They lay, unmoving, not speaking, while Kirsty’s pain subsided from agony to just plain awful.

But they’d done it. They were out of the water and Kenneth was gone.

Jake would come.

‘We’re OK,’ she whispered, and reached out to squeeze Susie’s hand.

Susie squeezed back with such force that Kirsty yelped.

‘We now only have one problem,’ Susie whispered at last.

‘Which is?’ Kirsty wasn’t so sure about not having punctured her lung now. She found she could scarcely breathe.

‘I think I’ve just had my fourth contraction.’


‘How fast can we make this thing go?’

Rod Hendry’s fishing trawler was the only boat in harbour that was complete with skipper when Jake and Sgt Mackie arrived to commandeer anything that moved. The policeman was now barking orders into his radio while Jake stood by Rod at the tiller and pushed him to go faster.

‘If we go any faster, mate, the engine will go ahead without the boat,’ Rod told him. ‘I’m doing faster’n safe as it is.’ Then his eyes narrowed against the sun. ‘Speaking of fast…who the hell is that?’

Jake looked. He grabbed Rod’s field glasses and focused. A speedboat. Powerful. A man crouched low in the back.

‘That’d be Scott Curry’s speedboat,’ Rod said. ‘I saw it go out earlier.’ He frowned. ‘That can’t be right. Scott’s in Queensland.’

‘It’ll be Kenneth,’ Jake said flatly. The speedboat was altering course now, moving away from the fishing boat rather than closer to it. ‘Fred!’ he yelled to the policeman, and Fred gazed through the glasses as Jake explained.

‘You want me to chase him?’ Rod asked, semi-hopeful, but they all knew chasing a speedboat with a fishing trawler was impossible.

‘I’ll contact base,’ Fred said grimly. ‘He’s alone in the boat now. I’ll have someone else pick him up. Meanwhile…’

‘We get to the rocks,’ Jake demanded. ‘Go!’

‘If he was towing a dinghy with a boat that powerful…’ Fred said thoughtfully, but Jake cut him off before he could finish. They all knew what could have happened. What had probably already happened.

‘I said I wouldn’t date her,’ Jake whispered, and Fred looked at his family’s doctor in surprise.

‘That’d be a first,’ he said, gently teasing. ‘You wanting to date someone.’

‘I don’t want to date her,’ Jake said desperately. ‘I want to marry her.’


‘Two-inch dilatation. Susie, you’re moving like a train. You have to slow down.’

‘How can I slow down?’ Susie whispered desperately. ‘Cross my legs? I don’t think so. Ow!’

‘Pant through contractions,’ Kirsty told her. ‘Whatever you do, don’t push.’

First labours were supposed to be long, she thought desperately. But, then, Susie had already gone into premature labour once and it had been suppressed.

There was nothing here to suppress labour. She needed alcohol drips, sedation, quiet.

And if the baby was born…

They were wet and cold already. They had nothing to warm a premature baby.

It would hardly be prem. Susie was only three weeks before full term.

It couldn’t come.

She hauled her soaking windcheater over her head and folded it so Susie had something approaching a pillow. Their rock was all of five feet long by three feet wide. It sloped, two feet above the water at one end, one foot at the other.

As a delivery room, it made a great rock.

‘I’m scared,’ Susie whimpered, and Kirsty hauled herself together and tried to sound professional.

‘Now, now, Mrs Douglas, what on earth is there to fret about? Women have babies all the time. This is just a water birth with a difference.’

Susie tried to smile-but failed. ‘I want my bath heated, please, Doctor.’

‘Nonsense.’ She had to pause as another contraction washed over her twin. Less than two minutes apart. Uh-oh. Susie was gripping her hand so tightly she was almost reaching bone. ‘You’ll write a book about this,’ she told Susie as the pain eased. ‘Natural birth with a difference. Sea, sun and dolphins, and no intervention at all.’

‘I’d like Enya on the stereo,’ Susie said, trying to match her mood.

‘No Enya.’ Kirsty was clutching at straws. ‘We’d need technology to play Enya, and think of the germs we’d have to contend with. Hospitals are full of golden staph, and I bet sound systems have their share, too. You wouldn’t want your baby catching golden staph.’

‘No, indeed.’ Susie took a rasping breath and humour died. ‘Kirsty, I can’t really have my baby on this rock.’

‘I suspect you don’t have a choice,’ Kirsty said, and as the next contraction hit she thought, no, it was more than a suspicion.

They were miles from anywhere. When the tide came in they’d be in the water. Somewhere there was Kenneth, intent on murder.

And they were having a baby.

‘If I ever suggested I didn’t need a man in my life, can I change my mind now?’ she said under her breath. ‘Jake, I need you. Now!’


‘Rot-Tooth Rocks are that white line on the horizon.’

The moment Rod said it, Jake had the field glasses fixed on the horizon. ‘Can’t we go faster?’

He was ignored.

Closer.

‘I think…’ Jake was straining to see and Rod grabbed the glasses back from him. The big fisherman’s eyes were creased from staring at the sea all his life. He focused. And what he saw…

He dropped the glasses and gunned the motor so hard black smoke started coming out the rear.

‘Hey,’ the police sergeant said, startled. ‘You’ll kill us.’

‘They’re on the rock,’ Rod snapped. ‘From here…one’s crouching over but one…hell, maybe one’s dead.’


‘There’s a boat coming.’ Kirsty whispered it to Susie but Susie was no longer listening. She was in a mist of pain and terror. She should have an epidural, Kirsty thought numbly. To have this type of pressure on her already damaged back… To have this level of pain…

There was a boat coming.

Was it Kenneth? It was still too far away to make out.

They couldn’t slip back down into the water now. They couldn’t hide.

Another contraction, merging into the last.

‘No,’ Susie screamed. ‘Kirsty, no…’

‘Breathe into it,’ Kirsty said, firmly releasing the clutching fingers and moving to where she needed to be. Which gave her exactly six inches of balancing space before she toppled into the sea. ‘OK, Susie, if you must, you must. Push.’


‘Kirsty!’

They were near enough to be heard. Jake was at the side of the boat, yelling frantically to the girls on the rock.

Kirsty was kneeling over Susie and he couldn’t see…he couldn’t see…

She must be able to hear him.

‘Kirsty!’

Fifty yards. Thirty.

‘I daren’t go closer,’ Rod muttered, but before he finished saying it Jake was over the side, stroking his way desperately through the white water.


One minute Kirsty was frantic. Despairing. The next Jake was beside her, hauling himself up on the rock. Assessing fast.

‘What’s happening?’ he snapped, and Kirsty gave a choked cry of fear and shock.

Jake was grasping her shoulders, pulling her aside. She was too close to Susie for him to be able to see.

‘Back into medical mode here, Dr McMahon.’

And, snap, just like that, it returned. Somehow. Enough for her to be able to falter, ‘The cord. It’s round the neck. I can’t stop…’

She was picked up and lifted to the other end of the rock where there was a tiny amount of space by Susie’s head. Jake was crouching down, his big hands moving.

‘Susie, stop pushing,’ he snapped, so loudly that Kirsty jumped in shock.

‘Pant. Don’t push. You’re not to push, Susie. Stop!’

Kirsty knew what he was doing. It was what she’d been trying to do but her hands were so cold they were numb, the pain in her chest was too sharp, she didn’t have the strength…

He’d be pushing the baby back. Just a bit. Just a little so he could manoeuvre…

‘There.’ It was a sigh of triumph, and Susie cried out.

‘I can’t-I can’t…’

‘It’s OK,’ Jake said, still triumphant. ‘Push, Susie, love. Go for it.’

And ten seconds later Rosie Kirsteen Douglas emerged into the world. Two miles out to sea, on a flat piece of rock not much bigger than a man. Seven pounds eleven ounces, and with the healthiest set of lungs a baby could be blessed with.

Jake held her in his hands, moving swiftly, ripping up his shirt, tying the cord with a scrap of fabric, holding her up-just for a second-so the men in the boat could see, holding her for another millisecond so Kirsty could see, and then smiling down at Susie, showing her her baby and tucking the tiny newborn under Susie’s sodden windcheater, tight against her skin.

After the mammoth effort Susie had made, her breasts had to be warmest place available, Kirsty thought. It was the warmest place until they could get themselves off the rock.

Sensible.

But Kirsty was no longer sensible. Susie was smiling and smiling, cradling her body into a protective curve, no longer aware of anything but this new little life that was gloriously hers.

Kirsty was weeping. Her head was in her hands and she was out of control, and when Jake swore and managed to get himself to where he could reach her, touch her, take her into his arms and hold her, the weeping only grew worse.

She was lost.

She didn’t cry. She never cried.

She cried now as if she’d cry for ever.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

SHE woke and she was on the wrong side of a hospital bed. The inside rather than the outside. It was so extraordinary that she had to shake her head to make herself believe she wasn’t dreaming.

Shaking her head wasn’t a good idea. Shaking anything wasn’t good.

She stayed very still indeed, and when Babs tiptoed in to do her obs and Kirsty spoke, Babs gave a squeak of surprise.