by Jojo Moyes
But she was the only one of us not crying.
'I knew,' she said, a great smile breaking across her face. 'I knew she couldn't be dead, not like the sea creatures. She never felt dead.' She turned back to the screen and traced the image again. They were so alike, it was as if she was staring into a mirror. It's hard to believe now that I could have doubted it.
Mike had gone to the window. He was rubbing the back of his head. 'Those bastards,' he was saying, forgetting Hannah's presence. 'How can they have kept the truth from her for all those years? How could they do that to her? How could they do that to the child?'
The size of their deception had hit me too, and the language that emerged from my mouth I haven't heard since I was a wartime barmaid. 'That bastard! That yellow-bellied, rat-eating son of a rabid dog! That . . . sh--'
'Shark?' suggested Mike, raising an eyebrow.
'Shark,' I affirmed, glancing at Hannah. 'Yes. Shark. I'd sure love to gut him like one.'
'I'd shoot him,' said Mike.
'Shooting's too good.' I had a sudden image of Old Harry, my harpoon gun, mounted on the wall of the Whalechasers Musem, and had a thought that would have shocked those who knew me. I knew Mike's mind was headed the same way. Then Hannah spoke again. 'I still have a sister,' she announced, and the simple delight in her voice stopped us both. 'Look! I have a sister.' And as Hannah placed her own face beside that oversized image, so that we could both take in the reality of that statement, Mike and I turned to each other.
'Liza,' we said, in unison.
We didn't know how to tell her. We didn't know how to give her this news. She was out on the boat and it was too huge, too shocking, to tell her over the radio. Yet we couldn't wait for her to come in. In the end we borrowed Sam Grady's cutter. With Mike and Hannah at the prow, and me at the tiller, we sailed out past the bay to Break Nose Island. The breeze was light, the seas gentle, and within minutes we were accompanied by pods of dolphins, the joyful arcs of their bodies echoing the mood on our boat. As we bounced across the waves, Hannah leant over the edge and told them. 'They know!' she said, laughing. 'They've come because they know!' For once I didn't put her straight. Who was I to say how life worked? Who was I to say those creatures didn't know more about it than I did? I felt at that moment that nothing would surprise me.
And there she was, coming back in, standing at the helm with Milly beside her, looking forward already to coming ashore. She had a full boat, largely Taiwanese. The tourists leant over the front rails, curious as to why we had approached, some still clutching their cameras, then snapping madly as they saw the dolphins in our wake.
As she spotted us and steered towards us, the sun was behind her and her hair looked as if it was on fire. 'What's up?' she yelled, as we pulled alongside. She forgot to be mad about Hannah not wearing a lifejacket: when she saw the three of us crammed into the little boat, she knew we couldn't be there for any ordinary reason.
I looked at Mike, who nodded at me, and I began to shout, but before I had even said the words, the tears were streaming down my face. My voice broke. It took several attempts, and Mike's proffered hanky, before I could make myself heard.
'She's alive, Liza. Letty's alive.'
Liza looked from me to Mike and back again. Above us, two gulls wheeled and cried, mocking what I had said.
'It's true! Letty's alive! Mike's sister has seen her. She's really, really alive.' I waved the picture that Mike had printed off, but the breeze whipped it round my hand and she was too far off to see it.
'Why are you saying this?' she said, her voice cracking with pain. She glanced back at the passengers, who were all watching the scene intently. The colour had drained from her face. 'What do you mean?'
Struggling to keep my balance, I unfurled the picture and held it above my head, in two hands, like a banner. 'Look!' I shouted. 'Look! They lied to you! The bastards lied to you! She never died in the car crash. Letty's alive, and she's coming home.'
The tourists hushed, and a few of the Taiwanese, perhaps sensing the enormity of the occasion, began a spontaneous round of applause. We waited below, our faces alive with joy and expectation, and then, as the gulls flew off on some predetermined path, Liza turned her face briefly towards the sky and fainted clean away.
Mike said he'd never realised how much he loved his sister till that day. In a three-hour conversation, as Liza sat pressed up to him, still pale with shock, she told him how she had arranged to meet Steven Villiers at his office and, once there, cup of tea in hand, told him she was following up a story about a respected councillor who had deliberately told his girlfriend that her daughter was dead in order to separate them. A councillor who had systematically beaten his girlfriend until she left in fear of her life. A girlfriend who had kept photographs of her injuries and had them verified by a doctor. Okay, so Monica had lied about that bit, but she said her blood was up by then and she'd just wanted to be sure she would win. I liked the sound of Monica Dormer.
The shocking thing was how easily the Villiers man had caved in. He went very quiet, then said, 'What do you want?' He had married, you see, and had two young sons, and when Monica told him that Letty would know, one way or the other, what he had done, she had thought, from his voice, that this was a conversation he had probably expected for some time. They struck a deal: restore the child to her mother, and this would remain a family matter. He agreed a little too readily; she had the impression that it wasn't the happiest of families.
This is the best part. He had known where Liza was for years - through his contacts in the police, probably, or some kind of private investigator. The irony was that he had wanted her to stay away from him as much as she had wanted to stay away. He said his mother had told Liza the child was dead, partly because at that point they thought it might be true, and partly out of spite. Then when they discovered that Liza had disappeared, they'd decided it might be useful to let her believe it, that it would be an easy way to have her out of their lives. She was a loose cannon, a threat to his career and his future, an obstacle to his happiness with the elegant, dark-haired Deborah. And they had what they wanted. He had the grace, she said, to look a little ashamed. He wanted proper access, he said, the kind of man who at least wants to behave as if he still has control of a situation, and Monica told him he could have his access - as much as his daughter wanted.
Then, accompanied by a lawyer and with a child psychologist at the ready (Mike's sister was a little afraid by then, never having dealt with children herself), they went to the house to tell Letty she was going on holiday. It was quick. We worried later that it was too quick, given the shock that the girl experienced on being told that her mother had not abandoned her, after all. But, sounding as unsure as Mike had ever heard her, Monica admitted that until they left the drive, she had been afraid Villiers would change his mind.
There were so many lies that Letty would have to learn to disbelieve, so many secrets. Mike's sister said she was a bright kid, that she wanted to know everything. It was night-time there now, and they were letting her sleep, but in the morning, our evening, Monica would ring us and, after five years, Liza would be able to speak to her. Her younger daughter, her baby, risen from the dead.
I saw the light on in the Whalechasers Museum as I let Milly out for her last walk of the night, and I guessed pretty quickly who it might be. I don't bother locking it half the time - there's nothing of monetary value in it to steal, and Milly would let us know if strangers headed up here when they shouldn't.
Liza and Hannah were upstairs making their telephone call and they needed to be alone, so I grabbed a couple of beers and went out there. He was probably feeling like I was, a bit of a spare part. This was Hannah and Liza's time. We could be happy for them, overjoyed even, but in truth, not yet knowing Letty, we could only ever feel a fraction of what they did. Being in that house while that conversation was going on upstairs felt intrusive, like listening in on someone's love affair.
Besides, I was curious about what
Liza had told me the previous day, before her whole world had changed again - about the possibility that the development might not go ahead. It was nothing certain, she said, and she was not meant to tell anyone until it was confirmed. But she said it was down to Mike and then, her face darkening, she said that he would be leaving for good tomorrow and after that she wouldn't say much at all.
He didn't hear me at first. He was sitting on one of Maui II's rotten timbers, one hand resting on it, and his shoulders were stooped, as if he were carrying a great weight. Given what he had achieved, it seemed an odd stance.
Milly shot in past me, wagging her way to him, and he glanced up. 'Oh. Hi,' he said. He was almost directly under the strip-lights, and they cast long shadows on his face.
'Thought you might like this.' I held out a beer to him. As he took it I sat down on the chair a few feet away and cracked one open myself.
'Not like you,' he said.
'Nothing normal about today,' I said.
We sat and drank in companionable silence. The barn doors were open, and through them, in the near dark, we could see the shoreline, the distant lights of people's cars, of fishermen's boats preparing for their night's work. The gentle, humdrum life of Silver Bay pottering on, as it had done for half a century. I still couldn't believe what I'd been told - that it was possible Mike could pull us back from the brink. I couldn't believe that we might be allowed to stand, undisturbed, for a little longer.
'Thank you,' I said, quietly. 'Thank you, Mike.'
He looked up from his beer.
'For everything. I don't understand how you've done it all, but thank you.'
His head dropped again then, and I knew something was wrong. The dark, contemplative expression on his face suggested that he was not out here to give Liza space: he was out here because he had needed to be alone.
I sat and waited. I've been around long enough to know you catch a hell of a lot more fish by keeping still and quiet.
'I don't want to leave,' he said, 'but it's the only way I can stop the development.'
'I'm not sure I understand . . .'
'There was a choice . . . and I couldn't make it hers. She's had to make too many hard decisions already.'
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 C
ity 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.
