Austin shook his head in the same patronising way he had shaken it at Cass. ‘Everyone wants to contact everyone at the same time, Ran; it clogs up the lines. You can’t necessarily get in touch at a busy time.’
‘In which case we’ll have to try to call Howard at a less busy time. Maybe I’ll take over the radio from now on.’
‘Nuh-huh,’ said Austin. ‘It’ll be confusing if we change over now. I’ll take care of it.’
Cass, who realised she knew less about ham radio than could be written on the back of an old-fashioned postage stamp, didn’t speak. She was filled with a longing for home, for her dad, for normality.
After lunch she went into the room she shared with Ranulph and slept. When she awoke, she decided not to go back to Delphine’s – it was quite a longwalk – but to stay and, if she could, do some drawing while she was here.
There seemed to be no one about when she emerged, so she found her sketch pad and pencil and went off to find somewhere she could be on her own. If anyone came across her – and by this she meant Austin – she was just drawing local vegetation. He wouldn’t know they were sketches for Bastian’s paper that she would work up into proper illustrations.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A week later, Cass pulled the last typewritten sheet – the extra copy she had made for safety – out of the machine and added it to the pile. She had already finished her drawings. Bastian had everything he needed for his paper. It could be submitted, just as soon as it could be got off the island to somewhere with an internet connection.
She packed the typed sheets, her illustrations and Bastian’s notes into her day bag and set off for Bastian’s house. She was weary. She’d started work at 6.30 a.m. – everyone started the day early in Dominica – and it was now after two. She was also starving hungry and her shoulders felt as though they were in steel clamps but she had finished. The paper was complete.
To her surprise, everyone was still sitting round the lunch table when she got back.’
‘Hey!’ said Becca. ‘Come and join us!’
‘I’ll just go and wash my hands,’ said Cass, ‘and then I will.’
She threw her day bag in the bedroom and had a quick wash, then she went back to the big table that was in the centre of the house.
‘Sit by me,’ said Becca.
Bastian got up. ‘You look tired. Come, let us wait on you.’
While Becca passed dishes, some sort of vegetable stew, salad, some freshly made juice made from a local plant called sorrel, Bastian rubbed her shoulders.
‘You’re very knotted up, my dear,’ he said. ‘You should ask Delphine to give you a proper massage sometime. She’s excellent at them.’
Delphine, who had been passing and filling Cass’s plate, nodded. ‘I do it for the tourists,’ she said. ‘They go on these long-distance hikes and come back broken. They’re not used to walking.’
‘Well, I’m not used to using an old-fashioned typewriter,’ said Cass and then realised she shouldn’t have said that. Her extra copy of Bastian’s last section that she had banged out was a secret, currently even from Bastian.
‘So what have you been typing?’ asked Austin, who never missed a trick.
‘I’ve been writing my impressions of the island and how it’s surviving the hurricane,’ she said smoothly. ‘My father asked me to keep a diary and, of course, I haven’t done that.’ She laughed. ‘I’ve been too busy and now I’m making up for it.’
‘So is Howard planning to use your account of the island after the hurricane in his own work?’ asked Ranulph, who seemed even more tight-lipped than ever.
‘Oh, I doubt it,’ said Cass, ‘I think he just wants to know my impressions. You know he loves Dominica – he spent a lot of time here with Bastian’s father – andhe wants me to love it too.’ She smiled at everyone at the table. ‘Of course I do already. I spent a formative ten days here when I was twelve. Loved it then, love it now! This curry is amazing!’ she changed the subject, digging into it with her fork, hoping she’d satisfied everyone as to what she’d been up to on Bastian’s old typewriter.
‘Well, you’ve been doin’ a great job on my little cabin,’ said Delphine. ‘I owe you a massage in return for all that hard work.’
‘I’m longing to see that cabin,’ said Austin. ‘Perhaps when I go to check on the pick-up Errol is working on, I could take a look-see.’
When Cass awoke from her siesta at about four, she looked briefly for Ranulph but quickly realised he must have gone back to the dig. She had wanted to ask him about the radio situation but as he wasn’t there, she went into the little building herself.
Austin was sitting in there with headphones on fiddling with dusty knobs and dials.
‘Hey! Austin, I was wondering if you could help me get in touch with my dad,’ Cass said cheerfully.
‘Oh, honey, I thought I’d explained. We can’t do that.’
Austin was very firm about this but Cass didn’t believe him. ‘Surely we can work out a time when he is more likely to be sitting by his radio set?’
