The Man She Could Never Forget. Meredith Webber

‘And remember the best way to get over pain is hard work. The hospital can always do with another nurse, especially now clinical services to the outer islands have expanded and we’ve had to cut back on hospital staff. Our existing staff go above and beyond for the island and the residents but there’s always room for another pair of trained hands.’

      Losing himself in work was what he’d done ever since her mother had died—died in his arms and left him with a premature but healthy baby girl and a premature and disabled baby boy to look after.

      ‘Maybe whoever owns that very smart helicopter has an equally smart plane and needed the strip improved.’

      Jill’s comment brought Caroline out of her brooding thoughts.

      ‘Smart helicopter? Our helicopters have always been run-of-the-mill emergency craft and Dad said we’re down to one.’

      But as she turned in the direction of Jill’s pointing finger, she saw her friend was right. At the far end of the strip was a light-as-air little helicopter—a brilliant dragonfly of a helicopter—painted shiny dark blue with the sun picking out flashes of gold on the side.

      ‘Definitely not ours,’ she told Jill.

      ‘Maybe there’s a mystery millionaire your shady uncle Ian has conned into investing in the place.’

      ‘From all I hear, it would take a billionaire,’ Caroline muttered gloomily.

      She’d undone her seat harness while they were talking and now opened the door of the little plane.

      ‘At least come up to the house and have a cup of tea,’ she said to Jill.

      Jill shook her head firmly.

      ‘I’ve got my thermos of coffee and sandwiches—like a good Girl Scout, always prepared. I’ll just refuel and be off. It’s only a four-hour flight. Best I get home to the family.’

      Caroline retrieved her luggage—one small case packed with the only lightweight, casual summer clothes she owned. Her life in Sydney had been more designer wear—Steve had always wanted her to look good.

       And I went along with it?

      She felt her cheeks heat with shame as yet another of Steve’s dominating characteristics came to mind.

      Yes, she’d gone along with it and many other ‘its’, often pulling double shifts on weeknights to be free to go ‘somewhere special’ with him over the weekend.

      The fact that the ‘something special’ usually turned out to be yet another cocktail party with people she either didn’t know or, if she had known them, didn’t particularly care for only made it worse.

      But she’d loved him—or loved that he loved her …

      Jill efficiently pumped fuel into the plane’s tank, wiped her hands on a handy rag, and turned to her friend.

      ‘You take care, okay? And keep in touch. I want phone calls and emails, none of that social media stuff where everyone can read what you’re doing. I want the “not for public consumption” stuff.’

      She reached out and gathered Caroline in a warm, tight hug.

      ‘You’ll be okay,’ she said, and although the words were firmly spoken, Caroline heard a hint of doubt in them.

      Dear Jilly, the first friend she’d made at boarding school so many years ago, now back in the cattle country of Western Queensland where she’d grown up, married to a fellow cattleman, raising her own family and top-quality beasts.

      Caroline returned the hug, watched as Jill climbed back into the plane and began to taxi up the runway. She waved to the departing plane before turning to look around her.

      Yes, the shed was a little run-down and the gardens weren’t looking their best, but the peace that filled her heart told her she’d done the right thing.

      She was home.

      Bending to lift her suitcase, she was struck that something was missing. Okay, so the place wasn’t quite up to speed, but where was Harold, who usually greeted every plane?

      Harold, who’d told her and Keanu all the legends of the islands and given them boiled lollies so big they’d filled their mouths.

      Her and Keanu …

      Keanu …

      She straightened her shoulders and breathed in the scented tropical air. That had been then and this was now.

      Time to put the past—all the past—behind her, take control of her life and move on, as so many of her friends had advised.

      And moving on obviously meant carrying her own suitcase up the track to the big house. Not that she minded, but it was strange that no one had met the plane, if only out of curiosity.

      Had no one seen it come in?

      Did no one care any more?

      Or was Harold gone?

      How old had he been?

      She didn’t like the tightening in her gut at the thought that someone who had been so much part of her life might have died while she’d been away …

      Impossible.

      Although all adults seemed old to children, she doubted Harold had been more than forty when she’d left—

      The blast of a horn sent the past skittering from her mind, and she turned to see a little motorised cart—the island’s main land transport—racing towards her from the direction of the research station.

      ‘Are you the doctor?’ the man driving it yelled.

      ‘No, but I’m a nurse. Can I help?’

      The driver pulled up beside her and gestured towards his passenger.

      ‘We phoned the hospital. Someone said the doctor would come to meet us on the way. My mate was fine at first but now he’s passed out, well, you can see …’

      He gestured towards the man slumped in the back of the little dark blue vehicle. He had no visible injury—until she looked down and saw his foot.

      Clad only in a rubber flip-flop, the foot had a nail punched right through beneath the small toe, and apparently into a piece of wood below his inadequate footwear.

      Caroline slid in beside the man and put a hand on his chest. He was breathing, and his pulse—Yes, a bit fast but obviously it had been a very painful wound.

      ‘I think we should get him up to the hospital as quickly as possible,’ she said, as a figure appeared on the track they would take.

      A figure she knew, although the intervening years had stretched him from an adolescent to a man—and for all her heart was bumping erratically in her chest, she certainly didn’t know the man.

      Caroline slid out of the cart and took the spare seat in front while Keanu, without more than a startled glance and a puzzled frown in her direction, took over in the back, fitting an oxygen mask to the man’s face and adjusting the flow on the small tank he’d carried with him.

      ‘Give me a minute to get some painkiller into him.’

      Prosaic words but the deep, rich voice reverberated through Caroline’s body—a man’s voice, not a boy’s …

      This was Keanu?

      Keanu was here?

      She didn’t know whether to hug him or hit him, but with witnesses around she could do neither. What she really wanted was to turn around and have another look at him, but the image of that first glimpse was burned into her brain.

      Keanu the man.

      Now grown into his burnished, almond-coloured skin, his grey eyes—his mother’s eyes—strikingly pale beneath dark brows and hair.

      Straight nose, tempting mouth, sculpted shoulders, abs visible