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action.'
    'Yes, but we're not well set up to deal with burns or major trauma,' Matt answered.
    'What about Westmead?' Malcolm asked, naming the large hospital in Sydney's west end which received serious injuries flown in from a wide catchment area.
    'Preferably not,' Matt answered. 'There are more fires in the Blue Mountains and they're expecting to be squeezed pretty tightly with those.'
    'Then—'
    'As I said, don't react too strongly at this stage. For now, loll by the pool, spoil your lady-friend and keep those peeled grapes coming, but your department may get roped in to this later.'
    'OK, thanks for letting me know, Matt.' Malcolm closed up his mobile phone and put it back in the canvas beach bag that sat on the picnic table in front of him.
    Then he smiled. Matt had been joking, and there were no peeled grapes in the picture, but he was, in fact, sitting by the pool and spoiling his lady-friend.
    Well, his daughter, actually, but they were friends, he considered, and he was proud of their relationship. It was easily the most important thing in his life.
    He watched Ellie for a moment as she made serious inroads into her chocolate ice cream. There was a sticky brown tideline all around her mouth now, the ice cream was melting fast and she was having to concentrate hard in order to get each piece of chocolate coating safely into her mouth before it slid off the creamy part beneath and dropped to the ground. Malcolm didn't have the tidemark, but he was having a similar struggle with his own chocolate bits now. They'd got a head start on melting while his mouth had been out of action on the phone.
    They'd had a nice weekend together, he and Ellie. Quiet. Technically, as Matt Grady's phone call had just proved, he was on call all the time as head of Black Mountain Hospital's Accident and Emergency Department, but, in fact, a call like Matt's was a rare event, and most of his weeks involved regular hours, Monday to Friday from eight until six, with the occasional overnight to cover gaps in the roster.
    Ellie's babysitter, Jenny, was almost always available to stay over on those occasions, and if by chance she wasn't, she had a grown up daughter, Clare, studying at university, whom Ellie liked—and he trusted—almost as much, and who was happy to fill in.
    Ellie slid the wooden ice-cream stick between her lips to remove the last of the chocolate goo, then did it again just to make absolutely sure that she wasn't missing a bit. Then she inspected it very seriously.
    'Are you keeping it?' he asked her, knowing the answer would be yes. At home, she had a plastic takeaway food container almost full of them now, destined for some as yet undetermined on but very important craft project. 'Here...'
    He took it from her and put it in a side pocket of the canvas bag, then wiped the chocolate from her face with a small cloth brought for that purpose. Ice cream was a regular feature of their frequent swims at the local outdoor heated public pool.
    Was it a little shocking that Ellie had so many icecream sticks in her collection, though? He felt a moment's twinge of guilt, then let it go. He loved to watch Ellie eat, and in general he was careful about the makeup of her diet. He got an active pleasure from seeing her relishing her food and taking something like an ice cream so seriously. She'd been so very delicate as a baby.
    Inevitably, he found himself thinking of Lucy Beckett and their startling meeting, out of the blue, on Friday. Ellie's health, his love for his child, Lucy's role in his life, grief and guilt... It was all tangled up together. The grief was perhaps the least of it now. As he'd told Lucy, year by year for six years Bronwyn's loss had become a little less acute.
    He'd certainly battled with it at the beginning, though...
    'Are we having another swim, Daddy?' Ellie wanted to know.
    'Are you all warmed up?'
    'Yes.' She nodded firmly.
    With so little padding on her bones, she felt the cold, but usually refused to emerge