CHAPTER ONE

      AT THE wheel of the ambulance, Hayley Morris turned out of the station driveway into Halifax Street and activated lights and sirens. Beside her, Bruce McDonald consulted the map.

      ‘OK, yeah, it’s off Bennett Parade,’ he said. ‘Beach Road.’

      He was a very experienced ambulance officer, though not a fully trained level-five paramedic as Hayley now was. Stocky and grizzled, he could lift a heavy, full-grown man as easily as he could gentle his voice to soothe a child.

      Hayley nodded, keeping her eyes on the road. ‘I know Beach Road.’

      ‘They’ve extended it. Maybe this is one of those new houses.’

      ‘We’ll soon see.’

      It was a Thursday in early February and the town was quiet at just after noon. Another turn brought Hayley to the Princes Highway and she headed north, taking advantage of the wide ribbon of traffic-free grey road to bring the vehicle up to a hundred kilometres per hour. She would go even faster once she was out of Arden.

      Crossing a long, low bridge over the harbour, just where it merged into the Cammerook River’s tidal mouth, she sped past motionlesss fishermen, a waterfront restaurant, a children’s playground. The houses petered out, and the highway shimmered with mirages in the midday summer heat.

      Two minutes later, she had reached the turnoff to Moama. Bennett Parade was quiet, too. Sixty years ago, Moama had simply been the name of a beach. Thirty years ago, it had been a string of rustic holiday homes, most of them made of fibro-cement or weatherboard and set amongst dense and fragrant eucalyptus forest.

      Now it was a town in its own right, prices for beachfront property had sky-rocketed and there were some gorgeous new houses looking out along the coastline of white beaches and rocky headlands. In another ten years, Arden and Moama would be seamlessly joined by the mushrooming developments.

      The ambulance radio crackled into life, down near Hayley’s left thigh.

      ‘Informant is a four-year-old child, Car Seven,’ said the dispatcher, Kathy Lowe. ‘Repeating that, four years of age. She’s sounding more and more distressed. Can I give her an update? Her name’s Tori, by the way.’

      ‘We’re turning into Beach Road now,’ Bruce said. ‘Tell her to listen and she’ll hear us coming. Tell her to open the front door.’

      Hayley felt a prickle of apprehension. What was a four-year-old girl doing, reporting her own injury? Who was with her?

      Kathy hadn’t been able to get a lot of detail, although she was experienced and adept at talking callers through all sorts of emergencies. A former nurse, she’d recently coached a dad through the delivery of his wife’s baby boy, over the phone, before the ambulance could reach the couple’s isolated property. And she’d once pinpointed the location of two lost and lacerated tourists by correctly identifying the tree into which their car had slid on a muddy side road that they hadn’t been able to name.

      This time, Kathy had had to coax an address and other details out of a four-year-old. She was with her grandmother? Why wasn’t Grandma helping to cook that boiled egg? Oh, Grandma was having a little nap? Was that it?

      ‘She’s crying too much,’ Kathy had said. ‘I can’t get a good fix on what’s wrong. Something about the grandmother. Something about the egg. Sounds like a burn or a scald.’

      Hayley hated burns. Hated any injury to a child. Particularly hated it when no one had the presence of mind to plunge the burn immediately into cold running water, but how could you expect a four-year-old to think of that? Or to understand when Kathy had suggested it?

      As for the grandmother...

      ‘It’s number 154—one of the new houses.’ Bruce counted off. ‘OK—146, 148. It’s this one.’ He pointed ahead to a dramatically beautiful architect-designed place, painted cream with purple-blue trim. ‘Gee, look at the views it’s got!’

      The driveway climbed steeply upwards from the street, before finishing in a flat apron of paved stone in front of a double garage.

      ‘I’m going to reverse in,’ Hayley said, silencing the siren.

      She passed the driveway, veered out wide into the street, then threw the gearstick into reverse and swung the steering-wheel hard down to the left, accelerating as she did so. The heavy vehicle lumbered backwards up the driveway, its engine loud and strident. Hayley craned in the driver’s seat and managed the manoeuvre without difficulty.

      Bruce was out of the car before it had even come to a stop. Hayley followed him through a sunny private courtyard newly planted with salt-tolerant shrubs and flowers and up the stone steps that led to a dramatic front balcony.

      In the doorway stood Tori, a pretty child with a high ponytail of fair hair and brown eyes. Her pink cotton dress was wet all down the front and she was shivering and crying.

      Shock? Hayley thought at once.