‘So she told you and she didn’t tell me.’

‘I believe she thought you wouldn’t want to know.’ Pieter looked grave. ‘This is a conversation you should be having with Lily, but this is maybe not the time for considering feelings. Lily’s in desperate trouble. She needs all the help she can get.’

‘Where is she now?’

The big man’s face clouded. ‘I don’t know. Maybe that’s why I’m telling you this. I should be out looking for her. She should be here helping with our wounded. As I need to be. There are shoulds everywhere.’

‘There’s been no word about the hostages?’

‘No.’

‘And this Jacques?’

‘He will be fine, that one,’ Pieter said, and his expression grew even more grim. ‘He must be a hostage but if he is…maybe he’ll be the first one to talk his way out. He is not an islander, you understand. Jacques came here when the oil was found. He helps us with our administration.’

‘You don’t like him?’

‘He’s not one of us.’

And there it was, Ben thought grimly. The reason Lily had said she could never leave the island. The islanders were family.

But even though Jacques was an outsider, Lily had agreed to marry him. He must have something.

If I’d come to her island maybe she would have married me, he thought suddenly, but it was a dumb thought. He’d never have wanted to come here, and he had a lot more to think about right now than a seven-year-old romance that had gone astray.

‘Ben,’ a voice called from the end of the corridor, and it was Sam, wearing theatre gear again.

‘Yes?’

‘They’ve released three of the hostages,’ he said. ‘Or at least they opened the front doors and shoved them out. Each of them has gunshot wounds. We need all hands in Theatre and that means you.’