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Helen obviously thought she knew better, but Lisa’s heart was in her mouth when she saw Robbie suddenly scramble up beside her. She longed to call to the little boy to warn him that what he was doing was dangerous, but she knew her voice wouldn’t reach him. Where was Rorke? Why wasn’t he watching him? In a fever of impatience, Lisa willed Rorke to appear, and then, before her horrified eyes, Robbie seemed to slip. Quite how it happened Lisa didn’t know. One moment Helen was reaching down to help him up, the next the little boy was toppling back into the sea. In an agony of fear Lisa watched the water. Where was Rorke? She saw the sea, previously blue, suddenly turn an ominous dark red, and acting purely on instinct she ran into the water, swimming frantically to where she had last seen Robbie.
She had barely gone half a dozen lengths when she saw that Rorke was swimming strongly towards her, only he was swimming on his back, his body supporting Robbie’s, and as they swam the red stain followed them.
Lisa reached the beach only seconds before Rorke. He didn’t waste time speaking to her, simply pushing her aside as he laid Robbie on the sand and reached for his shirt.
‘He cut himself on the coral. I think he got a vein.’ All the time he was talking he was fashioning a tourniquet out of his shirt and a piece of stick he had picked up from the beach, working so quickly that Lisa’s dazed mind could scarcely take it all in. Robbie looked so still and pale, lashes fluttering over the paper-white cheeks. Helen emerged from the sea, looking more bored than worried.
‘God, Rorke,’ she explained pettishly, ‘why all the fuss? I told you we should have left the kid behind.’
‘Leave it, Helen,’ Rorke advised without bothering to look at her, saying instead to Lisa, ‘Run up to the house, will you, Lisa, and warn Dr James we’re on our way. I’m not sure, but he may need a transfusion. Either way the cut will certainly have to be looked at.’
At that moment Robbie’s lashes fluttered open. He stared first at Lisa, and she made a small, incoherent moan, longing to take him in her arms, but knowing that Rorke was far better equipped physically to carry him than she was, and she was already on her feet when Robbie turned to Helen and said quite clearly and very accusingly, ‘You pushed me! You pushed me and I cut myself.’
Lisa didn’t wait to hear what response Helen made to his accusation, she was far too anxious about Robbie’s safety. In her own heart she was sure that Robbie was right and that Helen had pushed him, but she was equally sure that Helen would deny it and that Rorke would back her up. Why on earth had they taken Robbie with them, when all too obviously they had wanted to be alone?
By the time Lisa had phoned the hospital Rorke had arrived at the house. Lisa was on her way downstairs with a blanket to wrap Robbie in when she heard them arrive.
In no time at all they were in the Range Rover, Lisa sitting in the back with Robbie lying on the seat. His body felt cold and slight in her arms, and as Rorke eased the tourniquet slightly, sickness washed over her. This frail, quiet child was Robbie; her son, the child she had given birth to. Did all parents feel this helpless anguish when their child was seriously ill? She supposed they must, she thought vaguely, wondering a little at the numbing mist that seemed to have enveloped her. She knew that Robbie had cut himself badly, that he had lost a great deal of blood, and all that that implied, but she couldn’t seem to think beyond getting him to the hospital; about fussing over small trifles that were really unimportant, as though by filling her mind with these trivia she could keep her real fear at bay.
Neither of them talked during the drive, although once when Rorke glanced in the driving mirror at her and saw the silent, anguished tears pouring down her face, he muttered, ‘His father would have been flattered to see how much his child means to you. Would my child have meant as much, I wonder, Lisa?’
She couldn’t even be bothered to respond. Robbie was his child, but she was tired of stating that fact and not being believed. All she wanted now was for Robbie to be safely installed at the hospital under Dr James’s care.
Alerted to their arrival, nurses were ready to take Robbie from her as they pulled up outside. Pain tugged at her heart as she saw his tiny little frame being wheeled away.
‘Try not to worry.’
She refused to look at Rorke. It was all right for him to say that. As far as he was concerned Robbie wasn’t his child, and he couldn’t really care less what harm his girl-friend might have done to him.
‘There’s a waiting area round here, let’s go and sit down,’ he suggested. ‘I’ll get us both a cup of coffee.’
‘Don’t bother, I’m perfectly happy to wait on my own. You might as well go back to Helen—I don’t want to spoil your afternoon together.’
She had her back to Rorke and just caught the explosive mutter of fury, before he swung her round, his eyes bleak and grim.
‘Look, it may suit you to cast me as the cold, unfeeling villain of the piece, but it so happens that I do care about Robbie, and I am going to stay here.’
‘You should never have taken him out there!’
&nbs
p; There, she had said it, and had the satisfaction of seeing Rorke pale beneath his tan.
‘Lisa, I…’ he began, but Dr James was coming towards them, and Lisa no longer cared what excuses Rorke was about to make, her whole attention was concentrated on the doctor.
‘Robbie—is he…’
‘He’s fine,’ he interrupted her gently. ‘Or at least he will be once we give him a transfusion. He’s lost quite a lot of blood—it’s lucky that you weren’t away when this happened, Rorke,’ he was saying to the other man, while Lisa’s face tightened in bitterness. If Rorke had been away the accident wouldn’t have happened in the first place. ‘If you’ll just go with Nurse, she’ll do the necessary and…’
Rorke was frowning, and Lisa’s heart skipped a beat as she heard him say curtly, ‘I don’t think I understand—are you suggesting that…’
‘Dr James knows that you and Robbie share the same blood group, Rorke,’ Lisa interrupted quickly, too concerned for Robbie now to spare Rorke’s feelings. What on earth was Dr James going to think if Rorke started denying that Robbie was his son, when he had irrefutable evidence that he was?
‘That’s right,’ Dr James agreed with a smile. ‘In fact I was only remarking on it this morning to Lisa. Of course it’s by no means unusual for a child to inherit a blood group from its father, but yours is such a rare one that it’s fortunate for Robbie that you’re here—I noticed this morning that we don’t have any in reserve. When Mike Peters was here he started up a blood bank, and got most of the islanders to give blood—by first donating a pint of his own, I remember him telling me. Like most doctors he doesn’t particularly like sticking needles in himself, and as he told me at the time, giving a pint of his own blood was purely symbolic, as he belongs to a very common blood group. However, it seemed to do the trick, but I seem to remember that you needed a transfusion a couple of years ago when you had that accident down by the harbour, and we never got you in to give any more.’
Lisa could tell by Rorke’s rigidly stiff back that Dr James’s revelation had come as a shock. In other circumstances she might almost have been able to feel pity for the grimly haunted face he turned towards her when Dr James had finished speaking, but now all she could think of was Robbie. Robbie injured and in need of the life-giving blood that had to come from his father.
‘Rorke.’
