Marion Lennox - His Secret Love-Child

What had he had? Cal thought grimly. One bedtime. He’d read his son one story and now he was gone.

One story was never going to be enough. He wanted more. He wanted so much.

He needed his son.

He needed Gina.

He sat rigid in the helicopter with Mike staring grim-faced ahead, and Cal did his own staring ahead.

What a fool he’d been. What a stupid, hopeless, inadequate fool. So many people had tried to tell him, but he’d done it his way. He’d tried to make himself self-contained, but to do that…it was just plain dumb. He could share his life with Gina and with CJ and with Rudolph and whoever else came along, and he could love them to bits and he could let himself need them, and why not? Because whatever disaster happened in the future, he could never feel any worse than he did right now.

‘For God’s sake, how much longer?’ he exploded, and Mike glanced across with sympathy.

‘Five minutes, mate.’

‘And there’s no news.’ Why was the radio dead?

‘You know there’s transmission dead spots on this part of the river.’

‘Then they should move to where they can transmit.’

And move away from where CJ had fallen in? It was a dumb suggestion. Both of them knew it and Mike was kind enough not to say it.

‘I’ll kill him,’ Cal was saying, directing impotent fury at the absent Bruce. ‘To take my kid on that part of the river…’

‘It’s safe enough. They were in a high-sided boat.’

‘He should have roped him in.’

‘Yeah, I can see CJ agreeing to that,’ Mike retorted. ‘No one gets roped into tourist boats. There’s usually no need. How he fell…’

‘Can’t you make this machine go faster?’

‘We’re almost there,’ Mike told him, and the big chopper swooped down in a long, low dive. They’d reached the fork where the main tributary turned northwards. ‘We’re assuming they’re on the main branch. Let’s just keep our eyes peeled until we see them.’

There was no need for him to say it.

Three pairs of eyes were scouring every inch of the river.

With dread.

Gina heard the chopper first. She glanced over her shoulder and she could just make it out, low on the horizon and half-hidden by the canopy of the boat.

‘That’s the Rescue Response helicopter,’ she said, and everyone turned.

‘There must be another drama along here somewhere,’ Bruce muttered. He was sounding a bit shaken, as indeed they all were. ‘It’ll be that blasted boat, come to grief. They come here doing ten times the legal limit-they’ll have hit a log. They’ll be lucky if they haven’t killed themselves, the fools.’

‘Oh, no,’ Gina whispered, hugging CJ closer. His wet little body was dripping against her, making them both soggy, but she didn’t care. He was still tear-stained and shaking against her, but the worst of his sobs had died. ‘We don’t need any more drama.’

But the corpulent American in the back of the boat was suddenly looking uncomfortable.

‘We might…we might just have a problem here,’ he admitted.

‘What?’ Bruce raked his bare head and looked exasperated. His expedition to show Gina the river wasn’t going to plan. He hadn’t wanted to bring tourists but the Americans were wealthy and prepared to pay a premium if he took them today, so he’d thought he could include them. Now this had happened, and he’d like to be comforting Gina, but he still had to be a tour operator. And on top of everything else, he’d lost his favourite hat!

‘When the little guy fell overboard…’ the man said.

‘Yeah?’

‘Well, everyone was screaming and you guys were real busy trying to haul him in and then Marsha screamed about the crocodile and I saw it and I just… I just…’ He lifted his cellphone and looked sheepish. ‘I knew your emergency code here was 000 so I dialled it.’

‘You dialled the emergency services,’ Harry said slowly.

‘Well, I did.’ The man beamed, recovering. ‘And, of course, after we got the kiddy back…after seeing those great jaws chomp on that hat…but we had him safe… Well, I guess I clean forgot that I’d phoned, but I’d imagine that’s why they’re coming, to look for us.’

‘I guess they are,’ Gina said, and all of a sudden she cheered right up.

The sight of CJ floating downstream on a log, and then the huge teeth rearing up and snapping down on Bruce’s hat wasn’t something she’d forget in a hurry. She was holding CJ tight and he was still shaking, and she’d been thinking she badly wanted to go home. But suddenly the helicopter was overhead and she thought maybe, just maybe, home was coming to her.

Don’t hope, she told herself. It wouldn’t be. It wouldn’t…

But Bruce was winding the canopy back so they could see up, and the helicopter was right above them, the whirling of its rotor blades causing white water. She could see…

Cal.

He was looking down at her and his face-dear God, his face.

What had he thought?

She knew exactly what he’d thought. The expression on his face matched how she’d felt as she’d seen CJ slide overboard.

Well, why wouldn’t he look like that?

He was family.

Home had come to her.

IT TOOK them ages-ten minutes at least-before the boat could reach a place where the helicopter could land. They steered back along the river, and the helicopter stayed with them every inch of the way.

Up in the chopper, the crew were all crowded into the cockpit, probably breaking every safety rule in the book, Gina decided. Mike and Hamish and Cal. They were watching CJ. The moment the little boy had looked up at them and given a tentative, shaken smile and a tiny wave…well, the expression on all of their faces would stay with Gina for ever.

How had she ever thought she could go back to Idaho?

Home was here.

And then they were mooring at a jetty near a picnic ground. The helicopter was landing. Bruce and the tourists were climbing off the boat, but Gina didn’t move. She sat still, holding CJ. The vision of the croc coming toward her son was still with her. Her legs weren’t moving. She couldn’t get her legs to move.

But she didn’t need to.

Cal was out of the chopper and running toward them. He was climbing down into the boat, oblivious of the Americans climbing upward onto the jetty, oblivious of Bruce.

He was gathering her into his arms. He was gathering his son into his arms, and by the way he held her she knew that this man would never let her go again.

‘I thought I’d lost you,’ he murmured.

‘It was CJ who fell.’

‘It makes no difference which,’ he told her, pressing his lips into her hair. ‘You and CJ. My loves. My two loves. I thought I’d lost my family.’

The nursery lights were dim when they returned.

Equanimity restored, CJ had headed to the hospital kitchen to tell Rudolph and Mrs Grubb all about the very exciting adventures of his hat. Hamish and Mike had disappeared to tell everyone the good news-though the radio call to Charles would have done the same thing. Cal and Gina fell behind, but somehow, because it seemed the right thing to do, the obvious thing to do, for this was who had brought them together in the first place, Cal and Gina ended up beside Lucky’s crib.

Lucky was the only baby in the nursery, and he certainly had medical attention. Em, Mike, Hamish, Charles, Jill, and now Cal and Gina. They were all there.

‘There’s nothing wrong?’ Gina asked, startled at the mass medical gathering.

‘No,’ Jill said, and tried to look busy. ‘I was just checking Lucky’s obs had been done.’

‘And I was doing the obs,’ Em said.

‘And I was checking that Jill had checked that the obs had been done,’ Charles said, and grinned.