They split up, one in each direction, Hanna sprinting towards the jetty, certain they’d be taking the boat back to Summer Isle. Bell could hear their shouts shake through the trees, the children’s names being called out with bald-faced terror.
Bell knew Linus had heard everything. He’d been hiding in the bush, listening to every word – hearing how his mother had fallen in love with another man, how his father had threatened his mother with losing him, how his mother had chased his father in the car, both of them angry, reckless, dangerous . . . He had been frightened of having to choose but now he had chosen – and he hadn’t chosen any of them. He had taken his sisters and he was taking them to safety, away from all the so-called grown-ups who professed to love them.
She knew all this because she knew him. She loved him, actually, that was the truth of it. She loved him like he was her own, though he wasn’t. She was the nanny. Just the nanny. And yet she’d always been more than that. They’d demanded more from her and she’d given it because she’d needed a family, a home, when she had been alone and stranded in the world.
She tore through the trees, her palms slapping against bark as she pushed off against them, running blindly, past the birches and pines, the blueberry bushes and the hawthorns that scratched her legs.
She came to the water’s edge, the sea suddenly there like a bear saying ‘boo’, the levels much higher than usual, dredged up by the low pressure of the coming storm. She stared out, screaming their names, but it was hard to see and hear – the water was being whipped up by the wind, the standing waves in the strait making it hard to spot a small rowing boat or a kayak. Please God, not a kayak, not out there, not in these conditions . . . She scanned up and down the shore, stumbling on the rocks as she surveyed the water, straining to hear for cries over the wind, but there was nothing . . .
She decided to keep to the perimeter and walk round. It was the water that was the danger. As long as they didn’t go in the w—
Suddenly she stopped.
She knew exactly where they were.
The others had realized it too, Hanna still sprinting as Bell met her on the rocks, their feet slipping in their panic. The wind was blowing their hair around, blinding them for moments, Hanna’s slight frame sinewy and rigid with tension.
They got to the crater and stared down the sheer drop, Hanna giving a cry as they saw the basin was full of rough, slapping water, no sand visible. No beach.
‘Linus!’ Hanna screamed, her eyes white like a horse’s in battle. ‘Tilde! Elise!’
Max was ahead of them, on the far side, already scrambling down the rill. Emil was maybe a hundred metres behind him – not as fast, not as strong.
‘I can see them!’ Max yelled, his voice faint as the wind conspired against them and threw his words back over him. ‘They’re okay! They’re on a ledge! They’re okay!’
Hanna gasped, her body giving out at the news, adrenaline overwhelming her, and she sank to the ground. Bell rushed over, holding her. ‘It’s okay, Hanna. Max has got them. They’re safe now.’
‘I can’t lose them, Bell.’
‘I know, and you won’t. Max is getting them. It’s all going to be okay.’
‘Oh God, my babies,’ she moaned.
Bell looked down and saw Hanna’s hand curled over her stomach. A mother’s instinct. ‘They’re safe. But this one needs protecting too. You’ve got to look after yourself.’ And she placed her hand over Hanna’s.
Hanna stared back at her, the question pale on her lips. ‘How . . .?’
‘I saw the pregnancy test in your drawer, that day when you’d lost the ring.’
Their eyes met. They both knew now it had never been lost at all. Hanna had already been trying to control Emil the only way she felt she could, keeping her love for Max a secret still, buying time.
‘. . . I only took the test yesterday. I knew confirming the pregnancy would only complicate it all further and I wasn’t sure how far I would have to go to keep Emil on-side . . .’ She swallowed, looking ashamed. ‘You must think I’m terrible, to have done what I did.’
‘I think you were desperate, Hanna. Anyone would have been. You were protecting your family.’
‘As soon as it came up positive, I knew I couldn’t keep trying to persuade him or fool him anymore. I had resolved to tell him once we’d got through today. I was prepared to go to court over it.’ A tear slid down Hanna’s cheek as she bit her lip, trying to master her emotions. ‘But it wasn’t all an act. I do still love him, you know, in my own way. In spite of it all. How could I hate him? He gave me my son.’
Bell bit her lip. ‘Just try to relax now. The kids are safe, Max is getting them and you heard Emil – it’s all going to be okay. They’re going to work it out.’
Hanna gave a weak smile and nodded, closing her eyes as they both waited for the men – the two fathers – to bring the children back up.
Bell felt herself trembling too, her own body unwittingly depleted by the frantic chase across the island and as she sat on the ground, she closed her eyes, trying to control her shock. She did what she’d done after Jack had died and closed the world down to darkness and just sounds – she listened to Hanna’s still-frightened breathing, the birds singing, the wind moaning, the sea’s rhythmic slapping . . .
And then one more – unexpected, unwelcome, unnatural.
A scream.
In the final moments of his life, it was her face that filled his mind. Images spun round and round, of the light catching their pale spun hair, heads thrown back in laughter, his three girls, his three graces. Everything about them was radiance and beatific grace, as though they were not solid at all but heavenly conceits, constellations of stardust fallen from the skies into deft, perfect forms . . .
In seeing all this, there was much that he missed – the frond of strife dropped by a passing gull, the slickness left by a high wave, the ragged gasps that pulled brokenly at the air and tore down the archipelago’s sky. He knew none of it.
For him there was only light.
And then darkness.