the mats and cushions, and they told us about the fire pits. A big one for the fire that heats the stones, then a shallower one for the stones to go into when they’re hot, baskets for the food and bags and sand to cover it all up. Have we got it right?’
He was obviously anxious, but Keanu clapped him on the back and said, ‘Fantastic, mate, it’s just fantastic.’
Caroline had opened one of the top cupboards and found the baskets for the food stacked inside it. The next one held the sacks that would be wet and placed across the food before the lot was covered with sand to keep the heat in and help the meal steam-cook.
The thought that she’d actually be here and celebrating with a hangi made her turn to Keanu in delight.
‘Won’t it be great? It’s so long since we’ve been to a hangi!’
‘Great if we don’t have to cook it,’ Keanu reminded her, but Bill assured them both that local staff had already been employed for the station and they were bringing in more people for the celebration of Alkiri’s life the following day.
‘Apparently people will come from all the islands, and as we’re leaving soon, it will be kind of a reward for our workers to be here for the party.’
Bill hesitated then added, ‘Although that sounds a bit rough, partying when someone’s dead.’
‘Not here,’ Keanu assured him. ‘Here we celebrate a life that enriched all who knew him—or her if it’s a woman’s funeral.’
Bill seemed content, but Caroline considered what he’d said.
Had she enriched anyone’s life?
She rather doubted it.
Christopher’s maybe.
He’d certainly enriched hers, getting through each day of pain and illness with a smile always ready on his face for her or their father. During the ‘Steve years’ as she was starting to think of them, she’d seen less of her brother and really regretted it. Love, or what she’d thought was love, had made her selfish.
They were walking back up to the hospital while these thoughts coursed through her head.
‘You okay?’ Keanu asked, and she realised she’d dropped behind again, drifting through the past.
Which, considering the confusion she was feeling in his presence, might have been a safer place.
‘Fine,’ she lied, and hurried to catch up with him.
IT WAS A day without end, or so it seemed to Caroline when they returned to the hospital.
‘Would you mind keeping an eye on things while Keanu, Hettie and I have some dinner?’ Sam greeted her. ‘Hettie’s cooking because Vailea’s already preparing for the funeral feast and there’s stuff the three of us have to go over, including juggling the roster for the funeral tomorrow.’
‘No worries,’ Caroline assured him, ‘though you’d better tell me what to do in an emergency. Do I go to the back door and yell?’
‘Oh, you don’t know the system? Of course not, you’ve barely arrived and we haven’t stopped working you. See the panel by the door? It was an ingenious idea worked out by your father. You hit the blue button for me—it rings in my room—the green for Hettie—and the red that will clang all through the villas for all hands on deck.’
‘No fire alarm?’ Caroline teased, and Sam pointed to the regulation fire alarm box set beside the panel.
‘Open that one and press the button and they’ll hear you over on Atangi! And the village will have men here almost as fast as the staff can get here. The hospital’s very important to all the islanders—and they’ve your father to thank for that.’
Caroline thought the conversation was over, until Sam added, almost under his breath, ‘Although we’d prefer to be thanking him in person.’
‘My father loves the island. All M’Langi. I can hear it in his voice when he talks about it, asks questions. But my mother’s death, and Christopher … It seems he blamed himself, and now he says both the hospital and Christopher need him more on the mainland. Over there he can keep a watch on Christopher’s care and also make money and lobby for money to keep this place going.’
Sam sighed and departed, but the conversation had brought Caroline’s mind back to the problems at the mine. Of course mortgaging half a house had been a stupid idea, but Keanu hadn’t come up with anything better.
Keanu …
The kiss …
Setting the past and the future firmly out of her mind, she went into the big ward, where she discovered that the boys with the coral cuts had been released. The woman with unstable diabetes was sleeping once again, as was their patient with the Biruli ulcer. The woman with the baby had also gone, so all she had to do was hang around in case she was needed.
And use the time to try to sort out the mess inside her head.
Start with the mine—there had to be some way …
But how could she think when she was hungry? She headed for the kitchen, where she found several salads made up in the main refrigerator.
‘Staff salads,’ the note attached to the shelf said, so she took one, went back into the desk in the ward to keep an eye on her patients and ate it there.
Thinking, almost subconsciously, of the grandparents she’d barely known.
How terrible for them to have lost their daughter—their only child—so far away from home. Max had flown his wife’s body back to Sydney to be buried there, and had taken first his babies, and later his toddlers—well, Christopher had never actually toddled—to visit their grandparents.
But both of them had been dead before Caroline was six so it was difficult for her to summon up more than an image of a defeated-looking old man and woman.
Defeated by grief, she’d realised, much later.
‘Are you okay? You must be tired. I can take over here if you like.’
Keanu’s arrival interrupted her unhappy thoughts.
‘No way. I have a feeling if I handed over, or even had you standing by, it would reinforce everyone’s opinion of the worthlessness of all Lockharts.’
Keanu smiled, something she wished he wouldn’t do, at least when she was around.
‘Hettie will be over soon and she’ll stay until Mina comes on, but I can at least hang around and keep you company. I’m being Maddie this week and she was on call so I might as well be here.’
He pulled a chair over from beside the wall and sat beside her at the small desk, far too close.
Caroline managed to manoeuvre her chair a little farther away
