No!

Finally, with the drip steady and the old man drifting toward sleep as the morphine took hold, she was able to focus on something other than imperative need. She stepped back into the kitchen and found the cameraman putting down her radio. ‘Dr Reece is busy,’ he told her. ‘Apparently there’s been an emergency appendicectomy. But they’re sending a truck.’

Her heart sank. Of course. The appendix.

No Grady.

Well, what was so unusual about that? she asked herself harshly. She’d been used to it for four years. She needed to get used to it again.

Robbie…

‘The child who was here,’ she ventured. ‘Do you know where he is?’

The man smiled. ‘He’s a great kid, isn’t he? He gave us some fantastic footage.’

‘But…’

He got her worry then, and his smile died. ‘I’m sorry. They were arguing as I arrived.’

That was what she didn’t understand. Robbie didn’t argue. At least, not with Hubert.

‘I overheard it as I walked up the scree,’ the man said apologetically. ‘Do you want to know what about?’

‘Yes.’ Then, because her voice had been a little bit desperate, a little bit raw, she repeated herself. ‘Yes, please.’

Still there was a tremor in her voice and the cameraman gave her an odd look before continuing. He couldn’t understand her fear. And maybe…please…the fear was illogical.

‘I heard Robbie say he’d guessed a place where someone called Hamish might be,’ the man told her. ‘He wanted to go there but Hubert was saying he had to wait for you. As I came within sight, the kid seemed to lose it. He yelled that he’d waited and waited and he had to go now, because Hamish would be stuck. When Hubert said he couldn’t go by himself he said he’d take Elspeth. Would that be the dog?’

‘Right.’ She bit her lip. Where…?

‘Will you go search for Robbie straight away?’ The cameraman cast an uneasy glance at Hubert, and Morag shook her head. An appendicectomy meant that both Grady and Jaqui would be fully occupied. She’d have to stay with Hubert until one of them could take over.

But Robbie needed her. He needed her so much.

He’d needed her all day and she’d left him alone.

‘Hey, it’ll be fine,’ the cameraman said gently, and she caught herself and managed a faltering smile. She was scaring him. She was the doctor. She was in charge. So she had to get on with it.

‘I… Of course it’ll be fine.

‘We’ll take the old man down to the hospital and then we’ll find your kid.’

‘Thank you.’

‘It makes good copy,’ he told her.

‘I didn’t think you were supposed to be involved in breaking news,’ she told him, striving for lightness. ‘If you’re not careful, you’ll be on the front page of your paper as a hero.’

‘It’s you who’s the hero,’ he told her. ‘And there’s not a man, woman or child on this island who’d disagree with me.’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

DOWN at the hospital tent, the cardiograph showed no significant change. No significant damage. Morag read the tracing and breathed a little easier.

Maybe Hubert would be lucky. At ninety-two he could hardly complain that he hadn’t had a good innings, but the old man was part of the fabric of this island. If he died…

The island was going to die anyway, she told herself bleakly as she adjusted his intravenous line and wrote up his medication.

Louise was normally a beaming, bright-faced nurse who saw the world through often infuriatingly rose-coloured glasses, but the woman who helped settle Hubert was white-faced and silent.

‘They’re saying we have to leave the island,’ she whispered.

‘Hush,’ Morag told her, but Hubert had drifted into a drug-induced sleep and seemed unaware of their presence. For a moment Morag was stung by a pang of pure envy. To just close her eyes…

‘It’ll be OK,’ she told the nurse, and Louise hiccuped on a sob.

‘No, it won’t. My Bill…he set his little goat cheese dairy up from scratch. Do you know not a goat was killed? Not a single one? They’re the cleverest creatures. Bill went up to the dairy last night and they were all there. We wanted to expand, and to say we have to leave…’

But Morag had no comfort to give. She had her own anguish, and her own desperate need.

‘Louise, have you seen Robbie?’

‘Robbie?’

‘He had an argument with Hubert. I imagine he’ll have come down here to find me.’

‘I haven’t seen him,’ Louise told her. ‘I’ve been on the front desk, so I’d have noticed.’

Damn, where was he? She couldn’t leave until she had back-up for Hubert, she thought desperately, and Grady and Jaqui were totally occupied. ‘The appendix is messy?’

‘It’s burst and it’s awful,’ Louise told her. ‘Dr Reece has been working in there for well over an hour.’

So here it was again. The medical imperative. She needed Grady-or Jaqui-but Grady and Jaqui were both totally occupied.

She had to find Robbie, but if Hubert suffered cardiac arrest…

She couldn’t leave.

‘I need to find Robbie.’

‘You said he’s coming here…’

‘No. I assumed he was here.’ Morag was trying hard not to panic. ‘If he was coming here, he’d be here now. He said he was going to find Hamish.’

‘But Hamish drowned,’ Louise said blankly, and Morag winced.

‘We don’t know that.’

‘It’s…it’s a reasonable assumption. By now.’

‘No.’ Morag bit her lip. ‘It’s not a reasonable assumption. Nothing’s reasonable.’

Help! She felt like kicking something, she thought desperately. Or weeping. Or yelling in sheer frustration.

Or all three.

Robbie, she thought frantically. Grady. Dear heaven, she needed Grady.

She couldn’t have him. He had his life and she had hers.

‘Will you sit with Hubert?’ she asked Louise, and the nurse searched her face and gave her a swift hug. These first hours after a coronary event were vital and they both knew it. In a normal intensive care unit, there’d be monitors set to a central desk. Here everything had to be done the old way.

‘Of course. But you’ll stay within call? Oh, Morag, what are we going to do?’

‘I don’t know,’ Morag told her. ‘I don’t have a clue.’

She couldn’t leave. Not until Jaqui or Grady were free to leave the operating theatre could she go out of call of the old man. Even with Louise sitting by his bed, with Hubert in the early stages of coronary trouble, there had to be a doctor right there.

But Robbie… Robbie…

Someone else would have to search.

She’d call Marcus, she thought, but no sooner had she thought it than the man himself walked through the entrance of the tent. Marcus looked grim. But, then, the whole island looked grim.

‘Morag.’ He must have been looking for her, as his face changed as she emerged from Hubert’s canvas cubicle. But it didn’t grow lighter. ‘Thank God you’re here.’

More problems? She wasn’t sure she could cope with anything else. She glanced across in the direction of Grady’s makeshift theatre. The lights they’d set up were brilliant, oozing through the canvas and telling her that Grady and Jaqui were still a hundred per cent occupied.

She could hear a man’s low, gravelly voice giving orders. Grady. If Grady wasn’t here, it’d be she who was trying to cope with Mary’s appendix, she thought grimly. She should be thankful for that at least.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, forcing herself to turn back to Marcus. To the next problem.

Marcus hesitated. ‘Maybe it’s nothing.’

‘Tell me.’ She knew he didn’t want to. They knew they were both carrying intolerable burdens, and to place more on each other seemed impossible. But if something else dreadful had happened then she had to hear it, and Marcus knew it. The lines round his eyes grew tighter. There were dark shadows underneath them.

‘May’s just been with me,’ he told her. ‘She asked if I could set up a radio link so she could contact the Sydney hospital where her family is.’

Of course. That made sense, Morag thought. Peter and Christine and Lucy were May’s family. She’d be desperate about them, as they’d be desperate about Hamish. ‘Did she get through?’

‘Mmm. That’s why I came to find you.’

‘Christine?’ The head injury. Dear God…

‘No. Christine’s not worse.’ Marcus could see where her thoughts were headed and moved fast to reassure her. ‘She’s fully conscious and she’s been given the all-clear. But Lucy’s with her parents now. That’s why I’m here. You know Lucy wouldn’t speak to May?’

‘She’d hardly speak to anyone.’

‘That’s right. But now her mother’s made her talk. It seems she thinks she knows where her brother might have gone.’

‘She knows where Hamish went?’

‘She’s guessing. Apparently he’s been doing…what he’s been doing for a while. Lucy knew she should tell her parents, but she didn’t, and then when the wave came she realised he must have been killed and she felt like it was all her fault. And she couldn’t tell you either because…well, it’s Robbie.’

Robbie. Her heart seemed to stand still.

‘What about Robbie?’

‘She thought…she assumed they were together.’

‘Doing what?’

There were small trickles of terror inching down Morag’s spine. There was something about the way Marcus was speaking. It was as if he was giving really, really bad news. He was giving her bad news about Hamish, but where was Robbie?

The vision of Hamish’s cheeky face was suddenly before her. Hamish and Robbie. The two little boys treated this island as their own personal adventure playground.

Where…?

‘It seems they’ve been robbing petrel nests,’ Marcus told her.

‘Petrel nests?’ She forced her panic to the backburner. Panic was useless. She had to think. The petrels were big seabirds, twice the size of gulls and many times more fierce. They nested on the far side of the island, on rugged, crumbling cliffs that dropped straight to the western shore. The sea there was a mass of jagged rocks and savage breakers. This was the place where the Bertha had gone aground all those years before, with the loss of a hundred and sixty-eight lives. A dreadful place.