‘Caleb? You in there?’

Caleb opened the door. Mick stood on the verandah, his arm around a slender Chinese woman who held a child in her arms. The normally imperturbable Mick ran a hand through his dark hair. ‘Sorry to bother you, doc. It’s Lin’s little girl.’

Caleb looked at the child who lay limp and unresponsive in her mother’s arms.

‘Bring her in,’ he said, shutting the door behind them.

He’d managed to squeeze in a wooden bench, which Posy had covered with a clean sheet, and he took the child from Lin to lay her on the hard surface. The child looked up at him with large, dark eyes.

‘What happened?’ he asked.

‘She’s just starting to walk and she had a fall this morning. Hit her head hard on a rock. She was fine but then she started vomiting.’ Mick glanced at the woman. ‘She went for a sleep this afternoon but we couldn’t wake her up for supper and that’s when I told Lin we had to bring her to you. She sort of woke up on the walk here but she’s too quiet. Know what I mean?’

For the first time, the mother issued a small sound that could have been a stifled sob.

Caleb summoned his ‘reassuring’ smile. ‘What’s her name?’

Lin looked at Mick and he nodded.

‘Mae. We call her Mae,’ she said so softly, Caleb had to strain to hear her.

‘We?’ Adelaide spoke for the first time.

Mick shuffled his feet and looked down at the ground. ‘Yes, missus. Mae’s me little girl.’

Adelaide laid a hand on his arm. ‘I’m not passing judgement, Mick. She’s beautiful.’

Caleb turned his attention back to the child.

A quick feel of her skull confirmed a large bump on the side of her head but his questing fingers did not detect the crackle of a break and her pupils weren’t dilated, which he took as a good sign.

When he had finished the examination he turned to the anxious parents. ‘She’s had a bad knock and she has a concussion.’

‘Is bad?’ Lin asked, her eyes widening.

‘It’s not good,’ Caleb said, ‘but she should be all right. She will need lots of rest and quiet games, no running around outside.’

Mick tightened his grip on Lin’s shoulders and hugged her tighter. ‘Got to keep her quiet, Linny.’ He looked at Caleb. ‘Not easy at this age.’

‘No,’ Caleb, who had no direct experience of children of ‘this age’, said. He turned to Adelaide. ‘Can you look in the cupboard and pass me a bandage?’

With four adults there barely seemed enough room to breathe, let alone move, but Adelaide slipped into place at his side, the bandage in her hand.

‘Ad—Mrs Greaves, can you hold young Mae so I can bandage her head?’