RORKE disappeared shortly after breakfast. He was flying to St Lucia, he told Lisa, but would be back after lunch.
Lisa took Robbie up to the hospital for his injections as she had promised Doctor James. Visiting the small island hospital reminded her of Mike Peters, and Rorke. She glanced down at Robbie’s tousled head as Doctor James talked reassuringly to him, but Robbie wasn’t afraid. He was very much his father in that respect, Lisa thought wryly, noticing how Robbie ignored the comforting hand she held out for him.
He hadn’t forgiven her for allowing him to be banished from the bedroom this morning. She sighed. Her life seemed so fraught with problems she couldn’t envisage ever being solved.
‘Just a wee drop of blood now,’ Doctor James, was saying comfortably to a white-faced but determined Robbie. ‘Just to make sure there’s plenty there.
‘Do you know what blood group he is?’ he asked Lisa. ‘You’ll know that his father’s is extremely rare.’
‘Robbie’s too,’ Lisa admitted. She had always worried a little that Robbie should inherit Rorke’s rare blood group. She had only found out just after he was born, and she wondered what Rorke would say if she confronted him with it. She wasn’t likely to find out, she decided grimly. She was tired of trying to persuade Rorke to accept the truth—she no longer cared what he believed; if denying meant so much to his male pride then let him. It wasn’t the truth, but it went some way to bolstering her pride—something which had suffered considerably over the last few days. The truth was that, weakly, she didn’t want to hurt him—which was ridiculous when she remembered how much he had hurt her.
An old-fashioned boiled sweet did much to restore Robbie to his normal good spirits, and then they were free to leave.
Lisa drove back carefully. The island roads could be treacherous in places. They were narrow and winding, and she had always hated driving along them.
Rorke returned just as she was about to take Robbie upstairs for his nap.
Her mouth went dry and she longed to run away. Coward, she mocked herself. What was she afraid of? That Rorke would throw last night’s victory over her in her face?
‘Lisa…’ He walked towards her, lean and bronzed, and her stomach muscles quivered in agonised response. Why was she so weak?
‘Lisa, I want to talk to you.’
‘Not now, Rorke. I promised to go and see your father. He has to rest in the afternoon and he gets bored.’
A little to her surprise, Rorke didn’t argue. In fact Lisa noticed that he seemed almost tense. What could he want to speak to her about?
‘Tonight, then?’ he suggested briefly. ‘After dinner?’
‘In our room,’ Lisa suggested.
‘No! No,’ Rorke said less sharply. ‘We’ll talk in the library. We can be quite private in there.’
No more private than they could be in their room, Lisa reflected. Why had he sounded so angry when she suggested they talk there? She shrugged aside the thought. If she started worrying about whatever it was he wanted to talk to her about now, she’d be a nervous wreck by tonight.
* * *
Leigh as always was pleased to see her. He looked a little better today, she decided, watching him carefully.
‘Robbie tells me you took him to see Doctor James this morning,’ he smiled, as Lisa closed the door of his pleasant sitting room.
She laughed. ‘Yes. He needed to have some injections. We left England in such a hurry that there wasn’t time for all of them.’
‘He’s a fine boy, Lisa.’ He looked tired all of a sudden. ‘I can’t tell you what it means to me to have you both back here—to have you reunited with Rorke. I should never have agreed to let him marry you when you were so young. I told him as much at the time, but I think, like me, he was frightened if he didn’t we’d lose you. Have you forgiven me?’
‘There’s nothing to forgive,’ Lisa assured him, kissing the papery skin of his cheek. ‘I wanted to marry Rorke—very, very much.
‘And now,’ she added, taking advantage of the situation, ‘I want you to get well enough to have your operation—not just for our sakes, Leigh, but for Robbie’s as well. He needs you. I can vividly remember how I longed to have a larger family, and I very much want Robbie to have the chance to get to know and love you.’
She could tell her words affected him. For a moment he said nothing, and then, shakily, ‘I’ll do my best—I’m not promising anything, mind, Lisa… but I’ll certainly do my best.’
‘That’s all we ask.’
Ten minutes later she left him, having persuaded him to rest. If he could just get well enough to have his operation… She sighed, wondering if Robbie was awake. When they first arrived he had protested that sleeping in the afternoon was for babies, but now he went quite willingly to rest. After all, he was still adjusting to the heat, Lisa reflected, as she pushed open his bedroom door, her heart somersaulting as she looked for the tousled dark head and saw only the empty, rumpled bed. Mama Case walked into the room behind her, grinning when she saw Lisa.
‘Mama, where’s Robbie?’
‘His daddy done take him down to the beach for a while, Miss Lisa,’ Mama Case explained. ‘Miss Helen, she came wanting Master Rorke to take her scuba-diving.’ Mama Case’s smile turned to a frown. ‘She can’t take no for an answer, that one.’
So Rorke had gone scuba-diving with Helen and they had taken Robbie with them! They were bound to have gone down to the cove, Lisa decided, stilling the maternal fears leaping to life inside her. It would do no harm to go down and keep an eye on things. Robbie loved the water, fortunately, and she knew Rorke well enough to be sure that he would take good care of the little boy. Even so…
It only took her fifteen minutes to walk down to the beach. She could see Rorke’s discarded jeans and Robbie’s shorts and shoes, and she shaded her eyes, looking out to sea. The cove was protected by a coral reef all round the bay; the water inside it as calm and unruffled as the surface of a pond, the surf moving softly against the silver sand.
On the sea side of the reef the surf pounded unceasingly, throwing up spray and spume, and Lisa wondered how far out Rorke had taken Robbie. She remembered that when she was barely a couple of years older than Robbie, Rorke had taken her right out to the reef and how thrilled she had been when he taught her how to scuba. The underwater world was one that had always fascinated her. Narrowing her eyes against the sun, she searched the sea again, frowning as she thought she glimpsed movement over by the reef. Surely Rorke hadn’t taken Robbie out as far as that? Fear began to pound inside her. Robbie was too young to go out so far; such a very little boy.
Chiding herself, she tried to calm down. Were all mothers like this with their children? Was she becoming too possessive, too cautious, perhaps smothering all Robbie’s natural love of adventure?
As she watched she suddenly saw Helen emerge from the sea and stand on the coral reef that jutted dangerously out of the water. Coral was razor-sharp, and cuts could be dangerous because they became easily infected. Lisa vividly remembered the lecture Rorke had once given her as a child when she had fooled about on the coral. The horrendous mental pictures he had drawn for her of the consequences of her ‘showing off’ had lingered in her mind for a long, long time.
Helen obviously thought she knew better, but Lisa’s heart was in her mouth when she saw Robbie suddenly scramble up beside her. She longed to call to the little boy to warn him that what he was doing was dangerous, but she knew her voice wouldn’t reach him. Where was Rorke? Why wasn’t he watching him? In a fever of impatience, Lisa willed Rorke to appear, and then, before her horrified eyes, Robbie seemed to slip. Quite how it happened Lisa didn’t know. One moment Helen was reaching down to help him up, the next the little boy was toppling back into the sea. In an agony of fear Lisa watched the water. Where was Rorke? She saw the sea, previously blue, suddenly turn an ominous dark red, and acting purely on instinct she ran into the water, swimming frantically to where she had last seen Robbie.
She had barely gone half a dozen lengths when she saw that Rorke was swimming strongly towards her, only he was swimming on his back, his body supporting Robbie’s, and as they swam the red stain followed them.
Lisa reached the beach only seconds before Rorke. He didn’t waste time speaking to her, simply pushing her aside as he laid Robbie on the sand and reached for his shirt.
‘He cut himself on the coral. I think he got a vein.’ All the time he was talking he was fashioning a tourniquet out of his shirt and a piece of stick he had picked up from the beach, working so quickly that Lisa’s dazed mind could scarcely take it all in. Robbie looked so still and pale, lashes fluttering over the paper-white cheeks. Helen emerged from the sea, looking more bored than worried.
‘God, Rorke,’ she explained pettishly, ‘why all the fuss? I told you we should have left the kid behind.’
‘Leave it, Helen,’ Rorke advised without bothering to look at her, saying instead to Lisa, ‘Run up to the house, will you, Lisa, and warn Dr James we’re on our way. I’m not sure, but he may need a transfusion. Either way the cut will certainly have to be looked at.’
At that moment Robbie’s lashes fluttered open. He stared first at Lisa, and she made a small, incoherent moan, longing to take him in her arms, but knowing that Rorke was far better equipped physically to carry him than she was, and she was already on her feet when Robbie turned to Helen and said quite clearly and very accusingly, ‘You pushed me! You pushed me and I cut myself.’
Lisa didn’t wait to hear what response Helen made to his accusation, she was far too anxious about Robbie’s safety. In her own heart she was sure that Robbie was right and that Helen had pushed him, but she was equally sure that Helen would deny it and that Rorke would back her up. Why on earth had they taken Robbie with them, when all too obviously they had wanted to be alone?
By the time Lisa had phoned the hospital Rorke had arrived at the house. Lisa was on her way downstairs with a blanket to wrap Robbie in when she heard them arrive.
In no time at all they were in the Range Rover, Lisa sitting in the back with Robbie lying on the seat. His body felt cold and slight in her arms, and as Rorke eased the tourniquet slightly, sickness washed over her. This frail, quiet child was Robbie; her son, the child she had given birth to. Did all parents feel this helpless anguish when their child was seriously ill? She supposed they must, she thought vaguely, wondering a little at the numbing mist that seemed to have enveloped her. She knew that Robbie had cut himself badly, that he had lost a great deal of blood, and all that that implied, but she couldn’t seem to think beyond getting him to the hospital; about fussing over small trifles that were really unimportant, as though by filling her mind with these trivia she could keep her real fear at bay.
Neither of them talked during the drive, although once when Rorke glanced in the driving mirror at her and saw the silent, anguished tears pouring down her face, he muttered, ‘His father would have been flattered to see how much his child means to you. Would my child have meant as much, I wonder, Lisa?’
She couldn’t even be bothered to respond. Robbie was his child, but she was tired of stating that fact and not being believed. All she wanted now was for Robbie to be safely installed at the hospital under Dr James’s care.
Alerted to their arrival, nurses were ready to take Robbie from her as they pulled up outside. Pain tugged at her heart as she saw his tiny little frame being wheeled away.
‘Try not to worry.’
She refused to look at Rorke. It was all right for him to say that. As far as he was concerned Robbie wasn’t his child, and he couldn’t really care less what harm his girl-friend might have done to him.
‘There’s a waiting area round here, let’s go and sit down,’ he suggested. ‘I’ll get us both a cup of coffee.’
‘Don’t bother, I’m perfectly happy to wait on my own. You might as well go back to Helen—I don’t want to spoil your afternoon together.’
She had her back to Rorke and just caught the explosive mutter of fury, before he swung her round, his eyes bleak and grim.
‘Look, it may suit you to cast me as the cold, unfeeling villain of the piece, but it so happens that I do care about Robbie, and I am going to stay here.’
‘You should never have taken him out there!’
There, she had said it, and had the satisfaction of seeing Rorke pale beneath his tan.
‘Lisa, I…’ he began, but Dr James was coming towards them, and Lisa no longer cared what excuses Rorke was about to make, her whole attention was concentrated on the doctor.
‘Robbie—is he…’
‘He’s fine,’ he interrupted her gently. ‘Or at least he will be once we give him a transfusion. He’s lost quite a lot of blood—it’s lucky that you weren’t away when this happened, Rorke,’ he was saying to the other man, while Lisa’s face tightened in bitterness. If Rorke had been away the accident wouldn’t have happened in the first place. ‘If you’ll just go with Nurse, she’ll do the necessary and…’
Rorke was frowning, and Lisa’s heart skipped a beat as she heard him say curtly, ‘I don’t think I understand—are you suggesting that…’
‘Dr James knows that you and Robbie share the same blood group, Rorke,’ Lisa interrupted quickly, too concerned for Robbie now to spare Rorke’s feelings. What on earth was Dr James going to think if Rorke started denying that Robbie was his son, when he had irrefutable evidence that he was?
‘That’s right,’ Dr James agreed with a smile. ‘In fact I was only remarking on it this morning to Lisa. Of course it’s by no means unusual for a child to inherit a blood group from its father, but yours is such a rare one that it’s fortunate for Robbie that you’re here—I noticed this morning that we don’t have any in reserve. When Mike Peters was here he started up a blood bank, and got most of the islanders to give blood—by first donating a pint of his own, I remember him telling me. Like most doctors he doesn’t particularly like sticking needles in himself, and as he told me at the time, giving a pint of his own blood was purely symbolic, as he belongs to a very common blood group. However, it seemed to do the trick, but I seem to remember that you needed a transfusion a couple of years ago when you had that accident down by the harbour, and we never got you in to give any more.’
Lisa could tell by Rorke’s rigidly stiff back that Dr James’s revelation had come as a shock. In other circumstances she might almost have been able to feel pity for the grimly haunted face he turned towards her when Dr James had finished speaking, but now all she could think of was Robbie. Robbie injured and in need of the life-giving blood that had to come from his father.
‘Rorke.’
Dr James was touching him lightly on the shoulder, indicating the waiting nurse. Lisa couldn’t bear to watch as Rorke followed her down the corridor, and she wasn’t even aware that Dr James had remained until he said gently, ‘Try not to worry. I promise you he’s going to be all right. It’s lucky for him that you brought him in for those boosters so quickly, Lisa, and that Rorke was on hand. What happened exactly?’
Now was her chance to implicate Helen by repeating what Robbie had said to her, but she found she just wasn’t able to do so. All her attention was concentrated on Robbie, willing him to get well. She simply told Dr James that Robbie had slipped on the coral and gashed his arm.
‘Yes, I thought that’s what must have happened. Robbie told me that Rorke hadn’t wanted to take him on to the reef, but that he had insisted on going. He’s a very lucky little boy,’ he added a trifle grimly. ‘Thank God Rorke kept a cool enough head to act quickly, otherwise…’
‘Please… when can I see Robbie?’ Lisa asked him urgently. Her throat muscles were taut with tension, she felt oddly lightheaded and yet strangely weak, almost as though she could float away. As she followed Dr James down the corridor she had the oddest sense of weightlessness, almost of not really being there at all, but separate from her body, watching its mechanical movements.
The ward Robbie was in was a small one; the other beds were empty apart from the one next to him where Rorke lay, watching the little boy, his arm brown and sinewy against the white of the bedclothes and the complication of the transfusion equipment.
Even as she watched Lisa could see a more natural colour returning to Robbie’s pale face. She had eyes only for her son, unaware of the pain etched into Rorke’s features as he watched.
Dr James’s light touch on her shoulder roused her. ‘Look,’ he said quietly, ‘Robbie’s starting to come round. We gave him a tranquillising shot when you brought him in. He’s a tough little character,’ he added for Rorke’s benefit, ‘and something tells me this isn’t the last time I’m going to see him here.’
‘In that case I’d better come in again and give you some more of this,’ Rorke told him, tapping the tube linking his arm to the transfusion equipment. ‘Another time I might not be on hand.’
‘Good idea,’ Dr James agreed, indicating to the nurse that Rorke could get up.
Robbie stirred and opened his eyes, and to Lisa’s anguish the first person he looked for was Rorke.
‘I’m sorry I went on the reef when you told me not to, Daddy,’ he said drowsily.
‘That’s all right, Robbie.’ Rorke swung himself off the bed and crouched down beside the little boy. ‘You’ve learned a painful lesson, and you know now why I was warning you not to climb on the coral.’
‘But Helen did it,’ Robbie objected sleepily.
‘Helen’s old enough to make her own mistakes,’ Lisa heard Rorke saying huskily. He saw Dr James glancing at him and added softly, ‘Now you’re going to go to sleep for a little while.’
‘Will you be here when I wake up?’
Across the bed Rorke’s eyes met Lisa’s.
‘We’ll both be here Robbie,’ he promised softly.
With a little sigh Robbie turned to Lisa, letting her kiss and cuddle him, telling her drowsily that he was all right.
They left the ward together, Lisa unable to forget that Robbie had turned first to his father. She was still in a numb daze when she stumbled against the wall. Instantly Rorke’s arm was supporting her and it seemed from the dream world she was suddenly inhabiting that there was pain as well as concern in the look he gave her. From a distance she heard Dr James’s voice answering Rorke’s sharply curt query, and then she was sliding into warm darkness, the voices of the two men dull echoes that couldn’t hurt or touch her.
‘Lisa!’
She recognised the voice and its implicit command and opened her eyes warily. She was lying in the bed she shared with Rorke, although she had no memory of getting there. Rorke himself was standing beside the bed, staring down at her, his face tautly bitter. Lisa’s hand crept up to the pulse beating erratically in her throat, encountering the soft silk of her nightgown. Who had undressed her and put her to bed? Rorke? Heated colour flooded her skin as she caught the elusive memory of gentle hands easing her out of her clothes, soothing her anguished protests.
‘Lisa, I know you’re awake. I want to talk to you.’
‘I know,’ she agreed huskily, ‘you’ve already told me.’
She looked up and saw that Rorke was frowning. ‘That was before…’
‘Before you found out that Robbie is your son?’
Strange how knowing that he now knew the truth had so little effect upon her. She ought to be exulting, but somehow it was too much of an effort. All she cared about was Robbie. Rorke had denied his child for too long for her to care that he knew the truth now. Where once she would have given anything to have him standing looking at her with the helpless anguish she could read plainly in his eyes, suddenly it meant less than nothing to her. It was almost as though she were incapable of feeling anything. It was a sensation not unlike the numbing anaesthetic administered by her dentist. She knew what was happening around her, she knew how she ought to react to it, but somehow the numbing effect of the anaethestic made it impossible for her to do anything more than be an onlooker.
‘Lisa, for God’s sake! I didn’t know…. I couldn’t believe…’
She turned away from him, her voice cool as she said quietly, ‘It really doesn’t matter any more, Rorke. Loving someone sometimes does require an act of faith. It isn’t your fault that you couldn’t believe me—not when you couldn’t remember what happened.’
‘Dr James says you’re suffering from shock and that you must rest, but we have to talk this whole thing out, Lisa, we can’t just leave it here.’
‘Why not?’ She was amazed that she could be so calm, so uncaring in what ought to have been her moment of triumph.
She heard Rorke growl something in his throat, but didn’t bother to turn round.
‘You might have just discovered that Robbie is your son, Rorke, but don’t forget I’ve always known, and so for me nothing has changed.’
‘We’ll talk about it later,’ she heard Rorke say grimly as he got up and left the room, closing the door quietly behind him. Once he had gone she gave herself up to the desire to sleep, wondering vaguely if Dr James had given her some sort of tranquillising shot. She felt so calm and relaxed.
It was some time later that she heard her bedroom door open again. This time it wasn’t Rorke, it was Helen, immaculately dressed in a suit of pure gentian blue silk, her eyes hardening as they looked across the distance that separated them.
‘You haven’t won, you know,’ she began conversationally, sitting down and crossing slender brown legs. ‘You might think that discovering that Robbie is really his son is going to make Rorke turn to you, but it won’t, Lisa. In fact,’ she continued, idly smoothing the silk fabric with long, painted nails, an expression of feline triumph in her eyes, ‘it simply makes matters easier for us.’
‘If you mean by “easier” that Rorke can divorce me to marry you, he’s been free to do that for the last five years,’ Lisa told her calmly.
‘Oh yes, but then he’s always known how much his father dotes on you. Leigh had planned to split his estate between the two of you, you know, until he found out about the boy. Now he’s leaving your share to Robbie, and as Rorke is Robbie’s natural father, it will be the easiest thing in the world for him to divorce you and claim custody. That way he keeps Leigh happy by keeping the child here and he gets to inherit the entire estate.’ She laughed softly. ‘Now that Rorke knows that Robbie is his son he holds the winning card doesn’t he?’
* * *
Half an hour later when Mama Case came upstairs with a glass of milk and some fruit she found Lisa staring blindly out of the window, her face pale and set.
‘Why, honey chile, whatever be de matter?’ she exclaimed in concern. ‘That little boy, him gonna be just fine, so don’t you go worryin’ yourself about him.’
So Robbie was going to be ‘just fine’, was he? A huge lump gathered in Lisa’s throat. What would Mama Case say if she told her how callously Rorke was planning to take her son from her? If only she could appeal to Leigh for help—but how could she in his present weakened state? What on earth was she going to do? Panic tore into her. She wanted to go and see Robbie to make sure that he was all right, that Helen and Rorke hadn’t spirited him away somewhere. One read about such horrible things she thought feverishly, of parents snatching their children or all manner of dreadful things. Tears started to stream down her face, and she saw Mama Case watching her with growing concern. She went to the door and opened it, calling something. Ten minutes later Rorke came into the room, his face grim and unreadable. Did he know that Helen had told her the truth? She suspected not. Rorke was too skilled a tactician to want her to be forewarned of what he planned.
‘Lisa, stop tearing yourself apart,’ he commanded sternly, ‘Robbie is going to be all right. If you want the truth Dr James is more concerned about you. He seems to think you’re going through some sort of crisis brought on by the strain of Robbie’s accident. Drink this milk and take this tablet. It’s only to help you sleep,’ he added sardonically, seeing her expression. ‘I’m not Bluebeard. I’m not about to do away with you.’
Under his grim gaze she was forced to take the pill and swallow it down with milk, and although she fought hard against the darkness reaching out to engulf her, it proved too strong. She found herself sinking into it, Rorke’s face growing misty and distant, the smile he gave her as she finally went under terrifying in its triumph. Her last thought was that somehow she must get Robbie away. She must prevent Rorke from doing what Helen said he planned to do. Helen already had her husband, she thought bitterly, she wasn’t going to have her son as well.
* * *
A terrible presentiment of evil stalked her through her dreams; the old childhood nightmare of being pursued through some tangled leafless forest of gaunt spectral trees by some terrifying but unseen ‘thing’, resurrected as she tried desperately to escape the fear haunting her.
A sudden sharp sound splintered through her fear and she woke up staring round the darkened room, her mouth dry and her heart pounding with fear.
‘It’s all right, Lisa.’ Rorke’s voice reached her through the darkness and she realised the sound that woke her must have been him entering the room.
‘You’ve been having a bad dream so Mama Case says. She didn’t know whether to wake you or not. Would you like a drink?’
‘Fruit juice please.’ She felt so dry. It must be the tablet he had given her. ‘Rorke, Robbie…’
‘He’s fine,’ he assured her briefly. ‘We should be able to bring him home in a couple of days.’
The words ‘we’ and ‘home’ started off an ache inside her that wouldn’t be stilled. She moved restlessly in the large bed, wishing she had the courage to ask Rorke to leave. Where before she had felt protected from any kind of pain, now her reactions were just the opposite. Her emotions felt raw and bruised, tears far too near the surface, her body crying out for the comfort of Rorke’s arms, the solace of his lovemaking, and yet she knew quite well that neither could ease the real pain because that sprang from the knowledge that he didn’t want her, didn’t love her, and planned to deprive her of her child.
‘Here’s your juice.’
He had moved so quickly and quietly she hadn’t seen him. As she reached up to take the glass her fingers were trembling so much that some of the liquid splashed over her skin.
Instantly Rorke was bending over her, his arm supporting her as he sat on the bed lifting her and holding the glass for her so that she could drink in comfort.
‘Lisa, we have to talk.’
She stiffened immediately.
‘What about?’ she asked coldly. ‘We don’t have anything to speak about, Rorke.’
‘We have Robbie,’ he contradicted quietly. ‘He’s my son, Lisa.’
‘He’s been your son from the moment he was conceived, but somehow that fact hasn’t bothered you before!’
She felt him tense, and in the moonlight saw the dull colour edging up under his skin.
He was about to say something when the door opened and Mama Case came bustling in.
‘You all right?’ she asked Lisa. ‘Tossing and turning like nobody’s business you were.’
‘I was having a bad dream,’ she admitted. ‘But I’m fine now.’
‘You always did feel fine when Master Rorke was around,’ Mama Case chuckled. ‘Even as a little girl. Every time you fell over, he always had to be the one to kiss you better.’
She was still laughing as she left the room, but Lisa felt as though her heart was being squeezed in a vice. Rorke was watching her intently, and to her dismay he lifted his hand, tracing the outline of her jaw and smoothing the untidy curls back off her hot face.
‘You put me on a pedestal, Lisa,’ he said huskily, ‘and now you can’t forgive me for falling off it, but I could still try to kiss you better.’
Lisa wouldn’t allow herself to believe that that was a plea she could hear beneath the quiet words.
‘It’s too late, Rorke,’ she told him icily. ‘Five years too late.’
She had turned her back, but she heard him get up and move around the room, and there was a tight bitterness in his voice as he said slowly, ‘I suppose I ought to have expected that, but somehow I hoped you wouldn’t say it. I’ll get Mama Case to come up and sit with you. Goodnight, Lisa.’
When he had gone she wanted to cry, but couldn’t. She had cried too much already. Somehow she had to find a way to leave St Martins with Robbie, and quickly. If she could just get to St Lucia. But how? And then it came to her. She could telephone over to St Lucia and get them to send a plane for her. She could tell them that Rorke wanted it. There was a kind of bitter satisfaction to be found in letting him pay for their escape. Tomorrow she was going to the hospital to see Robbie and to find out from Dr James how long it would be before the little boy could leave, and nobody, but nobody was going to stop her.