her.
Not now she knew where Hamish might be.
Robbie was dependable-far too dependable for one small boy. But he’d been brought up to be self-sufficient, to make a judgement call when needed. He could decide if a phone call was something he should interrupt his aunt for when she was talking earnestly to someone who was crying on their doorstep. If someone appeared at their back door, bleeding, Robbie would find a towel and tell them to press hard before he ran to find Morag. If Morag wasn’t home when he got back from school-if she’d been called away on an emergency and hadn’t had time to make provision for him-then he’d take himself off to his Aunt Christine’s.
Normal kids-normal nine-year-olds with milk-and-cookie mums-would never be asked to make decisions such as these, but with a doctor-mother and then a doctor-aunt, Robbie had been asked to make them almost from birth.
So now Morag knew instinctively the decision Robbie would have made. He was worried sick about his best friend. Morag hadn’t appeared before dark to help him, and he hadn’t been able to ask Hubert to go with him.
So he’d gone alone.
Grady was still watching her. His calm eyes were a caress in themselves, and she accepted it because she needed it so much.
She gave him a faltering smile in return.
‘Take care of Hubert for me,’ she whispered. ‘And, Grady, come as soon as you can.’ She reached out and touched him, lightly on the hand. It was a fleeting gesture that meant nothing-and everything.
‘Thank you, Grady,’ she whispered. ‘My love…’
CHAPTER TWELVE
IT WAS not a good night to be out of the harbour mouth.
The sea, as flat as a millpond during the chaos of the tidal wave, had started to stir. A building sou’westerly was driving a strong, erratic swell in against the cliffs. As soon as the
‘You do that life jacket up tight, lass,’ Marcus called, and she nodded and hauled the straps tighter as she huddled into her oversized waterproofs.
Marcus’s boat was one of the best equipped available. They were very lucky it hadn’t been in the harbour when the wave had come, but, then, most of the boats had been out. Thankfully. Otherwise they’d have been destroyed.
Marcus headed a crew of four, usually rostered down to three. The town had been lucky it had been Marcus who had been rostered off the day before, but Morag was grateful he hadn’t rostered himself off now. The big fisherman was calmly competent, and in this sea they needed every trace of competence they could get. It was a sea that would have an inexperienced fisherman running for cover.
Marcus and Grady were alike, she thought inconsequentially. The two men were separated in age by twenty years but they were really similar. Grady could be just like this in twenty years. But then…
Grady would never look as Marcus did, she thought bleakly. Marcus loved his wife and his kids and his island. He looked at life through calm eyes, with a placid acceptance and muted pleasure with his chosen lot in life.
Whereas Grady… Grady had been here for less than two days and already he was thinking about moving on.
The boat swung south. The moon was lifting over the horizon-thankfully the sky was clear so they’d have moonlight to search. As they rounded the headland Morag could see the brilliant beam from the lighthouse.
Her lighthouse.
If she moved away from the island, if she wasn’t here and something happened-another sea-eagle crashed into the lantern room, anything…
Stop it, she thought fiercely. Stop it.
Robbie…
Robbie. Grady. Her island. Her people.
So much to care about. So much to think about. So much, she felt ill.
They were moving fast. The boat was crashing over the cresting swells. Marcus took the boat wide of the rocks that jutted from the southern tip of the island, and then curved in again. Suddenly the sea seemed calmer, but that was an illusion. It was only because they were moving with the same motion as the swell.
‘You feeling OK?’ Marcus yelled over the noise of the big diesel engine, and she nodded.
‘Fine,’ she yelled back. Not seasick at least. Just sick with fear.
‘There’s the boyfriend.’ Marcus jabbed a finger skyward and she saw a faint light lifting off from the ridge. Grady had moved fast. It had been twenty minutes since they’d left and already he had his crew mobilised for take-off.
What had Marcus called him? Her boyfriend?
That was a joke.
‘We’re going in close now,’ Marcus told her, and one of the men came toward her with a clip and harness.
‘Lifelines,’ he told her. ‘We lay craypots in here, but not normally in weather as rough as this. It’s safe enough if you know what you’re doing-and we know what we’re doing-but we put the lifelines on anyway.’
‘Fine.’
They were nearing the cliffs. Morag had been out here during the day many times as she and her father and sister had fished the waters. She knew these cliffs. In the daytime they were steep and jagged and alive with a mass of seabirds. Now they were dark and forbidding. The sound of the waves crashing on the jagged rocks all but drowned the sound of the boat’s big engine.
Robbie. Hamish. The man who’d clipped her lifeline switched on the floodlights.
Where were they?
Their light swept up and down the cliff face in long searching runs. Over and over. Over and over.
Was this stupid? Morag was straining to see along the rockface. Had Hamish been washed out to sea long before this? Was Robbie even now searching somewhere on the island for a friend he’d never find? Alone-as he’d been alone for too long.
She wouldn’t cry. She hadn’t cried when she’d left Grady or when Beth had died. She mustn’t cry now.
But the thought of Robbie alone… Searching for Hamish as they were now doing, but with no one to hold onto him…
Her eyes were still desperately following the line of the floodlights, but she was becoming more afraid by the minute.
The helicopter had reached the cliff face now. Grady. His machine was hovering above them at the far end of the breeding grounds. The helicopter’s floodlights scanned to the cliff face and joined the raking, searching lines of light.
At least if the boys were somewhere here they’d know people were looking, Morag thought desperately. Everyone was looking.
Grady was looking. The thought gave her an indefinable comfort, though how one man could make a difference…
He couldn’t. Block out Grady.
Search.
Her eyes were straining upward until they hurt. They were only about fifty yards from the base of the cliffs now, as close as Marcus dared to go. Between the boat and the cliffs were rocks, freshly tumbled into the sea as the tsunami had smashed the cliff face and the ledge at the base of the cliffs had crumbled. Above the tumbled rocks in the sea there were jagged crevices filled with sleepy birds staring outward, indignant as the floodlight interrupted their sleep.
The floodlights raked on. The rockface curved in, out, in…Morag was holding the rail, leaning forward, her body swaying with the movement of the sea. Her father had spent so much of his time on the sea and she with him. And Beth. Her family.
