‘Erin?’
It was midnight. The phone had echoed through Shanni and Nick’s home, shrill with urgency, and Nick had answered it on the third ring. He’d listened in appalled silence, and then come to find Erin. Now, standing in the hall in her bare feet, she heard Matt’s fear echoing down the line.
‘What is it, Matt?’
‘Erin, the twins have gone.’
‘Gone.’ She took a deep breath, fighting down panic as she forced herself to think it through. Erin hadn’t survived this long as a House Mother by giving way to hysterics at every scare. ‘You mean they’ve run away.’
‘It looks like it.’
‘I…okay, Matt.’ She took a deep breath. ‘There’s no problem. You told them I was just around the bay, remember? They’ll be walking on the beach somewhere. I’ll come.’
‘No.’
‘N… No?’ She really took on board his fear then, and it was vivid and dreadful. It reached her heart, as his statement that the twins had disappeared had not. ‘Why not?’
‘I’ve checked. Like you, I thought of the beach first, so I took the farm bike down there straight away. But I went by the river first. Shanni and Nick’s house looks miles by beach, but it looks much closer across the water. The twins will have seen that. Erin, the rowing boat’s gone, and the tide’s running out at full pace. If they took the boat, they’ll now be well out to sea.
‘They promised they wouldn’t use the boat,’ Matt muttered. ‘They promised.’
Quarter of an hour later, Erin and Matt were in the police launch, headed out into the bay-along with half the fishing population of Bay Beach. Every boat that wasn’t already out fishing was called into action. Rob McDonald was taking no chances.
‘I want them found, and I want them found fast. If they realise they’re drifting away from land, there’s no telling what they’ll do.’
‘But they promised,’ Matt said again into the night, and there was quiet desperation behind his words. ‘Maybe we’re wrong to be looking out to sea. Maybe they haven’t used the boat. It could have broken away itself. Erin, I trusted them not to break their word.’
‘I think they’re in the boat-and I don’t think they’ve broken their vow. Or-not on their terms.’ Erin’s voice was winter-bleak.
‘Erin, I heard them promise. I trust them.’
‘And you know what I said when they promised?’ she whispered into the night. The boat was slipping out of the harbour, a flotilla of fishing boats behind them. ‘I said: “While you’re living with me you obey my rules.” And then I left them.’
He closed his eyes. ‘Erin…’
‘It’s not your fault,’ she said bleakly. ‘It’s mine. I let Tom talk me into this, and I might have known it would end in disaster.’
Dear God…
The sea mist had slipped in over the water. The night was almost eerie in its stillness. They stood alone in the bow, each feeling sick with what they might or might not find before them.
Erin didn’t know where Charlotte was. She didn’t ask. Once she’d heard about Tigger’s removal, it was maybe just as well she didn’t know.
Dear God… It was a prayer, said over and over again into the night.
Instinctively, Matt’s arm came out and held Erin hard around her waist. For a moment she resisted, but her need for comfort was too great. She let herself be pulled into him, and they stayed that way as the rolling swells of the open sea hit the boat and Rob turned the launch out of the harbour and along the bay toward the tidal outpouring from the river.
Matt and Erin didn’t move. They were a man and woman as one. With one prayer…
It was the longest night Erin had ever known.
The flotilla formed a pack. Rob and the most senior of the fishermen worked out a pattern of grid lines based on tides, currents and wind, and each boat was given a course to follow. It was a myriad of criss-crossing lines, with all hands of every boat glued to the guy ropes, and all eyes trying desperately to pierce the fog.
Somewhere in this vast sea were two little boys in a rickety old rowing boat that was never intended to be strong enough to be buffeted by waves like this.
The sea wasn’t at its wildest, but it was rough enough to frighten a grown man in an open rowing boat-much less children.
‘They don’t even have Tigger,’ Erin whispered brokenly at one point, and Matt’s arm tightened still further. He was trying to instil comfort with every ounce of his being, but at the same time he needed comfort himself.
If only… If only…
He’d been a crazy, blind fool to think this could ever work, he thought. Leaving the twins to Charlotte…
He’d been left with his mother, and he still remembered the coldness. If his father hadn’t been there-if he’d had an Erin to run to…
It might have been him in this damned rowing boat, he thought, and there was something of the lost and lonely child in the look he cast out over the water. Please let the boys be safe, he said to himself and finally out aloud. ‘Please…’
‘Matt?’
‘Mmm.’ He could hardly hear. Every ounce of his being was concentrating on trying to pierce the fog. He was willing the boys to appear.
‘Whatever happens,’ Erin said softly. ‘Matt, whatever happens, the boys know that you’ve loved them. That’s meant so much.’
‘Not enough,’ he managed.
‘You’re not to blame for this.’
‘I am.’ He closed his eyes for an instant before pushing them wide to continue searching. ‘I am to blame.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I didn’t have the courage to change my life. As I should have done. As I will if I ever have the chance again. Please…’
And finally, just before dawn, they found them.
There was a shout across the water from one of the fishing boats, and then another shout as the boat on the intersecting grid saw what they’d seen.
Immediately every nose of every boat swung into the same point, and Matt and Erin almost fell over the bow in their effort to see.
When they finally did, the fishing boat that had first seen them had seized the rowing boat with a grappling hook and was trying to haul it alongside.
Which was easier said than done. The grappling hook was too short. The rowing boat hit the fishing boat with a sickening crunch, the next wave hit before there was time to lower a man to reach the children, and the fishing boat was forced to pull away. If it hadn’t, they ran the risk of crunching the row boat to splinters.
Floodlights played out over the water. The children were crouched low in the boat, clinging to each other in terror.
Rob pulled the police launch in close, but it was so rough he could do nothing. Half filled with water, the old wooden boat was threatening to capsize with every movement. And the twins didn’t look up. The men’s shouts and the noise of the engines over the roar of the sea was only increasing their terror.
It was too much for Erin. Before anyone could stop her-before anyone could even realise what she intended- she’d grabbed a lifevest and jumped into the water.
One second later, Matt followed.
It took Erin precious minutes to clamber into the rowing boat, and she’d darn near capsized it as she did. But
