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‘You’re moody today. Of course I remember.’ Logan buttered the second piece of toast. ‘Why wouldn’t I? We’ve all been covering her clinics because the agency nurse they sent was hopeless. As I said, it’s good to have you back, Evanna.’
Kyla gritted her teeth. ‘She went out a lot. Met a lovely registrar. Really nice guy. Good-looking. They got on brilliantly.’
‘That’s good to hear.’ Logan finished his toast, licked his fingers and rose to his feet, his eyes on the street. ‘There’s Doug McDonald. Excuse me. I’ve been trying to catch up with him all week. Since he had the heart attack he’s afraid to push himself and I think he needs to do more. Perhaps he could go to your exercise class, Evanna? People always seem to like doing that. I suppose they have confidence because the instructor is a nurse. See you in surgery this afternoon. Janet’s booked you a full clinic.’ He patted her arm and walked towards the door, pausing by a table to exchange a few words with the couple that ran a small guesthouse near one of the island’s best beaches.
‘You see?’ Evanna’s voice was soft and she blinked several times to clear her vision. ‘I’m just a piece of medical equipment. His practice nurse. He feels the same way about me as he does about the ECG machine. We’re both useful tools that help his life run smoothly. If he could, he’d plug me into the electricity supply to make me function more efficiently.’
Kyla was simmering with frustration. ‘I’m starting to think my brother is thick.’
‘He isn’t thick. He’s very clever, you know that. He just isn’t interested and that’s fine.’
‘It isn’t fine. How can you say that it’s fine?’
Because it had to be. What choice did she have? ‘You can’t make someone love you, Kyla,’ Evanna muttered, reaching down to pick up her bag. Suddenly she just wanted to go home. Back to the peace and tranquillity of her little cottage. She needed to get her thoughts back together before she started work. Needed to rediscover some of the strength and resolve she’d found during her time on the mainland.
She dropped some money on the table for her coffee just as the door opened and Fraser stood there, his hat askew and his face scarlet. ‘Dr MacNeil!’ He was breathless from running. ‘I saw—You have to come—now … He snatched in another tortured breath and Logan turned swiftly, concern in his eyes.
‘Fraser? What did you see?’ He strode over to the boy and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘You must have run like the wind to be this out of breath. It’s all right. Calm down. Now, what’s happened?’
Fraser waved a hand towards the beach beyond the harbour. ‘Drowning.’ He sucked in a breath. ‘Kid in a rubber dinghy thing. Fell in.’
Without wasting time on questions, Logan left the café at a run with Fraser at his heels.
Evanna and Kyla followed, dodging the throngs of tourists ambling along the quay before sprinting down the steps onto the sand.
‘He’s gone!’ A young woman holding a tiny baby was running up and down the sand at the edge of the waves, frantically scanning the water. ‘He was in the boat and now he’s gone!’
‘I saw him.’ Fraser backed away from the mother and moved closer to Logan, instinctively seeking protection from the woman’s mounting hysteria and the baby’s howling. ‘We were up on the cliffs. He leant out of the boat with this bucket thing and a wave caught the boat and he fell. Straight down.’
The woman’s wails turned to screams and Logan took Fraser to one side, his tone urgent.
‘Where, exactly?’ He was ripping off his shirt as he spoke. ‘And how long ago did he fall?’
Fraser shrugged. ‘About two minutes? We started running down as soon as it happened. The wind’s blowing off shore so I suppose it was probably there.’ Fraser pointed. ‘You want me to go in and look?’
‘No. I want you to stay right here.’ Logan thrust his clothes into Fraser’s hands and handed him a mobile phone. ‘Call the coastguard on that and then go to my car and get my bag. Here are the keys. Then stay here with Evanna and do everything she says. Everything.’
‘OK.’ Fraser nodded importantly and punched the number into the phone. ‘I’ll give them the details. Be careful, Dr MacNeil.’
Logan looked at Evanna, his ice-blue eyes sharp and alert. ‘Beach duty.’
She nodded, reading his mind. He wanted her to coordinate efforts on the beach. He didn’t want any of the tourists plunging into the waves on a rescue mission, because they were likely to get into trouble. He didn’t want little Fraser going in. He wanted her to give support to the mother and then help the rescue services.
Logan lifted the buoyancy aid that he’d grabbed from the top of the beach and ran with a long-limbed, athletic stride towards the sea. At any other time she would have admired the strength and power of his body but the crisis was unfolding in front of her. The mother was screaming now, a thin, high-pitched panicky noise that cut through the air like a knife. A crowd had gathered in the way that humans always gathered when they scented disaster.
Kyla moved them back. ‘Come on, now. Nothing to see.’ Her tone was clipped. Efficient. ‘Move right back, please. Go to the far end of the beach. Right back. That’s right. We’re going to need to land a helicopter here.’
Fraser was speaking to the coastguard on the phone and Evanna turned to the mother and slid an arm round her shoulders.
‘You poor thing. You must be frantic with worry but try and calm down so that we can ask you some questions,’ she said gently. ‘How old is he?’
‘Six.’ The mother gave a gulp and jiggled the baby to try and soothe it. ‘He’s just six. Jason. He’s so little.’
‘And he was in some sort of boat?’
‘I only turned my back for a minute. I was changing the baby.’ She sucked air in and out of her lungs, her eyes wild. ‘It was just a minute.’
And a minute was more than long enough when water was involved, Evanna thought as she squinted towards the sea. ‘What boat?’ She couldn’t see a boat. Only a small toy blow-up boat of the sort that people used in swimming pools.
