She’d loved Jacques.
‘We’re grown up now,’ he agreed at last. ‘We’re sensible. We don’t do the heart thing any more.’
‘Did you ever do the heart thing?’
‘Lily…’
‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘It’s not fair to ask if you loved me seven years ago. We were kids. But I did feel grown up in the way I felt about you.’
‘As you felt…grown up about Jacques?’
‘Even more grown up,’ she said. ‘And just as stupid. That was a decision of the head and look where that got me.’ She rose and brushed sand from her pants, looking uncertainly back toward the hospital. ‘I need to go.’
‘I’d like to get to know Benjy before I leave.’
‘Of course.’
It worried him, he decided, that she was being calmly courteous. This was a reasonable discussion, but he didn’t feel reasonable. He felt like hitting something. ‘Maybe I need to do that fast,’ he told her. ‘Most of the troops will be pulling out in the next few days.’ Then, as he saw the flash of fear behind her eyes, he said, ‘Lily, there’s no need to fear anyone coming back. No one’s naming names but we know who was behind this. Nothing can be said, no accusations can be made, but they’ll be aware that the eyes of the world are on them now and they daren’t try again. I suspect…maybe the islanders aren’t as innocent as they thought you were.’
‘How can we be innocent when so many of our number are dead?’ she said, not attempting to hide her bitterness. ‘And that they be allowed to get away with murder…’ She faltered, and closed her eyes. Ben stepped forward, but her eyes flew open and she stepped away. ‘Don’t touch me.’
‘I only-’
‘I’m not the Lily you knew.’
‘I can see that,’ he said gravely. ‘To have coped with the medical needs of this community for so long…’
‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘I’m fine because I have support from all the islanders. You know, when I came back here seven years ago there was a part of me that didn’t want to come. But now…’
‘You want to put up the barricades.’
‘Jacques was an outsider and look what he caused. I should have known. So, yes, I want you all gone. I want my life normal-like it was before Jacques was here. How could I ever have been stupid enough to believe him? First you, then him. My choice of men…’
‘You’re putting me in the same category as Jacques?’ he demanded, appalled, but no apology was forthcoming.
‘Look at you,’ she said scornfully. ‘A grown man, chasing danger like it’s some sort of adrenalin rush…’
‘I don’t need it.’
‘Yes, you do,’ she said, weariness replacing anger. ‘I asked you to come and see my island when we finished med school and you know what you said? You said, “I’ve no intention of wasting time sleeping under coconut palms.” As if my life has anything to do with sleeping. And now…You’re on this island because it’s what you term exciting. Someone else might stay behind and help me pick up the pieces but it won’t be you. Sam told me…’
‘Sam,’ Ben said, and groaned inwardly, because Sam was the last person he’d want to be telling Lily what he was like now. ‘What’s Sam been saying?’
‘Sam said you’re a frontline doctor,’ she said. ‘You go in first. The heroic Lt Blayden. Where danger is, that’s where you are.’
‘So?’ he said, cautious, unable to think of any way to avoid a criticism he didn’t really understand.
‘So maybe that’s why I haven’t told Benjy about you.’
‘What have you told him about his father?’
‘Not much,’ she said, and flushed. ‘Ben, this is crazy. I’m way out of my league. I’ve spent the last few days thinking Benjy might have been killed. That should make the rest of this discussion trivial, but it’s not. It still matters.’
‘I do want to get to know him.’
‘So stay on,’ she said, challenging. ‘If a medic can stay here as long as the field hospital’s needed, why can’t that person be you?’
‘My job means I don’t stay in one place,’ he said blankly.
‘And my job is to protect Benjy,’ she said, as if he’d ended the conversation. ‘I need to get back to him.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘I don’t want you in my house.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I know. That sounds dumb-and mean. While Benjy was in danger I needed you-I needed anyone-and you sleeping in my house helped. But it doesn’t help now. It only complicates things.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I don’t need you any more,’ she told him simply. ‘I don’t need you and I don’t need Jacques. End of story. You’ve taught me a hard lesson, Ben Blayden, but maybe I’m finally learning. So go back to your quarters and move on.’
‘And Benjy?’
‘I can’t figure that out. Maybe I will in the morning. I’m too tired now. It’s too late at night and I’m not sleeping.’
‘Lily-’
‘Leave it,’ she snapped. ‘I don’t want you being sympathetic. I don’t want you to be anything at all. I just want everything to be as it was.’
‘It can’t be.’
‘You think I don’t know that?’ she yelled, and her voice rose so high that a flock of native birds flew upward from the palms in sudden fright. She backed away from him, taking some of her anger out in movement. She glared at him, turned away and kicked out as the remains of a wave reached up to her toes. Water sprayed up around her, and then retreated. She was left alone on a patch of washed sand, shimmering in the moonlight.
Shimmering blue.
Electric blue.
Where a moment ago it had been dark and lifeless, suddenly a thousand lights had turned on around her feet.
She stood absolutely still and the lights slowly faded. But they were still there, a thousand, no, a million tiny blue lights shining from within the wash of white water surging in and out with the tide.
‘Oh,’ she whispered, deflected from her anger.
Light was everywhere. She gazed down at her feet and she wiggled her toes experimentally.
The lights went on around her.
‘Oh.’ It was scarcely a breath. It was a whisper of awe.
She bent and put a hand on the sand. Lifting it, she left a perfect handprint of light, shimmering blue. She stared down, awed, as the lights slowly went out again and her handprint became nothing but a darker patch in the wet sand. But still there were lights. Wherever the water washed, there was light.
‘What is it?’ she breathed. ‘Oh, Ben…’
He was as awed as she was. But he did know what it was. He’d seen this once before, on the south coast of Australia, and it had blown him away then as it was doing again now.
‘It’s bioluminescence,’ he told her. ‘It’s millions of tiny sea creatures called dinoflagellates. You rarely see them this close to shore. They’re like fireflies, responding to movement with a tiny blue glow.’
‘It’s not magic?’ She was turning round and round, very slowly, watching her feet glow around her.
‘Almost.’ In truth he was as awed as she was. ‘Maybe it is. It surely looks magic.’
‘Oh, Ben…’
He walked down the beach until he was beside her. As soon as he reached the soaked sand, his footprints lit up blue just like Lily’s.
‘This wasn’t here when we came. We’d have noticed,’ Lily breathed. ‘How…?’
‘They’ll have come in on the tide.’
‘They never have before.’
‘It’s rare as hen’s teeth this close in.’
‘It’s…’ She was still turning, slowly, with her hands held out, like a ballet dancer. She sank and dug her hands into the soaking sand. Lifting them high, the sand fell from her fingers in a shower of blue light.
She laughed, a laugh of pure delight, a laugh he hadn’t heard for so long.
‘It’s magic,’ she whispered. ‘It’s just magic.’
‘It is.’ He caught her as she rose and spun once more, and he tugged her against him. They stood side by side, their bodies touching, water washing over their feet, gazing out at a sea that was a wash of blue and shimmering silver, a magic show put on just for them. Just for this night.