She held up her hand.
‘One, you’ve come very early, and the lump I’m feeling seems very well defined. That means it’s either a nice little cyst, which we can confirm with a biopsy, or, at worst, it’ll be a small cancer that we can remove. Now, I can’t make promises until the tests have been done, but if, as I suspect, it’s confined to the one small area, then there’ll be no question of you losing your breast, even if it is cancer.’
‘But I’d want…’ Anna gasped, then continued. ‘If it’s cancer I’d want it off. All off. The whole breast.’
‘Surgeons don’t remove breasts without very good reason,’ Em told her. ‘Even if it is cancer, with modern surgical techniques there’s usually no need. They’d simply take away the affected part. That means you’d be left with a scar and one breast a little smaller than the other.’
‘And that’s it?’ Anna looked as if she just plain didn’t believe Em. ‘What about chemotherapy?’
‘If it’s as early as I suspect it must be, then you’d undergo a six-week course of radiotherapy just to mop up any stray cells. Then you and the oncologist would decide whether you wanted chemo.’
‘But…’
‘The survival rate for early breast cancer is great,’ Em said firmly. ‘After surgery and radiotherapy it’s well over ninety percent. And it’s not the fearful experience it once was. Honestly, Anna, about the worst side effect of current chemotherapy is fatigue as your body copes with medication, and hair loss. And hair loss is no big deal.’
She grinned. She may as well be honest here. ‘You and your brother are so good-looking that having shiny scalps would only make the pair of you even more attractive. It’d just bring you back to be on a level with the rest of us ordinary mortals.’
‘And I’d shave with you,’ Jonas said promptly, and he finally succeeded in drawing a smile from his sister.
‘You wouldn’t.’
‘Watch me!’
Em blinked. The thought of a bald Jonas…
Good grief. Once more, there was a wave of pure fantasy. Jonas bald…
She was right. They’d both be stunningly attractive, no matter what they did to their hair, or…or anything.
But Anna was back on consequences. ‘I don’t want to be bald.’
‘So you never need to be,’ Em told her. ‘The health system in this country makes sure you’ll get a wig if you want one, no matter what your income is, and wigs are great.’ She smiled at the pair of them. The tension was decreasing by the minute. ‘You know June Mathews?’
‘I…yes.’ Everyone knew June. She ran the local minimart. June was a stunning strawberry blonde. Or, to put it more truthfully, she was an interim strawberry blonde. Until she tired of it.
‘June doesn’t dye her hair.’ Em’s smile widened. ‘Whenever June tires of her hairstyle, she just buys a new one.’
‘You’re kidding!’
‘I’m not kidding.’ Once more, Em’s voice gentled. ‘She doesn’t mind me telling people who need to know, as long as I ask that you don’t tell anyone else. June suffers from alopecia—hair loss—and she’s been wearing a wig for twenty years.’
‘I don’t believe it!’ This was clearly a side of June that stunned Anna, temporarily diverting her from more serious issues. Which was just what Em wanted.
‘Believe it. And I know there’s nothing June would rather do than help you choose a wig if it ever becomes necessary. She adores wig-buying. She told me once that choosing hair is better fun even than sex!’
Then, as Anna blinked in astonishment, Em pushed home her advantage. She smiled her most reassuring smile. ‘But, Anna, we’re crossing way too many bridges, and we’re crossing them way too fast. As I said, chances are we’re talking about a cyst.’
‘You’ll be fine, Anna,’ Jonas added, and Em heard the catch of emotion in his voice. This was his baby sister after all.
Em looked at Jonas and she realised with a sense of shock that he, too, was asking for reassurance. For facts! As a surgeon, he must know the statistics, but he wanted to hear them out loud.
Cancer was a frightening word, she thought, no matter who faced it, and the only way to lessen the fear was to confront it head on.
Help me, he was asking, and it was suddenly all Em could do not to put out a hand and touch his. Her smile died.
Because brother and sister were both afraid of one thing. Anna was taking a long, drawn-out breath, searching for courage for the next question.
‘If…if it’s cancer, it’ll come back,’ she said finally, and her voice was now strangely calm. ‘I’ll die. My kids… Sam and Matt and Ruby. Ruby’s only four. Who’ll look after them?’
‘Anna, I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours giving piggy-backs to your three terrors,’ Jonas said, in a tone of one much maligned. ‘I love your kids dearly and of course I’d take care of them, but for the sake of my aching back, can we arrange to have you live?’
‘I…’
‘Please, Anna.’
Anna took another deep breath. ‘I don’t have a choice, really. Do I?’
‘We don’t,’ Jonas said. He rose and his hands clenched and unclenched. He’d also been under a huge amount of strain, Em realised, wondering just what was wrong with his sister. This must come almost as a relief. There were so many worse diagnoses than early breast cancer. ‘Anna, I love your kids but, let’s face it, they’d be much better off with their mum than with their Uncle Jonas.’
He grinned then, a wide, lazy grin that sent Em’s insides doing crazy things again. Stupid things! She had to force herself to focus on what he was saying.
‘I’m willing to stay in Bay Beach while you need me,’ he was telling Anna. ‘In fact, I have a feeling that Dr Mainwaring could use some help, too, and with two women in need, what’s a man to do but stay?’ He flashed them another grin, even wider than the first. ‘So can we organise these tests and get on with it, please?’
Anna looked up, long and hard, at her brother—and then she turned to Em. In her face was a slackening of terror. There was still fear, but less. The hardest decision had been made.
And the smile she finally gave almost matched her brother’s. ‘Yes, please,’ she said.
‘Then let’s do it.’ Em reached for the phone and started dialling.
CHAPTER TWO
EM WOKE to afternoon sunlight.
The feeling was so novel that for a moment she thought she must be dreaming. Then the morning’s events came flooding back, and with them came emotions so complex she had trouble taking them all in.
First there was Charlie’s death. Despite his age, there was a sensation of emptiness and grief which she needed time to absorb.
Em tried hard to stay dispassionate but, as the only doctor in a small country town it was impossible. And she’d known Charlie all her life. Em’s parents had died when she was tiny. She’d been raised by her grandfather, and Grandpa and Charlie had been close mates.
With Charlie’s death had gone one of her last links to her childhood—to memories of weekends fishing in Grandpa’s old tub of a boat, or sitting on the pier baiting hooks while the two men yarned in the sun—or having them make her endless cups of tea as she’d studied her medical texts while they’d gossiped easily over her head.
She’d loved them both. Grandpa had died two years ago, and now Charlie had gone