Page 38 of Reckless

I wasn’t sure what she meant by that, so I didn’t answer.

“I’m sorry about Anna,” I said. Because that seemed the only logical move—deny myself the pain of her loss. Let the islanders, the people who’d really known her, grieve. Keep myself on the outside, where I belonged. I recalled those moments I’d shared with Anna and her family, with Tall Tom—hell, even with Button John—and with Robbie. Especially with Robbie. The moments that had made me feel, however fleetingly, like maybe I could have a place here. It wasn’t that they’d meant nothing. But they couldn’t change who I was. I positioned myself where I thought I could be useful and then refused to budge. Refused to open, to grow, to risk. Told myself I wanted to work towards something greater, without ever letting myself be part of something whole.

Dauntless needed me to sign off on a death certificate. Not to help them grieve. Not to bring Archie and the kids casseroles. Not to remember Anna. I was useful, but not essential. Not integral. Not part of.

And not even that useful, either. Because what kind of doctor let a young woman die? Helped her die on her own terms? I thought back to the Health Fair. All my stupid posters and fake thyroids, my pamphlets and advice. Yet I was as powerless as the next person when shit got real. I thought of Neal. Nothing I could have done to save his life; so much I could have done to share a life with him in the time we had.

Here I was at the same crossroads, and look what I’d chosen to offer Robbie—a means to an end. Not any real piece of myself. Not a chance to be part of something bigger.

Was this really who I was going to be forever? Closed off and distant, only daring to form a friendship with a woman I’d known wouldn’t be around long enough to demand more of me?

We both looked at the doorway as someone new appeared.

It was the police officer. He wasn’t wearing his uniform. He was wearing jeans and a jumper. He nodded at Katrina, and then said, “Doc, can I have a word outside?”

I followed him out the front, into the grey dawn.

“Don’t think we’ve met properly yet,” he said with an apologetic grimace. “Dominic.”

I shook his hand. “Alastair. Are you here about Anna? News travels fast.”

“On Dauntless? Sure does. My boyfriend, Natty, is Nipper Will’s brother. Anything I need to be aware of?”

“No,” I said. “When she passes, I’ll issue the Cause of Death certificate. It’s not reportable to the coroner.” I took another look at his casual clothes. “I take it you’re not officially on duty?”

“Last thing anyone wants is to see a copper in uniform walking into that house today,” he said. “None of the government’s business, according to everyone on the island.”

“I’ve noticed a lot of that.”

“It’s a hell of a place,” he said, glancing at the door. “Listen, I’m gonna head home. If you need anything, let me know. It can be tricky dealing with bureaucratic stuff and the Islanders at the same time.”

“And you think you can help me with that?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“Hell, no,” he said. “Unless you need a scapegoat, and then I’m overqualified. Seriously though, if you have any trouble, Red Joe’s the man to talk to. The Islanders listen to him.”

“I don’t think there will be any,” I said. All I had to do was email the Medical Certificate Cause of Death to the Registry of Births, Deaths & Marriages, who would then issue the official Death Certificate. There was no need to involve any Islanders in that process at all. After my experiences with everyone’s lack of Medicare cards, I was glad. “But I appreciate it, thanks.”

Dominic nodded, clapped me on the shoulder, and turned and headed towards the harbour. He walked off into the growing dawn, and I watched him go for a moment, my thoughts turning to Anna, and then to Robbie again, and back to Anna.

Dominic was an outsider on Dauntless, and I wondered if the Islanders thought the same of me. People on the island talked. They watched, and they talked. And probably most of them still thought I was the outsider they wanted me to be, and that I’d thought I wanted to be.

But maybe, just maybe—a few of them thought I was part of this. Part of them.

I tilted my head back to look at the dark sky for a moment, and then went back inside to drink tea with Katrina Finch and wait for Anna Hooper to pass.

Several hours later, the faint strains of jazz music filled my office as I completed the Medical Certificate Cause of Death form online. I wasn’t even sure why I’d put the music on. To distract me from the silence, I supposed. I didn’t even like jazz. Neal had, and I’d joked-not-joked it was because he was a pretentious snob. He’d even listened to it on vinyl. His death hadn’t changed my opinion on jazz at all, but I also hadn’t had the heart to throw his record collection away. It had seemed disrespectful. I was glad I’d held onto them; listening to a dead man’s music seemed appropriate today.

With the windows open, I could hear the waves in the harbour. The crash into the harbour wall, the retreat, the next surge, the relentless dark pull of the wider ocean. I thought of Anna—crash, retreat—lost myself briefly in the clinical details of the form, then suddenly saw her face again—crash. Back and forth, back and forth, inexorable.

I thought of Archie and the children, and then wished I hadn’t.

I was used to hospital deaths, where a curtain was drawn at the end of a scene. I wasn’t used to bedrooms with dressing gowns hanging on the back of the door. A canister in the kitchen that held her favourite tea. A husband who at some point would have to move his wife’s body from their bed. I wasn’t used to a house that slowly filled with silent friends and neighbours, with food that appeared on the kitchen table for tomorrow or the next day or whenever Archie remembered to eat, with men who talked in low voices about who could take Archie’s shifts on the fishing boat, and women who wrote lists of what would be needed for the wake. On Dauntless, death wasn’t neatly removed from daily life, hidden behind curtains and in morgue drawers and given over to a funeral director to manage. It was woven into the tides, and the screech of the gulls, and the steady beam of the lighthouse. There was a certain shape to both life and death on the island that was comforting and familiar in some way, even if I hadn’t experienced it before. Nostalgia for a time and place I’d never known, perhaps, where if everything was a little slower, it was also a little deeper. There was space to breathe on Dauntless, to think, to feel, for better or for worse.

Crash, retreat.

I didn’t want to feel today.

I completed the Cause of Death form and submitted it, then closed my laptop and went to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. Found myself standing over the sink a while later, squeezing the dripping tea bag like a sponge, letting the hot water seep into the creases of my fingers. I dropped the tea bag into the sink with a splat.