He nodded. ‘Other direction.’
‘The roads—’
‘Not open. We’ll take them as far as we can on the road but then they’ll have to walk.’
Somehow, Cass managed to turn the pick-up round in the very small space available. The pregnant woman sat next to Cass with her husband squashed in by the door.
Although the road was a lot clearer than it had been in the morning, it still seemed to take an age and then, inevitably, they could drive no more.
‘What will happen now?’ Cass asked Kai, who had come up to the cab to speak to her when her passengers had got out.
He shrugged. ‘We’ll walk and carry the mother to Roseau, to hospital. What else can we do?’
‘You need some sort of stretcher,’ said Cass. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got.’
A tarpaulin was found in the back of Bastian’s pick-up and tied to some branches with a coil of rope.
‘But won’t she have the baby before she gets to Roseau?’ Cass said to no one in particular. The woman had been making sounds which implied to Cass the birth of the baby was imminent.
‘We hope not,’ said one of the men who was part of the team which had formed to help her.
‘Does she need me to come with her?’ said Cass, who was very unhappy about letting this woman in labour be carried on a homemade stretcher for many miles.
The woman’s husband smiled. ‘You are needed here. You take Bastian’s pick-up back to his house. There’s more work for it waiting.’
Soon Cass was alone, and on the drive back to Bastian’s house she wished she could have done more to help that poor woman. It might take days to get to Roseau, even if there were mountain tracks that would be shorter than the roads. She felt it would have been better for the woman to stay at home. But it had not been her decision, and the group supporting her seemed certain of their mission.
The house was empty when she arrived back and Cass was grateful. A bit of time to herself, a cup of tea and she would be restored, although she hoped she wouldn’t need to go out again or she’d definitely be caught out in the dark.
She had just made the tea, grateful for Bastian for having a large supply of tea bags, when there was a knock on the door. Since she’d been there, everyonehad just walked into the house, calling for Bastian. She went to the door and opened it.
There was a large white man standing there. He was about the same age as Ranulph and Bastian – mid-thirties – and was wearing a linen shirt and trousers; he was holding a Panama hat. ‘Hi,’ he said in a friendly way. ‘I’m Austin Gilmour. Sorry to call unannounced!’
He had an American accent and a white-toothed smile. Cass smiled back, a little bewildered.
‘Is this where Bastian lives? I gather he’s the hotshot on the island.’
Cass became even more bewildered. She could have found many ways of describing Bastian but ‘hotshot’ wasn’t one of them. ‘He does live here, yes.’
‘Thank goodness. I’ve just come across from Marie-Galante—’
‘Did you bring supplies with you? Tinned tuna is what is popular right now. You can eat it without cooking it. Not everyone one has fuel.’
Austin Gilmour seemed surprised at this suggestion. ‘No, I came in a hurry – no time for shopping.’ He smiled again. It occurred to Cass that he had spent a lot of money on his smile and wanted to get value from it.
‘Oh, well, I really hope you’re a doctor. I have a very high-end first aid kit and I don’t know how to use half the things in it. If I could hand it over to you—’
‘I’m not a medical doctor, I’m afraid. Although I am a doctor. Anthropology and archaeology is my area.’
Cass nodded. Why couldn’t he have been something useful? ‘Would you like some tea?’
It felt awkward saying this: it implied they were in a vicarage in the Home Counties and she was the daughter of the house. What she longed to ask was why, as an anthropologist, or archaeologist, he’d thought it a good idea to visit Bastian just after a hurricane. But she felt obliged to rein this in, not least because her own reasons for being on the island didn’t bear much inspection either. She wished Bastian or Ranulph would appear.
While she was boiling water on the Primus it occurred to her she hadn’t seen Ranulph for ages. Of course there were a million possible reasons for this but she found herself longing for him. If this was the crush she was so determined to get over, or a need for someone familiar in this strange environment, she couldn’t tell.
She had given a mug a rudimentary wash, having no idea how much water there was available, when she realised her guest had disappeared. He had left the kitchen and gone into the large sitting room. Currently this was filled with boxes of provisions, camping stoves, crates of fruit and vegetables, bottled water and cases of baby food. But Austin Gilmour was ignoring the supplies and was peering at the bookshelves beyond.
‘Here’s the tea,’ she said. ‘Did you come all this way to borrow a book?’
