Silver Bay (28 page)

‘I don’t blame her,’ I said. ‘I know it’s all down to me.’

‘My brother the serial shagger, eh? Watch that screw – you’re about to lose it.’

‘I’m not a serial shagger.’

‘Snogger.’ She giggled. ‘Serial snogger, then.’ I couldn’t help laughing too. It sounded so ridiculous.

‘There,’ she said, pointing her cigarette at me. She was seated cross-legged on a rug. ‘There – you see? You can’t have loved her that much or you’d be devastated. Told you I was right.’

‘You have no heart,’ I accused.

But perhaps she
was
right. I felt bad, admittedly, and guilty, and a bit horrible, but I knew I wasn’t drinking because I’d lost Vanessa. I was drinking because I no longer knew who I was. I had not just lost material things – the flat, the car, my position at Beaker Holdings – but the things I thought defined me: my analytical skills, my drive, my strategic focus for deals. My hunger. I was not sure I liked the elements of my character that had revealed themselves to me recently.

And I was drinking because one thought hung over all the others: that I had inadvertently destroyed the lives of three people who had no facilities with which to fight back. ‘What do I do, Monica? How can I stop it happening?’ I dropped the screwdriver on to the floor beside me.

‘Why does it matter?’ she asked, picking it up, and studying the instructions. ‘You lose your job if it doesn’t.’

I stared at the pieces of wood in front of me, which didn’t even look like wood, then at the tiny, chaotic flat, where the sound of traffic penetrated the walls. I felt homesick.

‘Because it just does,’ I said.

‘Mikey, what the hell went on out there? You went out as Billy Big Shot and came back a bloody mess.’

So I told her. I told her everything. And the odd thing was that in saying the words, I realised what was going on. It took me two hours and several more glasses of wine, but I sat with my sister, in her cramped, untidy flat in Stockwell, and talked into the small hours. I told her about Kathleen and the hotel, Hannah, Liza and the whalechasers, and as I spoke, their faces came alive to me, and I felt briefly as if I were back there in the wide open space with just the sound of the sea in my ears and the salt breeze on my skin. I told her about Letty’s death and the baby whale, and the sound I’d heard when Liza had dropped the microphone into the water. And when I got to the part where I had watched the thin, blonde figure recede in my rear-view mirror, I understood. ‘I’m in love,’ I said. The words had just slipped out. I sat back, dazed, against the sofa, and said them again. ‘God. I’m in love.’

‘Hallelujah,’ said my sister, stubbing out her cigarette. ‘Can I go to bed now? I’ve been waiting for you to work that out since you got here.’

When Dennis Beaker yawned, he made the same sound as a large dog does when you meet it first thing in the morning. It was a genuine sound, impossible to reproduce, which was odd, because I knew that yawning was a tactic he used to considerable effect when underlings or rival firms were making presentations, or when someone was attempting to say something he didn’t want to hear. Which was often.

He leant back now, in his leather chair, and yawned so widely that I could count the number of amalgam fillings in his upper jaw. ‘Sorry, Mike. What did you say you wanted?’

I stood in front of him, and said evenly, ‘I quit.’ I had planned a speech, refined it through several hours of sleeplessness, but when it came to it those two words were all I wanted to say.

‘What?’

‘I’ve put it in a letter. I’m giving notice.’

Dennis’s yawn stopped abruptly. He looked at me from under lowered brows, then leant back in his seat. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said. ‘We’ve got the Carter deal lined up for spring. You’ve babysat that from the start.’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t care about the Carter deal,’ I said. ‘I’m hoping you’ll let me go immediately. I’m happy to forgo my salary.’

‘Don’t piss me about, Mikey boy. I haven’t got time.’

‘I’m deadly serious.’

‘I’ll talk to you this afternoon. Go on, get lost. I’m waiting for a call from Tokyo.’

‘I won’t be here.’

At that point he saw I was serious. He looked irritated, as if I were trying something on. ‘Is this about money? I’ve told you you’ll get a salary review in January.’

‘It’s not money.’

‘And we’re bringing in better private health insurance as part of the package. Much wider cover. Plastic surgery, if you fancy it. You won’t even need to pay contributions.’

My shirt collar was uncomfortable, and I fought the urge to pull off my tie and loosen it.

‘Is this about Vanessa? You think I’m trying to force you out?’

‘You want me to go, but it’s not about Vanessa. Look . . . I know you don’t want me to leave while Vallance are wobbling.’

‘Who says Vallance are wobbling?’

‘I’m not stupid, Dennis. I read the signs.’

He picked up his pen. He let his gaze travel round the room as if he were considering something. Finally it settled on me and he gave a grudging nod. ‘Oh, sit down, for God’s sake. You’re making the place look untidy.’

London was not beautiful that autumn: the skies sat low, threatening and sulky, and the rain came down in sheets, creeping up my trousers from the uneven pavements where it collected in puddles. Sometimes the clouds seemed so close to the tops of the buildings that I felt almost claustrophobic. But it might, I thought, looking out of the window, have been almost any season for the amount of time I spent outside. In winter months I occasionally brought an overcoat, and in summer I might wear a lighter shirt, but closeted day after day between double-glazing and air-conditioning, ferried to and from work by tube or taxi, years could pass without my needing to adapt at all.

I sat. Outside, I could hear car horns and some kind of altercation. Normally Dennis loved a good scrap, and would stop whatever he was doing to peer outside. But now he studied his hands. Waiting, thinking.

‘Look, Dennis, I’m sorry about Vanessa,’ I said, at last, into the silence. ‘I never wanted to hurt her.’

His demeanour changed then. His shoulders unbraced themselves, and he leant towards me, his expression briefly softening. ‘She’ll get over it,’ he said. ‘She’ll find someone better. I should be madder at you, given that she’s my daughter, but I’m well aware that Tina’s a minx. Nearly headed down that road a couple of times myself. It’s only because Vanessa’s mother has pretty well all our assets in her name that I haven’t dared.’ He chuckled. ‘Plus she’s told me she’d have my bollocks for paperweights.’

He let out a huge sigh, and chucked his pen across the desk at me. ‘Bloody hell, Mike. How has it come to this?’

I caught it, and placed it back on the desk in front of him. ‘I can’t be part of this development, Dennis. I told you.’

‘For a few effing fish?’

‘It’s not just the whales. It’s everything. We’ll be . . . ruining people’s lives.’

‘It’s never bothered you before.’

‘Perhaps it should have.’

‘You can’t protect people from progress. You know that.’

‘Who says this is progress? Anyway, some people need protection.’

‘It’s a ruddy hotel, Mike, not a nuclear-waste plant.’

‘Might as well be, for the effect it’s going to have.’

I could tell he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. He shook his head, dug a few black crosshatches on to his telephone pad. Then he looked at me. ‘Don’t do this, Mike. I admit I’ve kept you out of the loop since you got back, but you’d turned into such a bloody pious git. I can’t trust you if you’re not a hundred per cent with me.’

‘I am with you, Dennis, just not with this development.’

‘You know we’re too far down the road to back up now.’

‘We’re not. We’d earmarked two other sites. Both are viable, you know they are.’

‘They’re more expensive.’

‘Not if we offset the costs of the S94. I’ve been through it.’

‘It’s going ahead, whether you like it or not.’ He was apologetic rather than bullish, and I saw suddenly that this was not about business: it was about Vanessa. He could forgive me, but to undermine his daughter publicly was asking too much. ‘I’m sorry, Mike. But it’s going ahead as planned.’

I shook my head regretfully. ‘Then I have to quit.’ I rose from my chair, and held out my hand. ‘I’m really sorry, Dennis. More sorry than you know.’

When he didn’t shake my hand, I walked towards the door.

His voice, lifted in exasperation, followed me: ‘This is effing ridiculous. You can’t ruin a bloody good career for a few fish. Come on, boyo. We’re mates, aren’t we? We can get past this.’

I hesitated by the door. Oddly, I heard reflected in his voice what I felt – an almost greater regret than I had experienced in splitting with Vanessa. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

As I opened it he spoke again: ‘You’re not going to fight me on this, Mike.’ It was a question as much as a statement. ‘You go if you have to, but don’t try to fuck up my deal.’

I’d hoped he wouldn’t ask. ‘I can’t sit by and watch it go ahead,’ I said, swallowing hard.

‘I’ll screw you, if I have to.’ He nodded, to make sure I’d got the message.

‘I know.’

‘I’ll shitbag you all over the City. You’ll never get a job anywhere decent again.’

‘I know.’

‘Don’t expect me to hold back. You know what I can do.’

I nodded. More than most, I knew.

We stared at each other.

‘Oh,
bollocks
.’ Dennis stepped forward and enveloped me in a bear-hug, until Tina’s voice came over the intercom, announcing that his call from Tokyo had come through.

I met Monica in a bar a short walk from her newspaper’s offices. She had nipped out for a drink, but said she’d be returning to her desk until late that evening, trying to follow up a story. Still mulling over my meeting with Dennis, I had asked her, more out of politeness than genuine interest, what it was about, and she had muttered something vague about farming fraud and EU subsidies, then looked rather cross. ‘I hate stories that involve finance,’ she muttered. ‘You spend weeks trying to understand the figures, and when you run it nobody cares because there’s no human interest in it.’

‘Want me to help?’ I said. ‘I’m not a forensic accountant, but I can find my way across a spreadsheet.’

She seemed a little taken aback. ‘I might.’ Her face lit up with a brief smile. ‘If I get stuck I’ll bring some home, and you can take a look.’

I had to admit that one of the unexpected benefits of my collapsed personal life was that my sister and I had discovered, to our mutual surprise, that we liked each other. I still thought her overly sarcastic, ambitious and chaotic, and that her taste in men was appalling. But now I understood that insecurity lay beneath the sarcasm, and that at least some of her ambition stemmed from having an elder brother who appeared to have scaled the career ladder effortlessly, and parents who, I saw with some shame, had used that success relentlessly and unthinkingly against her. I suspected now that she would have liked a boyfriend more than she was prepared to acknowledge, and that the longer she lived by herself, the less likely she was to leave room for one. If we stayed close, if we were able to leave this particular door open, I would have that conversation with her. One day.

‘Did you bring the pictures?’

I reached into my pocket and handed over the little paper folder. She began to flick through them, head down as she tilted them towards the light. ‘I’ve been thinking about this, and the best hope you have is in publicity. You reckon Vallance are nervous of bad publicity so what you have to do is get an effective figurehead to oppose the scheme, one spokesman, and then you need to work on two levels, local and national.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘On the local level, leaflets, posters, local newspapers. Try to create a ground swell of opposition. On the national, or even international level, you need a couple of well-placed features that might get you some telly coverage. Maybe get some wildlife experts involved, or use some new research. You should be able to find some. Isn’t there a whale-conservation society who can help you?’

I began to scribble some of this down. This was a Monica I had never met before, and her knowledge was valuable. ‘Whale-conservation society,’ I murmured. ‘Dolphins too?’

She held up one of the pictures Hannah had taken, of Liza standing on Whale Jetty. She was tilting her head, smiling directly at the camera, the way she often smiled at her daughter – brimful of warmth and love. Her hair, unusually, was loose, and the dog was gazing at her adoringly. I knew how it felt.

‘That her?’

I nodded, temporarily silenced.

‘She’s pretty. Looks a bit like that wildlife girl on telly.’

I had no idea who she was talking about.

She thrust the pictures back at me, and tapped that one, now resting on the top. ‘You’ll have to get her to step up. Make her the figurehead of the campaign. She looks good, and most people will be expecting some crusty do-gooder. I could probably get her a feature or two. Put her and the old lady together and you’ve got a better chance. Maybe you could try and get something like Relative Values in the
Sunday Times
. Didn’t you say there were old newspaper reports about her?’

‘I think I can get them off the Internet.’

‘If she hasn’t been written about since then it might make a piece. Did I mention local radio? Oh, Christ. Look, first and foremost you need a press release, something to send out to all the news organisations with your contact details clearly marked. And then, bruv, you need to get tough. You need to come out fighting.’

‘Me?’

She looked up at me.

‘I was asking how
they
could do it.’

‘You’re not helping?’

‘Well, I’ll do what I can from here.’

My sister’s face was suffused with disappointment.

The barman asked if either of us wanted a refill, and for a minute she appeared not to have heard him. Then she glanced at her watch and declined. ‘And he doesn’t want one either,’ she added, nodding at me.

‘I don’t?’

‘You said you loved her,’ she said accusingly, when he had gone.