‘I’m Matt McLellan,’ he said softly, but there was a growl underneath, an inherent threat. Was it...don’t mess with me? ‘You’re booked to take me to Garnett Island. Is there a problem?’
Charlie stood up so fast his chair fell over behind him. He grabbed a grubby notepad from beside the phone, wrote a figure on it and shoved it across the desk at Meg.
She glanced down at it and turned bug-eyed.
‘That’d be my cut?’ she asked incredulously. What had this guy offered Charlie?
‘Yes,’ he said hurriedly and surged around the desk to take the stranger’s hand. ‘There’s no problem, Mr. McLellan. This is Meg O’Hara, your skipper. She’ll take you out, anchor until you have the little one settled and then bring you back.’
‘Little one?’ Meg asked.
‘He’s taking a boy out to his grandmother,’ Charlie said, talking too fast. ‘That’s right, isn’t it, sir?’
‘That’s right.’ The man dropped Charlie’s hand and glanced at his own. She saw an almost-instinctive urge to wipe it.
She didn’t blame him. Charlie’s hands... Ugh.
Though she glanced down at herself and thought... I’m almost as bad.
‘But you have reservations?’ he said. He’d obviously overheard. ‘The boat?’
‘We had the boat in dry dock just last week,’ Charlie said. ‘I checked her personally. And Meg here is one of our most experienced skippers. Ten years of commercial fishing and another two years taking fishing charters. There’s nothing about the sea she doesn’t know.’
‘She doesn’t look old enough to have done any of those things.’
‘Is that a compliment or what?’ It was time she was part of this conversation, Meg decided. She knew she looked young, and her jeans, baggy windcheater, short copper curls and no make-up wouldn’t be helping. ‘I’m twenty-eight. I started fishing with my grandfather when I was sixteen. He got sick when I was twenty-five so we sold the boat and I took a part-time job helping Charlie with fishing charters. My granddad died six months ago, so I can now take longer charters.’ She glanced at the note Charlie had given her. This amount... She could even get the leak over the washhouse fixed. ‘The boy... Is he your son?’
‘I don’t have a son.’
Hmm. If she was going to be forthcoming, so was he.
‘I’m not about to let you take a kid I know nothing about and dump him on Garnett Island.’ She planted her feet square and met him eye to eye. ‘Garnett Island’s four hours off the mainland. As far as I know, Peggy Lakey lives there and no one else.’
‘Peggy’s Henry’s grandmother.’
‘Really?’ Local lore said Peggy had no relatives at all. ‘How old’s Henry?’
‘Seven.’
‘He’s going on a holiday?’
‘To stay.’
‘Is that right? Are you his legal guardian?’
‘It’s none of your business.’
‘If you want my help it’s very much my business.’ Behind her she could see Charlie almost weep. The figure he’d scrawled represented a month’s takings and that was only her cut. But she had to ignore the money. This was a kid. ‘You’re American, right?’
‘Right.’
‘Henry’s American, too?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you must have had documentation allowing you to bring him out of the country. Giving you authority. Can I see?’
‘Meg!’ Charlie was almost wringing his hands but Charlie wasn’t the one being asked to leave a child on an almost-deserted island.
‘You can see,’ he said and flipped a wad of documents from an inside pocket and laid them on the desk. Then he glanced outside, as if checking. For the child?
‘Where’s Henry now?’ she asked.
‘We just had fish and chips. He’s feeding the leftovers to the seagulls.’
‘Greasy food before heading to sea? Does he get seasick?’
That brought a frown. ‘I didn’t think...’
She was flipping through the documents. ‘These say you’re not even related.’
‘I’m not related,’ he said and then obviously decided the easiest way to get past her belligerence was to be forthcoming.
‘I’m a lawyer and financial analyst in Manhattan,’ he said. ‘Henry’s mother, Amanda, is...was...a lawyer in my company. She was a single mother and no one’s ever been told who Henry’s father is. Henry’s quiet. When he’s not in school he sits in her office or out in the reception area. He reads or watches his notepad. Then two weeks ago, Amanda was killed. She was on her phone, she walked into traffic and suddenly there was no one for Henry.’
‘Oh...’ And her head switched from distrust to distress, just like that. Her own parents... A car crash. She’d been eleven.
Her grandparents had been with her from the moment she’d woken in the hospital. She had a sudden vision of a seven-year-old who sat in a reception area and read.
There was no one for Henry.
But she wasn’t paid to be emotional. She was paid to get the job done.
‘So...your relationship with him?’ She was leafing through the documents, trying to get a grip.
‘I’m no relation.’ His voice was suddenly bleak. ‘Sometimes he sits in my office while I work. It was term break, so he was with me when we heard of his mother’s death. The birth certificate names the father as Steven Walker but gives no details. We haven’t been able to track him down and no one else seems to care. Apart from Peggy.’
And just like that, her bristles turned to fluff.
‘Garnett Island?’ she said, hauling herself—with difficulty—away from the image she was starting to have of a bereft seven-year-old sitting in a lawyer’s office when someone came to tell him his mum was dead.
‘As far as we can find out, Peggy Lakey’s now Henry’s only living relative,’ he told her. ‘Peggy’s his maternal grandmother. Unless we can find his father, she has full say in his upbringing.’
‘So why didn’t she get straight on a plane?’ The solitude of Henry was still all around her.
‘She says she turns into a whimpering heap at the sight of a plane. I’ve talked to her via her radio set-up. She sounds sensible, but flying’s not an option. She made arrangements for an escort service to collect Henry and bring him to her, but, at the last minute, I...’
‘You couldn’t let him travel alone.’
The last of her bristles disintegrated. For some stupid reason she felt her eyes fill. She swiped a hand across her cheek—and felt an oil streak land where the tear had been. Good one, Meg.
‘So is that enough?’ Matt McLellan’s tone turned acerbic, moving on. ‘Can we leave?’
‘After I’ve double-checked Bertha,’ she told him with a sideways glance at Charlie. He’d checked her personally? Yeah, and she was a monkey’s uncle. She could at least give the engine a quick once-over. ‘And when you and Henry have taken seasickness tablets and let them settle. Bass Strait, Mr McLellan, is not for pussies.’
* * *
What