Once at the hospital, she climbed softly so her feet wouldn’t echo in the deserted stairwell. It wasn’t visiting hours and she hoped she wouldn’t meet any staff on the way, more for the fact that she didn’t feel like conversation than any worry they’d tell her she had to leave. Coming out on the second floor, she crossed to Zac’s doorway and found him standing at the window looking out over the hospital grounds. His broad shoulders were silhouetted against the light and there was tension in the stiff set of his neck. She wanted to come up behind him and put her arms around him in comfort. Instead, she knocked quietly on the doorframe and waited, and when he turned, his face lay in the shadow with the light behind him.

‘Ah, Ava. Good morning.’

‘Morning, Zac.’ She could hear too much cheery brightness in her voice and pulled it back. She only just managed to stop herself from asking, Are you coming? Taking a calm breath, she said, ‘How are you?’

‘Feeling remarkably well,’ he replied, then he paused and gestured for her to come in. ‘And you?’

‘Fine, thanks.’ She could feel her heart thumping and this precipice of the future was killing her. She needed to end this indecision before it did her head in. ‘Have you thought more about where you will convalesce?’ she asked as coolly as she could muster.

He nodded. ‘I have. George has been to see me already and I can leave today. He thinks going with you is a better idea than staying on my own at the hotel, and he’d prefer I didn’t fly back to Sydney yet because my parents are in Greece for a couple of weeks.’

She felt her heart lift. He was coming.

‘But I still think it’s an imposition on you.’ She could hear the hesitancy in his voice.

‘It’s no imposition if you’d like to come.’ She kept her voice light, though the idea that his parents knew at least her name now made her feel anxious. She’d been driving when their son had almost been killed.

‘Though I’d better tell you now in case you change your mind – Mum wants you sleeping in the homestead so she can watch you.’

His mouth opened and shut.

She grimaced. ‘That conversation went as expected. I suggested you’d want a cabin and your privacy but was howled down because you “need watching”.’ She shrugged. ‘You could stay a couple of days in the house and then move out. I gave up trying to reason with her.’

To her surprise, he didn’t seem fazed. ‘She seems a strong-willed woman.’ She could hear the smile in his voice, which reassured her.