He butted out.

Marcia was packing as well. He went out to the courtyard and found her loading her gear into the back of Lachlan’s BMW.

‘As fast as that?’ he asked, and she gave him a vicious glare. Lachlan, looking nervous, stayed back.

‘You don’t want me here. I’ll be back to you about financial details.’

‘Financial details?’

‘This has cost me,’ she muttered, throwing a holdall into the trunk with vicious intensity. ‘I’ve wasted three years of my life organising our future and you mess it up with one stupid widow. If you think you’ll get out of that without a lawsuit, you have another think coming.’

‘You did go to the sand dunes,’ he said mildly. He looked across at Lachlan, who decided to comb his hair in the car’s rear-view mirror.

‘I hate you,’ Marcia told him.

‘You don’t do emotion.’

‘I so do!’ She rallied then, whirling to face him head on, and her eyes were bright with unshed tears. Tears of fury, frustration and bitterness.

‘You see?’ she snarled, her voice almost breaking. ‘I do “do” emotion. It’s just that I don’t want to. It stuffs up your life. You can’t control people. And I don’t want it, any more than I want you.’ She flung herself into the passenger seat and slammed the door. Unfortunately the window was open and without the engine on she couldn’t close it.

‘Get in,’ she snapped at Lachlan. ‘Let’s get moving.’

‘Sure,’ Lachlan said, and grinned at Hamish. ‘That’s quite a lady you’re losing.’

‘Rich, too,’ Hamish offered.

‘You think I don’t already know that?’

I’m sure you do, he thought as he watched the BMW disappear from view.

Two unemotional people?

No. There were emotions there all right. Maybe they were in the wrong place but they were still there.

As were his. He just had to figure out where to put them.


He still hadn’t figured it out thirty minutes later as he watched Susie climb into Jake’s car. Still with no tears. Still with that dreadful wooden face he was starting to know-and to fear.

‘Goodbye, Hamish,’ she said, but she didn’t kiss him goodbye.

Her body language said it all. He had no choice.

He stood back and let her go.


The castle emptied, just like that. One minute there’d been a crowd waving Susie off, a confusion of packing and tears and hugs and waving handkerchiefs as the car disappeared down the road.

Then nothing. The inhabitants of Dolphin Bay simply turned and left, went back to their village, went back to their lives. Which didn’t include him.

Hamish went back into the kitchen, expecting a mess, but the Dolphin Bay ladies had been there en masse and everything was ordered. Pristine.

There was a note on the table from Kirsty.

Susie’s organised professional cleaners to go through the place tomorrow. Leave a list of what you want kept. They’ll dispose of the rest. Mrs Jacobsen says one casserole dish will be fine, thank you, but it had better be a good one.

Great.

He walked back out to the hall where Ernst and Eric were looking morose. Guard duty with nothing to guard.

They’d look dumb back in Manhattan, he thought. Could he write a clause into the hotel sale, saying the new owners had to keep these two?

Ridiculous.

The word hung.

Why had Susie thought his proposal ridiculous? It had been a very good offer, he thought. He’d told her he loved her. He’d look after her, keep her safe, make sure she wanted for nothing.

Ernst and Eric gazed at him morosely.

Ridiculous.

‘The whole thing’s ridiculous,’ he snapped. ‘Not me. What does she want me to do?’

Whatever it was, he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t.

His phone buzzed and he looked at the screen. Jodie. Another lecture.

He flicked it off. Out of communication.

That meant the office couldn’t communicate either.

Good. He needed to not communicate.


‘You are sure you’re doing the right thing?’

‘Of course I am.’ They were outside the vast metal gates at the airport-gates you could only go through as you passed passport control. The days of waving planes off were long gone. Now the gates slammed on you two or three hours before the plane left and that was that.

Susie and Kirsty were in a huddle. Jake was standing back, holding Rose, giving his wife and her sister space to say goodbye.

‘But you’re in love with Hamish.’

‘He doesn’t have a clue what love is. Leave it, Kirsty. It’s over.’

‘You will come back when our baby’s due?’

‘I promise.’

‘Oh, Susie, I don’t see how I can bear it.’

‘If I can bear it you can,’ Susie said resolutely. She’d expected to be a sobbing mess by now, but the tears were nowhere. She didn’t feel like tears. She felt dead.

‘I can bear it,’ she told her sister. ‘You’ve been the best sister in the world but we’re separate. Twins but separate. You have your life and I have mine.’

Yes, thought Kirsty as she stood and watched the gates slide shut, irrevocably cutting Susie off from return. I have my life. My husband, my kids, my dog, my life. Oh, Susie, I wish you had the same.


What the hell was a man to do?

Hamish paced the castle in indecision. He went back into Angus’s room and looked at the papers scattered over the floor. Yes, they needed to be gone through. There were all sorts of important deeds that couldn’t be left. They represented a couple days’ work.

He’d stay for two more days, and then he’d leave.

He rang the airline and booked his return flight for two days hence. Right. That was the start of organisational mode.

Now sort the papers.

It didn’t happen. His head wasn’t in the right space. The papers blurred.

He went back out into the garden and saw his half-finished path. He’s work on that.

Two spadefuls and he decided his hands were just a wee bit sore to be digging.

He’d go to the beach. He’d swim.

Alone?

He had to do something.

He went to the beach.


The water was cool, clear and welcoming. Before, every time he’d dived under the surface of the waves he’d felt an almost out-of-body experience. It had been as if he’d simply turned off. A switch had been flicked. Here he could forget about everything but the feel of the cool water on his skin, the power of his body, the sun glinting on his face as he surfaced to breathe.

Today it didn’t work. He couldn’t find a rhythm. He felt breathless, almost claustrophobic, as if this place was somehow threatening.

Susie had almost lost her life here, he remembered. And he hadn’t been here to help her.

She wouldn’t have let him near even if he had been here.

Hell.

He looked back to shore. A sea-eagle was cruising lazily over the headland. As he watched it stilled, did a long, slow loop, focussing on something below, and glided across the rocks just by him.

There was something there-a dead fish maybe-but Hamish’s presence distracted the bird. For a moment he thought the bird would plunge down, and suddenly he splashed out and yelled at it.

The bird focussed on him and started circling again. Slowly.

Still watching whatever it was on the rocks.

It’d be a dead fish, Hamish told himself. Nothing but a dead fish.

He struck out for the rocks, surfacing at every stroke to make sure the bird wasn’t coming down. Twelve, fourteen strokes, and he reached the first of the rocks. They were sharp and unwelcoming. He’d cut his feet trying to get across them.

It’d be a dead fish.

But the thought wouldn’t go away. He looked skyward and the bird was focussed just in front of him. Two or three yards across the rocks.

He hauled himself out of the water. Ouch. Ouch, ouch, ouch.

A dead fish…

It wasn’t a dead fish. It was Taffy, curled into a limp and sodden ball, half in and half out of a rock pool.

He thought she was dead. For a long moment he stared down at the sodden mat of fur, at the tail splayed out in the water, half floating. At the little head, just out of the water.

And then she moved. Just a little, as if she was finding the strength to drag herself out of the water an inch at a time.

The rocks were forgotten. His feet were forgotten. He was kneeling over her, lifting her out of the water, unable to believe she’d still be alive.

‘Taffy,’ he whispered, and her eyes opened a little. And unbelievably the disreputable tail gave the tiniest hint of a wag.

‘Taf.’ He held her close, cradling her in his arms, taking in the enormity of what had happened.

What had happened?

He looked up and the eagle was still circling. There was another bird now, swooping past, as if the two birds were disputing about who was to get lunch.

Two birds…

He looked down at Taffy and saw lacerations in her side. Deep slices. Something had picked her up…

And carried her out over the sea? And then maybe got into an argument with another bird, and the prey had been dropped.

If she’d been dropped into the white water around the rocks then maybe the birds had lost her. Maybe she’d have been left struggling in the water, to finally drag herself up here.

Only to expose herself again to the birds of prey who’d dumped her here in the first place.

Hamish was crying. Hell, he was crouched on the rock and blubbing like a baby. Taffy.

‘We’ll get you warm,’ he told the pup. ‘We’ll get you to a vet.’

But to walk over the rocks in bare feet was impossible. He was two hundred yards from the beach.

He’d have to swim.

He backed into the water, dropped down into the depths and felt Taffy’s alarm as she was immersed again. He was on his back, cradling the pup against his chest. He’d get back to the beach using a form of backstroke-backstroke with no arms? But if the pup struggled…