‘Right,’ he said, and struck a line through Dimboola. There was silence while he checked a few more ads. Then: ‘Where’s Mission Beach?’

‘North Queensland,’ the same nurse told him. ‘You remember Joe and Jodie?’

‘Joe and Jodie?’

‘Joe was the paediatric intern here last year. Big, blond guy almost as hunky as you. Six feet tall and yummy-every sensible woman’s dream.’ She grinned, but in a way that said her compliment wasn’t idle banter but was designed to cheer him up. As was everything anyone said to him at the moment. Let’s look after Fergus…

‘Joe married Jodie Walters from ICU,’ she continued, as she failed to elicit a smile. ‘They took a job at Port Douglas last year and that’s close to Mission Beach.’

OK. Fergus sorted the dross and came up with the information he needed. There were people he knew close to Mission Beach.

Another line.

He knew the next place in the list of advertisements, and the next, and the next. More advertisements were consigned to oblivion. Then: ‘Where’s Cradle Lake?’

Silence.

This was hopeful. He gazed around, checking each of his colleagues for any sign of recognition. ‘Does anyone know where Cradle Lake is?’

‘Never heard of it,’ Graham, his anaesthetist, told him. ‘Cradle Mountain’s in Tasmania. Is it near there?’

‘Apparently not. It has a New South Wales postcode’

‘Never heard of it, then.’

‘No one knows it?’ Fergus demanded, and received four shakes of four heads in reply.

‘Great,’ he said, and the line became a circle. ‘That’s where I’m going.’

Ginny got the phone call at two in the morning. She’d known it had been coming, but it didn’t make it any less appalling.

Richard was ringing from his hospital bed. He hadn’t wanted her with him when he was told, and he’d waited until now to call.

Who could blame him? Where could anyone find the courage to face news like this, much less pass it on?