Page 26 of Prognosis So Done

CHAPTER TEN - 1600 HOURS

Harriet returned toher packing. They never brought much with them, just what could fit in a backpack. They wore scrubs all day and then got into their pyjamas. A few pairs of Civvies — usually jeans/shorts and T-shirts — their underwear and toiletries were all they required.

Harriet always shouted herself to a few nice outfits when

she hit London. After two months of blue scrubs she needed

trendy and colourful. Something in the height of fashion and

completely frivolous. This time tomorrow...watch out, Knightsbridge!

Everyone else had adjourned to their rooms as well. The

atmosphere was still heavy and they hadn’t felt much like

conversing. The mood was different to most last days. They wanted to be happy, they had something to celebrate, but given the circumstances it just seemed wrong to be laughing and joking and fooling around as they would normally have done. The death of Peter and the other aid workers was a far too depressing reality.

Harriet collected a few things from around the room — a nail file on the bedside table, a notepad and pen, her digital camera. She got down on the floor on her hands and knees and put her face down against the floorboards, looking for anything that may have rolled under the bed.

Nothing. Clean as a whistle. The only thing under the bed

was dust and that could most definitely stay. She rubbed her

hands together to brush off the film of dust and sat back on

her haunches, a sudden pain stabbing low in the right side

of her abdomen.

Subconsciously she pressed the area with her hand. The twinge left as soon as it had come, replaced by a vague ache, which she dismissed. She’d had a couple of similar twinges over the last few days which wasn’t unusual given her history of ovarian cysts. If it hadn’t settled by the time she got back to Australia, she’d go and get it checked out.

She got up and picked up the family photos that adorned her

window sill. One was of her parents and the other was Gill with baby Thomas. She smiled at the framed photo as she remembered the day it was taken. They’d had a wonderful family barbeque in

their Bondi courtyard with her parents and her sister Rose and

her husband Paul and, of course, baby Thomas.

He had completely unashamedly hogged the limelight. It had

been a hot summer’s day and they had all walked down to the

beach a few hours later. Gill had been roped into making a

sandcastle with his nephew. Thomas loved his Uncle Gill and

that day he had tugged at Gill’s hand and dragged his reluctant uncle to the paltry mound of sand he’d been constructing.

Gill had made it into a beautiful Renaissance-style château

and a two-year-old Thomas had been in complete awe of it, loving his uncle all the more. She had snapped the shot of them while they hadn’t been looking. Thomas had been sitting between Gill’s legs, a shell poised in one hand to decorate the outer wall, and was looking up at his uncle for advice, and Gill had been pointing to the appropriate place.

Harriet loved the photo. It was hardly professional quality — the background was wrong and they weren’t looking, let alone smiling, at the camera, but it was the type of photo that if her house had been burning down she’d have run back in to save. It held so many nice memories and the look of total admiration and complete and utter trust in Thomas’s eyes was something she doubted any professional photo shoot would have captured.

It had been a totally candid moment and Harriet knew she would treasure it forever.

It wasn’t long after that photo had been taken that they’d

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