old man all his life. He’s the elder who asked Keanu to come back to the islands. It will be hard for him.’
Caroline nodded.
‘Alkiri would have known he was dying,’ she murmured, remembering the uncanny sense the islanders seemed to have about death. ‘Maybe he wanted Keanu by his side.’
She left the room to be with Alkiri and Keanu, though she doubted he’d take comfort from her presence.
Sitting on the opposite side of the bed from her childhood friend, she took the old man’s dry hand, feeling bones as fragile as a bird’s beneath the papery skin.
‘It’s Caroline,’ she said very quietly. ‘Do you remember teaching me to weave fish traps?’
To talk or not to talk to the dying was a much-argued topic, but Caroline thought Alkiri deserved to know she remembered, and perhaps to let his mind drift back to happy times he’d had with the two children.
‘Then you’d take us out in your old boat to show us where to put them up against the reef.’ Keanu took up the story equally quietly, but looking at him, Caroline wondered if the sadness in his eyes was not all caused by the elder’s approaching death.
Caroline swabbed the saliva from the old man’s mouth, while Keanu started a story about Alkiri’s frustration at not being able to teach Caro to split a coconut properly.
‘I still can’t,’ Caroline admitted, ‘although they’re everywhere in the city shops now and people are going crazy for coconut water.’
‘I’ve been looking into that and have talked to the elders,’ Keanu said quietly. ‘Wondering if the craze for it might provide a viable source of income for the islanders. After all, it’s not just the water but every bit of a coconut is used in one way or another. I’ve got an accountant who’s done a lot of set-up work on new businesses looking at the figures.’
Her thoughts hadn’t quite got that far but the splitting of coconuts had started her thinking that way.
She risked a glance towards him. Surely they were not still going to be able to read each other’s thoughts, especially now, when her thoughts, since meeting him again, had been almost wholly taken up with how magnificent he looked.
Keanu was as fine a specimen of manhood as she’d ever seen, and although just looking at him generated unwelcome reactions in her body, she couldn’t resist a sneaked glance now and then as she tried to analyse her reactions.
She turned her attention back to Alkiri, speaking quietly again, more memories tumbling into her head. Keanu offered some of his own, adding to hers—shared lives.
At some stage she heard a plane come in—bringing stores but not the staff that had been expected, Caroline guessed. Then some time later it took off again. They talked on …
There were long silences between Alkiri’s rattly breaths, some so long she feared their old friend had already died. Until suddenly he roused, opened his eyes and looked from one to the other, smiling.
‘With both of you here, I am at peace. Please keep me here when I am gone. Wildfire was always my true home,’ he whispered in a thin papery voice, and then the breathing did stop.
For ever.
Caroline couldn’t bring herself to pull the sheet up over the old man’s face. Very gently, she closed his eyes, and straightened the sheet across his body.
‘Can we bury him here or would his family want him back on Atangi?’ she asked, finally meeting Keanu’s eyes across the bed.
Keanu shrugged, and, sensing the grief he was trying hard to hide she went to him, unable not to offer comfort to her old friend, and put her arm around his wide shoulders.
‘Come on, let’s have a cup of tea while we think about the arrangements.’
He walked with her, but blindly, although the fact that he was not aware of her didn’t bother Caroline one bit. She was far too busy battling all the reactions just touching Keanu’s body had caused in hers—hoping the deep breaths she was taking to suppress the weird emotions were going unnoticed by her companion.
But her heart raced, her head spun, and every nerve in her body tingled with excitement.
Ridiculous, she told herself. This was ‘old friend’ reaction and not sexual at all, although it did feel …
Sexual?
Vailea was in the kitchen. She took one look at Keanu’s stricken face and pulled out a chair for him.
‘I heard you were back,’ she said, her voice cold enough to douse the fires just touching Keanu had set alight. ‘Come to bring more trouble to us?’
‘No, of course not. I’ve come to work.’ Caroline tried to sound reassuring, but Vailea’s words and attitude had stung.
What on earth had been going on? Was it more than Ian’s poor management? Selling off the family heirlooms wouldn’t have affected anyone outside the family, so what else had happened or was happening? What had Bessie said about the new housekeeper? Something about Ian …
‘I’ve come to make Keanu a cup of tea,’ she said as Vailea’s eyes continued to study her, a malevolence Caroline couldn’t understand clear within them.
‘I’ll take care of him,’ the older woman snapped, and Caroline, only too pleased to escape the extremely uncomfortable atmosphere, left the kitchen.
‘Boy, this is going to be fun,’ she muttered to herself as she made her way out of the hospital.
Keanu could deal with Alkiri on his own—do whatever needed to be done. She was damned if she was going to stay around and be insulted. Once Hettie, the head nurse, returned later today and gave Caroline her roster, she could work out how best to avoid Vailea altogether.
Vailea and Keanu.
Although there was something about Vailea’s reaction to her that seemed more personal than a general hatred of all Lockharts …
Keanu walked up to the house at six. He’d spent two hours talking to the elders on Atangi, making arrangements for Alkiri’s funeral. The elders had agreed he could be buried on Wildfire and they would send over people to help with the practicalities and some cooks to prepare the food.
‘Is there somewhere we can all gather?’ the man he’d been speaking to had asked. ‘I think the little church and its hall would be too small.’
Keanu thought of the big longhouse that had once been the centre of the research station and assured the elder that somewhere could be found. There was always the Lockhart house if nothing else worked out.
They settled on a service at ten in two days’ time.
Now, given that they might need the house, he had to make peace with Caro, although he doubted he could ever explain his angry reaction to her arrival—far too complicated and quite unwarranted, really.
Caroline was sitting on the veranda, watching the sun sink into the sea, dropping below the western cliffs lit up with the brilliant fiery red that gave the island
