the village church. The wave had gone straight through, leaving only a shell. Pews and fittings had been shattered into a pile of jumbled ruins. The nave, though, with its vast, east-facing window, was still almost intact. The window was without glass, but from where Grady stood he could see right to the ocean beyond.
The woman was staring outward, looking at the sea. Just…looking. In the midst of all this confusion, it was an incredibly peaceful scene, and Grady thought suddenly that there was little need for fittings. It was breathtakingly lovely, just as it was.
The woman turned and saw the two men, she gave them a faltering smile.
‘The doctor. Just who I need. I have a splinter that’s stopping me working.’
Grady crossed the ruins to meet her. She was none too steady on her feet, he noticed, and she let him take her arm and help her out to the remains of the church-ground. While Doug watched, he lifted her hand and saw a shard of wood had been driven right under the nail.
‘I’ll take you to the medical centre.’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I have too much to do to bother. But if you could pull it out…’
‘It’s in deep.’
‘Just…pull.’
‘I need to cut the nail.’
‘Then cut it,’ she said, and there was desperation in her voice. ‘Now. Please. The pain’s driving me crazy and I need to concentrate. Please, will you help me?’
He looked down at her, trying to figure how to argue, but what he saw in her face gave him pause. There was no argument. She wouldn’t go to a medical centre. And the light here was good enough…
OK. He could do this. He always carried a fully equipped medical kit in his backpack, and in a way he welcomed something practical to do. At least this was something medical rather than medical administration.
The questions he and Doug were trying to find answers to were impossibly difficult. How long could villagers survive without a viable water source? What were the risks of disease if sewerage contaminated the groundwater?
Or maybe they weren’t impossibly difficult. Maybe they were questions to which he knew the answers, but he didn’t like facing them. The thought of Morag’s reaction when she heard was dreadful.
Morag. He couldn’t think of what she was facing. He didn’t understand her fierce love for this little community but now at least he knew that her love was for real, and the dispersing of the islanders would break her heart.
Hell! He’d much rather face a splinter, complicated or not.
So, as Doug excused himself, he found himself perched on a low stone wall, carefully extricating a splinter from an elderly lady’s finger.
Working with care, with her hand spread on the sun-warmed stones, he blocked her ring finger with local anaesthetic. Then he carefully sliced a wedge from her nail, lifting it free so he could reach the sliver underneath.
The woman-she said her name was May Rafferty but that was all she was saying-stared straight ahead as he worked and she didn’t speak until he applied antiseptic and dressing and asked her about tetanus shots.
‘They’re up to date,’ she said shortly. ‘Morag sees to that.’
‘I’d imagine she would.’ He hesitated. The woman, in her late sixties or early seventies, lean and weathered, with the look of someone who’d seen a lifetime of hard work, was staring again through the ruins of the church toward the sea.
‘I’m sorry about your church,’ he told her.
‘It’ll be OK. We’ll rebuild.’
Would they? Grady thought of the report he was preparing and he winced. But now wasn’t the time to talk of that.
‘My husband was buried from this church,’ May said softly. ‘And my baby daughter. That’s how I got the splinter. There’s a plaque somewhere that my husband carved when our baby died. I thought…I thought I might be able to find it.’
‘Would you like me to help you look?’ he heard himself say, and she nodded as if she’d expected no less.
‘I’d be very grateful.’
So with all the work to be done-with the momentous decisions still hanging in the balance as to the fate of this island-Grady found himself hauling aside splintered timber and ruined furnishings, trying to reach the base of the west wall, trying to locate one tiny carving…
Like the technical medicine of removing the splinter, it was work that he welcomed. It let him stop thinking of Morag’s face as she read the report.
Morag…
Enough. Stop thinking now!
He had thick leather gloves to work with, and the task was simple enough. From the sidelines the woman watched, still in silence. Without gloves, and with her injured hand, he wouldn’t let her haul things aside, but her eyes still searched the ruins. Ceaselessly.
And when he hauled aside a section of what looked like a door, she saw what she was looking for. She gave a soft moan of relief and darted forward to lift a plaque.
It was a battered piece of wood, a little less than a foot square, and it looked as if it had once been highly polished. The wave had battered it with force, marring the carving, but the lettering was still clear.
May was cleaning the lettering with her sleeve, smiling down at it as if she’d found the child herself. And for the second time that day Grady found himself swallowing. Hard. Hell! He didn’t do emotion. He didn’t!
‘Morag,’ he managed after a while. ‘Your little girl was called Morag?’
‘Mmm.’ She smiled mistily up at him. ‘Your Morag was named after her.’
‘My Morag?’
‘The Morag you’ve been working with,’ she explained. ‘Your Morag’s father was my second cousin. He was best man at our wedding, and he was our Morag’s godfather. We’re so intertwined, the two families. My son…’ She clasped the plaque closer. ‘My son Peter-my Morag’s brother-married Christine. Christine’s brother was David, the fisherman who married Beth, your Morag’s sister. So Christine is Robbie’s aunt.’
He thought it through. He was confused. Very confused. Genealogy wasn’t his strong point, and the complexities of this island’s relationships had his head spinning. But he finally thought he had it. ‘So your son and his wife are Peter and Christine Rafferty, the couple we’ve evacuated to Sydney?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then Lucy-Lucy and Hamish…’
‘Lucy and Hamish are my grandchildren.’
That had him even more confused. ‘Then why…?’
‘Why haven’t I been with Lucy?’ She shrugged and hugged the plaque against her, as if suddenly cold. ‘Lucy didn’t want me. She’s so angry. So distressed. She said I should be out here searching for Hamish, and, of course, I have been. But there’s nowhere else to search and your people are so much more competent, and suddenly…’ She shivered again. ‘I just wanted…’
She just wanted contact with her daughter, Grady thought with sudden insight. Her little one. This plaque was a tangible link with the past, a link to hold onto when the future looked dreadful. Grady could see it in her face and he let her be for a moment, waiting until she turned again to the east window. She gazed out to sea for a long moment, and finally her face regained a little of its serenity.
‘You’re all so intertwined,’ he said softly. ‘I’d thought…I’d thought when Beth died that Robbie had no one.’
‘Robbie never had no one,’ May said simply. ‘Robbie has every single islander. There’s no one here who
