The Light Between Oceans(82)

‘Don’t talk bilge.’

‘You’ve been a good friend to me, Ralph. But – there’s a lot about me you don’t know.’

‘And there’s a lot about you I do, boy.’

Tom stood up. ‘Did the engine get sorted out? Bluey said you’d been having problems with it.’

Ralph looked at him carefully. ‘It’s not looking good.’

‘She’s served you well, over the years, that boat.’

‘Yep. I’ve always trusted her, and I didn’t think she’d ever let me down. Fremantle wants to decommission her.’ He looked Tom in the eye. ‘We’re all dead soon enough. Who are you to throw away the best years of your life?’

‘The best years of my life were over a long time ago, Ralph.’

‘That’s codswallop and you know it! It’s about time you got on your feet and did something! For Christ’s sake wake up to your bloody self!’

‘What are you suggesting I do, Ralph?’

‘I’m suggesting you tell the bloody truth, whatever it is. The only place lying leads is trouble.’

‘Sometimes that’s the only place telling the truth gets you, too … People can only take so much, Ralph. Christ – I know that better than anyone. Izzy was just an ordinary, happy girl until she got tangled up with me. None of this would have happened if she hadn’t come out to Janus. She thought it’d be paradise. She had no idea what she was in for. I should never have let her come out.’

‘She’s a grown woman, Tom.’

He looked at the skipper, weighing his next words. ‘Ralph, I’ve had this coming a long time. Sins catch up with you in the end.’ He sighed, and looked up at a spider web in the corner of his cell, where a few flies hung like forlorn Christmas decorations. ‘I should have been dead years ago. God knows I should have copped a bullet or a bayonet a hundred times over. I’ve been on borrowed time a long while.’ He swallowed hard. ‘It’s tough enough on Izz being without Lucy. She’d never survive time in— Ralph, this is one thing I can do for her. It’s as close to making it up to her as I’ll ever get.’



‘It’s not fair.’ The child repeats this phrase over and over, not in a whingeing tone, but in a desperate appeal to reason. Her expression is that of someone trying to explain an English phrase to a foreigner. ‘It’s not fair. I want to go home.’

Sometimes, Hannah manages to distract her for a few hours. Making cakes with her. Cutting out paper dolls. Putting crumbs out for the fairy wrens, so that the tiny creatures come right to the door and hop about on legs as fine as fuse wire, enthralling Grace while they peck daintily at the stale bread.

When she sees Grace’s expression of delight at the tabby cat they pass one day, she asks around town if anyone has any kittens, and a tiny black creature with white paws and face becomes part of the household.

Grace is interested, but suspicious. ‘Go on, he’s yours. All for you,’ says Hannah, putting the kitten gently into her hands. ‘So you have to help look after him. Now, what do you think his name should be?’

‘Lucy,’ says the child, without hesitation.

Hannah baulks. ‘I think Lucy’s a little girl’s name, not a cat’s name,’ she says. ‘What about a proper cat’s name?’

So Grace gives the only cat’s name she knows. ‘Tabatha Tabby.’

‘Tabatha Tabby it is,’ Hannah says, resisting the urge to tell her it’s not a tabby cat, and it’s not a girl. At least she’s got the child to speak.

The next day, when Hannah says, ‘Come on, shall we give Tabatha some mince?’ Grace responds, fiddling with a strand of hair, ‘She doesn’t like you. She only likes me.’ There’s no malice. Just explaining a fact.



‘Perhaps you should let her see Isabel Sherbourne,’ Gwen suggested after a particularly fierce round between mother and child over putting on a pair of shoes.

Hannah looked horrified. ‘Gwen!’

‘I know it’s the last thing you want to hear. But I’m just saying … maybe if Grace thought you were a friend of her mother’s, that might help somehow.’

‘A friend of her mother’s! How could you even say such a thing! Besides, you know what Dr Sumpton said. The sooner she forgets about that woman, the better!’

But she could not escape the fact that her daughter had been irrevocably embossed with the stamp of those other parents, that other life. When they walked by the beach, Grace strained to get to the water. At night, whereas most children would be pleased to identify the moon, Grace could point to the brightest star of the evening and declare, ‘Sirius! And the Milky Way,’ in a voice so confident that it frightened Hannah, and made her hurry inside, saying, ‘Time for bed now. In we go.’

Hannah prayed to be freed from resentment, from bitterness. ‘Lord, I’m so blessed to have my daughter back. Show me the right thing to do.’ But straight away she would imagine Frank, thrown into an unmarked grave in a piece of canvas. She remembered the look on his face the first time he had held his daughter, as though she had presented him with the whole of heaven and earth in that pink blanket.

It was not up to her. It was only right that Tom Sherbourne should be dealt with according to the law. If a court decided he should go to gaol – well, an eye for an eye, the Bible said. She would let justice take its course.