It would have weathered countless storms in its past, he told himself. It would weather another.
But why were their lights still on? Because the roaring of the storm was making them nervous?
He could go over and check, but he wasn’t wanted.
Babs didn’t want him.
Neither did Gina.
So why was he aching to head over there and cart them bodily back here? Would that suit his own macho image of keeping the women safe? Save the helpless?
He thought of Gina and decided helpless was hardly an adjective that fitted. She was competent and she was fiercely independent.
As he was. Independent was the way he liked it. It had been the way he’d intended to stay for the rest of his life.
Had been? Why was he talking in the past tense? It should be present tense, he told himself as he tossed another log on the fire. He was still independent.
Hoppy was asleep on his fireside rug. He stirred a little as the new log caused sparks to fly. One eye opened to check Hugh was still there, but once that fact was verified the eye closed again.
Hoppy was the only creature who needed him, Hugh thought, and that was the way he liked it.
Except...it was no longer quite true.
He’d been working at the clinic for a month now, and he’d already realised the growing dependence he was creating among the islanders. It wasn’t just from the islanders, either, he conceded. Two days ago, he’d fielded a call from Marc, the head of the Gannet Island group. ‘We don’t have a doctor spare to do a clinic next Monday,’ he’d told him. ‘But you seem to be operating well over there. Can we leave scheduled clinics to you from now on? Can we depend on you?’
He’d almost refused, but then he’d thought why not? It was happening anyway.
Dependence.
At least he still had this place. His solitude. Nothing could interfere with that.
Except there was a storm and a battered cottage and two women...
There was Gina.
He sat on, staring into the fire, thinking he should go to bed. Glancing out occasionally towards Babs’s cottage.
And then the lights went out.
That wasn’t a big deal. This was some storm, and the electricity connection from the far side of the island was tenuous. He thought of flicking onto his backup power, but he should go to bed, anyway.
Instead he found himself back at the window, staring once more across to Babs’s place.
The lights had gone out there, too.
Fair enough. It was three in the morning. They’d probably both be asleep, not even noticing.
But he was suddenly thinking of Gina, fifteen years old, on the side of a mountain in a storm. In the dark. She hated the dark.
‘She’ll be asleep,’ he said out loud, straining to see the outline of the cottage through the driving rain.
And then he saw a chink of light. Babs’s shutters were ancient, falling to bits. He’d offered to fix them, but she’d snapped his head off. ‘They’ll see me out. I don’t need help.’ So now he watched as light filtered out, faint. A lantern, moving from room to room?
From living room to Babs’s bedroom.
So Gina had been up, too, sitting in the living room as he was. Lighting the lamp when the power went out. Taking it into Babs’s room to check.
Staying there.
He knew the set-up in Babs’s house. He’d been in there when she’d had the attack, and a couple of other times when he’d insisted on checking her after she’d come home from hospital. He’d even insisted she give him a key. Now he stood and watched, waiting for the light to disappear, or to move back to the living room. Gina’s bedroom must be the small back room and he wouldn’t be able to see the light if she’d gone back there. Or she could leave the lantern in the sitting room and go back to bed.
Instead the light stayed in Babs’s room.
The wind was blasting in from the ocean and rain had turned to a driving sleet. The light from Babs’s cottage was a glimmer only, occasionally disappearing as sleet mixed with blowing sand.
He watched on. Ten minutes. More. The light didn’t shift. Still in Babs’s bedroom.
Maybe they were sitting talking, he thought. Maybe they were taking comfort by being with each other in the storm.
He thought of Babs and he thought, Ha! There was no way she’d concede she needed comfort.
Okay, maybe he had it wrong. Maybe it had been Babs in the living room, Babs taking the lantern back to her own bedroom. Maybe Gina was sound asleep. Why was he worrying?
Except he was.
He could phone.
He didn’t want to phone. What he wanted was to head over and check, and the urge was growing by the minute.
Would either of them appreciate him pounding on the door at three in the morning? Babs would tell him where to go in no uncertain terms if she thought he was interfering. And Gina? Maybe he’d be told off by both of them.
If Gina needed him, she only had to lift her own phone, he told himself. He knew she wouldn’t hesitate if she thought he could make things easier for Babs. The safest—the most sensible—course was to stay where he was. To not interfere unless asked.
But still...what was he risking by finding out?
‘Scared of drowning?’ They were Gina’s words, thrown at him as a dare.
Scared of showing he cared?
Same thing.
He was suddenly back in a war zone, listening to a woman pleading for help for her daughter. Hearing the sergeant in the background. ‘We can’t afford to care.’
This wasn’t a war zone. This was an old lady with a heart condition and a woman he...
A woman he...what?
No. Don’t go there. There was a step too far.
But he looked out into the night again, at the flickering, distant light, and suddenly he knew that, like it or not, he’d already taken that step.
He was thinking of Gina as a child of neglectful parents. He knew she’d have had a similar childhood to his, without the advantages of riches. Of nannies who were at least paid to care.
He was thinking of her as a teenager, alone after an appalling plane crash. Then he was thinking of her arriving on the island, only to be told she was here under sufferance.
But she’d conquered. He was thinking of her courage, her humour, her inimitable spirit.
He was thinking of the way she’d held him, of the way she’d given herself, no strings, with love and with laughter.
Did those words go together?
Love?
No strings?
He was feeling ‘strings’ now, and he was feeling them in spades. The amazing thing was, though, that they didn’t feel terrifying.
They felt right.
Hoppy was awake and at his feet, looking up at him, puzzled. Hugh was standing by the door. The storm was raging outside and Hoppy’s look said: ‘You have to be out of your mind.’
‘So maybe I am,’ he told his little dog. ‘But we’re in this together, mate. How about we vote? You’re probably more sensible than I am right now, so you get two votes to my one.’
There was a cop-out if he’d ever heard one, because Hoppy knew his duty. He sighed and put his nose against the door.
He’d be thinking, as dogs did, that Hugh was simply insisting he head outside to relieve himself before they both slept. But Hugh gave a rueful smile.
‘Not a bathroom break, mate. I have a feeling it might be a break of a completely different kind.’
A break from solitude? From armour? From staying aloof for ever?
He thought of Gina and the defences she’d built for her own protection, and he thought it wasn’t just he who needed to think about a whole new future. But if he was willing to share his isolation...
‘Who am I kidding? She might not eve
n open the door to us,’ he told Hoppy as he opened the door and the wind almost blasted them back into the house. He picked up the little dog and tucked him under his arm. ‘But Babs might be ill, and she might need us for practical reasons. And the rest... Why not give it a red-hot go?’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SHE SAT IN the weak light cast by the lantern. She held her aunt’s hand and felt the warmth slowly fade.
She felt sick. Cold.
Empty.
This, then, was the end.
She thought suddenly of that hug she’d had from Babs, all those years ago. She’d arrived on the ferry, shell-shocked, alone, bereft, and her aunt had hugged her. She remembered the wave of relief she’d had, the feeling that here was someone who cared.
The feeling of coming home.
And then, the next morning, the realisation that the hug had been an aberration. That there’d be no more displays of what Babs called sickly sentimentality.
But still, that hug had stayed with her. The hug had been why she’d made such an effort to get back to the island, and there’d been another when she’d arrived.
She was all Babs had, and Babs was all she had—and now there was nothing.
There was nothing for her here. She wasn’t about to live in this cottage for the rest of her life, doing morning clinics, trying to pretend it was home.
Home was a fantasy. She’d always known that. Forgetting it, even for a moment, caused nothing but heartbreak.
So now what?
One step at a time, she told herself. Don’t look too far into the future. So...
She could call Hugh, she thought, but then...why? She knew he’d come—he’d assured both her and her aunt. But Babs was gone. There was nothing here for Hugh to do.
There’d be time enough to call in officialdom in the morning, she told herself, because surely that was what Hugh was. The island doctor. There should be a funeral director on the island as well, or someone who acted as such. He or she could wait until morning as well.
And then? She allowed herself to think a little past the next few days. To a flight back to Sydney? To job opportunities? To the next adventure?
Why did it leave her cold?
She shivered. She should go to bed, but still she sat, taking the last vestige of comfort she could from the fading warmth of her aunt’s hand.
She was crying. These were stupid tears that she knew Babs would have scorned. She dashed them away with her spare hand, but they still came.
She hated crying. She’d learned long ago that tears achieved nothing. They just made her feel appalling the day after, and the day after was for planning how to move on.
Tomorrow...
Stop crying!
And then a knock sounded above the wind. Or maybe it was just a part of the storm. She ignored it. It seemed just too hard to move.
It seemed impossible to release her aunt’s hand from hers.
But then the bedroom door opened. ‘Babs?’
And it was Hugh. He was standing in the doorway, a huge shape behind the glow of the lantern he carried. He was wearing a vast, all-weather coat, and a sou’wester hat casting his face into absolute darkness. He was so deeply in shadow she shouldn’t even know it was him, but she’d know this man, even without words.
She didn’t move. His lantern was lighting the room now, with a glow far stronger than the lantern she’d been using. He crossed to the bed and held the lamp high, taking in the sight of Babs’s face, peaceful in death. Of Gina still sitting, her hand still holding.
And then he set his lantern down. He crouched beside her and gently, gently, he disengaged her fingers from Babs.
And then he took her into his arms, and he hugged.
* * *
When the trap had been sprung, when the bomb had exploded, Hugh’s world had seemed blasted to pieces. His body had been wounded, but the physical wounds had been nothing compared to the shock and regret that followed. What had been left was a dull, grey void where, once upon a time, caring had been.
Now he held Gina, and somehow, in some way, his world seemed to settle.
The caring flooded back. The feelings he’d had watching the flicker of her lantern through the storm solidified into certainty.
For as he gathered her against his chest, as he felt her initial rigidity, which seemed to last less than a heartbeat, as he felt her let go, sink against him, burrow her face into his shoulder, let his arms embrace her, hold her, he felt as if...
He’d come home.
This, then, was his home. His peace.
Gina.
He was crouched on the floor and she was in his arms. He was cradling her as one would cradle a child. Holding for as long as she willed it.
He felt her sobs falter, fade, turn to desperate sniffles.
Somewhere in one of the cavernous pockets of his massive coat he’d have a handkerchief, but for now it didn’t matter. The front of his coat was enough. Her face was buried against his chest, as if she needed the reassurance of his heartbeat.
This woman...
He loved her.
The knowledge came, a bolt from who knew where, but it was sure and strong, and with it came a feeling of wholeness. Of wonder. Of a future?
He’d tell her. He must tell her, but for now all he could do was hold her.
Gradually he felt her body relax, but still he held her, and she let herself be held. The moments passed and he thought she was taking time to readjust to this new world.
A world without an aunt who’d refused to love her.
A world without an aunt whom she’d loved, regardless.
And finally, finally he felt her regroup. She sniffed and sniffed again, then pulled back, just a little.
He still held her, but he could see her face now, swollen with weeping.
Lovely.
‘I’ve... I’ve made a mess of your coat,’ she stammered, and he smiled. All the tenderness he could muster—maybe more tenderness than he knew he had—was in that smile.
‘There’s a storm outside and this is a raincoat,’ he told her. ‘Two minutes outside your backdoor and who needs a washing machine? Love, I’m so sorry.’
Love. Where had that word come from?
He’d never called a woman love.
It felt right.
But she hadn’t seemed to notice. She closed her eyes and then opened them again, tilted her chin, visibly fighting for composure.
‘She didn’t call me,’ she said bleakly. ‘I knew she was fading, but she wouldn’t let me sit with her. I was in the sitting room. I said, “If you have any pain...”’ She broke off and he could hear agony in her voice.
‘Hey, I’m looking at her,’ he said, gently as he held her. ‘She died in peace, love. Not in pain. She died secure in the fact that you were just through the door. She died knowing she had a family.’
‘She wasn’t...she didn’t want...’
‘She never admitted she wanted,’ he told her. ‘That wasn’t Babs’s way. But she did want you home. When she came home from hospital and I suggested she might move closer to help, she snapped my head off. “My niece will come,” she told me, with all the assurance in the world. “She’ll come when I need her.” And so you did.’
‘She never wanted me.’
‘You know she did.’
There was a long silence. He held her close, waiting for the acceptance he knew must surely come. Outside the wind was screaming. A piece of roofing iron had come loose and was banging with every gust. The whole house felt as if it were trembling, as if any minute it could end up in Texas.
‘Let me take you back to my place,’ he suggested, but she shook her head. Finally, she gathered herself, tugged away and he let her stand.
‘I...no. Thank you, Hugh, but I can’t leave Babs. I’m so glad you came but I’ll be
all right now.’
And once more he had that vision of a kid on a mountainside, alone. ‘I’ll be all right now.’ How many times had she told herself that?
‘Gina, there’s nothing more you can do for her.’
‘Except stay. Hugh, I can’t leave her. Tomorrow...there’ll be things... I can’t think, but when the storm passes...’
‘Then I’ll stay with you.’ He thought of his own house, warm, solid, safe. He thought of this place, rickety, cold, the fire stove never able to throw enough heat to negate the draughts blowing in through a thousand cracks.
An ancient house, with a dead woman.
The place where Gina was.
Of course he’d stay.
‘You don’t need to.’ She was almost visibly regrouping. Pulling her fierce independence around her. ‘I can cope.’
‘You don’t need to cope.’
‘But I can.’ She didn’t sound sure, though. She sounded bewildered. ‘I guess... I should sleep.’
‘Could you sleep?’
‘No,’ she said frankly. ‘But I’ll stoke up the fire and sit the night out.’ She hesitated. ‘How did you know to come?’
‘I saw the light from the lantern. It shifted into Babs’s room and stayed. I thought...’ He stopped and Gina nodded.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘I...it means...it meant a lot. That you found her the first time. That you came tonight. You’re a good neighbour.’
‘I want to be more than that.’ He said it flatly, definitely, and in those words was a declaration. Her eyes flew to his and held.
‘H... Hugh.’
‘Let me stay, Gina,’ he said gently. ‘I can’t bear you to be alone.’
‘I can’t...’
He put his hands on her shoulders and met her gaze full on. Her face was swollen from weeping. Her hair was tousled, a riot of tangled curls. She was wearing some sort of jogging suit, faded pink, baggy, old.
He thought he’d never seen anything so lovely in his life.
‘I think you can, love,’ he said. ‘For tonight, let yourself admit that you need me. Let me in.’
There was a long, long silence. The whole world seemed to be holding its breath. And then finally, finally that breath was expelled.
Healing Her Brooding Island Hero Page 13