Free Stranded by Amberly Woodruff Page A

foreshortened
and becoming smaller as the helicopter gained height. The last she saw of Jed
was as he turned to go back inside, his arm around Fi’s waist.
    Tamsin craned her neck to catch a last glimpse of the
island. She could see the whole of it and was aware, for the first time, of how
tiny it was. There was the stone circle, distorted by distance, and the white
beaches where the surf washed in. The Hermitage was a doll’s house, the bath
place a toddler’s paddling pool beyond which miniature cliffs encompassed the
cove, the seabird colony clear when seen from above, gulls flapping in panic
and swirling into the air as the downdraught from the rotors hit them. Yet it
was the most magical place on earth to her, and she was leaving it forever.
    Although the headphones she’d been given to insulate her
from the roar of the turning blades had a radio, she answered Greg’s chatter
briefly as he asked her how she’d landed up here and where she was going.
    ‘Is there anyone we can contact for you when we land?’ he
asked, turning to her with a smile. ‘I understand your personal possessions
were washed overboard.’
    Tamsin shook her head. ‘There’s a phone in my aunt’s
cottage: I’ll ring my parents and ask them to collect me.’
    Greg nodded and smiled again. Then, minutes later they were
flying over Land’s End, heading for Gullwatch headquarters just outside Falmouth.
    ‘You’ll need to fill in some details for the flight log,
like your name and address,’ Greg told her, ‘and then I can run you back to Polgorrow ; it’s on my way home.’ Then they were dropping
through the air, the sheds and buildings of Gullwatch looming closer.
    After that, everything was a blur: signing the flight log,
(with her parents’ address since she couldn’t live with Damien now), drinking a
cup of coffee, climbing into Greg’s car for the trip to her aunt’s place.
Tamsin was numbed to her core, tears not far away and yet seeming impossible in
the bleak, frozen waste of her deadened emotions.
    Then at last she was alone, her phone call to her parents
over, Greg driving away. All she could do was drag herself like a wounded
animal up to bed, where she slept for the three solid hours till her folks
arrived.

Chapter 11

 
 
    The
weeks that followed were hell. Tamsin couldn’t seem to rouse herself from
the aching misery that followed her around like a slinking black dog. Jed was
never far from her thoughts. She both longed for and shunned company: when she
was alone, she sank into a pit of grief, but when she was with people, she
couldn’t concentrate on conversation, her attention constantly turning inwards.
      At first she
had nourished a vague hope that she might be pregnant, that she could be
carrying a part of Jed inside her. But her period came, quashing any chance of
that.
    One of the first things she did after returning to London
was to contact Damien to tell him it was over; but he had already left for New
York, not bothering to wait for her answer. It was a huge relief, though it
left her with nowhere to stay, since she’d given up her flat to move in with
him. He’d boxed up her stuff and parked it on her friend Cassie. He hadn’t even
left her a note, though she supposed it was lucky he
hadn’t merely thrown her belongings into the street. So that was it, the link
between them was severed for good.
    So she stayed with friends, taking time off work, trying to
get her life back on track. And, as the months passed and spring blended into
summer and then the leaves started to turn gold, she gained a sense of peace
and resignation. She began to take up the threads of her life again after her
prolonged break. Though whenever she fingered the Viking talisman at her throat,
she would be filled with the energy of the island and, in her mind, would be
back among the gorse and bracken, or swimming in the cove with the seabirds
circling overhead. When that happened, she would be charged with sexual energy
and