Silver Bay(54)
Author: Jojo Moyes

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.