Alison Roberts - Wildfire Island Docs

‘Vailea, her mother, worked as the cook at the research station while we were caretakers there. But there’s all kinds of funny stuff going on there too, so now she’s housekeeper at the hospital and Anahera—she’s a bit older than you and went to school on the mainland; her grandmother lived there—well, she’s a nurse here so I mind her little one.’

It was hard to absorb so much information at once, so Caroline allowed herself to be led up to the house, where a very small child with dark eyes, olive skin and a tangle of golden curls was lining up dolls in a row on the cane lounge that had sat on the veranda for as long as Caroline could remember.

The cane lounge, potted palms everywhere, a few cane chairs around a table, once again with a smaller pot in the middle of it, and the swing she and Keanu had rocked in so often— this was coming home …

‘This is Hana,’ Bessie said, leading the little girl forward. ‘Hana, this is Miss Caroline. She lives here.’

Caroline knelt by the beautiful child, straightening one of the dolls.

‘Just Caroline will do,’ she said, ‘or even Caro.’

Caro.

No one but Keanu had ever called her Caro, but now wasn’t the time to get sentimental over Keanu, for all he looked like a Greek god, and had sent shivers down her spine just being close to him.

She was here to …

What?

She’d come because she was unhappy, seeking sanctuary in the place she’d loved most, but now she was here?

Well, she was damned if she was going to let things deteriorate any further.

But first she had to find out exactly how things stood, and whether whoever ran the hospital would give her a job, and most importantly of all right now, she had to find the steel in her inner self to work with Keanu …

‘Are you being paid, Bessie?’ she asked, thinking she had to set her own house in order first.

Bessie studied her toes then shook her dark, curly hair.

‘Anahera pays me for looking after Hana, but it’s been a while since Harold got a wage.’

Caroline was angry. She knew their fondness for the Lockhart family and gratitude for what her father had done for the islands would have kept them doing what they could whether they were paid or not.

Knew also that the couple wouldn’t be starving. Like all the islanders, and many people she knew on acreage on the mainland, they had their own plot of land around their bure—the traditional island home—and Harold would grow vegetables and raise a few pigs and chickens, but that didn’t make not paying them right.

‘Well, now I’m here we’ll shut off most of the rooms and I’ll just use my bedroom, bathroom and the kitchen. I can pay you to keep them clean and I’ll vacuum through the rest of the place once a fortnight.’

Bessie began to mutter about dust, but Caroline waved away her complaint.

‘Lockharts have been eating dust since the mine began,’ she said, ‘so a little bit on the floor of the closed rooms doesn’t matter. And now,’ she announced, ‘I’m going down to the hospital to ask whoever runs it for a job. Even if they can’t pay me, they can surely find me something to do.’

She left her case and headed back down the way she’d come. Work would give her the opportunity to find out what was going on. Even small hospitals were hotbeds of gossip.

Although …

Of course she could work with Keanu. She didn’t know the man he’d become so she’d just treat him like any other colleague.

Male colleague.

Friendly, but keeping her distance …

Definitely keeping her distance, given how the accidental touches had affected her …

Lost in her muddled thoughts, she was halfway to the hospital when she remembered the only people there had been Keanu and an aide. What had he said? Hettie and Sam were on a clinic run? Caroline knew the hospital ran weekly clinics on the other inhabited islands of the group and today must have been one of those days.

That was probably the only reason Keanu had accepted her help with the injured man earlier.

She walked back up the hill, wondering why she’d thought returning to the island was such a good idea.

Wondering how things had gone so wrong, not only with the island but between herself and Keanu.

Had she judged him too harshly?

Refused to accept he might have had a good reason for stopping communication between them?

But surely they’d been close enough for him to have given her a reason—an explanation?

Hadn’t they?

Totally miserable by the time she reached the house, she went through to her old bedroom and unpacked the case that either Bessie or Harold had left there.

Then, as being back in her old room brought nostalgia with it, she slowly and carefully toured the house.

Built like so many colonial houses in those days, it had a wide veranda with overhanging eaves around all four sides of it. She started there, at the front, looking down at the hospital and beyond it the airstrip, and onto the flat ground by the beach, and although she couldn’t see the research station, she knew it was there, sheltered beneath huge tropical fig trees and tall coconut palms.

As she knew the village was down there, on the eastern shore, nestled up against the foothills of the plateau. The village had been built on land given by her father, after the villagers on another island had lost their homes and land in a tsunami.

Now some of the villagers worked in the mine and at the hospital, and worshipped in the little white church they’d built on a rocky promontory between the village and the mine. A chapel built to celebrate their survival.

She knew the beach was there as well, but that too was hidden, although as she turned the corner and looked across the village she saw the strip of sand and the wide lagoon enclosed by the encircling coral.

On a clear day, from here and the back veranda, she’d have been able to see most of the islands that made up the M’Langi group, but today there was a sea haze.

The western veranda formed the division between the main house and the smaller copy of it, an annexe where Helen and Keanu had lived.

No way was she going there now, although their home had been as open to her as hers had been to Keanu.

This time she entered the house through the back door, through the kitchen with its different pantries opening off it and the huge wooden table where she and Keanu had eaten breakfast and lunch.

The pantries had provided great places for hide and seek, although Grandma’s cook had forever been shooing them out, afraid they’d break the precious china and crystal stored in them.

Caroline opened the door of one—empty shelves where the crystal had once reflected rainbows in the light.

The sight sent her hurrying to the dining room, on the eastern side of the main hall. Looking up, she saw with relief that the chandelier still hung above the polished dining table.

Grandma had loved that table and the grandeur of the chandelier. She had insisted Caroline, Keanu and Helen join her there for dinner every evening, the magic crystals of the chandelier making patterns on the table’s highly polished surface.

Helen would report on anything that needed doing around the house, and talk to Grandma about meals and what needed to be ordered from the mainland to come over on the next flight.

Grandma would quiz Keanu and Caroline about their day at school—what they’d learned and had they done their homework before going out to play.

Ian might have sold her grandmother’s precious crystal to cover his gambling debts but at least he’d left the chandelier.

He must have been desperate indeed to have packed the delicate objects before sending them out on the boat that made a weekly visit to the harbour at Atangi.