Silver Bay(13)
Author: Jojo Moyes

‘But we haven’t even—’

‘I’ll stall them as long as it takes for you to pull it together. But this is our biggest ever development. I want to know I was right to promote you, that you can bring it in.’

It didn’t occur to him that I might refuse. That I might put my personal life before the needs of the company. But, then, he was probably right. I’m a company man. A safe pair of hands. I booked the flight that afternoon. Business class in one of the Asian carriers was cheaper than economy in both my initial choices.

Four

Greg

What’s an okay time of day to start on the beer? According to my old man, any time after midday. He used to sink them like my mother sank cups of tea, cracking open a Toohey’s every couple of hours or so when he took a break from whatever house he was building.

He was a big bloke, and you’d never have known he was drinking that much. My mum reckons that was cos he was permanently drunk; cheerful in the afternoons, ebullient at tea, a little muzzy in the mornings from the night before. We never had the misfortune to deal with him stone-cold sober.

I believe the right time is around two p.m., unless I’m working, in which case it’s whatever time I bring Sweet Suzanne back in. You wouldn’t catch me drunk at the helm – whatever my faults, I’d never put my boat or my passengers at risk. But a cold beer at Kathleen’s, with the sun high in the sky and a few chips on the table, that’ll do me. Can’t see how anyone could object to that. Apart from my ex.

According to Suzanne, there’s never a good time for me to drink beer. She said I was a mean drunk, an ugly drunk, and drunk too often to make up for it. She said that was why she could no longer stand the sight of me. She said that was why I was losing my looks. She said that was why we’d never had kids – although she’d refused point-blank when I suggested she and I head for the doc to see if he could work it out. And I told her – I might not be an angel and I’m the first to admit I’m not the easiest bloke to be hitched to – there’s not a lot of men in Australia would volunteer to have their tackle tampered with, especially by another bloke.

But that was how bad I wanted kids. And that was why, as I left my solicitor’s office at eleven twenty-five – amazing how you keep track of time when you’re paying by the hour and it’s Saturday rates – I decided that, as far as I was concerned, eleven twenty-five a.m. was the perfect time to crack open a cold can of VB, even though it was chilly enough for me to be wearing my sweater, and the wind was too high to sit outside without turning blue.

I guess that beer must have been a two-fingers to her, as much as anything. Her and her bloody fitness-instructor bloke and her half-share of everything and her stupid demands. Because, to be honest, it didn’t taste that great. I was going to drink one at the pub but somehow, when I thought about it, sitting in a pub by yourself at eleven twenty-five in the morning seemed a little . . . sad. Even on a Saturday.

So I sat in the front of my truck, drinking my beer with a little less speed than I might have done, waiting for the point when it would stop feeling like an effort, and start easing the hours along from the inside. I had no customers that day. I’d had to admit my numbers had dropped a lot since I’d graffitied the boat. Liza had helped me paint over it at the weekend, and told me briskly that if I kept my mouth shut everyone would have forgotten about it in a week or two. And I did – I was going to have to work like a bloody dog to pay the kind of settlement that that ex of mine was demanding.

‘A clean break’, they called it. The same phrase doctors use when they talk about a snapped limb. And that was how it felt, I can tell you. So painful that if I thought about it too hard it made me feel physically sick.

But for now I sat in my cab in the car park thinking of how I had watched the tourists totter down Whale Jetty in their high heels, clutching their video cameras and their whalesong CDs, and eye Suzanne warily, as if she might jump out of the water to reveal some other blasphemy.

If I hadn’t had other plans that day, I would have taken her out by myself. Even after a beer. I’d found that sometimes just sitting in the bay watching the bottlenose made me feel better. They stick their heads up with those stupid old smiles as if they’re having a joke with you, and sometimes you can’t help but laugh, even on days when you want to slit your wrists. I guess we were all a bit like that, the crews. We knew that was the best bit – just you and those creatures, out in the silence of the water.

‘At least you didn’t have kids,’ the solicitor had remarked, checking out the joint account. She’d no idea what she’d said.

I’d finished the second beer when I saw him. I’d crumpled the tin in my fist and was about to chuck it into the passenger footwell when I clocked him. You couldn’t miss him. He stood there in his dark blue pen-pusher’s suit, flanked by two oversized matching suitcases, gazing back towards the main street. I stared at him until he clocked me back, then stuck my head out of the window. ‘You all right, mate?’

He hesitated, then picked up his cases and stepped forward. His black lace-up shoes had been polished to within an inch of their lives. Not the kind of bloke I’d normally have got chatting to, but he looked dead beat, and I guess I felt sorry for him. One deadbeat to another, like.

When he reached my window, he dropped the cases and fished a piece of paper out of his pocket. ‘I think my taxi’s dropped me at the wrong place. Can you tell me if there’s a hotel near here?’

A Pom. I might have guessed. I squinted at him. ‘There’s a few, mate. Which end of Silver Bay you after?’

He glanced at his piece of paper again. ‘It just says the . . . ah . . . Silver Bay Hotel.’

‘Kathleen’s place? It’s not a hotel as such. Not any more.’

‘Is it much of a walk?’

I guess curiosity got the better of me. You don’t often see men dressed up like a dog’s dinner in this neck of the woods. ‘She’s a way up the road. Hop in. Got a bit of business over there myself. You can sling your bags in the back.’

I saw doubt pass over his face, as if an offer of a lift was to be mistrusted. Or perhaps he didn’t want his smart luggage touching my seaweedy gear in the back. This bugged me a little, and I nearly changed my mind. But he dragged his cases round to the tailgate and I watched him haul them over the side. Then he opened the door and climbed in, struggling as his feet made contact with the pile of empties.