The gruesome image sat well in Hana’s determined mind. She’d be like one too, until her husband had healed.

Chapter Forty-five

Zac

Zac looked around his impersonal apartment at the hotel in Alice Springs and decided it was decent but too big for one person. The view from the window faced the MacDonnell Ranges – he guessed a different side to that he remembered from Setabilly – but looking at the rugged mountains made him feel closer to a station he had no cause to return to and held a barb of regret.

Apart from his own things in the room, he didn’t recognise anything here or anyone he ran into. He’d cancel the booking and pack his stuff. Just move into a normal hotel room next week when he came back from Uluru.

It was best he left town while he waited to go back to work. He knew he needed to give Ava space. Her family had been flung into the worst kind of turmoil. He felt as if he’d let them down by not seeing the perilous depth of Jock’s depression, though he had broached the subject of a consult for Jock and made the referral for the next time he and Hana would be in Alice. But it had been too little too late.

The horror of yesterday would stay with him for a very long time. He could feel his heart rate pick up and blew out a breath to reassure himself. At least he’d got the tube in. Jock would recover physically and Zac staying around here wasn’t helping anyone. George had suggested another week off, but he’d be back to work after that.

He glanced at his phone and checked the time in Greece – 8.15 am. He placed the call to his parents and checked in, as well as letting them know the latest from George. Then he began to pack his things.

The next morning, Zac drove down to stay at the Ayers Rock Resort in Yulara, because he’d be going back to Sydney soon and Ava had been quietly persistent that he should see the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park before he left.

His first sight of Uluru made him stop the car and stare. Even from a distance the monolith rose as an immense protrusion into the sky, and as he drove closer it reared up from the surrounding desert, drawing his eye back like a magnet from the road to the rock.

Yulara township was a surprise. It appeared suddenly after miles of desert, a collection of buildings, a turn, and a row of verandahs from the hotel on his left looking out to the road and across to the monolith. The township was bigger and more modern than he’d expected. An isolated outpost with desert gardens and smiling staff and tourist buses, and he could see why it drew visitors from around the world.