AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Round the front, mate. It was her who flagged us down and said you were in there.”
I nod and weave my way around to the front of the house just as the fire engine draws up. Men in protective gear spill from the cab and start the business of putting out the fire.
I hear Ruth before I see her, screaming for her child.
“Morgan. Jack. Please, you have to help them. They’re in there…”
Two men wearing breathing apparatus approach the front door but pause when they spot me staggering towards them.
“It’s okay. There’s no one left inside,” I rasp. I don’t want firefighters endangering themselves unnecessarily.
“You sure?” the officer in charge demands.
I nod, then stagger backwards when I’m hit by the full force of Ruth’s body.
“You got out! You brought Morgan out. Thank God! I thought… I thought…” She reaches for her baby then drops to her knees, sobbing. “I thought I’d lost her, lost you both…”
I crouch beside her and enfold the pair of them in my arms. “We’re safe,” I murmur. “It’s okay now, we’re all safe.”
CHAPTER24
Ruth
I’m wakenedby a tapping at the door. Still half asleep, I call out, “Who is it?”
“Cristina. Cristina Savage.”
I sit bolt upright, stifling a cry at the bolt of pure agony shooting from my ankle to my brain. I didn’t even realise I was injured until I was on my way to the hospital in an ambulance. It seems, though, that I sprained my ankle when I dropped the final few feet to the ground, escaping from the blaze. I’m under orders to keep my weight off it for at least a week.
I was numb. The combined effects of shock and pain relief, I suppose. I must have been to let myself be brought here.
The helicopter was there, in the staff car park, when Jack hustled me out of the hospital in a wheelchair. Morgan was in my lap having been given a clean bill of health by the paediatric consultant and discharged from the children’s ward after a night under observation.
I assumed we’d go to a hotel since my house has been gutted, but no. The same pilot who flew us to Cambridge all those months ago headed north. I was too exhausted to argue and expected to be returned to the mansion on the outskirts of Glasgow, but when I woke up after sleeping for most of the journey, it was to find we were circling over a rocky island.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Caraksay,” Jack replied from his seat beside me. “I thought you could recuperate here for a while.”
“Caraksay? Where…?”
“In the Outer Hebrides. You’ll like it.”
The helicopter descended, swaying in the buffeting winds until it landed on a cobbled forecourt in front of a medieval castle. I gazed around me, amazed. The setting was dramatic and imposing, and utterly remote. The towering stone walls of the keep reared in front of us, while all around lay rocky moorland dotted with low-roofed cottages and what looked to be barns. The breathtaking landscape was matched by a cacophony of sound. Winds buffeted the cliffs surrounding us. Waves crashed on the shores, and seabirds swooped and screeched as though resentful of the intrusion.
This island is strangely beautiful in its ferocity. How can anyone live here, let alone recuperate?
Jack lifted me from the helicopter and carried me towards the castle. As we got close, I could see it was far from the derelict ruin I first imagined when I viewed it from the air. He shouldered the colossal oak door open and strode inside, then set me down on a carved wooden chair in a huge hall. I barely had time to take in the enormous stone fireplace and the hearty blaze crackling in the hearth, as well as the incongruous sight of a pair of basketball hoops on poles, before the pilot placed Morgan on my lap. Incredibly, she was still asleep, having not stirred for most of the flight.
“You’ll be in my apartment,” Jack informed me. “I’ll take you there now, and you can see round the rest later.”
“When can we go home?”
“I honestly don’t know. The fire service are still investigating the cause of the fire. There was a lot of damage…”
I didn’t ask any more questions. There seemed little point. Despite my protests that I could shift for myself, Jack carried me up one flight of stone stairs, then another. The pilot, Magda, trailed behind with Morgan.
“Why is there a cot in here?” I demanded to know when he eventually set me down on a huge bed in what I assumed to be his apartment.
