it was the fear of loss that was the real driving force in this deception.
And, if she was completely honest, Anahera didn’t want to share her precious daughter with the man who had broken her heart. He didn’t deserve to have the unconditional love that this amazing little girl with the biggest heart in the world gave so freely.
Did that make her a bad person?
If it did, Anahera had decided long ago that she would live with the guilt of being one.
How much easier had that burden been to carry when Luke had been just a memory? Having him here in person was so much worse.
Unbearable even.
And now she had to spend a whole day in his company?
She had to press a hand to her belly as another knife-like cramp took hold.
‘Ana?’ Sam’s voice floated through the doorway. ‘Jack’s all set and Luke’s already at the helipad.’ He came through the door just as Anahera straightened her back and summoned all her willpower to ignore the pain. ‘Let me carry that bin for you.’
Getting a bird’s-eye view of the islands from the cockpit of a helicopter was so much more spectacular than the limited scope of a small plane’s window.
Luke was sitting in the front beside Jack and he had a grin on his face. ‘Look at that … the sea’s so clear you can just about see the coral in the reef. And the fish …’
‘Gorgeous, isn’t it? I never get sick of my office.’ Jack’s voice came through the headphones Luke was wearing. ‘That’s Atangi, there. The biggest island by land mass and the one that’s been settled the longest. That’s where the main schools are. It’s where you grew up, isn’t it, Ana?’
‘Yes.’ Anahera was sitting in the cabin of the helicopter, behind Luke so he couldn’t see her. ‘Until Mum started working at the hospital. We moved to the village on Wildfire after that and I took the boat to school.’
Luke hadn’t known that. What had they talked about all those years ago? Maybe he’d done too much talking and not enough listening but it was too late to start now. Anahera had barely glanced at him when she’d arrived at the helipad and he hadn’t been able to think of anything to say after a simple ‘Good morning’ because there’d been too many questions zipping through his head, starting with who looked after her daughter when she was at work and what did her husband do? And then he’d taken notice of her hands as she’d helped Jack load supplies into the chopper and he’d seen the absence of a wedding ring and that only led to more questions that he’d probably never get the chance to ask because it seemed like Anahera didn’t even want to talk to him.
He shouldn’t have let Harry and Sam talk him into extending his visit but that had been before he’d known about Anahera’s daughter. When he’d still had that vague hope that maybe he and Anahera could clear the air between them. That he would be able to finally explain …
The chance of that happening had evaporated in the shock of finding out how conclusively Anahera had already moved on with her life. Why would he want to make things harder for himself by reopening old scars?
But what if she wasn’t married? If whoever she had moved on with was no longer in her life?
No. He didn’t want to go there. Didn’t even want to think about it.
‘What’s that island?’ he asked to distract himself. ‘That round one, off to the left there. I never visited the other islands when I was here last time. I had no idea there were so many.’
‘There are a lot. Most of them are uninhabited, though. That round one is Opuru. It got evacuated after a tsunami a decade or two ago and that’s when the village on Wildfire got built. Before that, it was only the Lockharts and their house staff that lived here. The mine workers would all commute, mostly from Atangi.’
‘Where’s French Island?’
‘A bit farther out. Not as big as Atangi and not as mountainous as Wildfire. It’s got a lovely reef, though, and there’s still the wreck of the ship it was named for. Divers love it. With the sea so clear, there’s a point on one of the hills where you can see the bones of the whole ship. It’s pretty spectacular.’
‘I’d love to see that.’
‘I could show you,’ Jack said. ‘We might have time, depending on how many people turn up for the clinic, of course. I stay close, in case Ana needs a hand.’
‘I’d like to help with the clinic, too. If that’s okay, Ana.’
‘It won’t be necessary.’ Anahera’s voice was cool. ‘A lot of the people on this island don’t speak much English so I’d have to translate everything and that would just slow us down. Jack and I do this on a regular basis and we’ve never had a problem we couldn’t deal with. But thanks for the offer.’
Luke lapsed into silence as the helicopter dipped lower, heading for the landing point on French Island. The warning was clear and it was timely. If it felt like this to get a professional offer rejected, he would be wise not to make himself vulnerable on a personal level.
He wasn’t wanted. Maybe he never really had been.
The patients waiting for the clinic to open were already sheltering from the sun under the spreading branches of an enormous fig tree.
Anahera could see a couple of pregnant women, mothers holding small children and a few elderly people who had family members there to support them. As she greeted everybody on the way in to open up the clinic building, she was already making a mental note of everything she would need to do. Rough bandages on limbs meant a wound that would need cleaning and dressing, possibly suturing. Her diabetic patients needed testing to make sure their blood-sugar levels were under control, either by medication or the lifestyle changes she was trying to encourage. The people with hypertension needed their blood pressure checked and, if the levels weren’t improving, she’d need to talk to them about how compliant they were being with taking their tablets.
Antenatal checks for the pregnant women were important, too, and sometimes it took a lot of persuasion to get the mothers-to-be to leave their families in order to go to the mainland to give birth. Lani was worrying her at the moment.
‘Your baby is still upside down,’ Anahera told Lani when it was her turn for a consultation. ‘I’d like you see the obstetrician when she comes to Wildfire next week. Can you come across on the boat? Like you did for the ultrasound?’
Lani’s gaze shifted to the silent, elderly woman who was sitting on a chair beside the window, and she lowered her voice. ‘There’s no one else to care for my mother during the day. My father is out fishing and my husband works on Atangi. It’s difficult … especially since my brother and his family went to live in Australia.’
‘I know.’ Lani’s mother had had a stroke a year ago and had been left with a disability that needed constant care. She had lost the use of one arm, her speech was unintelligible to anyone other than Lani and she had difficulty swallowing.
‘Leave it with me, Lani. I’ll arrange something. Maybe we can get someone to come here to help. Or we can arrange for your mother to come with you, like she has today.’
What would happen if the
