A Child To Open Their Hearts

‘Abuse. A bully for a husband. Despair.’

The bleakness in her voice must have been obvious. He reached out to her then, the merest hint of a touch, a trace of a strong hand brushing her cheek, and why it had the power to ground her, to feed her strength, she didn’t know.

Max Lockhart was a big man, in his forties, she guessed, his deep black hair tinged with silver, his strongly boned face etched with life lines. His grey eyes were deep-set and creased at the edges, from weather, from sun, from...life? Even in his boxers, covered with abrasions, he looked...distinguished.

She knew about this man. He’d lost his wife over twenty years ago and he’d just lost his son. Caroline’s twin.

‘I’m sorry about Christopher,’ she said gently, still holding Joni tight, as if holding him could protect him from the horrors around him.

‘Caroline told you?’

‘That her twin—your son—died three weeks ago? Yes. Caroline and I are fairly...close. She flew to Sydney for the funeral. We thought...we thought you might have come back with her.’

‘There was too much to do. There was financial stuff to do with the island. To do with my brother. Business affairs have been on the backburner as Christopher neared the end, but once he was gone they had to be attended to. And then...’

‘You thought it might be a good idea to sail out here?’

‘I needed a break,’ he said simply. ‘Time to get myself together. No one warned me of cyclones.’

‘It’s the tropics,’ she said simply. ‘Here be dragons.’

‘Don’t I know it!’

‘But we’re glad you’re back.’

That got her a hard look.

Max Lockhart had inherited the whole of Wildfire Island on the death of his father. The stories of the Lockharts were legion in this place. Max himself had hardly visited the island over the past twenty years, but his brother’s presence had made up for it.

Ian Lockhart had bled the island for all it was worth. He’d finally fled three months ago, leaving debt, destruction and despair...

Ian Lockhart. The hatred he’d caused...

She hugged the child in her arms tighter, as if she could somehow keep protecting him.

How could she?

The sun was getting hotter. She was starting to get sunburnt. Sunburn on top of everything else?

She was wearing knickers and bra. But they were her best knickers and bra, though, she thought with sudden dumb gratitude that today of all days she’d decided to wear her matching lace bra and panties.

They were a lot more elegant than the boxers Max was wearing. His boxers were old, faded, and they now sported a rip that made them borderline useless.

‘You needn’t look,’ Max said, and she flashed a look up at him and found he was smiling. And in return she managed a smile back.

Humour... It was a tool used the world over by medical staff, often in the most appalling circumstances. Where laypeople might collapse under strain, staff in emergency departments used humour to deflect despair.

Sometimes you laughed or you broke down, as simple as that, and right now she needed, quite desperately, not to break down. Max was a surgeon, she thought gratefully. Medical. Her tribe. He knew the drill.

‘My knickers are more respectable than your knickers,’ she said primly, and he choked.

‘What? Your knickers are two inches of pink lace.’

‘And they don’t have a hole in them right where they shouldn’t have a hole,’ she threw back at him, and he glanced down at himself and swore. And did some fast adjusting.

‘Dr Lockhart’s rude,’ she told Joni, snuggling him some more, but the little boy was drifting towards sleep. Good, she thought. Children had their own defences.

‘My yacht seems to be escaping,’ Max said, and she glanced back towards the reef.

It was, indeed, escaping. The anchor hadn’t gripped the sand. The yacht was now caught in the rip and heading out to sea.

‘One of the fishermen will follow it,’ she told him. ‘The rip’s easy to read. They’ll figure where it goes.’

‘It’d be good to get to it now.’

‘What could a yacht have that a good rock doesn’t provide?’ she demanded, feigning astonishment. And then she looked at his legs. ‘Except maybe disinfectant and dressings. And sunburn cream.’

‘And maybe a good strong rum,’ he added.

‘Trapped on an island with a sailor and a bottle of rum? I don’t think so.’ She was waffling but strangely it helped. It was okay to be silly.

Silliness helped block the thought of what had to be faced. Of Sefina’s body drifting out to sea...

‘Tell me about yourself,’ Max said, and she realised he was trying to block things out, too.

‘What’s to tell?’ She shrugged. ‘I’m Hettie. I’m charge nurse here. I’m thirty-five years old. I came to Wildfire eight years ago and I’ve been here ever since. I gather you’ve been here once or twice while I’ve been based here, but it must have coincided with my breaks off the island.’

‘Where did you learn to swim?’

‘Sydney. Bondi.’

‘The way you swim... You trained as a lifesaver?’

‘I joined as a Nipper, a trainee lifesaver, when I was six.’ The surf scene at Bondi had been her tribe then. ‘How did you know?’

‘I saw how you took Joni from me,’ he reminded her. ‘All the right moves.’

‘You were a Nipper, too?’

‘We didn’t have Nippers on Wildfire. I did have an aunt, though. Aunt Dotty. She knew the kids on the island spent their spare time doing crazier and crazier dives. I’ve dived off this headland more times than you’ve had hot dinners. We reckoned we knew the risks but Dotty said if I was going to take risks I’d be trained to take risks. So, like you, aged six I was out in the bay, learning the right way to save myself and to save others.’ He shrugged. ‘But until today I’ve never had to save anyone.’

‘You are a surgeon, though,’ she said gently, looking to deflect the bleakness. ‘I imagine you save lots and lots.’

He smiled at that and she thought, He has such a gentle smile. For a big man...his smile lit his face. It made him seem younger.

‘Lots and lots,’ he agreed. ‘If I count every appendix...’

‘You should.’