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‘He was crushed under a load of rotten fish. Heaven knows how he managed to survive. At that stage the boat had been broken up for forty-eight hours. Anyway, Flotsam’s leg was badly broken and he was barely alive, but I hauled off a fish and he looked at me…’
‘With his patched eye?’
‘It’s a great eye,’ Alistair said, and there was no doubting the genuine affection in his voice as he looked at the little dog—who was rubbing himself round and round Sarah’s hand so every inch of his scruffy little head was covered. ‘Sam—the fisheries officer—said he was probably an Indonesian dog, was breaking all sorts of immigration laws by being here, and would have to be quarantined for six months if he was to stay. The best thing would be to put him down. But still that crazy eye looked at me. So I went back to the hospital and asked the wounded sailors if they knew him. They all swore they knew nothing about a dog. By the time I returned the eye had worked on Sam as well. So Sam and I declared him officially an Australian dog who’d obviously been walking along the beach minding his own business when two tons of tuna landed on his head.’
Sarah stared—and then choked. ‘Oh, of course. That’s the obvious thing to think, isn’t it?’
‘It was the obvious thing to think if we didn’t want to put him down,’ Alistair told her, deadpan. ‘Anyway, we treated his leg—and a tricky little piece of surgery it was, too. Broken tib and fib with resultant complications. Then he had to stay here in these quarters just in case quarantine was called for, and afterwards…’
‘You couldn’t get rid of him,’ Sarah said on a note of something akin to amazement, and Alistair scooped casserole onto three plates and managed a rueful smile.
‘See? I’m not always the evil twin. And as for putting him down…could you?’
‘No.’ She looked doubtfully at the dinner plates. And then at Flotsam, whose short, stumpy tail was doing helicopter rotations.
I’m not always the evil twin.
Did he know what Grant used to say about him?
It didn’t matter. Not any more. She had a job to do here, and a little dog to concentrate on to break the tension. ‘Does he sit up at the dinner table, too?’
‘He’s fussy who he dines with,’ Alistair said ambiguously, and carried the dog’s plate through the screen door out to the veranda. He set it down on the step while Sarah watched through the screen. ‘Here, mate—you can eat in privacy out here.’
Sarah stared. And felt her anger build. Whew. There was only one way to meet this hostility, she decided. Head-on. ‘Are you suggesting you’d rather eat out there, too?’ she demanded, and Alistair appeared to think about it.
‘Maybe. But I’m hungry. I’ll eat fast.’
‘Meaning you want as little contamination from me as possible?’
‘You said it, not me, lady,’ Alistair told her. ‘But let’s just leave it there.’
The silence was deafening. They ate, and the tension was growing all the time. Sarah stirred the casserole—which was some sort of indiscriminate stew—and wished she could be anywhere but here.
One mistake…
No. It had been more than one mistake. She’d been hauled into Grant’s world. She’d been caught in the bright bubble of laughter and excitement and sheer buzz, and she hadn’t looked below the surface until it was far, far too late.
She’d met his family.
She remembered the night Grant had given her the engagement ring. He’d taken her up to the top of the Rialto Tower in Melbourne, where the lights of all the world had spread out beneath them.
‘Now, when all the world is at our feet, I’m at your feet,’ he’d told her, and he’d knelt and given her the most exquisite diamond.
The moment had been something out of a fairytale. It had seemed…fantastic. But she’d looked down at that gorgeous laughing face and she’d felt a stir of disquiet. It had happened so fast—it had been as if they were playacting. Was there any substance there?
But she’d accepted. Of course she’d accepted. He had to be special. After that wonderful Christmas she’d wanted so much to be a part of his world. So she’d worn his ring, and she’d loved him and laughed at his jokes and been carried along in his world, until reality had finally hit and she’d seen what really lay beneath. And she’d realised the real reason she’d agreed to marry Grant.
Loving one twin was no basis for marriage to another.
Crazy thought. It was a crazy time, long past. She needed to focus on now. On what Alistair was saying.
‘You don’t wear his ring.’
Alistair was watching her from the other side of the table. His voice was carefully neutral—neither approving nor disapproving.
‘I thought you wanted to stay impersonal.’
‘So I do.’ His eyes stayed calm—watchful and appraising. ‘But I’m still wondering.’
‘I’m not in another relationship, if that’s what you mean,’ she told him. ‘But, no, I’m not still pining for Grant. I’ve moved on. Don’t you think it’s time you did, too?’
‘I don’t think you can move on from Grant.’
‘He’d have liked to hear you say that,’ she said, and there was no way she could keep the note of bitterness from her voice. ‘He had us all dancing from his strings. You included.’
‘I never did what he wanted.’
‘No, but you judged on his behalf.’
‘You killed him.’
It was like a punch to the face. Dear God…
She took a great lungful of air and it wasn’t enough. She found her eyes filling. Numbly, blindly, she stood.
What had she told him? That she’d moved on?
She’d done no such thing. The pain was right there, waiting to slam back. And it slammed back now.
She was not going to let this man see her cry.
‘Are…are the blood samples here yet?’ she whispered, turning away so he couldn’t see her face. Taking her plate to the sink. Avoiding his gaze.
‘Not yet.’ The brief flash of fury had faded. There was a trace of something else in his voice now. Confusion? She didn’t know. She couldn’t care. ‘They won’t be here until the searchers return to town.’
‘When will they be back?’ she managed.
‘Any time. I’d assumed they’d be in by now.’
‘Then I’ll wait in my bedroom,’ she told him. ‘Thank you for dinner. It was better than the company. Let me know when the blood samples arrive.’
Enough. Her voice wobbled dangerously and she turned before the first tear could fall. She was moving out through the door before he could speak.
‘Sarah…’ It was a tentative call of her name. He sounded unsure. Concerned.
But she didn’t turn. She couldn’t. She had to get out of here right now.
As Alistair cleared up the casserole he swore. Over and over again. What was going on here? What had Sarah said? That the casserole was better than the company.
Maybe she was right.
He really had to do something about Mrs Granson’s housekeeping, he told himself, in a vain attempt to distract himself from what was really important. The casserole was disgusting.
Right. The casserole was disgusting. Which made him…what? Even more disgusting?
No. He refused to accept judgement from someone like Sarah. What right did she have to criticise?
What right did she have to look as she did? As if he’d struck her—hard.
He thought suddenly of that last time he’d seen her. At the cemetery as they’d buried Grant. His parents had been inconsolable. And Sarah had appeared, wobbling on crutches, looking pathetic. She’d even tried to smile.
He’d been so…wild! Wild with grief at such an appalling waste. Such an appalling loss. At what had seemed such an ultimate betrayal of how he and his parents had felt about her.
So he’d pushed her away with his hurtful words and she’d looked just as she looked now. Like a wounded animal who’d been hurt even unto death.
Six years ago, standing beside his brother’s open grave, he’d felt an almost unbearable urge to recant. To take back what had been said. To follow her and take her into his arms.
He hadn’t done it then and he was darned if he’d do it now. But once again that urge was there.
What right did she have to look so wounded?
At his feet, Flotsam was gazing up at him, a worried look on his scraggy little face, and Alistair abandoned the clearing up, scooped the pup into his arms and took him out onto the veranda. The sea always had the capacity to soothe him. Maybe it could tonight.
He sat on the back step and Flotsam kept right on looking at him. Was he imagining it, or was there reproach in the little dog’s eyes?
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ he told him. ‘She killed my twin.’
Flotsam cocked one ear and kept on looking. Explain, his look said. Or maybe his look didn’t say any such thing, but Alistair needed to explain it to himself, to go over the whole thing one more time.
As he’d gone over it thousands of times before.
‘They were drunk,’ Alistair said wearily. ‘Or rather Grant was drunk. He used to party heavily. And drive fast. All the time. Not like you and me, mate, with our nice sensible truck. Grant had a Ferrari, and he and Sarah used to speed around the town looking like something out of Who Magazine. Heaven help you if you got in Grant’s way. What he wanted he got. And Sarah…she was so desirable. Everyone loved Sarah. Everyone. Because of her father she was famous. She had money, looks—everything. That’s why Grant wanted her—why he wanted to marry her when he’d never shown any sign of marrying any other woman in his past—and there were plenty of those.’
He was being sidetracked. Flotsam was giving him a sideways look, as if this wasn’t explaining anything. Which it wasn’t.
‘Okay. Cut to the chase. She drove his car,’ Alistair said heavily. ‘Sure, she was under the legal alcohol limit, but she was on drugs. Sedatives, uppers, downers—I don’t know exactly what. They must have been legal prescriptive drugs or she would have been charged, but it doesn’t matter. Grant used to use them, too. I thought…we hoped Sarah might influence him. Stop him using them. But, no, it seems she was just as bad as he was. So he was drunk and she was drugged. And she drove him home in that damned car. Not over the legal limit, but too fast for the icy road they were travelling. They were showing off, the pair of them, and they crashed.’
Flotsam was looking worried now, as well he might. There was such anger in Alistair’s voice. Such unresolved fury.
‘Of course they crashed,’ Alistair continued, his fury fading to a deadly weariness which was almost worse. ‘And Grant died. I can’t tell you what that feels like, can I, Flots? You’d need to be a twin to know. Grant and I…we didn’t get on, but he was my twin. Part of me. I can’t get away from that. And she killed him. She had concussion and lacerations and Grant got death. The driver’s side of the car—her side—was hardly touched. Even at the end she veered so that she wouldn’t cop the impact. But Grant would. Grant did. Grant got death. He had an unstable neck fracture which wasn’t picked up and the day after the accident he died in his sleep. It killed my parents. You have no idea, Flots. You have no idea…’
Silence. Flotsam seemed to take in the enormity of what he’d been told. The little dog stirred in his arms, reached up and licked him, nose to chin.
‘Gee, thanks. A kiss better.’ He grimaced. ‘It doesn’t help.’
He sat on, the dog in his arms, staring out to sea. Was she sleeping? he thought. He shouldn’t care.
He did care.
Why had she looked like that?
It was a life skill, he thought savagely. Manipulating. She’d manipulate people as Grant had manipulated people.
The phone rang indoors and Alistair almost welcomed it. Work. Work had been his salvation in those first months after Grant died. It had been a long time since he’d felt like that. He’d grieved for Grant but he’d moved on. He’d built himself the life that he’d always wanted—as a family doctor in a community that depended on him. He had fun. He dated. He knew what he wanted from life.
Or did he?
Suddenly she was here and his whole life was tumbling about him. It’d be transitory, he told himself. Tomorrow or the next day this mystery would be cleared up and she’d be out of here. His life could resume.
Only…
Go and answer the phone, he told himself. For heaven’s sake get back to work. Leave this pain alone.
Easy to say. Impossible to do.
Sarah was reading the report for the fourth time when Alistair knocked on her bedroom door, and she was almost glad of the interruption. If she’d known it was anyone but Alistair she’d have been delighted. She was climbing walls.
How could he make her feel like this? How could he have the capacity to tear her apart all over again?’
Maybe because she’d never healed in the first place.
‘Damn him,’ she whispered. ‘Damn them all. I don’t need any of them. I’m fine by myself and I always will be. Alistair Benn can condemn me all he likes and it doesn’t affect me.’
Liar.
‘The searchers have come back,’ Alistair called. ‘They haven’t found anything but you might like to talk to the police sergeant in charge of the case.’
Of course she would. She’d like to talk to anyone but Alistair.
At least now there was work to do.
There’d been a tarpaulin on the floor of the cargo area and it was heavily bloodstained. Maybe there was enough here to work with, Sarah thought, as one of the men unfolded it for her. The blood shouldn’t have soaked in so far that she couldn’t retrieve enough to put under a slide.
The first and the most imperative medical procedure, however, was to attend to one of the team. Despite having found no one, they’d come back with a patient.
Don Fairlie, the local publican, was about sixty pounds overweight. He was supported by a mate, and by the look of exhaustion on his mate’s face it was lucky Alistair didn’t have another heart attack on his hands. As Sarah and Alistair entered the emergency department Don was groaning in pain and looking sick.
‘He tried to do some rock-hopping,’ the local police sergeant told them.
Barry. Dolphin Cove’s only policeman.
Barry Watkins needed no introduction as the representative of the law. A big man, he was muscled rather than pudgy, with the shirt of his police uniform stretched far too tight across his barrelled chest. His close-cropped hair was cut to look deliberately macho and he stood with the aggressive stance of a male who was ready for anything. Sarah recognised this stance and winced every time she saw it. To finish the whole macho image he carried a wicked-looking pistol at his hip.
Sarah, standing back as Alistair took control, thought instinctively, There’s no love lost between these two.
She could soon see why.
‘Bloody pansy,’ Barry muttered as he stared down at Don. ‘Wasting our time by breaking his arm. And we didn’t find anyone. If I could have a decent search party…’
