Silver Bay (44 page)

He was holding so much to him, I swear he could hardly move.

‘I want you to know this, Kathleen. Whatever you might hear in the future, whatever you hear about me, it’s important she knows she was loved.’ His eyes were burning into me. Their intensity made me a little uncomfortable.

‘I don’t want you to think badly of me,’ he said, choking, ‘but I made a promise . . .’

‘You really can’t tell me what any of this is about?’

He shook his head.

I didn’t like to push him. Call me old-fashioned, but I think a man becomes physically uncomfortable if you make him talk too much about what he’s feeling.

‘Mike,’ I said finally, ‘you saved Liza. You saved both my girls. That’s all I need to know.’

‘She’ll be happy, right?’ He wouldn’t look at me now. I had a bad feeling about why that might be.

‘She’ll be okay. She’ll have her girls.’

He stood up and walked slowly round the room, his back to me. I realised then how sorry I was that he was going. Whatever wrongs he had done us, he had put right in spades and then some. I’m no great romantic – Lord knows, Nino Gaines could tell you that – but when it came to him and Liza I had hoped for a happy ending. I knew now that he was a decent human being and there are few enough around. I would have told him as much, but I wasn’t sure who would be more embarrassed.

He stopped in front of my Shark Lady picture. When I sensed he might be a little more comfortable with proximity, I raised myself out of my chair and walked over to join him.

Still in my original frame, sepia-tinted and yellowed with age. Still flanked by my father, Mr Brent Newhaven and their invisible wires. There I was, smiling into that camera, my seventeen-year-old bathing-suited self, preparing to pursue me through the rest of my days.

I took a deep breath. ‘I’ll let you into a secret,’ I said. ‘I never caught that ruddy shark.’

That got him. He faced me.

‘Nope,’ I said. ‘My dad’s partner caught it. Told me it would look better on the hotel, give us more publicity, if it came from me.’ I took another draught of my beer. ‘I hated lying. Hate it still. But I understand something now. If it hadn’t happened, this hotel would never have survived the first five years.’

‘Or it could have been a six-storey development for the last twenty,’ Mike said wryly.

I turned the picture to the wall. ‘Sometimes,’ I said, ‘a lie is the way of least pain for everyone.’

I placed my hand on Mike Dormer’s arm, and waited until he felt able to look at me again. He nodded towards the door, as if we should go, and we glanced up at the house, where Liza’s bedroom light still glowed in the dark.

‘You know something? I’ve never seen a tiger shark in this bay. Never,’ I said, stepping out into the dark.

‘Greg has,’ he said, as he made to close the doors behind us.

‘You’re not listening,’ said the Shark Lady.

Twenty-seven

Mike

I had one and a half suitcases, and the empty space within them was so great that I could almost have fitted one inside the other. That space seemed to echo my state of mind. I would be the only passenger, I thought, who was likely to be penalised for under-utilising their weight allowance. Somehow, during my time here, I had shed half of my wardrobe so that all I wore now, day after day, was one of my two pairs of jeans, perhaps a T-shirt and shorts if it was a really warm day. Not a lot to show for such a seismic period in my life, I thought, as I placed them on my bed. I guessed I could buy my parents a hell of a lot of duty-free.

I was not taking my oilskin: somehow it was too bound up with being here, and I didn’t want to look at it hanging up in the wrong surroundings. I was not taking my suits, which I had given to the Silver Bay charity shop. I didn’t pack the T-shirt I’d been wearing when Liza first came into my bed, or the jumper I had lent her the night we had sat out by ourselves until two a.m., and which I secretly hoped she might want to keep. I was not taking my laptop: I had left it in the living room for Hannah, knowing it would be of more use to her. Besides, it might only be a matter of hours now until Letty returned to them, but I couldn’t bear to separate Hannah and Liza from that pixellated image. It might sound odd, but it would have felt like tearing them apart all over again. They both sat in front of it for hours, talking, comparing Letty and Hannah’s faces, considering the myriad different ways in which they had changed and not changed.

Liza was out on
Ishmael
– her last trip before they, too, left for the airport. I had hardly seen her since the previous day and wondered whether a quiet exit with no goodbyes might be the best thing for both of us. I told myself that at least they would be occupied: this afternoon they would finish doing up Letty’s room. Hannah had been allowed the day off school, and they had spent the previous evening painting and putting up new curtains, filling it with the kinds of things a ten-year-old girl might like, and arranging Letty’s dolphins. Hannah was up there now, music blaring, pinning up posters that she would tear down in a fit of indecision. ‘Do you think they like this group in England? What do English girls like?’ she would ask me anxiously, as if I were likely to have a clue. As if it were likely to make a difference.

I watched all this from a distance, half removed from their happiness, too consumed with the prospective loss of my own. They might miss me a little, but they had a far greater prize to contemplate, and a whole new life ahead. Only I was likely to shed tears tonight. I looked out at the little bay, at the distant mountains and at Silver Bay’s scattered rooftops. I listened to the birdsong, to distant engines, to Hannah’s music thumping above me, and felt as if I was being wrenched from my home. What was I going back to? To a woman I was not sure I could love in a city that now stifled me.

I thought of having to pick up the pieces of my old life, revisiting once-familiar bars and restaurants with braying City acquaintances, forcing my way through crowded streets, shoehorning myself into a new job in an anonymous office block. I thought of Dennis, who would doubtless convince me to return – and what was the alternative? Then I pictured myself stuck on a train in a new suit, closing my eyes to imagine Hannah tearing down the beach with Milly at her heels. I thought of Vanessa’s smile, her perfume and high-heeled shoes, our smart apartment, my sports car, the trappings of our former life, and knew, with a sick feeling, that it meant nothing. I wanted to be here. Every last atom of me wanted to be here.

The worst of it was that I still liked Vanessa. I still cared about her happiness. And I cared about my own integrity. For those reasons alone it was important that if she held true to her promise I should hold true to mine.

Those were the words I would repeat to myself silently several hundred times a day. Then I would visualise the months ahead, of lying awake at night, with Liza’s face, her intermittent smile, her knowing, sideways glance, haunting me. I would imagine burying my face in the one T-shirt that might still carry her scent. I would make love to someone whose body did not instinctively fit my own.

Come on, I told myself sternly, as I walked briskly to the hire car to bring it to the front of the hotel. Liza had her girls, and I was about to secure their future. Two out of three was a pretty good strike rate for anyone. I reversed into the front space, then sat staring at the dashboard. I had finally mastered the weird gearstick and, as I turned off the ignition, that small fact bugged me more than anything.

My flight was not due until the following morning, but standing there, increasingly swamped by my thoughts, I decided I had to leave now. I would drive to the city and book a room in a hotel for the night. If I stayed an hour longer, my resolve might melt. It meant that I would not see my sister, that I would not witness the reunion, but I knew Monica would understand. If I stayed till tomorrow, if I fooled myself for five minutes that I was any part of that new family, I might not be able to do the thing I had promised.

I got out of the car, and turned to the road as I heard a familiar whine. Greg’s pick-up skidded into the driveway then shuddered to a halt, his bumper a few inches from mine, buoys and fishing nets colliding noisily with the back of the cab.

He climbed out, pulling the brim of his cap over his eyes. ‘I heard the news about the little one. Unbelievable. Unbe
liev
able.’

‘News travels fast,’ I said. But it was a platitude – Hannah had run to the jetty the previous evening, to tell every one of the whalechasers individually. They didn’t know the full circumstances, but they knew Liza had had a daughter in England who was to be returned to her, and they were astute enough not to look beyond what they had been told. Not obviously, anyway.

‘Arriving tomorrow night, is she?’

I nodded. He pulled a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one. ‘Good on you, mate. I can’t pretend I like you but, strewth, I can’t argue with someone who brings children back from the dead, eh?’

He took a deep drag of his cigarette. We both stared for a minute at Whale Jetty, where only Greg’s boat remained.

‘Thanks,’ I said, finally.

‘Yeah. Well.’

Behind us, in the hotel, a telephone rang. Probably some future guest. It would not be Monica – she had been in the air for several hours. Kathleen had offered to put her up for as long as she wanted to stay. It was the least she could do, she said, beaming, and I felt suddenly envious of my sister. Tomorrow night she would be sleeping in what I now thought of as my room. Silver Bay was about to be consigned to memory. A strange little period in my life that I would look back on wistfully; a series of what-ifs that I would not allow myself to consider too closely.

Thinking about my sister made me remember my cases, and I went inside to fetch them. When I carried them out, Greg was still leaning against his pick-up. He looked down at my luggage, then up at me. ‘Going somewhere?’

‘London,’ I said, swinging them into my open boot. I closed it with a thud.

‘London, England?’

I didn’t bother to respond.

‘Staying long?’

I wanted to lie to him – but what would have been the point? He would know soon enough. ‘Yes.’

A slight pause, a few calculations. ‘Not coming back?’

‘No.’

His face actually lit up. He was as transparent as a child. ‘Not coming back. Well, now, that’s a shame. For you, I mean.’

I heard him take another drag on his cigarette, heard the smile in his voice when he said, ‘I always thought you were an odd one, mate, and now I know I’m right.’

‘Quite the psychologist,’ I said, jaw tightening. I wished he would get lost.

‘Leaving us all, eh? I’m sure you’ve made the right decision. Best to stick where you fit in, eh? And I’m sure Liza will get over it. She’ll be a different character now, I reckon. A whole lot happier. And, well, you don’t need to worry at all – I’ll make sure she has enough . . . attention.’

He raised an eyebrow at me, delight written all over his face. If it hadn’t been that Hannah might be watching us I would have punched his stupid face in. I knew he half wanted it. He’d been spoiling for a fight with me for weeks. ‘If I remember rightly, Greg,’ I said quietly, ‘it wasn’t you she was interested in.’

He took a last drag of his cigarette and spat it into the dust. ‘Aw, mate,’ he said, ‘Liza and I go back a long way. I’m a big guy. As far as I’m concerned, you were just a distraction.’ He held his finger and thumb about a centimetre apart. ‘A little blip on the old radar.’

For a moment, the gloves were off. It was as well that Kathleen emerged from the house. ‘Mike!’ she called, her voice indignant. ‘What are you doing with your cases? I thought you weren’t going till tomorrow?’

I tore my gaze from Greg and went towards her. ‘I’m – waiting for a call. Then I think I’ll head off.’

She stared at me. Then at Greg.

‘Don’t look at me,’ said Greg, grinning. ‘I’ve done me best to tell him just how much he’s wanted.’

‘You want to come in for a minute?’ she asked me.

‘Don’t mind me.’ Greg shrugged.

‘Never have yet.’

I followed her into the front room.

‘You can’t leave now,’ she said, her hands on her hips. ‘You won’t see Letty. You haven’t said goodbye to anyone. Hell, I was going to do you a little party tonight.’

‘That’s really kind of you, Kathleen, but I think it’s best if I go.’

‘You not even going to hang on till Liza gets back? Say goodbye to her?’

‘Best not.’

She stared at me, and I wasn’t sure whether it was sympathy or frustration in her face. ‘You really can’t hang on? Just till after lunch?’

I tried to think clearly over the sound of Hannah’s boombox, which was pumping out disco music upstairs, my heart still thumping with thwarted adrenaline. I could hear her singing, her reedy little voice breathless and faintly out of tune. I stepped forward and held out a hand. ‘Thanks for everything, Kathleen,’ I said. ‘If any calls come here for me this afternoon will you give them my mobile number? I’ll call you as soon as I know for certain about the development.’

She looked at my hand, then up at my face. I found it difficult to meet her eye. Then she hugged me, her old arms surprisingly strong as they held me to her. ‘You call me,’ she said, into my shoulder. ‘You don’t get to disappear just like that. Doesn’t have to be about the ruddy development. You call me.’

I walked out of the room, out of the hotel and into my car before the pain in her voice could change my mind.

I had to drive slowly down the coast road, not because its surface was potholed and uneven but because there seemed to be something in both of my eyes and I couldn’t see straight. When I got to Whale Jetty I stopped to wipe them, and found myself hoping against hope that I might see
Ishmael
coming round the head and into the bay, that I might, one last time, see the thin figure, the hair blowing under the cap and the dog, steering in. Just one little glance, before my life continued its own separate course on the other side of the world.