way through her jaundice. They waited every night for Riley to tell them she was doing well.
Lucy and Adam sat on the veranda, read their birthing books and practised the breathing Amy proudly taught them-and waited every night for Riley to tell them they were doing well.
They depended on him.
Except… they didn’t. None of them depended on him. Not really, Riley thought as the week wore on. Because there was Pippa.
She was like the sun with planets spinning around her. She was the life of the house.
She was embracing life like she’d never realised she was alive until this moment, soaking up every moment of this new, wonderful world she found herself in. Her joy was impossible not to share.
Except he didn’t share it. Not if he could help it, because it seemed like a void. It seemed a sweet, sensual lure, a vortex that if he entered he’d end up as he’d ended up twenty years before when he’d met Marguerite.
Maybe he wouldn’t.
Maybe he wasn’t brave enough to find out.
Thursday night. He was on the beach, looking back to the house. Pippa’s curtains were left undrawn. The lights were on and he could see them all. They were squashed on the divans, watching television. Pippa had been making popcorn when he’d left. He could see them passing bowls. Laughing.
He’d go back soon. He was necessary in the house. He had to sort Lucy’s life. He had to check Amy’s baby.
He was useful.
He was… loved?
No. Love was an illusion. Something that happened to others, not to him.
He didn’t need it.
He had everything he needed-his medicine, his surf, his independence. He’d set Lucy and Adam up in their own place. Next Thursday Amy would go back to Dry Gum. Pippa would move out.
The ripples in his calm existence would roll to the edges and disappear.
He glanced again at the lit windows and thought he could be in there.
Pippa. Child of money. A siren song.
Stay outside, for as long as it takes.
She knew he was out there but there wasn’t anything she could do. He didn’t want to be a part of this house.
If it wasn’t for Riley, she’d be loving it.
Pippa had gone from general nursing training to Surgical, and then to Intensive Care. Then a case one night had touched her more deeply than she cared to admit. A woman had come in to have her fifth child. During second stage her uterus had ruptured.
Emergency Caesarean. They’d lost the baby and the mother had come so close to death it didn’t bear thinking about. Pippa had cared for her in Intensive Care. She’d watched the little family’s terror, and their grief for the little life lost.
Five children and each one the most precious thing in the world.
The following day she’d put in her application for Midwifery, she loved it and here was the perfect midwife job. She was caring for Amy with her newborn baby, and at the same time she was preparing Lucy for birth.
Lucy was like a sponge, listening to everything Pippa told her, reading, reading, reading about childbirth, and Adam was almost as eager. But what was more wonderful was that Amy was teaching Lucy. In Amy Lucy had a teenaged ally who’d gone through birth only a week before, who scorned her fears as garbage.
‘It’s like a teenage antenatal clinic,’ Pippa told Riley six days after Lucy arrived, and then winced as Riley grunted a sharp response and went on to do what he had to do.
He was doing exactly that-what he had to do. He was organising life for Lucy and Adam. He was watching Baby Riley’s progress. He was making sure Lucy had all her checks; that everything was done that had to be done.
There were enough practical tasks necessary for Riley to deflect emotion.
He’d get his life back soon enough, Pippa thought as the end of the first week neared. In one more week they’d take Amy home and Pippa would have no reason to stay. Then all Riley had to do was sort out a relationship with his daughter, and that had nothing to do with her.
His solitary life suited him.
She had to respect that.
So she’d move out and she’d be more professional than… than… Who did she know who was strictly professional? Who did she know who had no emotional attachment at all?
Riley?
Not Riley. Or not the Riley she knew.
But the Riley he almost certainly wanted to be.
Saturday afternoon. Riley was in the Flight-Aid headquarters, not because he needed to be but because three women and two men and one baby were sun-baking on his veranda. There was no way he was joining them. It wasn’t a trap but it felt like it.
They’d be talking babies, he told himself, quashing guilt. There was no need for him to be there.
But there was no need for him to be here either-he could be on call at home-so when a call came he grabbed the radio with relief.
‘All stops.’ Harry sounded frightened, which, for Harry, was amazing. ‘Kid stuck in a crevice off the rocks south of McCarthy’s Sound. Tide’s coming in, water’s rising and he’s at risk of drowning. I’m calling Pippa. Take off in two minutes whether you’re on board or not.’
They had six minutes in the chopper to take in the information being relayed to them. Harry had met them looking as grim as death and he had reason.
‘The kid slipped off a ledge while his dad was fishing. The cliff’s not sheer but it’s crumbling sandstone, so he slid and bumped, which is why he wasn’t killed outright. Just before water level there’s a bunch of rocks. He’s gone straight down a crevice. He can’t get up. In breaks between waves they’ve heard him screaming. His dad tried to get down and fell-probable broken ankle. He only just managed to get up himself. The local abseiling club’s trying to get their members there but no one’s available and the tide’s coming in. The report was hysterical-seems he’s below the high-tide mark.’
It was enough to make them all shut up.
Pippa and Riley sat in the back-this was where they’d operate from if they needed to lower someone to the scene.
Pippa felt ill. Was she ready?
With Cordelia remaining off work she’d been catapulted into the team with little training, but even with the emotional undercurrents, Riley had worked at getting her professional. It had been a quiet week, which was just as well.
She’d learned to operate the winch as Riley was lowered. She’d been lowered herself. She knew the right way to make physical contact with a patient for retrieval. She knew how to operate harnesses. She knew, in theory, all she needed to make her a viable member of the rescue outfit.
But for a call such as this…
They should have called Mardi, she thought, or another of the members of the second crew. But there’d been no time. Mardi was five minutes away. In the doctor’s house, she was right there.
‘We’re almost there,’ Riley said, watching her face, knowing what she was thinking. ‘You can do this, Pippa.’
Of course she could. There was no choice-but what was before them took her breath away.
People were clustered on the cliff top. A police car. An ambulance. Half a dozen people.
Even from here she could pick out the father. Someone was holding him back from the edge. He was kneeling, screaming, sobbing.
Another car was pulling up. A woman. Kids.
She couldn’t hear the screaming, but she felt it. She watched the woman run to the cliff edge, the policeman hold her back. She watched her crumple.
A part of the cliff seemed to have fallen away, making a rough ledge of rocks at the base, huge boulders scattered randomly. There’d been strong winds for the last two days and the sea was stirred up crazily. The wind
