Susanna gasped. ‘You could take us to Guernsey? Now?’
‘I’ll take you. Go home and get a bag with a few clothes. You can find accommodation once you’re on the island.’
Addie locked up the main door once they were outside. The girls tore home. Mateo drove his van around to the cottage and picked them up in less than ten minutes. They were on board the boat in another ten.
Addie put on the life jacket Mateo passed to her.
When Susanna’s phone rang, she answered. One finger in her ear, she said her husband’s name and gave a garbled explanation that she couldn’t talk right now.
‘Life jacket,’ Mateo prompted from beside Susanna. ‘Put it on. I’m not leaving the marina until you do.’
‘Alex, I have to go. What? No, I?—’
And then she had the phone back in her pocket and wrestled the life jacket on.
‘Alex?’ Addie asked as Mateo powered up the boat ready to leave.
‘He hung up the call. He heard a male voice. And now he knows I’m with Mateo.’
‘He must know you’re notwithhim.’
Susanna looked at her. ‘That’s the thing, he doesn’t. Mateo and I almost kissed and earlier on the phone, I told Alex.’
‘Oh, Susanna.’
‘It’s okay. I’ll explain everything to him when I’m home.’
It was a distraction of sorts as the boat raced over to Guernsey. Susanna told Addie what had happened with Mateo, how she’d stopped it before it went too far.
‘It’s all such a mess,’ Susanna said when Addie put an arm around her sister.
‘You’ll work it out, you and Alex, I just know you will.’
And when they arrived on Guernsey, it was time to refocus.
Aunt Gayle was family, and right now they had no idea whether she was going to be okay or whether they were about to lose her for good.
27
LOUISA
‘Louisa, is that you?’ Her mother’s voice on the other end of the phone made the tears flow even more. Louisa was outside the hospital on Guernsey, leaning against a wall. The skies were dark, and the world carried on around her in this place of emergency.
‘It’s me,’ she whimpered.
‘What’s happened? Are you all right?’
‘Yes, I’m fine. Sorry, I didn’t mean to panic you.’
An exhale of relief was followed by, ‘Take your time. Tell me what’s going on.’
Louisa had been an anxious child. She wasn’t sure why. Sometimes she’d wondered whether it was because it was just her and her mum, no dad to rely on, no siblings in her corner, and maybe she hadn’t learnt how to deal with things quite the way she should have. She’d shared her theory with a friend once who thought the opposite, who said she would surely be stronger if she was used to only having her mum to rely on and nobody else.
Louisa had no idea which of them was right. All she knew was that she hadn’t felt this anxious since her teenage years. She’d forgotten the feeling of having the walls of the world closing in and what it felt like to have to remind herself to take a proper breath in and let it go each time.
‘Gayle is in the hospital,’ she said, as she moved further along the wall so she was well out of the way of the ambulance bay.
‘What happened?’
