A Second Chance by Shayne Parkinson Read Free Book Online

it was, it must be true.
Susannah wished her well. Perhaps she had been thinking of that
other trip, too. Amy stored away the unexpected well-wishing as a
good omen for the journey.
    Just as Lizzie had begun interrogating Amy
as to whether she had enough clean handkerchiefs with her, the Waiotahi ’s captain approached them.
    ‘Excuse me, ma’am, we’ll be sailing
shortly,’ he told Amy. ‘If you wouldn’t mind coming aboard, I’d be
most obliged.’ He tipped his hat to Amy and Lizzie and went back to
the boat.
    Amy found herself enfolded in a hug and
kissed by each of her well-wishers in turn. David had hung back
till last, and he hugged her more tightly than any of the others,
almost squeezing the breath out of her. Now, when the time for
reconsidering was long past, for a brief, painful moment Amy
wondered if she was doing right to leave him alone.
    ‘Take care, Davie. I hope you’ll be all
right on your own.’
    ‘Of course I will, Ma. Don’t you go
worrying—you just get on with having a good time.’
    ‘Don’t worry about Dave, he’ll be quite all
right,’ Lizzie put in. ‘Beth and I will see to that.’
    Amy held on to David’s arm, only releasing
him when she reached the gangplank. She stood on the deck,
clutching the handrail with one hand and waving as the boat slipped
away from the wharf. Lizzie shook her head at her and gestured that
she should move back from the edge of the deck, but Amy pretended
not to understand.
    When her arm grew tired she gave up waving,
but made no move to leave her place. She stared back at the wharf
as it shrank in on itself. Even when it was no more than a
shapeless grey smudge in the distance she still imagined she could
make out the figures standing there.
    The boat crossed the bar, mercifully smooth
this morning. A tongue of land cut the wharf off from Amy’s view,
and there was no longer any use peering back towards Ruatane.
    She carefully picked her way around to the
starboard side, her steps made clumsy by the unfamiliar motion of
the boat. The ocean opened out before her, an unruffled grey-blue,
the distant outline of White Island diamond-sharp in the morning
light. Amy shaded her eyes and stared out towards the horizon and
the island floating on it, and blinked against the brightness. In
the east, the sun was shining.
     
    *
     
    Beth had learned early in life that the
noblest creature in creation was a mother; more specifically, her
own one. As she had grown up, her imagination had broadened until
she could conceive of a person of more consequence than her mother,
but she had certainly never met one.
    So it was not surprising that she should
have approached the task of keeping house for David with
enthusiasm. This was an opportunity, albeit temporary, to run a
house in her own way and to her own standards. Lizzie had said that
she would check up on her daughter’s work occasionally, but Beth
knew that, to all intents and purposes, for the first time in her
life she would be in charge.
    Her mother, of course, was her model. Beth
took it for granted that no one knew how to run a household as well
as Lizzie did; it was a notion she had drunk in at her mother’s
breast. And if she was to play the role of a truly excellent
housewife, she was determined that David would also play his part
correctly.
    On her first day at Amy’s, David came up to
the house within minutes of her arrival, attracted by the promise
of a morning tea.
    Beth stood in the doorway to meet him. ‘Take
those boots off before you come in here,’ she said sternly.
    ‘I always take my boots off before I come
inside,’ David said, startled.
    ‘Well, I don’t want you forgetting,’ Beth
said, quite unrepentant.
    She made a great show of setting the tea
things out nicely and making sure she gave David the largest cup
the kitchen held. They lingered over their tea and biscuits,
chatting about the happenings of the day and what they each
intended to do for the remainder of the morning, just