Sarah.
His senses shut down. Everything shut down.
There was only Sarah.
How long could the moment last? How far could they go? Alistair had no idea, but when it ended it was as if they both expected it. This joy wasn’t rightfully theirs. It was unbelievable. Unattainable.
This woman had loved Grant. His brother.
She had no place with him.
So when the sound of the phone jarred in the silence it was as if both expected it, and when they pulled away he could see that she had known it would happen.
There was no joy in her eyes. No love. Instead her face looked bruised. Frightened. She’d been weeping, he thought, and he swore and put a finger up to trace the path of a teardrop down her cheek.
‘Sarah, don’t. I can’t bear it. I didn’t mean to make you cry.’
‘You didn’t. You couldn’t…’ She was almost incoherent.
The phone was ringing still, but they ignored it. Some things were too important even for the imperatives of medicine to interrupt.
‘I love you,’ he whispered, but he knew at once that it was a mistake. He felt the sudden rigidity of her body. He felt the shock wave running through her slight frame and he knew there was no joy here this night. ‘No.’
‘Yes.’
‘Grant,’ she said, then faltered, and the tension in her body was suddenly matched by his. ‘I can’t… Because of Grant… Don’t say you love me, Alistair. I was your twin’s fiancee and this night I’ve shocked you to the core. You don’t know what you’re saying. You feel sorry for me, Alistair, and I can’t get past that. Not yet. Not now. Do you think I’d let you make love with me now-when there’s this between us?’
‘No, but-’
‘I knew how it’d be,’ she said bleakly. ‘I desperately didn’t want to tell you. I didn’t want to give you this guilt.’
‘I’m not wearing guilt.’
‘You’re saying if this hadn’t happened you’d be kissing me? This isn’t love, Alistair. This is shock. Passion of anger and pain and distress.’ Then, as he hesitated, she pulled away from him completely. ‘Answer the phone, Alistair,’ she whispered. ‘You need to.’
‘I don’t want-’
‘You don’t know what you want and neither do I. Answer the phone.’
He stared at her, balked. Frustrated. Her face had shuttered. Her eyes were blank and weary.
‘It’s too late,’ she said, turning away from him. ‘Or too early. It’s almost dawn. And I can’t face you. Not yet. Not now. I can’t take this forward. Just go and answer the phone, Alistair, and leave me be.’
How could he leave her? He couldn’t. But of course, as always, there were medical imperatives. Howard was awake and writhing with pain. One of the stones must be pushing through. He needed to increase the morphine dose and give the man some reassurance that he wasn’t dying.
He had to go. Like it or not.
‘We’ll leave it for now, but we can’t leave this for ever,’ he told her.
He’d answered the phone set up in the hall so he was standing in her doorway again, with Sarah a shadow silhouetted against the moonlight in the window.
‘We’ll leave it till morning,’ she whispered, almost grateful ‘Meanwhile…go and see to Howard. Let me think.’
It wasn’t only pain and fear of his illness keeping Howard awake. Alistair increased his morphine dose, but before he could leave the man gripped his arm and started pleading.
‘I’m not responsible. I dunno who all these people are.’
Alistair nodded. He wanted to go back to Sarah. He desperately wanted to get back to Sarah. There was so much left unsaid.
But there were other imperatives. Deadly imperatives. He knew that. If staying here could get them information…
‘You’ve had lots of people through the property?’
‘Heaps,’ Howard told him. He’d obviously been lying in the dark, in pain, and had decided the only way through this was to be helpful. ‘But I never knew who any of them were. Most from those places with funny names like Iran and Iraq or Kurb… Kurb… Anyway, places like that. They never said anything. The pilots would drop them off, I’d feed them and give them the passports and stuff, show ’em a few videos about living here, and in a few days a truck’d come and fetch them.’
‘A truck?’
‘They’d go on one of the transporters that take the cattle down south. It was all paid for. The truck drivers didn’t know nothing, either. No one did.’
‘You know that the pilot died?’
‘Yeah, but I didn’t know him. He was a newbie. We’d had the same pilot for two years but he got cold feet. The boss said he was sending someone out from Thailand to take over the run.’
‘The boss?’
Howard chewed his lip. ‘Yeah. The boss. I’m not supposed to know who he is.’
‘But you do?’
‘I might.’
‘Can you contact him?’
‘Maybe.’ Howard shifted in his bed and winced. ‘I’m not supposed to know anything at all. But he came here once to check the place out and…well, I checked his wallet when he was in the shower. I’m no happier to work in the dark than the next man.’
‘He’s Australian?’
‘Yeah. Do you reckon if I fingered him they’d be easier on me?’
‘I’m sure they would,’ Alistair told him. He was focused now, knowing this could be vital information. His own personal needs-what lay between him and Sarah-had to be put aside for this. It must. ‘Do you want me to ask the senior detective to talk to you?’
‘What’d’you reckon?’
‘I reckon it might help. And that has to count for something.’
It might well help. More than anything right now he wanted to go back to Sarah, but he knew enough of human nature to know that Howard was likely to change his mind at any minute. If he clammed up, this opportunity could well be lost.
‘I’ll phone the detective now,’ he told Howard, and Howard nodded.
‘You stay, though,’ he told Alistair. ‘They put words in a man’s mouth, these coppers. You stay with us while he’s here or I’m saying nothing.’
Alistair nodded. It meant he couldn’t go back to Sarah. It meant he might be stuck here for an hour.
Maybe it was just as well.
How could she think?
Sarah couldn’t. She lay and stared at the ceiling until the first glimmers of dawn lit the room. Four a.m. Four- thirty. Enough. Alistair wasn’t returning and she was going crazy.
She needed a walk. She needed to do anything but lie here and go crazy. Silently she rose and dressed, hauling on jeans and sweatshirt and trainers. Then she walked out into the dawn, closing the door firmly on Flotsam as he tried to follow.
‘No, boy. Not this morning. I need my own company.’
And how lonely was that?
She couldn’t answer her question. There was so much happening. So much…
She walked. She walked for miles along the sea-washed beach. But it didn’t help. Nothing helped, and finally she turned. She knew she had to return to the house. To Alistair.
To sort out for ever what lay between them.
