Erin ran her eyes over the bulk of him, with his muscled shoulders and the strength of his hands and realised none of it mattered. The heart only seemed to come in one easily-breakable size.
“I need to find Mum,” she said.
But Travers wasn’t paying attention. “What the ...”
Erin followed his gaze to the television, where the news bulletin was now showing jerky pictures of a choppy sea. Some people were on a boat, bouncing through the waves, the sheer face of a cliff rising perilously close beside them. Erin’s stomach dived; god, had other people had been caught in the storm?
Then slowly, she realised the footage was of her and Travers. That the cliff was the reach between Bella’s Leap and the next headland. The footage had now reached the point where Travers was hauling Alex into the boat. Most of the action was off the far left of the camera, but it was unmistakable. Travers was fiddling with the volume buttons on the TV, while Erin covered her mouth with her hands. It wasn’t as she remembered; the cliff hadn’t been that close, had it?
“... incredible pictures show just how perilous the rescue was. And again, as we understand, the people in the boat are Erin Jacobs, who recently found some fame as part of the revitalised Great Haven Regatta, and Darren Travers, an ex-army salvage diver who crews on Erin’s boat. At the current time, we understand Dr Bell remains in a critical condition in the Port Hospital. In a few minutes, we’ll speak to coastal search and rescue experts about the extraordinary footage. Meanwhile, the federal government is debating the future of Medicare ...”
Travers shut off the volume again as the picture cut back to the studio anchor, fixing Erin with an apologetic look. “Shit.”
“How is that even possible?” she asked.
“There’s a GoPro on the side rail of my boat,” Travers said. “I started running it when we were going in to the bay to anchor. I thought it would make some good footage, all the boats there, the storm coming in. I forgot to turn it off. But someone obviously noticed it and swiped it. Bloody hell.”
He rubbed his mouth, as if trying to decide something important.
“What?” Erin asked.
“I’m just thinking I should get going. The journalists will turn up, if they aren’t here already.”
“You’re leaving?”
He nodded reluctantly, but his eyes couldn’t quite meet hers. He was up to something. “Yeah, I need to take care of things back there. Secure my ruddy property for a start.”
He was at the door before Erin could comprehend what was happening. “Wait, Travers.”
She was about to say don’t leave me, but it would have been the wrong sentiment. Erin knew she had no right to expect anyone here with her. But he came back anyway, putting his two big hands on her shoulders. “I’ll keep in touch,” he said. And he gave her a rough kiss on the forehead, and squeezed her arms before he left. Erin rocked back in surprise.
She slipped out into the hall, creeping back towards the ICU. It seemed to take an age to reach Alex’s bed again, another age to take his hand in hers. Still cold, so cold. The only evidence of life were the trace lines on the monitors. She had to feel for the pulse in his wrist before she would believe he was still alive.
But for how much longer?
She could see the day staff congregating in the nurses’ station, about to start the ward round. Perhaps they would have something to say, but more likely it would be more waiting, more room for hope to grow and be shattered. She didn’t realise she’d put her head down on her arm until someone tapped her on the shoulder.
“Erin?”
Erin pulled her eyes up to find Wendy, the triage nurse.
“Would you come down to the ED? Your mother’s had a little turn.”
Chapter 26
Erin hurried all the way with panic-laden footsteps, despite Wendy’s assurances that she didn’t need to rush. All Erin could think was not her mother, too. Had Skye told her after all?
Anna was lying on a bed on one of the emergency bays, another nurse just finishing an ECG trace.
“I’m really fine,” she was protesting. “It’s just my low blood pressure. Oh, Erin.”
Erin gripped the blanket at the foot of the bed as the nurse scrutinised the ECG. Her mother seemed so thin and frail against the sheets, a smudge of blue paint on her index finger too close to the shade of her skin. Erin smelled nothing in the cool hospital air, which was completely wrong. Her mother should smell of warm paper, oil paints and blooming flowers.
“What happened?” Erin asked.
“I fainted just outside. I was sitting on the bench and all these news vans turned up. I stood up too fast, that’s all.”
“Does this happen a lot?” the nurse asked, slapping a blood pressure cuff on Anna’s arm again and pumping it up as she plugged the stethoscope ends into her ears.
“All the time,” Anna said. “Well, now and then.”
The nurse nodded, pressing the stethoscope into her mother’s elbow. The cuff hissed as she let off the pressure.
“I didn’t know that,” Erin said, guilt pumping through her heart.
“It’s not a big deal,” Anna said firmly. “Low blood pressure is a good thing, right?”
“Generally, yes,” said the nurse. “And the ECG does look normal. We should just make sure that there’s nothing else to find. I’ll be back with some other tests.”
Anna watched her go. “It’s all the walking,” she said, then glanced at Erin. “I started just for the book research. But then parts of the island I’d never seen before. I enjoy finding new things every time I go out. I think half the village has never gone beyond the main beach.”
“You should tell someone where you’re going,” Erin said. “What if you fainted out there, or twisted your ankle or something? Phones don’t work on half the island!”
“I’m fine,” Anna said emphatically. “Most the time, I don’t know where I’m going anyway. Sometimes I find myself at the homestead, or in the hills, thinking about Bella. Looking for the waterhole. But I’ve never found it. Sometimes I think it’s not meant to be found.”
“Or it doesn’t exist.”
“Of course it exists.”
Erin looked up with a jerk. That fierce tone was something she hadn’t heard in a long time. Her mother almost looked surprised herself, then her expression drifted, her mouth corners tugging down. She looked at Erin sadly. “You don’t know the whole story, do you?”
And suddenly, Erin couldn’t bear her secret. She hated that her mother must have pined for her lost husband, knowing only that Erin had been the last to see him, and hadn’t been able to save him. That her mother had buried herself in a research project that was now affecting her own health.
“Mum, I need to tell you something.” The words fell from her mouth, outstripping the apprehension.
But her mother held up a finger. “Not here. They’re going to let me go.”
They found a tiny garden courtyard in the centre of the hospital. The tiny space was hung with fern baskets and decorated with a trickling water feature shaped like a green tree frog. Even so, Erin couldn’t relax. She was strung as tight as mast wire in a forty-knot wind.
They sat on the bench, but Erin couldn’t start. So finally, her mother spoke. “Do you want to know all of Bella’s story?”
Erin shook her head, terrified of losing her chance. Her father had sworn her to secrecy, but Skye already knew, so Erin had to push every word past her fear.
“Mum ... I need to tell you what happened ... with Dad.”
A long silence.
“What really happened, I mean.”
The water feature gurgled, and a fern pot spun lazily. Erin snuck a glance at her mother, who was looking down at her hands, a frown of concentration between her brows. She prepared to be hated for what she had to say.
“Do you think I don’t know?” Anna said finally.
Erin gritted her teeth. “I don’t mean about the storm, about the police report, I mean what
really happened. See he was—”
“I know about the cancer.”
Erin stopped, dumbfounded. Anna glanced across. Her eyes were red, but there was no malice in her expression.
“I knew about the cancer,” she said softly. “I knew what he was planning to do. At first, I was aghast. I didn’t understand why he’d turn his back on the system he’d worked in all his life. I wanted to help him, but not what he wanted to do. And then, one day he sailed away with you and didn’t come back. I loved him, but I never forgave him for asking you to help, and for keeping that from me. He shouldn’t have put that on you.”
Erin took a breath to speak, but her mother ploughed on, with a trace of bitterness. “He told me that the two of you were just going on a last trip so I thought there was still time. And then came the news reports, and I knew it wasn’t an accident.”
“Mum …”
Anna smiled sadly. “I thought you and I would end up talking about it. But everything was in such a mess afterwards, and then you left. I wondered if I was wrong for a while. Some days I’d convince myself it really was an accident, and then I didn’t know which way was up. I must have walked the island a thousand times thinking the same thoughts. But then you came back, and I saw how you’re walking around with the weight of it on you. I never, ever wanted that for you.”
“I had no idea,” Erin mumbled, her shock too fresh to feel any relief.
Her mother’s shoulders lifted. “I haven’t known how to talk to you. I didn’t know if I’d be making it worse to bring it all up again. Besides, we were never … close like that. So I kept coming to your boat, just to give you that chance to say it if you needed to. Some people don’t.”
Erin felt the gulf between her and her mother, as though her toes were on the edge of a cliff. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, guilty and sad.
“No, don’t be,” Anna said quickly.
“But your health,” Erin said. “You look so unwell since I came back, and I know that has to be because of how it all happened.”
Her mother took a deep breath. “Erin, I aged while you were gone. A few more years than the four you were away, probably, but if it was anything, it was worrying about how you were. Yes, I’ve low blood pressure. But for most things you’re concerned about … I’ve come to accept them for what they were. And I’ve enjoyed coming to know the island. I know it better now than I ever did the first decade we lived there. The only thing that gives me pain these days is seeing you not at peace. Do you regret what you did for him?”
“No,” she said slowly. “I wished it could be different, but no.”
“Then don’t be sorry. It was a privilege to see how the two of you were together. No one would begrudge such closeness. I only regret that I couldn’t have spared you however hard these years must have been, carrying around that secret.”
“He didn’t ask me to help,” Erin said. “I don’t want you to think that. I just couldn’t let him sail off by himself.”
Her mother sighed, as if a great weight had lifted. “Then you were braver than I was. Just like him. You really are the best of him, Erin.”
Erin closed her eyes. “Skye knows,” she said. “She overheard me telling Alex about what happened.”
“Oh.” Anna looked skywards, and sighed heavily. “And?”
Erin told her mother what Skye had said.
“Your sister has a firm sense of what’s right, but she hasn’t had to live outside the island. She should have a long time ago, spent some time broadening her horizons, learning to deal with people who don’t agree with her. But she’s also loyal and sensitive, underneath. She’ll find her way round eventually,” Anna said.
“But what if she tells—”
“Who? The village?”
“I was going to say, Tristan.”
Anna frowned. “I don’t think even Skye would do that. She might have a temper, but she also knows what’s family business. I know because she kept your secrets when you were children.”
Erin felt a smile tug her lips, thinking of all the things they’d gotten up to, and that Skye had always kept quiet about it, even when Erin had been the instigator, even when they’d both been in trouble. But abruptly, she realised how little any of it mattered. What did she care, when Alex was going to die?
Another fat tear slid down her cheek. Her mother’s arm came around her. “How’s he doing?”
Erin swiped the tears away. “No change.”
“Then we’ll go back up again,” said Anna.
Alex was exactly as Erin had left him. The doctors’ round had come and gone, but Karen Bailey came back to see them. Erin could tell from her expression that she was preparing them for bad news. Erin gripped the counter.
“We’re concerned about ...” Dr Bailey began, and the list seemed not to end. Seizures. DVTs. Liver function. Electrolytes. Swelling.
Erin couldn’t absorb any of the details, except that the outcome was still in jeopardy.
She went back to sit with him, anguished, hating everything she heard. The soft shush of the ventilator, reminding her that he wasn’t breathing on his own; the electronic ticks and clicks of the machines that fed him fluids and medicines. She remembered her father being adamant he would never end up like this, and Erin could finally understand in a far too visceral way.
“I’ll leave you,” Anna said, softly.
“No, stay,” said Erin, gripping her mother’s hand in a way she never had in her life. She didn’t want to be alone again. She and Alex hadn’t had nearly enough time together, but she didn’t want his last moments to be silent. She wanted to talk to him, to tell him something that would interest him, that he could take to wherever he was going. And she needed her mother to be here for that.
“Alex, I want to tell you Bella’s story,” she said. She glanced at Anna, who nodded once and then dragged a chair over.
“Bella came to Haven with her husband Thomas, and five hundred sheep,” Erin continued. “No white men lived on the island then. No one had been game enough to take up the lease. The island was known as a devil’s place – unpredictable weather. Treacherous waters. There were stories about men disappearing there, what with the savage Indigenous folk who were supposed to live there.”
Anna made a disgruntled sound. Erin glanced across.
“Now of course those stories weren’t true, Alex. But let’s just say things were hard. Bella and Thomas had to build the homestead, and the shearing shed, and fences for the yards. Feed themselves and their dogs and horses. People thought they were mad, but they proved the doubters wrong. The herd grew, and with the shearing, they began to make money. But of course, it didn’t last.”
That was the way the story had always been told to Erin, but for the first time, she felt in her aching heart how those simple words could cover so much turmoil.
“Thomas died of a fever within three years. Bella was left on her own. Her family didn’t want her to stay – they said it was madness for a woman to be running a sheep station, especially on some isolated island. But Bella refused their offers to go back to Sydney. Instead, she explored the island. She made notes about things she found, but not always exactly where. She wrote about caves in the northern hills, and a waterhole, though no one’s ever found that one. Her family pressured her – both her brother and her brother-in-law visited, trying to convince her to leave. But she wouldn’t go. She developed a very strong friendship with the local people. She wrote about how they nursed her once when she had a fever herself, and that they watched over her from the hills. By all accounts, she was a success, and so other people began to show an interest in the lease.
“She held onto it, through all the pressures. Her health was failing in the end – she had a cough that wouldn’t shift, and arthritis from the heavy work, but she still resisted giving up the place. Until finally one day, she just disappeared. There’s lots of stories about what happened to her. Some of them say that she walked up into the hills to live out her end in the caves, ot
hers that she did leave for Sydney after all, changing her name to avoid the stigma of being the crazy sheep lady from the Queensland Island. Or that she died in a shipwreck. No one knows the truth, except that she had a hard and amazing life—”
At another sound from her mother, Erin broke off.
“You must forgive her our Erin, Dr Alex,” Anna said. “She doesn’t know the real story. I wish it was such a fairytale. But Bella’s life was nothing like that.”
“You don’t think she had an amazing life?” Erin asked.
“She was an amazing woman,” Anna said. “But she lived through many hells, and what happened to her was a tragedy. Do you really want to know how it really goes?”
Erin nodded, her hand finding Alex’s fingers again, which held a faint trace of warmth.
Anna sighed. “Some of the details are right. She did come with her husband, and he did die, and so did she, but the story doesn’t go the way you’ve just heard. Thomas, you see, was a violent man.
“These are things that I wish I never had to hear, or say. But from the moment they landed, Thomas was determined to make Haven his own island. He was ruthless. He hunted the Indigenous people, and Bella hated him for it. God knows how many he killed, but one sultry afternoon, with a storm blowing in, he’d cornered two boys by one of the sheds. He would have killed them cold, but for Bella. She felled him right there, with a branch, as I understand. He never woke again.”
Anna leaned forward and pressed her hand to Alex’s blanketed leg. “He was a bad sort of man, Alex. The sort who shouldn’t wake up. So don’t go taking any messages from that, you hear?”
She settled back. “So now, her husband’s dead. And things are hard, yes. It took Bella a long time to establish trust with the local people. They saw her as part of Thomas. But eventually, they came to an understanding. Even an accord. Maybe, with one man in particular, even more. And that was where the trouble started. Erin is right – her family did want her to leave the island and go back to Sydney. They wanted her to marry again, and her brother-in-law was the one vying to take Thomas’s place. That was his motivation in coming to the island. And I bet that Bella regretted having told her family so much about the place in her letters and piquing their interest.
On a Starlit Ocean Page 25
