Silver Bay(61)
Author: Jojo Moyes

‘Did you bring the pictures?’

I reached into my pocket and handed over the little paper folder. She began to flick through them, head down as she tilted them towards the light. ‘I’ve been thinking about this, and the best hope you have is in publicity. You reckon Vallance are nervous of bad publicity so what you have to do is get an effective figurehead to oppose the scheme, one spokesman, and then you need to work on two levels, local and national.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘On the local level, leaflets, posters, local newspapers. Try to create a ground swell of opposition. On the national, or even international level, you need a couple of well-placed features that might get you some telly coverage. Maybe get some wildlife experts involved, or use some new research. You should be able to find some. Isn’t there a whale-conservation society who can help you?’

I began to scribble some of this down. This was a Monica I had never met before, and her knowledge was valuable. ‘Whale-conservation society,’ I murmured. ‘Dolphins too?’

She held up one of the pictures Hannah had taken, of Liza standing on Whale Jetty. She was tilting her head, smiling directly at the camera, the way she often smiled at her daughter – brimful of warmth and love. Her hair, unusually, was loose, and the dog was gazing at her adoringly. I knew how it felt.

‘That her?’

I nodded, temporarily silenced.

‘She’s pretty. Looks a bit like that wildlife girl on telly.’

I had no idea who she was talking about.

She thrust the pictures back at me, and tapped that one, now resting on the top. ‘You’ll have to get her to step up. Make her the figurehead of the campaign. She looks good, and most people will be expecting some crusty do-gooder. I could probably get her a feature or two. Put her and the old lady together and you’ve got a better chance. Maybe you could try and get something like Relative Values in the Sunday Times. Didn’t you say there were old newspaper reports about her?’

‘I think I can get them off the Internet.’

‘If she hasn’t been written about since then it might make a piece. Did I mention local radio? Oh, Christ. Look, first and foremost you need a press release, something to send out to all the news organisations with your contact details clearly marked. And then, bruv, you need to get tough. You need to come out fighting.’

‘Me?’

She looked up at me.

‘I was asking how they could do it.’

‘You’re not helping?’

‘Well, I’ll do what I can from here.’

My sister’s face was suffused with disappointment.

The barman asked if either of us wanted a refill, and for a minute she appeared not to have heard him. Then she glanced at her watch and declined. ‘And he doesn’t want one either,’ she added, nodding at me.

‘I don’t?’

‘You said you loved her,’ she said accusingly, when he had gone.

‘Doesn’t mean she loves me,’ I said, taking the last swig of my drink. ‘In fact, I have it on fairly good authority that she hates my guts.’

My sister raised her eyebrows in a way that transported me to a time when we were children. It was a gesture that spoke of the uselessness of boys, of her eminent superiority. It told me that, yet again, I had got it wrong, and that this was probably only to be expected. As I had then, I wanted to wrestle her to the ground and sit on her, to stop her doing it and prove who was boss.

But, irritatingly, this time I had to accept she was right. She sat back on the bar stool and folded her arms. ‘Mikey, what the hell are you sitting here for?’

‘Because I’m a stupid bloke who can’t make a decision to save his life?’

My sister shook her head.

‘Oh, no,’ she said, and grinned. ‘You made a decision. You’re just too stupid to realise it.’

For the first time in my adult life, I didn’t shop around for flights. I didn’t compare leg room against cost, weigh up the benefits of frequent-flyer miles against the quality of the airline’s meals. I booked the first available seat on a flight to Sydney. Then, before I could think too hard about it, I packed a suitcase of essentials and my sister drove me to the airport.

‘This is a good thing,’ she said, straightening my jacket, almost fondly, as we stood outside at the drop-off point. ‘Really. A good thing.’

‘She won’t talk to me,’ I said.

‘Then for once in your life, Mikey boy, you’re going to have to work at it.’

During that flight I became steadily more nervous. When it stopped to refuel in Hong Kong, I was jittery in a way that couldn’t be explained purely by the time change. I kept trying to think of what I would say when I saw her, but every conversation opener was inadequate. In fact, my presence would be inadequate. With Monica several thousand miles behind me, my vague dreams of an impassioned reunion dissipated like jet-fuel trails in a clear sky.

I had not done what I had promised Kathleen I would do, which was to stop the development. If anything, it was now moving forward with greater speed than ever. Despite my feelings for Liza, I was still the duplicitous pig she had identified: if Tina had not sent that incriminating text, would I have split with Vanessa? I could fool myself that it would have happened anyway, but I seemed so out of touch with my own feelings that I couldn’t claim it as an absolute truth.

The murmured words I had rehearsed for Liza were drowned by different voices. I heard Hannah’s, with the clarity of a silver bell: ‘Mike, why did you lie to us?’, then her mother telling me accusingly that everything I had said, everything I had been, was a lie. I thought about Vanessa’s bleak expression when she had seen the message on my mobile phone, and knew that I wanted never to inflict that kind of pain on anyone again.

Sitting on that flight, headed east, I discovered before the end of the first in-flight movie that I had no idea what I was doing. It was unlikely that Kathleen and Liza would want my help, even if I had known what I should do to oppose the development. Few people left in the town would welcome me. I was not even sure where I would stay.

I drank a lot on the flight, despite what my sister had said to me, partly because it was the only way I could relax, and partly because sipping wine was something to do with my hands. I dipped in and out of fitful sleep, and felt the knots in my stomach accumulate in proportion to the miles that the plane travelled towards its destination.

Some thirty hours later, I got out of the rental car that I had driven to Silver Bay from Sydney, stood up in the bright sunlight, and fought an almost overwhelming urge to climb back into the car and drive back to the airport.