Ember Island

by Kimberley Freeman

  “Ah . . . I did for a while, when I was a child.”

  “Maybe you could come and visit Dad and me sometime, and we could play marbles.”

  I smiled at his artlessness. “That could be fun.”

  “You like being with me and Dad, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  He grinned back at me, and I had the distinct feeling I had passed some kind of test. Joe called me and I joined him at the boat with my phone, ready to take photos to put on a boat sales website.

  “Now I haven’t the faintest idea what kind of things sell boats,” I said.

  “Just take photos of everything and choose the most flattering ones later,” he said.

  “Dad!” Julian called from the boat shed. “Can I play in here?”

  “Sure, mate. Just don’t climb anything. It’s old in there, okay?”

  Julian nodded and disappeared into the shed.

  “There isn’t anything in there to climb, is there?” I asked.

  “There’s a platform, almost like a loft. Lots of old fishing nets and paddles and things stored up there.” He extended his hand to me. “Here, let me have the phone for a minute.”

  I handed him my phone and he took some close-up photographs of the motors and the dashboard dials.

  “That rip in the vinyl seat doesn’t look great,” he said.

  “I suppose we could shoot around it.”

  “No, go sit on it. Look happy.”

  I laughed and climbed up into the boat, sat over the tear, arms extended across the back of the seat, and smiled. Joe took several photos, then helped me down.

  “Is that false advertising?” I asked.

  “No, we’ll say in the description that it needs some minor repairs.” He thumbed through the photos. “You certainly light up every picture you’re in, Nina.”

  I watched him, his head bent as he looked through the photos, and experienced a surge of affection and longing that nearly winded me. He glanced up; I was about to say something—I don’t know what, but it would have been something foolish—when we heard a loud crack, a yelp, and a horrible thud from the boat shed.

  Joe went white. “Julian,” he gasped, before turning on his heel and sprinting for the boatshed. “Julian! Julian! No. No no no.”

  I was a second behind him, out of the bright light and into the dark boat shed. In an instant, I could see what had happened. The loft that Joe had spoken of was half hanging down, the wooden beam that had supported it cracked in half. Julian lay on the ground, still and not breathing. Joe bent over him, but had lost his ability to speak or think. He said, “Oh, God, oh, God,” over and over, too shocked to do anything else.

  I quickly pushed in front of him. The rough wooden floor scraped my knees. I had basic first-aid training from my years working in day care, but I had never had to use it. “Call emergency,” I said to Joe.

  My command snapped him out of his shock. He still had my phone in his hand, and I heard him talking to an emergency operator while I checked for a pulse then went to work on Julian: breathing into his soft damp mouth, compressing his little bony chest. Adrenaline sparked through me, flushing me with intense heat. Life had become suddenly more real than usual; the edges of everything were sharper, the light brighter. “Come on, Julian,” I said, pressing rhythmically on his chest. Then down again to breathe air into his lungs.

  And in a moment that seemed like a miracle, he gasped and started breathing on his own.

  “Oh, thank God, thank God,” I said.

  Joe pushed me off. “Julian? Julian? Hang on, little buddy. The helicopter’s coming.” His frantic fingers brushed the hair off his child’s forehead as he rolled him gently on his side. “Hang on, okay? You’re going to get a free ride in a helicopter.”

  Julian’s eyelids flickered, his eyes rolled, then he closed them again. His color was coming back as his breathing resumed.

  “My darling,” Joe said, not for an instant taking his eyes off his little boy. His tears fell on Julian’s face. “My son.”

  I sat back and waited for the welcome beating of the helicopter’s blades.

  •

  My own problems were dim and small after watching Julian and Joe helicoptered off the island, while Lynn and Dougal stood beside me holding each other and crying with shock and fear. They went straight down to the jetty for the afternoon service back to the mainland. I made them promise to call me the moment there was any news, but I only realized later that they didn’t have my number and my phone hardly ever worked anyway.

  So I wandered around my house, from verandah to verandah, completely disengaged from my work and my worries, all my mind bent on the fate of that little boy. I couldn’t stop thinking about the feeling of his ribs under my palms, about Joe’s anguished voice.

  Around nine at night, there was a knock on my door. I answered it with my heart in my mouth. It was Donna from the local shop.

  “Oh,” I said, “I hadn’t expected—”

  “Lynn called me and asked me to come up and see you.” Outside, a light rain had moved in, and I noticed Donna’s hair was damp. “She wanted to call you but she didn’t have your number.”

  “Julian?” I asked, breathlessly.

  “He’s stable. He’s got a couple of broken ribs and a bad concussion and they’ve got him in an induced coma, until some of the swelling in his brain goes down. But they say he’s going to be fine. Just fine.” Donna touched her hand. “You saved his life, Nina. Lynn said she didn’t know how they were ever to thank you.”

  I started crying too. It was the first time I’d cried for a long time.

  •

  Life was quiet without Joe around. He was staying at the hospital until Julian was good to come home. I missed him. I missed him more than I had expected to miss him. Lynn and Dougal had been up to give me the biggest bunch of flowers I had ever seen, but I hadn’t taken them up on their offer of dinner yet, and the flowers drooped and died because I forgot to change their water. I was writing. Not much, but I was writing, every day, under the watchful eye of Eleanor’s wooden cat. I still had no hope of meeting my deadline, and I decided it was time to let Marla know and see what consequences would come.

  I went to the pay phone in the bright noon of the week my manuscript was due. I dialed her number and waited, my heart thudding hard in my throat. Marla’s secretary answered and put me straight through.

  “Nina, how are you?”

  “I’m . . .” Words got stuck in my throat.

  Marla sighed. “I’m not an idiot,” she said. “I’ve already got you a stay of execution.”

  “You have? How long?”

  “Another six weeks, but that will take us up to nearly Christmas and I doubt anybody will be looking for that manuscript before January.”

  Relief flooded my body. “How long have you known about this?”

  “Over a month. But I didn’t want to tell you because I don’t want you to think this means you can cruise.”

  “I am not cruising,” I said, hurt. “I promise you, nothing about this feels like a cruise.”

  Her tone became gentle. “Nina, my dear, you’ll have to forgive me. A lot of publishing schedules have been disrupted and I’ve had to stave off some very ferocious inquiries about your fitness to produce this manuscript. I trust you. Don’t let me down.”

  I wanted to tell her. I wanted to say, Don’t trust me. But I didn’t. I said, “I won’t let you down.”

  “Now, I need to talk to you about something else.”

  I leaned my back against the glass wall of the phone booth, winding the phone cord around my fingers. “Go on.”

  “A journalist has been looking for you.”

  A little jolt to my heart. “Elizabeth Parrish?”

  “Yes, her.”

  “Don’t talk to her, please. I have nothing to say to her. I think she’s getting ready to do a terrible hatchet job on me.”

  “You want me to take care of it?”

  “Please. Fob
her off. I have nothing to say to her.”

  “Consider it done. Now, get back to your desk, stay on the island, and please finish that book.”

  “Consider it done,” I echoed, hoping and hoping that this time it would come together.

  •

  That afternoon, Elizabeth Parrish sent me a final text.

  If you won’t talk to me I will start talking to others about you.

  I ignored her. We would have to have a conversation eventually, but not now. The Widow Wayland was solving a crime, and I wasn’t about to stop her.

  •

  Then, finally, Joe came back.

  I heard footsteps on the front verandah just after I’d turned the kitchen light on to start making dinner. A storm front had moved in, making evening come early. I was at the door before the knock came.

  “Hi!” I said, too enthusiastically.

  He smiled back at me. “Hi. Long time no see.”

  The rain started to fall. Thunder grumbled in the distance. “How’s Julian?”

  “He’s at home, in the spare room at Mum’s, with a Young Avengers comic and a packet of chips. We got back this morning.”

  “I’m so relieved.”

  “Can I come in?”

  “Absolutely.” I stood aside and then closed the door behind him.

  “Look, I need to apologize,” he said, before I could even invite him to sit down and pour him a glass of wine.

  “For what?”

  “That day. I didn’t even say thank you. In my defense, I was out of my mind.”

  I touched his shoulder. “I want you to know that I have never once, in the days since the accident, thought that you should have remembered to say thank you.”

  I withdrew my hand, but he caught it, and rubbed my fingers softly, almost absently, as if it was the most normal thing in the world to do.

  “The crazy thing is, I know how to do CPR. I could have saved him myself, but all I could think was he’s dead, he’s dead.” His voice caught.

  “It must have been awful for you.”

  He gathered himself, met my eyes. “But you were there. Thank God for you, Nina.”

  I smiled back at him, the moment gathered itself and intensified. The anticipation was real and thrilling. He pulled gently on my hand and I was in his embrace, my arms around his neck. The heat of him, the smell of him. And then his lips on mine, soft and firm all at once, insistent and gentle. My body bent back, his hands caught me in the curve of my spine and the warm passion flooded me.

  His lips left mine and wandered to my throat. “I knew when I first saw you,” he said. “You would be important to me. You can’t imagine how important you are to me.”

  Niggling guilt.

  “I love you, Nina,” he said, almost casually. Naturally.

  Then he was kissing me again, deeply and passionately, and I knew I loved him too but I couldn’t say it out loud.

  “Wait, wait,” I said, pulling away. “This is . . .” I had been about to say “wrong,” but looking at him in the half-light, as the rain hammered down outside, I knew there was nothing wrong about my feelings for him.

  Joe smiled. Such a wicked smile, making me melt like toffee in the sun.

  I caught my breath. “Never mind,” I said. “Never mind.”

  •

  The storm rattled over and passed, we ate in bed, then slept wound around each other. Tomorrow and all my other tomorrows receded away from me. No deadline, no facing up to my sins and secrets. Just Joe and me, skin against skin, in the soft morning dark.

  •

  Joe was up at first light, pulling his jeans on while I blinked away sleep.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I feel terrible. Julian’s first night out of hospital and I wasn’t there to put him to bed.”

  “It was a wild storm. You couldn’t have walked home,” I said, sitting up. “And your parents were there for him.”

  He sat down, shirtless, reached across to stroke my hair off my face. “I should still go.”

  I smiled at him, feeling something bright and hot swelling in my heart. I said, “Wait,” before I knew I was going to say it.

  He looked at me curiously.

  “I can’t have children. I mean, I can’t get pregnant.”

  “So?”

  So.

  “It’s why Cameron and I split up. And I know you want more kids one day . . .” I trailed off, feeling foolish.

  “I did. But not anymore. Julian’s eight. I don’t want to go back to baby days. It’s too hard.” He leaned down and kissed me. “How long has that been on your mind?”

  I laughed. “Since day one.”

  “Well, I’m glad you got it out. Anything else you need to tell me? Skeletons in the closet?” He made a spooky gesture with his fingers.

  I kissed him back, hard.

  “I have to go,” he said.

  After he left, I lay there a long time. Smiling and smiling. When my phone rang, I picked it up, still smiling.

  “Nina, it’s Marla.”

  “Hi, Marla. I was about to start writing. Things are really starting to move along now, so—”

  “I spoke to Elizabeth Parrish.”

  My skin prickled. Her tone was curt, almost angry. “The journalist?”

  “Yes, the journalist. When I refused her request to speak to you, she told me why she’s writing about you.” A moment of silence as the phone signal dropped out and then bloomed back into life. “Do you want to know?”

  Heat in my heart. Something bad was about to happen. I managed to keep my voice even. “I guess . . .”

  “She says she’s been through the archives of Stanley and Walsh Publishers, 1926 through to 1929. She’s found letters . . .”

  “No,” I said aloud. Or maybe I said it in my head.

  “Letters between the publishers and a woman named Eleanor Holt, rejecting a series of manuscripts about a character called the Widow Wayland.”

  My mouth opened and closed, unable to form words.

  “Please, Nina, please tell me these were just your inspiration. Please tell me you didn’t plagiarize those books.”

  I hung up, switched the phone off, and threw it in the corner.

  It had all fallen apart.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The Boat Shed

  1892

  Tilly felt guilty and fearful breaking Sterling’s rule about being in the garden. Not that he was ever around to enforce it, but Nell was a little harder to get away from. One week to the day after Tilly had first made her proposal to Hettie, she found herself locking her bedroom door carefully, then climbing out her window onto the verandah. If she went the long way around, to the back of the house, she passed neither Nell’s window nor Sterling’s office. She took the back stairs down, behind the kitchen, then rounded the house on the north and from there plunged into the garden.

  Hettie had said she needed a week to think about it. At first, Tilly had found this astonishing. Was she not aching to get out of prison? To flee from the island and into her children’s arms? But Tilly told her to take her time, and then worried for the whole week that Hettie would report Tilly. Every footstep on the verandah had made her heart start: was it a warder coming to tell Sterling what she had done?

  But here it was, a week later, and Hettie was waiting for her down near Tilly’s plot. She turned at Tilly’s footsteps on the leaves. Her face was florid and her eyes almost black.

  “Hettie?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I will . . . we will do this. I knew I would say yes a moment after you said it. But I had to think . . . I am sorry I killed him. I am so sorry. But my babies . . .”

  Tilly realized she had been hoping, deep down, that Hettie might say no. It was no small thing to help a prisoner escape; and yet it was the only thing she could do to absolve herself of her own guilt. She grasped Hettie’s calloused hand. “I know you’re sorry. But he deserved it.” Not like Jasper. Not like Chantelle. “He might have killed you one day
, or the children.”

  “How is it to be done, then?” Hettie said. “We must . . . plan it. So many have tried before and not succeeded.”

  “Because they have done it alone, with rough materials, with no resources. That’s what makes this different. I can help you.” Tilly lowered her voice, looked around. “I think I can get you a boat.”

  Hettie’s eyes widened. “Really?”

  “And together we will row our way across to the mainland and put this island behind us forever.”

  “Together?”

  Tilly nodded, firm in her intention. She risked too much by staying. She was not naïve: assisting a prisoner’s escape would be punishable by law. No, if she left the island, left Chantelle Lejeune’s name behind there, life could resume on the mainland. She would take a job, far away where nobody cared much who she was and where she came from. Perhaps it would be safe to reclaim her old name: Matilda Kirkland. A woman from another time.

  Hettie squeezed her hand. “Then let us start to prepare ourselves. We must be careful and clever.”

  “And we mustn’t rush.”

  “If we wait for the cooler weather, when the sun goes down earlier . . .”

  “A month from now, then?”

  “A month.”

  •

  A boat. Tilly needed a boat. Not a raft made of sticks found around the island and lashed together with a pajama belt. These were the kind of vessels escaping prisoners usually made, building them over months and leaving them stored amongst the mangroves and mud. Sterling said they routinely searched the area and found many half-made boats; none were ever seaworthy. If the escapees did make it off the island, they would sink in the dark water and be prey to sharks.

  But there were boats on the island, in the boat shed. Sterling had mentioned it when Nell had gone missing, had said she knew which drawer the key to the boat shed was in. Tilly would be mad to ask Nell for help. The girl’s curiosity would unbind all Tilly’s plans. So she resolved instead to find the key herself.