lawyer in my company. She was a single mother and no one’s ever been told who Henry’s father is. Henry’s quiet. When he’s not in school he sits in her office or out in the reception area. He reads or watches his notepad. Then two weeks ago, Amanda was killed. She was on her phone, she walked into traffic and suddenly there was no one for Henry.’
‘Oh...’ And her head switched from distrust to distress, just like that. Her own parents... A car crash. She’d been eleven.
Her grandparents had been with her from the moment she’d woken in the hospital. She had a sudden vision of a seven-year-old who sat in a reception area and read.
There was no one for Henry.
But she wasn’t paid to be emotional. She was paid to get the job done.
‘So...your relationship with him?’ She was leafing through the documents, trying to get a grip.
‘I’m no relation.’ His voice was suddenly bleak. ‘Sometimes he sits in my office while I work. It was term break, so he was with me when we heard of his mother’s death. The birth certificate names the father as Steven Walker but gives no details. We haven’t been able to track him down and no one else seems to care. Apart from Peggy.’
And just like that, her bristles turned to fluff.
‘Garnett Island?’ she said, hauling herself—with difficulty—away from the image she was starting to have of a bereft seven-year-old sitting in a lawyer’s office when someone came to tell him his mum was dead.
‘As far as we can find out, Peggy Lakey’s now Henry’s only living relative,’ he told her. ‘Peggy’s his maternal grandmother. Unless we can find his father, she has full say in his upbringing.’
‘So why didn’t she get straight on a plane?’ The solitude of Henry was still all around her.
‘She says she turns into a whimpering heap at the sight of a plane. I’ve talked to her via her radio set-up. She sounds sensible, but flying’s not an option. She made arrangements for an escort service to collect Henry and bring him to her, but, at the last minute, I...’
‘You couldn’t let him travel alone.’
The last of her bristles disintegrated. For some stupid reason she felt her eyes fill. She swiped a hand across her cheek—and felt an oil streak land where the tear had been. Good one, Meg.
‘So is that enough?’ Matt McLellan’s tone turned acerbic, moving on. ‘Can we leave?’
‘After I’ve double-checked Bertha,’ she told him with a sideways glance at Charlie. He’d checked her personally? Yeah, and she was a monkey’s uncle. She could at least give the engine a quick once-over. ‘And when you and Henry have taken seasickness tablets and let them settle. Bass Strait, Mr McLellan, is not for pussies.’
* * *
What was he doing here?
The Cartland case was nearing closure. He had to trust his staff not to mess things up.
He checked his phone and almost groaned. No reception.
‘There’s not a lot of connectivity in the Southern Ocean.’ The skipper—if you could call this slip of a kid a skipper—was being helpful. ‘You can use the radio if it’s urgent.’
He’d heard her on the radio. It was a static-filled jumble. Besides, the boat was lurching. A lot.
The boat he was on was a rusty thirty-foot tub. ‘She’s all that’s available,’ Charlie had told him. ‘You want any better, you’ll have to wait until Monday.’
He needed to be back in New York by Monday, so he was stuck.
At least his instinct to distrust everyone in this tinpot hire company hadn’t gone so far as to refuse the pills Meg had insisted on. For which he was now incredibly grateful. His arm was around Henry, holding him close. Henry was almost deathly silent, completely withdrawn, but at least he wasn’t throwing up.
They were almost an hour out of Rowan Bay. Three hours to go before they reached Garnett Island.
He thought, not for the first time, how much better a helicopter would have been.
There’d been no helicopters. Apparently there were bush fires inland. Any available chopper had been diverted to firefighting or surveillance, and the ones remaining had been booked up well before he’d decided to come.
Beside him, Henry whimpered and huddled closer. There had been no choice. The thought of sending him here with an unknown travel escort had left him cold.
Dumping him on an isolated island left him cold.
He had no choice.
‘Boof!’
He glanced up. Meg had turned to look at Henry, but she was calling her dog?
They’d met Boof as they’d boarded. He was a rangy red-brown springer spaniel, turning grey in the dignified way of elderly dogs. He’d given them a courteous dog greeting as they’d boarded but Henry had cringed. Taking the hint, the dog had headed to the bow and acted like the carvings Matt had seen on ancient boats in the movies. Nose to the wind, ears flying, he looked fantastic.
Now...one word from Meg and he was by her side.
Meg was fishing deep in the pocket of what looked a truly disgusting oilskin jacket. She produced a plastic packet. Then she lashed the wheel and came over and knelt before Henry.
‘Henry,’ she said.
Henry didn’t respond. Matt felt his little body shake, and with that came the familiar surge of anger on the child’s behalf.
In anyone’s books, Amanda had been an appalling mother.
Henry had been lonely when Amanda was alive and he was even more alone now.
Meg had obviously decided to join the list of those who felt sorry for the little boy. Now she knelt with her dog beside her, her bag in her hand, and she waited.
‘Henry?’ she said again.
There was a muffled sniff. There’d been a lot of those lately. Matt’s hold on him tightened and slowly the kid’s face emerged.
They were both wearing sou’westers Meg had given them. Henry’s wan face emerging from a sea of yellow made Matt’s heart lurch. He was helpless with this kid. He had no rights at all and now he was taking him...who knew where?
‘Henry, Boof hasn’t had dinner,’ Meg said and waited.
The lashed wheel was doing its job. They were heading into the wind. The boat’s action had settled a little.
The sea was all around them. They seemed cocooned, an island of humanity and dog in the middle of nowhere.
‘Boof needs to be fed,’ Meg said, as if it didn’t matter too much. ‘He loves being fed one doggy bit at a time, and I have to go back to the wheel. Do you think you could feed Boof for me?’
There
