Page 56 of Reckless

Kat went still, then said, “No, not really. I was too young.”

“Me too.”

“I know.”

“I found something once. In the shed. It was a magazine. Porn, with men. I burned it.” My face burned like those pages had. “Looked at it first though.”

Kat was silent. The clock on the wall ticked. Outside, Sam bleated.

“Was his, wasn’t it? Must have been.”

Kat reached across the table and took my hand in hers. Her gaze was fierce. “You thought you’d turn out like him?”

“Didn’t I?”

“No,” she said. Her grip tightened. “You’re still here.”

My throat ached. “That’s what Alastair said.”

“He’s right.”

I looked at our hands. Her fingers were smaller than mine, but both of us had nails chipped from work. “I’m going to—” I stopped. Swallowed. “Alastair and me. We’re going to try to be something.”

“Sounds like you already are something.”

“I mean something real.”

Kat squeezed my hand then let it go. “Does he make you happy?”

I thought about it. The weight of his arm across my chest in the dark. The way he’d carded his fingers through my hair when I’d knelt for him. The way he’d said to me earlier, “There you are.” Like it meant the whole world that I was.

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, he does.”

And I thought that maybe I made Alastair happy too.

Chapter 18

ALASTAIR

Clouds came up in the afternoon, rolling slowly over the island. The sea turned dark. The wind picked up, and a tree branch scraped against the back wall of the house. It pleased me, ridiculously, to think that tomorrow I’d go out there and cut it back. Perhaps I would become a gardener after all, given a little time and patience.

The clouds brought Old Tom with them, clutching a bag of tomatoes and wearing a slightly anxious expression.

“Can I ask you something, doc? Being as, well, you looked after our Anna so kindly.”

Old Tom had an earache and had been treating it by trickling garlic juice into his ear canal. I took him into the clinic and had a look with my otoscope and prescribed a course of antibiotics that would clear the mild infection up in a few days.

“Don’t go putting anything else in there,” I told him. “Just the drops.”

“Aye,” he said, and sat there uncomfortably while I filled out a Medicare application for him. I emailed it to my health department contact, Sandra, in the hope that she could liaise with Services Australia to find out if Tom was already in the system—though given his advanced age I doubted it—and put him in it if he wasn’t. In the meantime, I accepted his tomatoes and payment and wondered how long it would take the department to realise the normal ways of operating didn’t apply on Dauntless. Or, conversely, how long until they investigated me for Medicare fraud. It wasn’t, of course—the islanders were Australian citizens—but try explaining that to a bureaucrat who couldn’t find a record of them. Or worse, to a computer. All I could do was treat them whenever they arrived at the clinic and wait for the government to catch up.

I made myself a piece of toast after Tom left, with sliced tomato and a generous shower of black pepper.

Just before dark, the rain started, a gentle, steady pattering on the roof. The knock on the door came just a little past nightfall, so soft that I almost didn’t hear it over the rain.

I set down my book and answered the door in my socked feet.

Robbie stood on the step with his collar turned up and his hair damp from the walk. He’d changed since this morning. He was wearing jeans and a green jumper. The wool was beaded with raindrops. He’d shaved.