said, ‘a moment and I will be all right, you will see.’

‘Oh Pietro.’ She was openly sobbing again, overcome with relief. ‘I thought you were dying.’

‘Sssh … sssh …’ He held her hand.

They remained where they were for several minutes, naked, vulnerable, each fighting to regain control. When her sobbing had stopped and when Pietro felt he was strong enough, she helped him to his feet and they sat on the bed, hugging the coverlet about them.

He told her about his illness, the fits he’d had as a child at the convent and the diagnosis of his epilepsy.

‘Is that why you can’t remember?’ she asked.

‘Perhaps it is the epilepsy. I do not know.’

She was riddled with guilt: she had prompted the attack by trying to help him recall his past. But when she said as much, he vehemently protested.

‘No, no, Violetta, is good I remember. I wish to remember.’ He did, since he’d met Violetta, he desperately wished to know about his childhood and who he had once been. ‘Is good that you help me.’

She looked unconvinced – his epilepsy frightened her – but Pietro was insistent. His fits were rare now, he told her, he’d had only one attack since he’d been in Australia, and after the doctor had given him pills, he’d had not even a warning sign.

‘And so I stop taking these pills,’ he said. ‘I no longer need …’

‘Then that’s why you had the attack,’ she said, a mixture of accusation and relief.

‘I do not know,’ he answered.

‘Well, of course it is, Pietro. It was bloody stupid to stop taking the pills.’

She sounded cross. More cross than he had ever heard her sound, and Pietro felt wretched. He was profoundly sorry that he had not spoken of his illness – he should have told her from the very beginning, he admitted.

‘But you see, Violetta,’ he protested, anxious for her to believe him, ‘I think that I am better. I have no fit for a long time. It is not like before. I think to myself that it is past. And it will be. I promise. You will see.’

She looked at him shrewdly. ‘You thought I wouldn’t marry you if I knew, didn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ he said, shamefaced.

‘Well, I would have. I love you, Pietro. For better or for worse and till death do us part, for ever and ever, I love you.’ It wasn’t a scene from a film and she didn’t think of Bette Davis; Violet was in deadly earnest, and the dialogue was all her own. ‘But you should’ve told me, just the same,’ she added.

‘I am sorry, Violetta.’

She kissed him. ‘As soon as we get back to Cooma,’ she said, ‘we’re taking you to the doctor.’ Then she added, concerned, ‘You don’t look too good. How do you feel?’

‘I feel hungry,’ he replied. He didn’t – he felt as if he’d been run over by a truck and his head was still aching – but it didn’t matter. She loved him, and he was happy. ‘I feel like toasted sandwiches,’ he said.

 

‘Ah, Pietro, a long overdue visit.’ Maarten Vanpoucke smiled a welcome as he went to show the boy into the consulting room; it was his last consultation of the day and he’d told his receptionist to go home after she’d let him know Mr Toscanini had arrived for his appointment. Then he noticed Violet as she rose from her chair. ‘And you must be Pietro’s young lady; Lucky’s told me all about you.’

Pietro and Violet shared a quick look – there were some things Lucky hadn’t told his friend the doctor, as they’d known Lucky wouldn’t.

‘Is all right if Violetta come in with me?’ Pietro asked.

‘Of course, if that is what you wish …’

‘Yes, please.’

‘Violet, isn’t it?’ Maarten asked. He’d seen her in Hallidays shop from time to time, a pretty little thing. ‘How do you do, I’m Doctor Vanpoucke.’

‘How do you do, Doctor.’ Violet was disappointed that he didn’t offer his hand. She knew he was European, although he didn’t really sound it, and European men shook hands with women. She would have initiated the handshake herself, but he was a doctor and she wasn’t sure if it was quite right. ‘I’ve seen you at the store,’ she said as he ushered them into his consulting room. She was disappointed, too, that he hadn’t mentioned the fact himself – she’d served him many times. ‘I work at Hallidays.’

‘That’s right, of course you do,’ he smiled.

Gratified, Violet returned the smile. He was quite good-looking, she thought, for an old bloke anyway; he had to be over forty.

‘And you know my aunt too; she works at the hospital.’

‘Oh yes?’ He gestured at the chairs and they sat.

‘Maureen Campbell,’ Violet said proudly, ‘she’s my auntie.’

‘A fine woman,’ Maarten said.

A bossy woman, he recalled. He didn’t know Maureen Campbell well, just as he didn’t know any of the locals well – it was the way he preferred it. But he remembered how, not so very long ago when there had been a severe shortage of doctors in Cooma, she had politely suggested he might give more time to the hospital than he did. Equally politely, he’d put her in her place, informing her that, as he had chosen an early semi-retirement, he preferred to work his own hours. He’d been aware of her criticism but he hadn’t cared. There would always be a shortage of doctors in Cooma and he would always live according to the way he wished, regardless of the opinions of women like Maureen Campbell who devoted their every waking hour to the hospital because they had little else in their lives.

‘A fine woman and a fine nurse.’ He sat behind his desk and opened Pietro’s medical file.

Violet flashed Pietro an I-told-you-so look – she’d known that Doctor Vanpoucke would be impressed. ‘Auntie Maureen practically runs the hospital, Pietro,’ she’d said, ‘and it helps to have friends in high places.’ She’d heard the phrase somewhere and she’d relished the ring of it.

When Violet had announced she was coming with him to the doctor, Pietro had at first been reluctant. There were no longer any secrets between them, but he wasn’t sure how he would feel about discussing his illness in front of her.

‘But we’re married now, sweetie,’ she’d gently reminded him, ‘and your problems are mine.’ Pietro had changed his tune in an instant. He’d never had anyone to share his problems with before. Now he had Violetta.

‘So, Pietro,’ Maarten said, ‘you’re long overdue for a new prescription. I presume you’ve been lax with your medication.’

Pietro nodded guiltily, and Violet answered for him.

‘That’s why we’re here, doctor,’ she said. ‘He had a fit the other day and I bet it’s because he hadn’t been taking his pills.’

‘It is possible, but not necessarily the case,’ Maarten replied shortly; he’d have preferred it if the girl had allowed Pietro to answer. ‘How long is it since you stopped taking the Dilantin?’ he asked.

‘Three months.’

‘And have you recently suffered any headaches or lethargy?’

The doctor was writing it down and Pietro wanted to get the facts right. He understood ‘headaches’, but he wasn’t quite sure about the next word and he hesitated.

‘Have you felt tired lately?’ Maarten’s pen remained poised.

‘Yes, a little, and I have some headache.’

‘There, you see,’ Violet said triumphantly as the doctor returned to his notes. ‘It’s because you weren’t taking your pills, I told you, that’s why you had the fit.’

‘I doubt it.’ Maarten’s response was icy. ‘Not taking the pills may have contributed to the fatigue, but I doubt it was the cause of the attack.’ The girl was as vacuous as she was pretty, he thought. ‘Tell me about the seizure, Pietro.’

‘I am sleeping …’ Pietro paused, giving the doctor time to make his notes.

‘So the attack occurred while you were asleep?’

‘No, no, I am awake, I know that it will happen. Always I am awake, and always I know that it will happen.’

‘You had the same warning signs then? As you’ve had in the past?’

‘Yes, I know it is coming. I have a dream and …’ Pietro stopped himself just in time. He couldn’t say ‘and Violetta woke me’ as he’d been about to. The doctor would know they were sleeping together and that was not right – the doctor did not know they were married and he would judge Violetta. ‘… and when I wake, I remember this dream.’ He paused again, trying to be meticulous in his recollection, he must tell the doctor every single thing he remembered.

‘And it was your dream that brought on the seizure?’ Maarten prompted.

‘No, no.’ The doctor had misunderstood, Pietro realised. ‘I am happy with the dream, because it is of the past. It is real. I feel good that there is something I remember.’

So the boy’s past was coming back to him, Maarten thought. How very interesting, particularly under the circumstances.

‘And what is it you remember, Pietro?’

‘I remember shoes. Man’s shoes. They are standing on steps, and the light is shining through the steps where I can see them. And I can hear a man’s voice calling my name.’

The doctor nodded encouragement, and Pietro was pleased.

‘I am beneath the house,’ he said, ‘I can see the floorboards above me.’

The boy had been hiding under the house.

‘I think that perhaps I am in a …’ Pietro couldn’t remember Violet’s word for it, and he looked to her for assistance.

‘A cubby.’ Violet dived in, thrilled to be of assistance. ‘Pietro had a cubby under the house as a child, and I told him he should walk up the steps to the door. I said if he could see inside the house, he might remember, but that’s when he had the fit.’

See inside the house. Is that what the boy did?

‘So you were with him at the time of the seizure?’ the doctor asked, and Violet froze, realising that she’d given herself away.

The girl had suddenly become important, and Maarten seized upon the moment. ‘Tell me about the attack,’ he said. ‘Come along, Violet, there’s a good girl.’ Good God, she was going coy – what the hell did it matter if she was sleeping with the boy? ‘Tell me everything that happened. It will be very helpful, believe me.’

Violet realised that Pietro was about to jump to her defence and she stopped him with a shake of her head. Embarrassed and caught out as she was, she had no intention of telling the doctor that she and Pietro were married. Until their announcement to her parents, their marriage would remain a secret.

‘What do you want to know?’ She looked squarely at Doctor Vanpoucke.

‘You said the fit occurred when you were encouraging him to recall the past, to enter the house, is that right?’

‘Oh.’ Violet felt dreadful. So the doctor thought it was she who had brought about the attack. ‘I didn’t mean to do anything wrong,’ she said. ‘Pietro and I often talk about the past …’

‘Yes, yes,’ Pietro agreed, not liking to see Violetta upset. ‘I wish to remember …’

‘But that was before I knew about the epilepsy …’ Violet was becoming agitated. ‘I didn’t mean to …’

‘Calm down, my dear,’ Maarten said soothingly, ‘you meant well and it was very caring of you to try to help Pietro remember.’

It might even have been medically helpful, Maarten thought. It was possible Pietro’s fits were not epileptic at all, but pseudo seizures brought about by his repression of the past. Freud himself would argue that the boy’s trauma should be revealed to him. It was certainly a fascinating case.

‘You have nothing to feel guilty about, I assure you.’

The doctor’s bedside manner was well-practised and Violet felt herself relax.

‘So tell me,’ Maarten said, his full focus now upon the girl, ‘what was Pietro’s reaction to the discussion of his past? I am most interested.’

‘It all started with the goats.’ Violet, vindicated, enjoyed the doctor’s attention. ‘Pietro remembered his favourite goat Rosa and how he’d delivered her baby. Didn’t you, Pietro?’

Pietro nodded. ‘Yes, I remember Rosa, and how I help her with her baby.’

The boy had recalled more than the shoes and the steps.

‘What else did you remember, Pietro?’ the doctor asked, but it was Violet who answered.

‘For a little while he remembered a wooden donkey, and I told him that something like that would be inside a house. But when I told him to try to see inside the house, he couldn’t remember the donkey any more. Isn’t that right, Pietro?’

Maarten interrupted before she could continue; the girl was annoying him again.

‘So you recalled your goat Rosa and her baby, and, at one stage, a wooden donkey. Was there anything else?’

The boy shook his head. ‘No, that is all I remember.’

‘And at the time these memories returned, you had no warning signs and no fit?’

‘No.’ Pietro smiled gratefully at Violet. ‘Violetta, she help me to remember. Is good, yes?’

‘Perhaps.’ The girl was not altogether as silly as she appeared, Maarten thought, the boy’s past was returning. But she was treading on dangerous ground.

‘Let’s get back to the recent seizure, shall we?’ he asked, returning his attention to the girl. ‘Pietro was lucid before the attack? He warned you that it was going to happen?’

Violet nodded. ‘He told me not to be frightened, and he put a piece of leather between his teeth …’

Maarten waited for her to continue.

‘He said it wouldn’t take long, but it went on forever and I didn’t know what to do. It was awful …’

‘Yes, yes,’ he tried to curb his impatience, ‘it is not a pleasant thing to witness –’

‘I thought he was dying, honest I did.’

‘Of course, most understandable. Now, Violet,’ he said, ‘without upsetting yourself, I’d like you to tell me everything you witnessed, before, during, and after the seizure.’

He proceeded to ask her specific questions, and Violet answered in detail. Responding to his queries, she described the particular movements Pietro had made during his attack, and she confirmed that when it was over he had been lucid.

‘He told me about the epilepsy,’ she said, ‘he’d never talked about it before, and then when he said that he’d stopped taking the pills,’ she looked accusingly at Pietro, ‘well, that’s when I knew …’

‘Yes, yes.’ Maarten wasn’t at all interested in her opinion. ‘And during the actual seizure, did you try to converse with him?’

‘No.’ Violet was amazed. ‘You mean that I could have? I could have talked to him, and he could have answered?’

‘It is perhaps possible.’

Maarten had become more intrigued by the minute, and increasingly of the opinion that Pietro’s fits were not epileptic. The boy had said they never occurred during sleep, that he always had warning beforehand, and the girl had said that he was lucid immediately afterwards. Even Violet’s descriptions of the movements he made during the attack were in keeping with a pseudo-epileptic seizure. It was impossible to be sure, of course, Maarten thought, but the trauma of the boy’s background strongly indicated it. How interesting it would be, he pondered, to induce a seizure here and now; Freud would certainly recommend it.

Maarten was an avid believer in Freud’s methods and, had it been any other case, he would have considered such action. But under the circumstances, he’d be flirting with danger. A pity – the results might have been quite thrilling.

‘Now, Pietro, I think we’ll continue with your medication,’ he said, taking his prescription pad from the top drawer of his desk.

Violet’s eyes widened in surprise. Surely there was no question about it: Pietro had had his fit because he hadn’t taken his pills.

‘And if at any time you decide, of your own volition, to cease your medication,’ Maarten stopped scribbling and looked up, ‘then you will do so gradually. If you stop taking your medication abruptly, you will get headaches and feel tired. Do you understand me?’

The doctor’s horn-rimmed spectacles had slid down his nose and, as he peered over the rims, his eyes were stern and admonishing.

‘Yes, I understand,’ Pietro said apologetically, averting his eyes from the doctor’s and wishing the doctor would look away.

‘Good lad.’ Maarten smiled approvingly at the boy. If his diagnosis was correct, there was no need for anti-epileptic medication, but as he couldn’t be sure, it was wisest to prescribe it. That’s what made the boy’s case so intriguing, he thought, tearing the script from the pad. Pietro actually wanted to recall his past, regardless of what he might discover. Most unusual. Those suffering pseudo seizures were usually looking for attention or an avenue of escape, and the boy was seeking neither. He was a perfect subject for psychoanalysis.

As the doctor rose and circled his desk, Pietro and Violet quickly sprang to their feet.

Maarten gave the prescription to Pietro and shook his hand briefly. ‘Good to see you, Pietro.’ It was best for all concerned, he thought, that the boy be kept in ignorance and continue to believe that his fits were epileptic in origin. ‘You too, Violet. Give my regards to your aunt,’ and he ushered the young couple quickly out of the surgery door, Violet a little offended that the doctor hadn’t shaken her hand too, particularly as she’d been so helpful.

Maarten returned to his desk and watched the couple through the bay windows as they walked down Vale Street, hand in hand.

So the boy had been under the house.

He pictured the squat hut, several narrow wooden steps leading up to the door. He’d never thought to look under the house; there hadn’t been space enough there for the boy to hide. And all the while he’d called the child’s name, the boy had been watching his shoes on the steps.

He felt no threat that Pietro had re-entered his life – on the contrary, he found it a fascinating situation. The moment Lucky had told him about the young man named Pietro who’d had a seizure and had placed a strip of leather between his teeth, he’d wondered at the coincidence. He’d seen the boy alone in his consulting rooms just in case, although he knew that, even if it were the same boy, Pietro would not recognise him. He’d made sure that no-one recognised him these days – and he himself had not recognised the child in the young man. But he had recognised the leather strap.

‘If you feel an attack coming upon you when you are alone, Pietro, this is what you must place in your mouth, do you understand?’

He remembered the very words he’d said as he’d given it to the child. The leather had not been worn then, it had been shiny and new, cut from the reins of the wooden donkey that stood in the corner of the room. He’d used the killing knife which the peasant father had fetched from the drawer of the bench where the mother prepared the food.

How extraordinary, he’d thought as he’d looked at the scarred leather.

It was interesting now to consider that perhaps his diagnosis of the child may not have been fully correct.

‘He suffers from a condition which will likely remain with him until adulthood, and possibly for the rest of his life.’

That was what he’d told the peasant couple and he’d believed it at the time – the boy had appeared a classic case. But Pietro’s childhood epilepsy may well be a thing of the past, he thought. The aberrant firing of the brainwaves may have ceased and the boy’s seizures could now be psychologically-triggered. Particularly if he’d been traumatised by the sight of his murdered family, which it seemed he had. He must have entered the house.

A most intriguing case – so little was known about pseudo epilepsy, he would have loved to investigate further. If only he were not so personally involved.

He cleared away his papers and rose from his desk. It was remarkable how the past continued to catch up with him in this remote outpost, he thought as he locked his consulting rooms and walked upstairs.

In the lounge room, he poured himself a large Scotch and topped it up with a finger of water. The irony of his situation amused him. Over recent years he’d become surrounded by his past – who would have believed it possible? He’d escaped from the world which would condemn him, and had exiled himself to one of the farthest regions on the globe, the Snowy Mountains of Australia, but the world had followed him.

How could he have known when he’d arrived in the backwater of Cooma in 1948, that barely a year later Europe would be on his doorstep? Now, at the end of 1954, the Snowies and the Monaro were populated by more Europeans than Australians. And among the hordes of migrants were refugees from displaced persons’ camps and Holocaust survivors, some quite possibly bearing the brand of Auschwitz on their wrist.

He’d felt threatened to start with and he had kept to himself, rarely working at the hospital, being selective with his patients, mingling very little, and had wondered whether perhaps he should leave the area. But the prospect of once again being on the run like a common criminal had angered him. Why should he run? He’d made a home for himself here and he liked it in Cooma. Besides, the surgery he’d undergone in Buenos Aires had made him unrecognisable as the man he’d once been. And in Cooma he blended with the potpourri of nationalities far more than he would elsewhere in Australia where foreigners were regarded with suspicion at worst and fascination at least.

His reasoning had proved correct. The very European element that he’d initially feared had become his protection, and he defied them now, every single one of them. When he saw a face in the street which he thought vaguely familiar, as he occasionally did, he no longer felt threatened. Those who were not looking, he thought, tended not to see. And why would they look anyway? What would they wish to see? They didn’t want reminders of their nightmares – they wanted a new life. It was ironic, he thought, that of all the places he could have chosen to hide, here was where he was safest.

The door opened and a tantalising aroma wafted in from the kitchen.

‘Dinner in one hour, Doctor?’ the housekeeper asked.

‘Thank you, Mrs Hodgeman.’ He sniffed the air appreciatively. ‘A stew. Lamb shanks, I take it?’ They were his absolute favourite – the one Australian specialty of hers he’d insisted she keep on the menu.

‘Yes, sir. And a sherry trifle for sweets.’

‘Excellent.’

As she closed the door behind her, he returned to his thoughts. The boy was a wild card, to be sure, but he was the least threat of all. Even if Pietro were to regain his memory, he would not recognise him. The boy was a freak coincidence, nothing more. Pietro had no links with the death camps. The boy and his family had merely been in the avenue of his escape. Most opportunely, as it had turned out.

He drained the glass and crossed to the dresser. How extraordinary that Lucky had proved such a catalyst, he thought, pouring himself another Scotch. His friendship with the man had always been risky and perhaps he should have exercised more caution – Lucky was a Jew, with friends who were possibly Jewish. But he’d taken care never to socialise publicly with the man, to always keep their relationship within the confines of his home, forgiving Lucky the accident of his birth in exchange for the stimulation of his mind and his expertise at chess. And now Lucky, the one person to whom he had opened his home, had brought the boy back into his life. And he’d brought her too. Or at least the memory of her. Most extraordinary.

Lucky had told him several years ago that his wife had died at Auschwitz, and he’d wondered briefly whether he might have known the woman; the thought had been dangerously amusing. He’d made the appropriate sympathetic comments and the subject had not been mentioned again. He’d never thought for one moment that the woman might be Ruth.

He downed half the Scotch in two swift gulps – he’d been drinking more heavily of late. He had thought that he’d eradicated Ruth from his mind, but clearly he hadn’t. Just one glimpse of her and his obsession had returned. Since the night he’d seen the photograph, he hadn’t stopped thinking about her. And as she had flooded his mind daily, she had brought with her the past.