The Light Between Oceans(85)

Hannah watched, stricken: humiliated, and despairing at the magnetic pull Isabel exerted on Grace. For the first time, the enormity of the theft came home to her. Right in front of her was the evidence of all that had been stolen. She saw the hundreds of days and the thousands of embraces the two had shared – the love usurped. She was aware of a trembling in her legs, and she feared she might fall to the ground. Gwen put a hand on her arm, unsure of what to do.

Hannah tried to fend off the humiliation, and the tears it brought. The woman and child were knitted together like a single being, in a world no one could enter. She felt sick as she fought to stay upright, to maintain some fragment of dignity. Struggling to breathe calmly, she picked up her bag from the counter and walked as steadily as she could towards Isabel.

‘Grace darling,’ she tried. The child was still burrowing into Isabel, and neither moved. ‘Grace dear, it’s time to come home.’ She reached out a hand to touch the little girl, who screamed: not a squeal but a full-throated, murderous cry that bounced off the windows.

‘Mamma, make her go ’way! Mamma, make her!’

The small crowd looked on, the men perplexed and the women horrified. The little girl’s features were distorted and purple. ‘Please, Mamma!’ She was begging, a tiny hand on each side of Isabel’s face, shouting the words at her as though to overcome distance or deafness. Still, Isabel remained mute.

‘Perhaps we could—’ Gwen’s sentence was cut off by her sister.

‘Let her go!’ Hannah shouted, unable to address Isabel by name. ‘You’ve done enough,’ she went on more quietly, in a voice edged with bitterness.

‘How can you be so cruel?’ Isabel burst out. ‘You can see the state she’s in! You don’t know the first thing about her – about what she needs, how to look after her! Have some common sense, if you can’t have any kindness to her!’

‘Let go of my daughter! Now!’ demanded Hannah, shaking. She was desperate to get out of the shop, to break the magnetic hold. She pulled the child away and held her around the waist, as she resisted and screamed, ‘Mamma! I want Mamma! Let me go!’

‘It’s all right, darling,’ she said. ‘I know you’re upset, but we can’t stay,’ and she went on, trying to soothe the child with words while keeping a strong enough grip on her to stop her wriggling out of her arms and running away.

Gwen glanced at Isabel, and shook her head in despair. Then she turned to her niece. ‘Shh, shh, love. Don’t cry,’ and she dabbed at her face with a delicate lace handkerchief. ‘Come home and we’ll find you a toffee. Tabatha Tabby will be missing you. Come on, darling.’ The words of reassurance, from Hannah and from Gwen, continued in a gentle stream as the trio made their way out. At the door, Gwen turned again to behold Isabel, and the desperation in her eyes.

For a moment, no one stirred. Isabel stared into thin air, not daring to move her limbs so as not to lose the feel of her daughter. Her mother eyed the shop assistants, defying them to comment. Finally, the boy who had been unravelling the linen picked up the bolt and started to re-roll it.

Larry Mouchemore took that as the cue to say to the old woman he had been serving, ‘And it was just the two yards you wanted? Of the lace?’

‘Ye— yes, just the two yards,’ she replied, as normally as she could, though she tried to pay him with a hair comb rather than the coins she had meant to extract from her handbag.

‘Come on, dear,’ said Violet softly. Then louder, ‘I don’t think I want the same wool this time. I’ll look at the pattern again and then decide.’

Fanny Darnley, gossiping to a woman beside her on the pavement, froze as the two women came out, only her eyes daring to follow them down the street.



Knuckey walks along the isthmus of Point Partageuse, listening to the waves launch themselves at the shore on both sides. He comes here to clear his head, in the evenings after tea. He’s dried the dishes his wife washed. He still misses the days when there were kids around to do it with them, and they’d make a game of it. Mostly grown up, now. He smiles at a memory of little Billy, forever three years old.

Between his finger and thumb he is turning a shell, cool and rounded like a coin. Families. God knows what he’d be without his family. Most natural thing in the world, it was, for a woman to want a baby. His Irene would have done anything to get Billy back. Anything. When it comes to their kids, parents are all just instinct and hope. And fear. Rules and laws fly straight out the window.

The law’s the law, but people are people. He thinks back to the day that started the whole sorry business: the Anzac Day when he was up in Perth for his aunt’s funeral. He could have gone after the lot of them, the mob, Garstone included. All the men who used Frank Roennfeldt to take the pain away, just for a moment. But that would have made things worse. You can’t confront a whole town with its shame. Sometimes, forgetting is the only way back to normality.

His thoughts returned to his prisoner. That Tom Sherbourne was a puzzle. Closed as a Queensland nut. No way of knowing what was inside the smooth, hard shell, and no weak spot to put pressure on. Bloody Spragg was desperate for a go at him. He’d stalled him as long as he could, but he’d have to let him come and question Sherbourne soon. Down in Albany, or in Perth, who knew what they’d make of him. Sherbourne was his own worst enemy, the way he was carrying on.