by Jojo Moyes
I stood and let my eyes run 360 degrees around me, taking in the distant coastline, the series of small, uninhabited islands that stood like sentries to the greater expanse of land. Above us birds swooped and dived, and I tried to remember what the crews had previously told me: ospreys, gannets, white-breasted sea eagles. Around us the sea rose and fell, glinting on one side, darker and apparently less amenable on the other. I no longer felt alien out here. Despite their lack of money, their insecure lifestyle and, their diet of cheap biscuits, I envied the whalechasers.
It was then that Vanessa spoke. Her hat was pulled low over her eyes so it was difficult for me to see her face. 'Mike?'
I turned to her. She was wearing the diamond earrings I had bought her for her thirtieth birthday.
'I know something's gone on,' she said carefully. 'I know I've lost a bit of you. But I'm going to pretend that none of this has happened, I'm going to pretend that you and I are still okay, and that this is some kind of weird reaction to the shock that you're getting married.'
My heart skipped a beat. 'Nessa,' I said, 'nothing happened--' but she waved a hand to stop me.
She looked at me, and I hated myself for the hurt in her eyes.
'I don't want you to explain,' she said. 'I don't want you to feel you have to tell me anything. If you think we can be okay, that you can love me and be faithful to me, I just want us to carry on as we were. I want us to get married, forget this and get on with our lives.'
The engines started up again. I felt the vibrations under my feet and then, as the boat swung round, the wind picked up and Lance started to say something over the PA system so I wasn't sure if she said anything else.
She turned back to the sea, pulled her collar up round her jaw. 'Okay?' she said. And then again: 'Okay?'
'Okay,' I said, and stepped forward. She let me hug her. Like I said, she's a clever woman, my girlfriend.
In the five days that remained before we travelled back to Sydney, Vanessa and I spent most of our time locked in our room. We were not engaged in the kind of liaison I suspected Kathleen and Liza imagined, but hunched over my laptop, working out how to alter the plans in a way that would satisfy her father and the venture capitalists. It was not an easy task.
'If we can get the USP, we can crack it,' she said. I thanked God that she had marketing skills. 'Without the watersports, the whales are the USP. We just have to work out a way of involving them that isn't going to alienate all of the whale-watching people. That means not setting up our own operation, which would be my immediate choice. There has to be some other way of making the sea creatures accessible.' She had got on to the National Parks, and Wildlife people to talk to them about the dolphins, but they had said they wouldn't encourage tourists to have greater contact with the animals than they already allowed.
'Perhaps something radical. Some kind of platform at the mouth of the bay, with an undersea viewing area.'
'Too expensive. And the shipping people would probably object. We could build a new jetty with a restaurant on top and a viewing area below.'
'What are you really going to see that close to land?' She sucked the end of her pen. 'We could try to work out some radical new spa idea.'
'Your dad didn't like the spa thing.'
'Or we could scrap the plans altogether and find another site. I can't see a way of using the hotel in its present form without the watersports. There's just nothing else to mark it out from what's available. Not for the luxury market.'
'Tennis?' I said. 'Horseriding?'
'A new site,' she said. 'We've got five days to find a new waterfront site for a one-hundred-and-thirty-million pound development.' We looked at each other and started to laugh: saying it out loud made it sound even more ridiculous than it actually was.
But Vanessa Beaker wasn't her father's daughter for nothing. Within an hour of us deciding that that was the way forward, she had hit the phones with Kathleen's old phone book, and within four hours she had spoken to probably every land agent between Cairns and Melbourne.
'Can you email me some pictures?' Between calls on my own phone, I heard the same request time and time again, then the other questions.
'Can you tell me, are the waters designated a protected area?'
'Do you have sea mammals or other indigenous creatures that are likely to be affected by a development?'
'Would they be interested in selling?'
'Might they be up for negotiation?'
By the end of the second day we had earmarked two possible sites. One was an existing hotel development an hour south of Brisbane. Its plus points included its own protected bay, which had been used without complaint for watersports. But it wasn't half as beautiful as Silver Bay, and the area was already thick with five star hotels. The other, half an hour from Bundaberg, was more accessible but almost a third again in price.
'Dad's not going to like that,' she said, then smiled brightly at me. 'But everything's doable, right? If we try hard enough? I mean, look what we've achieved already.'
'You,' I said fondly, pushing her hair back from her face, 'are a star.'
'Don't you forget it,' she said. Perhaps I imagined the edge to her voice.
That night we made love for the first time since she had come to Silver Bay. Given our previous physical appetite for each other, I can't explain what had happened until that point - but the atmosphere had been too odd. Neither of us had felt our old confidence in the other's response. We had hidden this insecurity under declarations of exhaustion, of too much wine. We had professed ourselves riveted by our books. I had found myself oddly conscious of the hotel's thin walls.
We had gone out to eat in the town, and walked back slowly along the bay holding hands. The wine, the moonlight, and the fact that I might have saved Silver Bay from the fate I had almost inflicted on it conspired to smooth over the strange resistance I felt when Vanessa and I now held each other.
I had nearly messed it up, I told myself, as we strolled along silently, but not quite. We would save this development, we would save the whales and we would save our relationship. We understood new things about each other. I had been given a second chance.
In my room we had left the light off and removed our clothes wordlessly, as if we had determined by telepathy that tonight was the one. We moved closer to each other, me focusing on the voluptuous beauty of Vanessa's silhouette, my mind locked only on physical sensation as we lay down on the old bed, skin on skin, her hands skilfully searching for me, her mouth emitting little gasps of pleasure. I ran my hands over her breasts, her skin. I buried my face in her hair. I remembered the scent of her, the feel of her, the familiar way her curves felt under my fingertips. And finally I plunged into her, forgetting everything, allowing myself the despairing gasp of release.
And afterwards we lay quiet as something heavy and melancholy settled in the dark around us.
'You okay?' I said, reaching across her for her hand.
'Fine,' she said, after a pause. 'Lovely.'
I stared up into the dark, listening to the waves breaking on the sand, the distant sound of a car door closing and the revving of an engine, thinking about what the core of me knew had been missing. Thinking about what I had lost.
We left on the Saturday. I went downstairs early and settled up with Kathleen. I paid her half in cash, guessing that would be more useful to her than credit cards. 'I'll be in touch,' I said. 'Things are happening fast. Really.'
She looked at me steadily. 'I hope so,' she said. She stuffed the money into a tin under the desk without counting it. I hoped that meant that, in some small way, she trusted me again. I felt buoyant with relief, and the confidence that something good could happen.
'Is - is Liza around?' I asked, when I realised she wasn't going to volunteer.
'She's out on Ishmael,' she said.
'Say goodbye to her for me.' I tried not to sound as awkward as I felt. I was acutely aware of Vanessa, who had come down the stairs and was now behind me.
Kathleen said nothing, but shook Vanessa's hand. 'Goodbye,' she said. 'I wish you luck with the wedding.'
There was more than one way you could interpret that, I thought, as I went upstairs for the bags, and none reflected well on me. I would have gone straight back down, but as I passed the family corridor, I heard music. Hannah was still there. She had barely spoken to me since the development had come to light and, more than anything, that child's silence had convinced me of my failure.
I stood at the door and knocked. Eventually she opened it, a burst of music filling the air behind her.
'I thought I'd say goodbye,' I said.
She didn't answer.
'Oh . . . and I came to give you this.' I held out an envelope. 'Your wages. The pictures were very good.'
She glanced at it. Her voice, when she spoke, held the faintest hint of an apology. 'My mum says I'm not allowed to accept your money.'
'Okay,' I said, trying to look less disconcerted than I felt. 'Well, I'm going to leave it on the hall table, and if you really aren't allowed to take it I hope you'll give it to a charity for the dolphins. I know you love them.'
I could hear Vanessa's mobile phone going off downstairs, and nodded, as if that were my excuse to leave.
Hannah stood in the doorway, studying me. 'Why did you lie to us, Mike?'
I took a step back towards her. 'I don't know.' I said. 'I probably made a big mistake, and I'm trying to put it right.'
She looked down.
'Grown-ups make mistakes too,' I said. 'But I'm trying to put it right. I hope you . . . I hope you believe me.'
She raised her head and on her face I saw suddenly that she had learnt this lesson long ago, that what I had done had merely reinforced her sense of adult fallibility, of our ability to sabotage her own blameless life.
We stood still for a moment, the City hot shot and the little girl. I took a breath, and then, almost as if by instinct, I held out a hand. After the longest pause she shook it.
'What about your phone?' she called suddenly, as I paused at the top of the stairs. 'We've still got your phone.'
'Keep it,' I said, grateful for the chance to offer her something, anything, that might redeem me in her eyes. 'Do something good with it, Hannah. Really.'
Vanessa was already waiting in the Holden. She was wearing what she had described as her travelling outfit - a suit in a non-crease fabric, with a clean shirt and a cashmere cardigan at the top of her holdall, ready for her to change into before we hit Heathrow. I had asked, with some amusement, whom she was intending to meet, and she had told me that just because I no longer cared about my appearance it didn't mean she had to give up and become a slob too. I think this was aimed at my jeans, which I had taken to wearing most days. They were comfortably worn in now, and somehow putting on a suit for a flight seemed excessive.
'So long, then,' said Kathleen, her arms folded, as she saw us to the Holden. She was a pretty different Kathleen from the one who had welcomed me five weeks previously.
'So long,' I said. I didn't try to shake her hand. Something about the steely cross of her arms told me it would be a pointless gesture. 'I won't let you down, Kathleen,' I said quietly, and she tipped her head back, as if that was as much as she was prepared to grant me.
She had told me Liza was out on Ishmael. Part of me thought that perhaps it would be for the best if I never saw her again. As she had said, what could I possibly have to say that she would want to hear?
But then, as we headed down the road and passed Whale Jetty, I looked in the rear-view mirror. A thin blonde woman stood at the end, her silhouette clearly outlined against the glistening sea. Her hands were shoved deep in her pockets, her dog at her feet. She was watching our white car as we drove slowly but surely away down the coast road.
The flight back was as much of a pleasure as a twenty-four-hour flight ever is. We sat beside each other, bickered about correct terminals, swapped unwanted items from our trays of food, and watched several films, none of which I can remember, but I was grateful for the distraction. At some point I slept, and when I woke, I was dimly aware of Vanessa going through a list of figures next to me. I was thankful again for her willingness to back me.
We landed at almost six in the morning, but by the time we had made it through Passport Control it was nearly seven.
Heathrow was crowded, chaotic and grey, even at that hour and at the height of what was loosely described as summer. Everyone feels bad when they get back from abroad, I told myself, rubbing at the crick in my neck as we headed for the baggage carousel. It's one of the certainties of travel, like delays and inedible airline food.
Predictably, the luggage was late. An announcement, in unapologetic tones, revealed that because of staff shortages there was only one team of baggage handlers for the four flights that had arrived in the past hour, and added, with masterly understatement, that we should 'expect a slight delay'.
'I could murder a coffee,' said Vanessa. 'There must be a shop somewhere.'
'I need to find a loo,' I said. She looked exhausted, even with her carefully refreshed hair and makeup. She never slept well on flights. 'The coffee shops don't start till after Customs. You watch for the bags.'
I walked away, more swiftly than exhaustion should have allowed. Over the past month I had got used to being alone, and spending a week joined at the hip to Vanessa, working and sleeping with hardly a minute's break, had been hard. It had been made harder given that few people wanted to talk to us any more, so that socialising, or sitting out with the whalechasers, had been almost impossible. I had not been tempted to try - I was afraid that Greg, with his simmering volatility, would confront Vanessa with what he guessed to be true. We had survived the unspoken; I was not convinced that we could manage such equanimity if the truth were laid out in front of us.
The short walk across the squeaking Heathrow linoleum was the first time I had been by myself for eight days, and it felt like a relief. I have done the right thing, I told myself, feeling bad about such disloyal thoughts. I am about to do the right thing.
I returned a few minutes later, my face still damp from where I had stuck it under the tap. As I drew closer I could see that the baggage carousel was revolving. Oddly, Vanessa had not collected our luggage although I could see it travelling its lonely, squeaking path along the conveyor belt.
'You must be tired,' I said, bolting for the cases.
But when I turned back, hauling the cases effortfully behind me - my girlfriend did not understand the concept of travelling light - Vanessa was looking at her mobile phone. 'Not your dad,' I said wearily. 'Not already.' Couldn't he even give us time to go home and grab a shower? I was dreading what I knew would be a confrontational meeting, even with Vanessa present, and felt I needed a short time to brace myself.
'No,' she said, her face uncharacteristically pale. 'No, it's your phone. It's a text. From Tina.' Then, thrusting the message under my nose, she walked out of the airport, leaving what remained of her baggage slowly travelling round the carousel.
The next time I saw her was almost twenty-eight hours later, when I arrived at the office for the crunch meeting with Dennis. He was on his feet, and with his restored physical mobility came a kind of mad sharpening of his energies. 'What's going on, boyo?' he kept saying, grabbing at my folder of planning letters. 'What's going on?'
The office had felt alien to me, the City so loud and crowded that I could not convince myself it was purely jet-lag that had disorientated me. When I closed my eyes I could see the serene horizon of Silver Bay. When I opened them I saw grey pavements, filthy gutters, the number 141 bus belching purple fumes. And the office. Beaker Holdings, once more familiar to me than my own home, now seemed monolithic and forbidding. I hesitated outside, telling myself that jet-lag had thrown me in Australia, and was likely to throw me again, even in England.
And then there was Dennis, and I had no chance to think of anything at all.
'What's going on, then? Feeling good about your big coup? T
he VCs are happy boys, I can tell you. Happy as pigs in the proverbial.' His time immobilised had brought him extra weight, and he was oversized, florid, compared to the lean, wind-whipped figures with whom I had spent the past month.
'You look like crap,' he said. 'Let's organise some coffee. I'll get one of the girls to go out and get us some. Not that instant swill they make here.'
In the brief moments after he left the boardroom, I sat down next to Vanessa. She had failed resolutely to meet my eye, and was now sitting in front of a blank foolscap pad. She was wearing what she called her power suit.
'I'm sorry,' I murmured. 'It's not what it seems. Really. Meet me afterwards and I can explain.'
'Not what it seems,' she said, doodling on the pad. 'That little welcome home seemed pretty self-explanatory to me.'
'Nessa, please. You wouldn't answer my calls. At least give me five minutes. After this. Five minutes.'
'Okay,' she said eventually.
'Great. Thank you.' I squeezed her arm, then braced myself for the task ahead.
He listened carefully as I outlined what I had done while I had been out there. He and Darren, our accountant, and Ed, the head of projects, scribbled notes as I outlined my considerations with regard to the ecological impact. I told them why I had been wrong to go for the S94 option, and why the planning process could still backfire on us if it went to a public inquiry, as it had with the pearl farm.
'The upshot,' I said, 'is that while I think the idea of our development, the idea of its USP -' here I glanced at Vanessa '- is still the right one, our existing plan is wrong for all the following reasons.' I handed them the pages I had photocopied that morning: the list of alternative sites and the breakdown of incurred costs that altering our proposal would take. 'We have already identified the new sites, have spoken with the local agents, and I think, having done the research, that these are by far the better options in terms of both potential adverse publicity and in terms of our new, added USP, which is that of responsible, community-friendly development.'
I gestured towards the table. 'Vanessa has been out with me. She's seen these creatures in the flesh, she's seen the whales' habitat, and the strength of feeling about them. She's in agreement that the best way forward for this company is either of the two alternative options. I know there will be time penalties, I know we'll have to sell the existing site, but I believe that if you were to take me along to Vallance, I could swing them round to the same way of thinking.'
