The Light Between Oceans(65)

‘Someone sent the rattle to Mrs Roennfeldt, last week.’

‘Last week?’

‘Looks like the same person as sent her a letter getting on for two years ago.’

This last news was too much to make sense of.

‘We’ll want to ask you some questions once we’ve spoken to your husband, but in the meantime, perhaps you should—’ He shrugged awkwardly. ‘Don’t go too far.’

Isabel looks out over the cliff: there is so much air, yet she struggles for breath as she pictures Lucy, having an afternoon sleep while in the room next door, police question her father. They will take her away. Her mind races: she can hide her somewhere on the island. She can – she can set off in the boat with her. She calculates quickly – the rescue boat is always ready to launch at an instant. If she can pretend she’s taking Lucy … where? Anywhere, it doesn’t matter. She can get the girl to the boat and they can be off the island before anyone realises they’ve gone. And if they get into the right current, they’ll head north … She pictures the two of them, making land far up towards Perth, together, safe. Logic intervenes to remind her of the risks of the southerly current and the certain death of the Southern Ocean. Urgently she explores another route. She can swear that the child is her own, that the dinghy washed up with two dead bodies, and they kept only the rattle. She clutches at any possibility, no matter how absurd.

The same impulse keeps returning: ‘I must ask Tom what to do.’ Then she feels sick, as she remembers this is all Tom’s doing. It hits her just as when she woke in the night after learning of her brother Hugh’s death and thought, ‘I must tell Hugh the awful news.’

Gradually, some part of her concedes there is no escape, and fear gives way to anger. Why? Why could he not just leave things be? Tom is supposed to protect his family, not rip it apart. Deep beneath awareness, a tar-thick feeling has been disturbed, and now looks for a safe harbour. Her thoughts spiral into darkness – he has been planning this for two years. Who is this man who could lie to her, tear her baby away? She remembers the sight of Hannah Roennfeldt touching his arm, and wonders what really happened between them. She retches violently onto the grass.



The ocean thundered against the cliff, showering spittle right up to where Isabel stood, hundreds of feet above the water, on the edge. The spray had soaked into the crosses and her dress was damp with it.

‘Izzy! Isabel!’ Tom’s voice was all but blown off the island by the gale.

A petrel was wheeling in the air, circling, circling, before plummeting hard as lightning into the jagged swell to retrieve a herring. But luck and the storm were on the side of the fish, and it wriggled from the bird’s beak, falling back to the waves.

Tom covered the few hundred yards to his wife. The petrel continued to hover on the storm currents, knowing that the tumult of the water would make easy pickings of any fish not sheltered in the deepest reefs.

‘We haven’t got much time,’ Tom said, pulling Isabel close. ‘Lucy’ll be awake any minute.’ The police had been questioning him for the past hour, and two of them were now heading down towards the old graves on the other side of the island, armed with shovels.

Isabel searched his face as though he were a stranger. ‘The policeman said someone sent Hannah Roennfeldt a rattle …’

He held her gaze, but said nothing.

‘… that someone wrote to her two years ago, to say her baby was alive.’ She wrestled with the implications a little longer. ‘Tom!’ was all she could say, her eyes wide with terror. ‘Oh, Tom!’ she said again, stepping backwards.

‘I had to do something, Izzy. God knows I’ve tried to explain. I just wanted her to know her child was safe.’

She looked at him, as if trying to make sense of words shouted from far away, though he was standing so close that strands of her hair blew into his face. ‘I trusted you, Tom.’ She bunched her hair in her fists as she stared at him, open-mouthed as she struggled for words. ‘What in God’s name have you done to us? What have you done to Lucy?’

She saw resignation in his shoulders, relief in his eyes. As she dropped her hands, her hair swept across her face again like a mourning veil and she began to sob. ‘Two years! Has everything been a lie for two years?’

‘You saw the poor bloody woman! You saw what we’d done.’

‘And she means more to you than our family?’

‘It’s not our family, Izz.’

‘It’s the only family we’ll ever have! What on earth’s going to happen to Lucy?’

He clasped her arms. ‘Look, just do what I say and you’ll be all right. I’ve told them it was me, all right? I’ve told them keeping Lucy was all my idea – said you didn’t want to, but I forced you. As long as you go along with that no one will touch you … They’re taking us back to Partageuse. Izzy, I promise I’ll protect you.’ He pulled her close to him again and touched his lips to the top of her head. ‘It doesn’t matter what happens to me. I know they’ll send me to gaol, but when I get out, we’ll still—’

Suddenly she launched at him, her fists pounding at his chest. ‘Don’t talk about “we”, Tom! Not after what you’ve done!’ He made no effort to stop her. ‘You made your choice! You don’t give a tinker’s damn about Lucy, or me. So don’t …’ she searched for words, ‘don’t expect me to care what the bloody hell happens to you from now on.’