The Light Between Oceans(73)

‘That why she lost the baby?’

Shock registered on Tom’s face. ‘Did she say that?’

Knuckey stayed silent, and Tom took a deep breath. ‘Look, I’ve told you what happened. She tried to talk me out of it. I’m guilty of whatever you say I’m guilty of, so let’s just get this over, and leave my wife out of it.’

‘Don’t try to tell me what to do,’ Knuckey snapped. ‘I’m not your batman. I’ll do what I decide to do when I’m good and ready.’ He pushed his chair out from the desk, and folded his arms. ‘The man in the boat …’

‘What about him?’

‘What state was he in, when you found him?’

‘He was dead.’

‘You sure about that?’

‘I’ve seen enough bodies in my time.’

‘Why should I believe you about this one?’

‘Why should I lie?’

Knuckey paused, and let the question hang in the air, for his prisoner to feel the answer weigh down upon him. Tom shifted in his chair. ‘Exactly,’ said Knuckey. ‘Why should you lie?’

‘My wife’ll tell you he was dead when the boat washed up.’

‘The same wife you admit you forced to lie?’

‘Look, it’s completely different, sheltering a child and—’

‘Killing someone?’ Knuckey cut in.

‘Ask her.’

‘I have,’ said Knuckey quietly.

‘Then you know he was dead.’

‘I don’t know anything. She refuses to talk about it.’

Tom felt a hammer blow to his chest. He avoided Knuckey’s eyes. ‘What has she said?’

‘That she’s got nothing to say.’

Tom hung his head. ‘Christ all bloody mighty,’ he muttered under his breath, before responding, ‘Well all I can do is repeat what I said. I never saw that man alive.’ He knitted his fingers together. ‘If I can just see her, talk to her …’

‘No chance of that. Besides the fact that it’s not allowed, I get the impression she wouldn’t talk to you if you were the last person on earth.’



Quicksilver. Fascinating, but impossible to predict. It could bear the ton of glass in the light, but try to put your finger on a drop of it, and it would race away in any direction. The image kept coming into Tom’s mind as he sat thinking about Isabel after Knuckey’s questioning. He thought back to the days after the last stillbirth, when he had tried to comfort her.

‘We’ll be all right. If it’s just you and me for the rest of our lives, that’s enough for me.’

Her eyes had slid up to meet his and her expression chilled him. It was despairing. Defeated.

He moved to touch her, but she drew away. ‘You’ll get better. Things’ll get better. Just give it time.’

Without warning, she stood up and rushed to the door, doubling up for a moment from pain, before limping into the night.

‘Izzy! For God’s sake, stop. You’ll hurt yourself!’

‘I’ll do more than that!’

The moon balanced in the warm, windless sky. The long, white nightgown Isabel had worn on their wedding night four years before glowed like a paper lantern as she stood, a tiny white dot, in an ocean of darkness. ‘I can’t bear it!’ she screamed in a voice so loud and shrill that the goats started from their sleep and began to move with a jangle of bells in their paddock. ‘I can’t bear it any more! God, why do you make me live when my children die? I’d be better off dead!’ She stumbled towards the cliff.

He rushed to gather her into his arms. ‘Calm down, Izz.’ But she broke free and ran again, half hobbling when the pain got too bad.

‘Don’t tell me to calm down, you stupid, stupid man! It’s your fault. I hate this place! I hate you! I want my baby!’ The light scythed a path far above, leaving her untouched by its beam.

‘You didn’t want him! That’s why he died. He could tell you didn’t care!’

‘Come on, Izz. Come back inside.’

‘You don’t feel anything, Tom Sherbourne! I don’t know what you did with your heart but it’s not inside you, that’s for sure!’

A person could only take so much. He’d seen it often enough. Lads who’d turned up full of ginger and ready to give Fritz hell, who’d survived the shelling and the snow and the lice and the mud, for years sometimes. Then something in them just packed up and went home – went somewhere deep inside where they couldn’t be touched. Or sometimes they turned on you, came at you with a bayonet, laughing like a maniac and crying at the same time. Christ, when he thought back to his own state by the time it was all over …

Who was he to judge Isabel? She’d reached her edge, that was all. Everyone had one. Everyone. And in taking Lucy away, he had driven her to it.



Late that night, Septimus Potts pulled off his boots and wiggled his toes in his fine woollen socks. He groaned at the familiar creaking of his back. He was sitting on the side of the solid jarrah bed carved out of a tree from his own forest. The only sound in the enormous room was the ticking of the carriage clock on the nightstand. He gave a sigh as he took in the finery – the starched linen, the gleaming furniture, the portrait of his late wife Ellen – by the light of the electric lamps, shaded by frosted rose glass. The image of his granddaughter, distraught and cowering that afternoon, was still vivid: Baby Grace, given up for dead by everyone but Hannah. Life. Who the bloody hell could tell how it was going to turn out?