Silver Bay(59)
Author: Jojo Moyes

I also knew that to survive professionally beyond this deal I had to sharpen up. But I was immobilised, unable to apply my old analytical rigour to the state of my career, paralysed by indecision and guilt.

And night after night I lay sleepless on the camp-bed, surrounded by the detritus of someone else’s life, waiting for my own to make sense again.

One thing was clear: Vanessa had released me at the moment she had said she wanted the development to go ahead. When she had looked at me every last atom of love was gone, and I was sobered by the depth of her enmity.

‘Bloody hell. You can’t blame her.’ Monica handed me a glass of wine. One of the many conditions of my stay with her was that I had to put together the flat-pack chest of drawers she had bought several weekends ago, so I was seated amid piles of MDF and clear plastic bags with too few screws. In the interests of effective engineering, I should have stopped drinking several glasses earlier.

I got through quite a lot that month – in fact, I was drunk much of the time. Not that anyone would have guessed. I was not like Greg, loud, obstreperous, demanding. I was a subtle drunk. The third double whisky slipped down discreetly. The glass of wine turned into a bottle and a half. It was not that I had an addictive personality, but break-ups are not suited to male patterns of behaviour. We do not have groups of friends to prop us up and endlessly analyse our former partner’s actions. We do not go in for aromatherapy baths and scented candles to ‘pamper ourselves’ or read inspirational stories in magazines to feel better. We go to the pub or sit alone in front of the television with a drink or two.

‘I don’t blame her,’ I said. ‘I know it’s all down to me.’

‘My brother the serial shagger, eh? Watch that screw – you’re about to lose it.’

‘I’m not a serial shagger.’

‘Snogger.’ She giggled. ‘Serial snogger, then.’ I couldn’t help laughing too. It sounded so ridiculous.

‘There,’ she said, pointing her cigarette at me. She was seated cross-legged on a rug. ‘There – you see? You can’t have loved her that much or you’d be devastated. Told you I was right.’

‘You have no heart,’ I accused.

But perhaps she was right. I felt bad, admittedly, and guilty, and a bit horrible, but I knew I wasn’t drinking because I’d lost Vanessa. I was drinking because I no longer knew who I was. I had not just lost material things – the flat, the car, my position at Beaker Holdings – but the things I thought defined me: my analytical skills, my drive, my strategic focus for deals. My hunger. I was not sure I liked the elements of my character that had revealed themselves to me recently.

And I was drinking because one thought hung over all the others: that I had inadvertently destroyed the lives of three people who had no facilities with which to fight back. ‘What do I do, Monica? How can I stop it happening?’ I dropped the screwdriver on to the floor beside me.

‘Why does it matter?’ she asked, picking it up, and studying the instructions. ‘You lose your job if it doesn’t.’

I stared at the pieces of wood in front of me, which didn’t even look like wood, then at the tiny, chaotic flat, where the sound of traffic penetrated the walls. I felt homesick.

‘Because it just does,’ I said.

‘Mikey, what the hell went on out there? You went out as Billy Big Shot and came back a bloody mess.’

So I told her. I told her everything. And the odd thing was that in saying the words, I realised what was going on. It took me two hours and several more glasses of wine, but I sat with my sister, in her cramped, untidy flat in Stockwell, and talked into the small hours. I told her about Kathleen and the hotel, Hannah, Liza and the whalechasers, and as I spoke, their faces came alive to me, and I felt briefly as if I were back there in the wide open space with just the sound of the sea in my ears and the salt breeze on my skin. I told her about Letty’s death and the baby whale, and the sound I’d heard when Liza had dropped the microphone into the water. And when I got to the part where I had watched the thin, blonde figure recede in my rear-view mirror, I understood. ‘I’m in love,’ I said. The words had just slipped out. I sat back, dazed, against the sofa, and said them again. ‘God. I’m in love.’

‘Hallelujah,’ said my sister, stubbing out her cigarette. ‘Can I go to bed now? I’ve been waiting for you to work that out since you got here.’

When Dennis Beaker yawned, he made the same sound as a large dog does when you meet it first thing in the morning. It was a genuine sound, impossible to reproduce, which was odd, because I knew that yawning was a tactic he used to considerable effect when underlings or rival firms were making presentations, or when someone was attempting to say something he didn’t want to hear. Which was often.

He leant back now, in his leather chair, and yawned so widely that I could count the number of amalgam fillings in his upper jaw. ‘Sorry, Mike. What did you say you wanted?’

I stood in front of him, and said evenly, ‘I quit.’ I had planned a speech, refined it through several hours of sleeplessness, but when it came to it those two words were all I wanted to say.

‘What?’

‘I’ve put it in a letter. I’m giving notice.’

Dennis’s yawn stopped abruptly. He looked at me from under lowered brows, then leant back in his seat. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said. ‘We’ve got the Carter deal lined up for spring. You’ve babysat that from the start.’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t care about the Carter deal,’ I said. ‘I’m hoping you’ll let me go immediately. I’m happy to forgo my salary.’

‘Don’t piss me about, Mikey boy. I haven’t got time.’

‘I’m deadly serious.’

‘I’ll talk to you this afternoon. Go on, get lost. I’m waiting for a call from Tokyo.’

‘I won’t be here.’

At that point he saw I was serious. He looked irritated, as if I were trying something on. ‘Is this about money? I’ve told you you’ll get a salary review in January.’

‘It’s not money.’

‘And we’re bringing in better private health insurance as part of the package. Much wider cover. Plastic surgery, if you fancy it. You won’t even need to pay contributions.’

My shirt collar was uncomfortable, and I fought the urge to pull off my tie and loosen it.