Silver Bay(21)
Author: Jojo Moyes

‘Ah. But why did she jump?’ said Lance. ‘She was afraid she was about to get – ahem – harpooned by Greg.’

Yoshi giggled.

Greg glanced at Liza. ‘Not true.’

‘Then how come I saw you taking her number later?’

‘I gave her my number,’ he said slowly, ‘because she said she might want me to take out a private party.’

The table burst into noisy laughter. Liza didn’t look up. ‘Oooh,’ said Lance. ‘A private party. Like the private party you gave those two air stewardesses back in April?’

Mike was gazing at my niece. She was saying little, as was common, but her stillness marked her out in the exact opposite way that she had intended. I tried to see her through his eyes: a still-beautiful woman, who was both older and younger than her thirty-two years, her hair scraped back as if she had long since stopped caring what she looked like.

‘And you?’ he said quietly, leaning towards her across the table. ‘Do you chase whales too?’

‘I don’t chase anything,’ she said, and her face was unreadable, even to me. ‘I go to where they might be and keep my distance. I find that’s generally the wisest course of action.’

As their eyes locked, I became aware that Greg was watching. His eyes followed her as she rose from the table, saying she needed to pick up Hannah. Then he turned to Mike, and I hoped that only I could see the wintriness in his smile. ‘Yup. Generally the best course of action when it comes to Liza,’ he said, his smile as wide and friendly as that of a shark. ‘Keep your distance.’

Six

Mike

The bay stretches around an area of four miles between Taree Point and the outlying Break Nose Island, a short drive north from Port Stephens, a large port favoured for recreational activities. The waters are clear and protected, perfectly suited to watersports and, in the warmer months, swimming. There is little in the way of a tidal system, making it safe for bathing, and there is a thriving but low-level cottage industry in cetacean-watching.

Silver Bay is three to four hours’ drive from Sydney and accessible most of the way by a major highway. The seafront is made up of two half-bays. One, at the northernmost point, is virtually undeveloped, and another, home to Silver Bay proper, is a short drive away, or perhaps a ten-minute walk. This supports a number of small accommodation units and retail outlets, most of whose business comes from residents of Sydney and Newcastle. There is a . . . I paused, staring at the screen . . . an existing operation ripe for redevelopment, and numerous buildings with little economic worth. It is highly likely that the owners would see a fair financial settlement as advantageous both to themselves and the local economy.

As far as competition is concerned, there are no local hotels of any size or stature. The only hotel located within the bay is half its original size, having suffered a fire several decades ago. It is run on a bed-and-breakfast basis. There are no recreational facilities, and it would be unlikely to create a problem in terms of competition should the owner be unwilling to sell.

I couldn’t present anyone with this, I thought. It was all over the place. And it didn’t matter how many facts and figures I had gleaned from the local planning department and chamber of commerce, I still felt as though I was writing about something I knew nothing about.

I had discovered almost as soon as I had arrived that this was not a straightforward site. I was used to square footage in the City; executive apartments, razed seventies office blocks waiting for a new health-and-fitness chain, new prestige headquarters. On such jobs I could go in, look around unobserved, work out the local rental yields against property prices, the disposable income of nearby residents, and, at the end of the day, disappear.

This, I had known from the moment I stepped into Greg’s beer-can-filled truck, would be different.

Here, I was acutely aware of my visibility. Even in a sweatshirt and jeans I felt as if my lack of a salt crust gave away my intentions. And considering how empty it was, the area seemed too inhabited somehow, too influenced by its people. It was a new experience for me, but somehow I couldn’t see straight.

I sighed, opened a new document and began to type in headlines: Geography, Economic Climate, Local Industry, Competition. I thought, with a little resentment, about my new two-seater sports car, the one I had promised myself on the back of this deal; the car that was waiting for me, paid for and polished, on the dealer’s forecourt. I consulted my watch. I had been sitting there for almost two hours and strung together three paragraphs. It was time for another tea break.

Kathleen Mostyn had given me what she described as her ‘good’ room, some other guests having recently departed, and the previous night had brought up a tray with tea- and coffee-making equipment. She wouldn’t have given it to the last occupants, she muttered, because they ‘would no doubt have complained that the water didn’t boil fast enough’. She was the kind of woman who in England would have been running a school, or perhaps a stately home. The kind who makes you think ‘Age shall not wither her’, sharp-eyed, fiercely busy, wit undimmed. I liked her. I guess I like strong women: I find it easier not to have to think for two. My sister would have other theories, no doubt.

I boiled the kettle and stood at the window, preparing a cup. The room was not luxurious but was oddly comfortable; the polar opposite to most of the executive-class hotel rooms I stay in. The walls were whitewashed, and the wood-framed double bed was made up with white linen and a blue- and white-striped blanket. There was an aged leather armchair and a Persian rug that might once have been valuable. I worked at a small scrubbed-pine desk with a kitchen chair. I had the feeling, when I looked around the Silver Bay Hotel, that Kathleen Mostyn had long since decided that decorating for guests required far too much in the way of imagination, and had chosen instead to whitewash everything. ‘Easy to clean, easy to paint over,’ I could imagine her saying.

I realised pretty quickly that I was her only long-term guest. The hotel had the air of somewhere that might once have been pretty smart, but had long since settled for pragmatic, then decided it didn’t want much in the way of company anyway. Most of the furniture had been selected for practicality rather than some great aesthetic. Pictures were largely confined to old sepia-tinted photographs of the hotel in its former glory, or generic seaside watercolours. Mantelpieces and shelves, I had discovered, often contained odd collections of pebbles or driftwood, a touch that in other hotels might have signified stylistic pretensions, but here were more likely just the day’s finds, needing a home.