cabinet we have down there.’
‘If Ian didn’t pinch it when he left,’ Keanu muttered, but Caroline couldn’t help feeling how lucky they were, to both have this excuse to visit the mine.
And although more time with Keanu was hardly ideal, this was work, and all she had to do was concentrate on that.
If she was gathering whatever impressions she could of what was happening at the mine she’d hardly be aware Keanu was there.
Hardly.
Stick to business!
‘So, who do you think will be in charge of the mine now Ian’s gone?’ she asked Keanu as they took the path around the house that led to the steps down to the mine.
He stopped, turning around to take her hand to help her over a rough part of the track where the stone steps had broken away.
‘Ian’s never really been hands-on, leaving the shift bosses to run the teams. Reuben Alaki is one of the best,’ he said, speaking so calmly she knew he couldn’t possibly be feeling all the physical reactions to the touch that were surging through her.
‘I remember Reuben,’ she managed to say, hoping she sounded as calm as he had, although she was certain there’d been a quiver in her voice. ‘His wife died and he had to bring his little boy to work and your mother looked after him. We treated him like a pet dog or cat and he followed us everywhere.’
Fortunately for her sanity the rough bit of track was behind them, and Keanu had released her hand.
‘That’s him, although that little boy is grown up and is over in Australia, getting paid obscene amounts of money to play football.’
Then of course Keanu smiled, which had much the same result on her nerve endings as his touch had.
‘Good for him,’ Caroline said cheerily. ‘Maybe you should have gone that way instead of becoming a doctor.’
Then you wouldn’t be here holding my hand and smiling at me and totally confusing me!
Lost in her own thoughts, she didn’t realise Keanu had stopped. He turned back to face her, his face taut with emotion.
‘We had an agreement,’ he reminded her, and now a sudden sadness—nostalgia for their carefree past, their happy childhood—swept over her.
‘What happened to us, Keanu?’ she whispered, forgetting the present, remembering only the past.
‘Ian happened,’ he said bluntly, and continued down the path.
Guilt kept him moving, because he could have kept in touch with Caroline, but in his anger—an impotent rage at his mother’s pain—he had himself cursed all Lockharts.
Of course it had had nothing to do with Caroline, but at the time fury had made him blind and deaf, then, with his mother’s death, it had been all he could do just to keep going. Getting back in touch with Caroline had been the last thing on his mind.
‘All the files are in the site office,’ he said, all business now as they reached the bottom of the steps.
He pointed to the rusty-looking shed sheltering under the overhang of the cave that led into the mine.
‘That’s Reuben there now. Let’s go and see him.’
He knew Caroline was close behind him, aware of her in every fibre of his body, yet his mind was crowded with practical matters and he needed to concentrate on them—on the now, not the past …
The rumbling noise from deep inside the tunnel told him the mine was still being worked, but who was paying the men? And the crushing plant and extraction machine were standing idle, so they could hardly be taking home their wages in gold.
‘Who’s paying the men?’ Caroline asked, as if she’d been following his train of thought as well as his footsteps.
‘Reuben will tell us.’
Reuben stepped out of the shed to shake Keanu’s hand, then turned to Caroline.
‘New nurse?’ he asked.
‘But old friend, I hope, Reuben. It’s Caroline Lockhart.’
Reuben beamed with delight and held out his arms to give Caroline a hug.
‘You’ve grown up!’ Reuben said, looking fondly at her. ‘Grown up and beautiful!’
And from the look on Caroline’s face, it was the first friendly greeting she’d received since her return.
‘And your father? How is he?’ Reuben asked.
‘Working too hard. I hardly see him.’
‘Working and caring for that poor brother of yours, too, I suppose. Same as always,’ Reuben said. ‘Me, I did that when my wife died but later I realised pain didn’t go away with work. I have a new wife now and new family, and my big boy, he’s rich and famous in Australia—sends money home to his old man even.’
‘That’s great, Reuben,’ Caroline said, and Keanu knew she meant it. Her affinity for the islanders had always been as strong as his, and they had known that and loved her for it.
‘So, what’s happening here, Reuben?’ he asked to get his mind back on track. ‘Well …’
Reuben paused, scratched his head, shuffled his feet, and finally waved them both inside.
‘The men working the bulldozer and crusher and extraction plant hadn’t been paid for more than a month so they walked off the job maybe a month ago.’
He paused, looking out towards the harbour where machinery and sheds were rapidly disappearing under rampant rainforest regrowth.
‘The miners are in the same boat, but they believe they’ll eventually be paid. I think their team bosses sent a letter to your dad some weeks ago and they’re waiting to hear back, hoping he’ll come. They’re happy to keep working until they hear because most of them—well, they, we—don’t need the money for food or fancy clothes. It just puts the kids through school and university and pays for taking their wives on holidays.’
The words came out fluently enough but Keanu thought he could hear a lingering ‘but’ behind them.
‘But?’ Caroline said, and he had to smile that they could still be so much on the same wavelength.
‘The miners—they mine. It was the crusher team that did the safety stuff. Your uncle’s been putting off staff for months, and he started with the general labourers, saying the bulldozer boys and crusher and extraction operators could do the safety work when the crusher wasn’t operating, but now they’ve gone.’
‘Then the miners shouldn’t be working,’ Keanu said. ‘You’ve got to pull them out of there.’
Reuben shook his head.
‘They’ve got a plan. They’re going to stockpile enough rock then come out and work the crusher
