a moment, intrigued by the sight. A water ambulance. Of course. It made perfect sense in such a place.
Gathering herself and her belongings, she pulled up the hood of her jacket and walked along the main street. As she wound her way east, she stopped in the lee of a small shop and pulled out a piece of paper from her pocket. Shearwater Cottage. Church Street. Green gate and front door. Key will be under the flowerpot, it read. Trouble was, she couldn’t see a sign for Church Street. Then a thought struck her and she looked up, turning around to survey the small town. Sure enough, a little farther ahead she spied the steeple of a church, and then another. It stood to reason that was where Church Street would be.
It was only later that she realized she could have checked the maps app on her phone, but she had never been in need of it on Aitutaki, even when she first arrived there, and so wasn’t in the habit of using it.
As it turned out, finding the cottage and the key was easy and she pushed the door open, the width of her backpack causing her to ricochet off the walls of the narrow hallway. Dr. Wentworth had been correct: there were just two rooms downstairs, a small living room furnished with a floral sofa and a couple of armchairs, and then the kitchen. She could make out a blur of garden through the wavy glass panes of the back door. She also noticed that someone had turned on the radiators and left a plastic-wrap-covered plate of food and a container of what looked like soup on the kitchen table.
Rachel rested her backpack against the wall, shucked off her jacket, and picked up a note that was resting against the soup. It was succinct and to the point: The Bishop and Wolf. 7 p.m. Ask for Janice.
She unwrapped the plate and picked up the sandwich that had been left there. Sea air always made her hungry and the cold weather even more so. She took a huge bite, put the remainder back on the plate, and then walked upstairs to explore.
There were two quaint bedrooms. The main room was papered in a delicate flowered pattern and furnished with a comfortable-looking bed made up with a thick duvet. Several rose-pink woolen blankets lay folded at its foot. There was a large pine chest of drawers and an upholstered chair near the window, which overlooked the street. It wasn’t exactly her taste, but she’d never been that fussy about her surroundings as long as they were clean and kept out the drafts. Next door, a bathroom—with a large tub, she noted—and then the other bedroom, which contained a single bed and a desk. Excellent. She would make that her study.
* * *
Later that day, having eaten, unpacked her few possessions and soaked some warmth back into her bones in the bathtub, Rachel decided to go for a walk to explore the island. She’d spent so much time on airplanes, trains, and buses in the past month that opportunities to stretch her legs had been few. The earlier drizzle had stopped and a weak sun was doing its best to shine through the clouds. Taking her jacket in case the rain returned, she laced up her new hiking boots, wiggling her toes at the unaccustomed constriction. On Aitutaki she’d been mostly barefoot, and although she’d worn the boots a few times in the previous few weeks, they still felt heavy and cumbersome.
Janice—at least she presumed it was her—had also left a map of the island on the table and she pocketed that before heading out.
Rachel had done her research before leaving London, and so she knew that the main island was slightly less than two-and-a-half-square miles. She reckoned she should be able to walk around it in about four hours, but as it was after three o’clock she decided to aim for a quarter way around and then she would turn back. She didn’t want to be caught out when the light went. Sunset was later here than on the mainland, but she wasn’t taking any chances on her first day.
She headed south, picking up a path that wound its way along the rocky coastline toward a place on the map called Piper’s Hole. The visibility was considerably better than when she’d arrived that morning and a sharp climb rewarded her with a vista of several smaller islands, lying long and