He still had Joni.
She’d been out of the water now for five minutes. She had her breath back. Blessedly, she could help. She clambered down over the rocks, heading out into the shallows, reaching for Joni.
She had him. They had him.
Safe?
FOR A WHILE they were too exhausted to speak. They were too exhausted to do anything but lie on the rocks, Joni somehow safe between them.
The little boy was silent, passive...past shock? Maybe she was, too, and as she looked at Max collapsed beside them she thought, That makes three.
‘S-Sefina,’ she whispered.
‘Neck,’ he managed, and it was enough to tell her what she needed to know.
Oh, God, she should have...
Should have what? Cradled Sefina yesterday as she was cradling Joni now?
Yes, if that’s what it would have taken.
If this had happened at a normal time... But it hadn’t. Sefina had been admitted into hospital, bashed almost to the point of death, while the cyclone had been building. With the cyclone bearing down on them Hettie hadn’t had time to do more than tend to the girl’s physical needs.
Afterwards, when there’d been time to take stock and question her, Keanu, the island doctor on duty, had contacted the police. ‘I want her husband brought in. With the extent of these injuries it’s lucky he didn’t kill her.’
It’s lucky he didn’t kill her...
She remembered Keanu’s words and her breath caught on a sob.
Hettie de Lacey was a professional. She didn’t cry. She held herself to herself. She coped with any type of trauma her job threw at her.
But she sobbed now, just once, a great heaving gulp that shook her entire body. And then somehow she pulled herself back together. Almost.
Max’s arm came over her, over Joni, enfolding them both, and she needed it. She needed his touch.
‘You’re safe,’ he told her. ‘And the little one’s safe.’ And then he added, ‘Keep it together. For now, we’re all he has.’
It was a reminder. It wasn’t a rebuke, though. It was just a fact. She’d been terrified, she was shocked and exhausted, and she still had to come to terms with what had happened, but the child between them had to come first.
And Max himself... He’d swum over those rocks. Over that coral...
She took a couple of deep breaths and managed to sit up. The sun was full out. The storm of the past days was almost gone. Apart from the spray blasting the headland and the massive breakers heading for shore, this could be just a normal day in paradise.
Wildfire Island. The M’Langi isles. This was surely one of the most beautiful places in the world.
The world would somehow settle.
She gathered Joni into her arms and held him tight, crooning softly into his wet curls. He was still wearing a sodden hospital-issue nappy and a T-shirt one of the nurses had found for him in the emergency supplies. It read, incongruously, ‘My grandma went to London and all she brought me back was this T-shirt’.
It was totally inappropriate. Joni didn’t have a grandma, or not one who’d acknowledge him.
Max had allowed himself a couple of moments of lying full length in the sun, as if he needed its warmth. Of course he did. They all did. But now he, too, pushed himself to sitting, and for the first time she saw his legs.
They’d been slashed on the coral. He had grazes running from groin to toe, as if the sea had dragged him straight across the rocks.
What cost, to try and save Sefina?
He’d saved Joni.
‘I never could have got him here,’ she whispered, still holding him tight. The toddler was curled into her, as if her body was his only protection from the outside world. ‘I never could have saved him without you.’
‘Do you know...? Do you know who he is?’ Max asked.
‘His name is Joni Dason. His mother’s name is...was Sefina.’
‘A friend?’ He was watching her face. ‘She was your friend?’
‘I... A patient.’ And then she hesitated. ‘But I was present at Joni’s birth. Maybe I was...Sefina’s friend. Maybe I’m the only...’
And then she stopped. She couldn’t go on.
‘I’m Max Lockhart,’ Max said, and she managed to nod, grateful to be deflected back to his business rather than having to dwell on her shock and grief.
‘I guessed as much when I saw your yacht. Caroline will be so relieved. She’s been out of her mind with worry.’
‘My boat rolled. I lost my radio and phone three days ago. Everything that could be damaged by water was damaged.’
‘So you’ve been sitting out here, waiting for someone to notice you?’
‘I reached the island last night. It was too risky to try for the harbour, and frankly I wasn’t going to push my luck heading to one of the outer islands. So, yes, I’ve been here overnight but no one’s noticed.’
‘I noticed.’
‘Thank you. You are?’
‘Hettie de Lacey. Charge nurse at Wildfire.’
‘I’m pleased to meet you, Hettie.’ He hesitated and then went on. ‘I’m very pleased to meet you. Without both of us... Well, we did the best we could.’
‘You’re injured. Those cuts need attention.’
‘They do,’ he agreed. ‘I need disinfectant to avoid infection, but the alternative...’
‘You never would have saved Joni without swimming over the coral,’ she whispered, and once again she buried her face in the little boy’s hair. ‘Thank you.’
‘I would have...I so wanted...’
‘Yes,’ she said gently. ‘But she jumped too close to the rocks for either of us to do anything.’
‘Depression?’
‘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