‘I’ll find them,’ Jake said quickly. ‘Why do you think they’re there?’
‘Kenneth killed a dog that way once,’ Angus whispered. ‘Rory’s dog. That was why Rory left. Rory was staying with me-him and his great black Lab that went everywhere with him. Kenneth came down and hated Rory being here. He took the Lab out to sea on a makeshift raft and dashed him against the rocks.’
‘Oh, God.’
‘Move fast, Jake,’ Angus whispered. ‘Move fast.’
They had to get out of the water.
They’d crouched behind the rocks for fifteen minutes now, growing colder and more terrified by the minute. Kirsty’s chest was hurting but that was the least of her worries. Susie was growing quieter. Finally she stopped talking altogether; she stopped responding to Kirsty’s prompts. Kirsty thought, Enough. It was a risk to leave their safe haven but a bigger risk to stay.
One of the rocks had a flattish surface, just clear of the water. If they could manage…
‘Susie, I’m climbing up. I’ll tug you up after me.’
Susie didn’t answer.
Kirsty hauled her round to face her. Susie’s eyes were wide with pain, focused inward.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing.’
Yeah, right. But she had no choice.
At least the tide was going out. More of the rocks were being exposed, meaning once they got onto the rock they’d be out of the water for hours.
Long enough for Jake to find them?
As long as Kenneth had gone.
Please…
She grabbed Susie’s hands and tugged her across the gap to the flat rock. If they had both been well, this would have been a cinch, but Susie’s legs were so weak, and she was so bulky and Kirsty’s chest hurt…
She paused and did a bit more test breathing. If it hurt this much she surely must have punctured a lung-but her breathing was OK.
‘I’m being a wuss,’ she whispered to Susie and Susie managed a reply.
‘Twin wusses. Wusses who have to climb a rock.’
And somehow they did. Kirsty first, waiting for a wave to give her momentum, hauling herself up, trying not to cry out as her chest hit the flat, unforgiving surface. Trying not to stay flailing like a beached whale, trying to look up, searching the horizon, fearful that Kenneth would be just…there.
The horizon was empty.
Problem number one despatched, she thought with a twinge of triumph before the bigger twinge of her cracked rib washed back.
Ignore the rib. Now Susie.
And she did have to ignore the rib. The only way to get Susie onto the rock was to reach down with both hands and pull.
Where was her doctor’s bag when she needed it? Her kingdom for morphine.
Morphine wasn’t available. Forget morphine. She pulled and Susie tried to help and couldn’t. Twice Kirsty hauled and she didn’t think she could do it, but then a wave, bigger than the rest, washed in and lifted Susie’s body momentarily. She slithered onto the rock so there were two beached whales now.
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.
