‘We’re making sure Sam’s stable before we transfer him,’ Grady was saying. ‘But he’ll make it. I’m sure he’ll make it.’
‘Without his leg,’ she whispered. ‘No more fishing.’
‘But still a life.’
‘Maybe.’ She stared again at the ruins of her cottage. The water had smashed its way everywhere. Through gaps where once there’d been window-panes, she could see a mass of sand and mud and sludge a yard deep.
Where to start…
Robbie.
Hamish. Dear God.
‘I need to find my nephew,’ she said bleakly.
‘Beth’s child?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where is he?’ Grady asked, and then added, more urgently, ‘Morag, do you know where he is?’
What was he thinking? she thought incredulously. That she’d only now thought of the little boy’s whereabouts?
‘Of course I know where he is,’ she snapped. ‘I never would have left him if he hadn’t been safe. I would have stayed. But I had to go. Sam…Hamish…the others. But Hubert will take care…’
She wasn’t making sense, even to herself. Grady looked at her, his face intent and serious in the fading light.
‘So he’s with someone called Hubert. Where’s Hubert?’
‘Up on the ridge above the town. Hubert’s cottage is the high point of the island. I was up there when…’
‘When you saw the wave,’ Grady said. ‘You were very lucky. Marcus told me what happened. If it hadn’t been for your quick thinking…’
‘Yeah, if I hadn’t been here,’ she said, and it was impossible to keep the bitterness from her voice. ‘If I hadn’t been where I belonged, we’d all be dead. But I was. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Grady, I need to find my nephew.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘No.’
‘Yes,’ he said, and he took her hand, whether she liked it or not. ‘You’re as much a victim as anyone else on this island, Morag. Your home is in ruins. You possess only the clothes you stand up in. You’re shocked and you’re exhausted. I’m taking you in charge. We’ll go up together and fetch Robbie and then I’ll take you to the tents they’re setting up on the cricket grounds to care for all of you. Learn to accept help, Morag. You’ll have to take it over the next few weeks, like it or not.’
She stared at him. Helpless. Lost. And when he held her hand tighter, she didn’t pull away.
She was going to need this man over the next few weeks? Right. She did need him.
The only problem was that it wasn’t just for now. She’d needed him for four long years and that need had never faded.
She’d needed him then and she needed him desperately now.
Grady.
Her love.
It was all a mist, she thought. A delirious dream where horror and death and Grady and love-and sheer unmitigated hopelessness-all mingled.
They had to walk up the fells, scrambling up the scree to Hubert’s cottage. The goat track was hard to find in the dim light. Grady had a flashlight and it picked out the path.
He held onto her hand all the way. To do otherwise seemed stupid. The fact that his touch made her sense of unreality deepen couldn’t be allowed to matter.
Maybe she should release herself from his grip, she thought inconsequentially. She wasn’t nervous of the dark. Brought up to know every nook and cranny on the island, Morag was as at home here as she was in the city on a well-lit street. Grady needed the flashlight but she let her feet move automatically.
Dear heaven, this was so dreadful…
The thought of Angie kept filling her vision. Angie’s tiny cold baby. And Mavis. And so many dead…
And Hamish?
No.
She couldn’t think. Somehow she blocked her thoughts until the only thing she was aware of was the presence of this man beside her.
It helped. It stopped her getting her head around what had happened this day.
So much had happened since she’d last walked up here that Morag was having trouble believing that any of this was real. This afternoon she’d strolled up the path with Robbie by her side, happy because it was a glorious Sunday afternoon and the island was the best place to be in the entire world. Robbie had kicked his soccer ball along in front of him, letting it roll down the scree, whooping and hollering and occasionally returning to her side to keep up his latest plea for a puppy.
‘Please, Morag. We need a puppy. We need a dog. We need…’
Then there’d been the talk of Elspeth.
I wonder how many island dogs have survived? she thought, and then thought even more savagely, I wonder how many dogs need new owners?
Her head was right back into the tragedy. How could she escape it?
‘It’ll be OK.’
‘How can it be all right?’ she said into the night, not really talking to Grady. She was talking to herself. ‘How can things be righted? So much destroyed…’
‘The chopper pilot on the way over said there’d been talk of resettling the islanders,’ Grady said cautiously. ‘Making this an unpopulated island. With so much of the infrastructure damaged, maybe that’d be the way to go.’
Oh, right. Smash homes and then rip the island out from under them.
‘Yeah, the government would like that,’ she said bitterly. ‘It costs them an arm and a leg in support-to have ships drop off supplies, to provide things like mail, telecommunications, health services…’
‘You
‘I know, and if I wasn’t here they’d close the island in a minute,’ she told him. ‘They’ve decided again that the lighthouse can manage unmanned. They don’t want to provide infrastructure and it drives the powers that be nuts that I agreed to stay here. I’m the only reason this island can function.’ She shook herself, trying to lose the feeling of nightmarish unreality. ‘And now there’ll be more pressure. How the hell can we rebuild? All these people? There’ll be so many problems. I can’t cope…’
‘Hey, Morag.’ His hand tightened on hers, holding her, steadying her as she stumbled along a track which all of a sudden wasn’t as familiar as she’d thought. And, dammit, she was too far gone to pull away. Sure, it was his bedside manner doing the comforting, but she needed any bedside manner she could get.
Liar. She needed Grady.
Whatever.
She’d deal with the consequences later, she told herself dully. For tonight-for now-she needed Grady.
He held on and she gripped him tight in return, and she sensed in the sudden, momentary stillness that her reciprocation had surprised him.
‘Morag…’
‘Shut up,’ she told him. ‘I don’t want to think about tomorrow. I just need to see Robbie. I need to focus on now. That’s all I can do.’
There was a candle in Hubert’s cottage window, lit in welcome.
The electricity for the entire island was cut. The outside teams had brought emergency generators which they were using at the cricket ground, and the lighthouse had its solar power, but the rest of the island was in darkness.
But Hubert had never had need of electricity and, though the rest of the island was in darkness, here was light.
