into the mess of the island that had once been their home.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE lighthouse was a priority.
Morag had two jobs on the island. One was island doctor, the other was lighthouse-keeper, and who could say which was more important? They both saved lives.
Once, being lighthouse-keeper had been a full-time job, but now it was simply a matter of ensuring that the light was still functioning, and that was a vastly different task than in the days when kerosene had had to be carted up the tower every night. Now the light was powered by electricity, with solar back-up.
Normally an alarm would sound if the light was dimmed in any way, but the alarm was in the lighthouse- keeper’s cottage. Morag’s home. And the cottage was at the foot of the lighthouse, not high enough above sea level to avoid damage.
It had been early afternoon when the wave had struck. Now the last rays of sun were sinking over the horizon and the darkness caused more problems. The streets were a mess, the streetlights were history, and a walk that usually took five minutes took her half an hour.
She made her way along the devastated main street, skirting the massive build-up of clutter smashed there by the water, clambering over piles of what had been treasured possessions but were now sodden garbage, stopping occasionally to speak to people searching through the mess that had once been their homes.
People stopped her all the time. People were desperate to make contact, to talk through what had happened.
But there was no longer an urgent medical need for her. Grady and his people were coping with medical needs for now, and she had to move on.
She must. The light…
She came to the end of the street and turned from the shelter of the ruined buildings onto the tiny, wind-swept promontory that held the lighthouse.
The lighthouse itself was still standing. Of course. It was built of stone, built to withstand massive seas, built to cope with anything nature threw at it.
The cottage, though…
She stood and stared, seeing not the ruins of the whitewashed building that had been her home for the last four years but seeing what it had once held.
Robbie’s memories. Photographs of Beth and her husband. Robbie’s precious teddy, knitted for him by his mother when she’d been so ill she’d hardly been able to hold needles. The furniture carved by Morag’s father, splintered, ruined…
The lighthouse. Concentrate on the lighthouse. She choked back tears and looked up to find the light blinking its warning into the dusk.
At least one thing in this dysfunctional world was still working to order.
She stared upward for a long time. Stay away from here, the light was saying. The light was supposed to be warning ships that here were rocks to be wary of, but this day the danger had come from the sea itself, and the wreck was inland.
Her home was ruined.
She’d have to find Robbie.
She turned away, blinded by tears, and someone was standing in her path.
Grady.
Grady was right…there.
‘They told me you’d come here,’ he said, in that serious voice she’d known and loved all those years ago. A lifetime ago. He was looking down at her in the half-dark and it was all she could do not to fall on his chest again. Only, of course, she couldn’t. How could she? And why would she? Sure, this was a tragedy, but it was her tragedy. It had nothing to do with this man.
He was here because it was his job to be here, she thought bleakly. He had nothing to do with her.
‘Aren’t you needed back at the pavilion?’ she asked, and his gaze didn’t falter.
‘I thought I might be needed here. With you.’
‘There’s nothing to do here. The light’s still working.’
‘You really are the lighthouse-keeper?’
‘Like father, like daughter. Yes.’
‘Morag, I’m sorry.’
She had no idea what he was sorry for. So many things…She had no idea where he intended to start.
‘Don’t be sorry,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t help.’
‘This is your house?’ He gazed at the battered whitewashed buildings. The light was fading fast now, and the beam from the lighthouse was becoming more obvious, one brief, hard beam out over the waves each fifteen seconds. The waves were washing gently over the rocks, their soft lapping making a mockery of the wave that had come before.
From where they stood you couldn’t see around the headland into the town. The ruins were hardly apparent- unless you stared into the smashed windows of the cottage and saw the chaos that had been her home.
‘Do you need to do anything for the lighthouse?’ he asked, and she shook her head.
‘No. The electricity’s cut but we have solar power back-up. The solar panels on the cottage roof seem to be just under the high-water mark, and the connections must still be intact. That was what I was most worried about. I needed to check that the light was OK.’
‘To stop further tragedy?’
‘Without the light…yes, there’d be further tragedy.’ She gazed across the great white tower, following its lines down to where it was anchored on solid rock. ‘It doesn’t look harmed. One wave couldn’t wash it away. Unlike…’
‘Unlike the rest of the island.’ He hesitated, watching her face as she turned again to face the wreckage of her home. ‘It was some wave.’
‘It was the most frightening thing I’ve ever seen,’ she whispered. ‘I thought everyone would be dead. I couldn’t believe that so many would live. But still…there’s so much…’ She let herself think of the lists Marcus had held-and the name that among them all had her cringing the most. Doctors shouldn’t get personal, she thought. Ha!
Somewhere there was a little boy called Hamish. Robbie’s best friend.
Enough. The little boy had probably been found by now, and even if he hadn’t, she couldn’t let herself think past a point where madness seemed to beckon. She gathered herself tight, allowing anger to replace distress. ‘Why aren’t you back at the pavilion? I wouldn’t have left if I thought you and Jaqui weren’t staying.’
‘We have things under control and I can get back fast if I’m needed,’ he told her. He was still watching her face. ‘There’s two doctors on the Chinook-the helicopter we’re using to evacuate the worst of the wounded. We’re evacuating those now. Peter and Christine Rafferty. Iris Helgin. Ross Farr. You’ve done a great job, Morag, but multiple fractures and internal injuries need specialist facilities.’
She nodded. ‘How about Lucy Rafferty?’ she asked tightly. ‘Did she go with her parents?’ Peter and Christine had been badly hurt-Peter with a badly fractured leg and Christine with concussion as well as fractures, but their thirteen-year-old daughter hadn’t seemed as badly hurt.
And their son? Hamish? She thought the question but she didn’t add it out loud.
‘We didn’t have room for Lucy,’ Grady was saying. ‘And we thought-’
She nodded, cutting him off. She knew what he thought.
‘And Sam?’ she managed. He could hear how involved she was, she thought. He must do.
But so what? she demanded of herself. The medical imperative-not to get personally involved-how on earth could she ever manage that here?
‘You can’t act at peak professional level if your emotions get in the way,’ she’d been taught in medical school, and she wondered what her examiners would think of the way she was reacting now.
Well, it was too late to fail her. They were welcome to try.
