CHAPTER ONE

      ‘IT’S RED DAY.’

      ‘Red day?’ Dr Lauren Fuller’s hand paused in mid-twist on the yellow lid of a jar of Vegemite. She was minding Shaylee—her parents’ current foster-daughter—while Sue and Ian were up in Melbourne, celebrating their thirty-third wedding anniversary.

      ‘For reading,’ Shaylee explained. ‘We wrote a real letter with a stamp and everything. Today we’re walking to a big red letterbox. Mrs Kikos says it’s really old.’

      Lauren knew the postbox. It dated back to 1890, when Horseshoe Bay had been a popular holiday destination and people sent postcards to tease the folks at home. Now everyone just texted. ‘That sounds like fun.’

      She grabbed the toast as it popped up and swung back towards the table, dodging Cadbury, her parents’ aging chocolate Labrador, who had decided he needed to lie right at her feet. After dropping the toast on a plate, she pulled the scrambled eggs off the heat seconds before they boiled. Breakfast at her own house was a much less hectic affair, consisting of fruit and yoghurt, and, if the planets aligned, a quiet online read of the paper.

      The eight-year-old girl’s gaze suddenly dropped past her new green and white checked school dress—her pride and joy—before resting on her bare feet. Shaylee mumbled something else about red.

      Lauren scooped the eggs out of the pan and dumped them over the toast she’d spread with Vegemite. Her mother had been insistent that Shaylee eat a high-protein breakfast before school to help her with her concentration. Lauren knew that wasn’t the sole purpose; it was as much about warmth, love and a full stomach as it was about concentration. Shaylee had spent far too many years going hungry when her drug-affected mother’s suppressed appetite and muddled brain hadn’t considered food a necessity. ‘Sit up and eat your brekkie and tell me what you just said.’

      Shaylee eyed Lauren carefully as she climbed up onto the breakfast stool. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

      ‘Of course it matters,’ Lauren said with a smile. She’d grown up with a parade of foster-children coming and going in the house and, as hard as that was at times to cope with, if she’d learned one thing, it was that the muttered asides usually contained the most important information.

      Shaylee shovelled eggs into her mouth and Lauren waited. The moment the girl swallowed, Lauren said, ‘Hit me with it.’

      ‘We have to wear red,’ Shaylee said quietly, her head down. ‘But it’s okay. I love my uniform.’

      Lauren’s heart rolled over. This little girl had endured so many disappointments in her short life that she automatically prepared for them now. It was odd that Lauren’s mother hadn’t made a costume for her before she’d left for Melbourne—Sue was huge on things like this. Surely the school had sent home a note about it? But that was something to sort out later. Right now, she had...she glanced at the clock and tried not to groan...half an hour to create a red costume before dropping Shaylee off at school and getting to the clinic on time. ‘You eat your eggs and I’ll go and see what I can find that’s red.’

      Her first stop was the bathroom. At the back of the cupboard she found four cans of coloured hair spray, all of dubious age. She picked up the red one and shook it. It sounded hopeful, although she hoped it was fire-engine-red or it wouldn’t show up on Shaylee’s glossy black hair. Her second stop was the floor-to-ceiling cupboards in the playroom-cum-teenage retreat. Dragging an old hospital linen bag along the polished floorboards, she walked back into the kitchen just as Shaylee finished her last mouthful.

      ‘What’s that?’ the little girl asked, clearly intrigued.

      ‘Sue’s special bag of tricks.’ Lauren pulled open the drawstring and started pitching out items—a pink feather boa, a black ushanka fur hat with a red badge, a green fez, an old handbag, a royal-blue waistcoat... As she added more items to the pile, Lauren found herself silently chanting ‘Come on, red,’ like a roulette player.

      Meanwhile, Shaylee was twirling around the kitchen, wearing the Russian hat and a stethoscope. ‘Look, I’m a doctor just like you.’

      Lauren glanced at the bright red instrument in surprise. It must have been tangled up in some clothing, because she hadn’t seen it come out of the bag. If anyone had asked her about that piece of medical equipment, she would have said she’d binned it at the end of her first year of uni after replacing it with a utilitarian black stethoscope. Apparently not. It appeared she had abandoned it here and her mother, ever a magpie when it came to the bag of tricks, must have kept it for dress-ups. Lauren had deliberately not thought about the red stethoscope in years.

      Twelve years.

       Shut up! How do you even know that?

      It was too long ago and far too much had happened in her life for her subconscious to instantly calculate the number. Especially as the day she’d bought the replacement black stethoscope had been the day she’d moved on from Charlie Ainsworth. At least that was what she always told herself on the infrequent occasions something made her think back to that heady summer a lifetime ago.

      ‘Stethoscopes are like wands,’ Charlie had said, slinging a red one around her neck and pulling her towards him before kissing her.

      She’d gazed up at him, loving his kind and handsome face.