Silver Bay(78)
Author: Jojo Moyes

‘You think I don’t know that?’

‘How will Hannah cope without you? Hasn’t she lost enough already?’

She blew her nose. ‘Better she loses me for a few years while she’s still got Kathleen. Then we can start again. I can start again. And maybe someone will listen.’

I stood up and began to pace the floor. ‘This is wrong, Liza. What if it doesn’t stop the development? People may sympathise, but it’s far from conclusive that any one person’s going to make a difference to whether this building goes ahead.’

‘What other chance have we got?’

And there she had it.

She held my hands. ‘Mike, for years I’ve lived a half-life. I’ve fooled myself, but it’s been a half-life, full of fear. I don’t want Hannah to grow up like that. I want her to be able to go where she wants, see who she wants to see. I want her to have a happy childhood, surrounded by people who love her. What kind of life is this for her?’

‘A bloody good one,’ I protested, but she shook her head.

‘She can’t leave Australia. The moment they see her passport, they’ll catch up with us. She can’t even leave Silver Bay – it’s the only place I feel sure we’re out of the way.’

She leant forward. Her words came out perfectly formed, as if they had been softened, rounded in the tides of her head, over years and years. ‘It’s like living with ghost nets,’ she said, ‘all that history . . . what I did, Letty, Steven . . . It may be thousands of miles away but it’s all out there, waiting to catch up with me. Waiting to strangle me, to pull me down. Has been for years.’ She pushed her hair behind her ear and I caught sight of the little white scar. ‘If the development goes ahead, we’ll have to move on,’ she said. ‘And wherever we go, it will all be drifting silently behind us.’

I put my face in my hands. ‘This is all my fault. If I’d never come here . . . God, the position I’ve put you in—’

I felt her hand on my hair. ‘You weren’t to know. If it wasn’t you it would have been someone else eventually. I’m not naïve enough to think we could have stayed like this for ever.’

She swallowed. ‘So here it is. I’ve been going over it all night. If I hand myself in, I’ll give Hannah her freedom and bring some attention to the whales. People will have to listen.’ She smiled at me tentatively. ‘And I’ll be free. You’ve got to understand, Mike, that I need to be free of this too. As far as I ever can be.’

I stared at her, feeling her already slipping from my grasp. Yet again, a million miles from me. ‘Do me a favour,’ I said, reaching for her again. ‘Don’t do anything until I’ve spoken to someone.’

The following evening, I called my sister. And forcing her on pain of death not to say anything to anyone, I told her, with as much detail as I could remember, what Liza had told me.

There was a long pause. ‘Jesus Christ, Mike, you do pick ’em,’ she said, her voice awed. Then, as I heard her scribbling: ‘This is legit, right? She’s not making it up?’

I thought of Liza, shaking in my arms. ‘She’s not making it up. Do you think it would be a story?’

‘Are you kidding? The newsdesk would wet themselves.’

‘I need it—’ I tried to get a grip on myself. ‘If we do this, Monica, I need it to be as sympathetic as possible to her case. I need people to understand how she ended up in such a position. If you knew her . . . if you knew what kind of person, what kind of mother she is . . .’

‘You want me to write it?’ My sister sounded incredulous.

‘I don’t trust anyone else.’

There was a short silence.

‘Thanks. Thanks, Mike. I . . .’ She was distracted now, as if she was reading through her notes. ‘I reckon I could make it sympathetic. I’ll have a chat with the lawyer here – no names, of course – but I’ll get her view on the legal position. I don’t want to write anything that may turn out to be sub judice . . . that might jeopardise any case that comes to court.’

I stared at the receiver, hearing in those words the unwelcome truth of Liza’s situation and what it might mean. ‘And you think . . . she could highlight the cause?’

‘If she made it clear that the reason she was coming forward now was not just to put things right but to protect a load of baby whales people might be well disposed towards her. The public love all that whale stuff and, more importantly, they love an eccentric. Especially a pretty blonde one.’

‘If you did the interview yourself you could make sure it all came out right. That her words weren’t twisted.’

‘I’m not going to stitch you up, Mike. I’m not that much of a reptile. But you must talk to her very carefully about whether she really wants to do this. Because if everything you’ve told me is true, I can’t guarantee what’ll happen to her once it’s in the open. Other papers will pick it up and twist it – they’ll take their own line on her. It’s not going to look good that she ran away.’

‘Her youngest daughter was dead. She heard Steven was critically ill. She had to take steps to protect Hannah.’

‘But even if I and everyone else make her sound like a bloody angel she could still be arrested and end up in prison. Especially if this bloke – the ex-partner – died too. If the prosecution can prove that she gave him those pills knowing he’d been drinking, knowing he would get in his car, well, I hate to say this but that sounds like manslaughter at best.’

‘And murder at worst.’

‘I don’t know. I’m not a crime correspondent. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Spell out his name for me again. I’ll see what I can find out and get back to you.’

It would be nice to be able to say that, along with those of Nino Gaines, the fortunes of Silver Bay’s other inhabitants began to look up, but that wasn’t the case. The objections to the public inquiry, while lodged, were widely predicted to be disregarded. The newspapers began to talk of ‘when’ the new development went up, rather than ‘if’. And, as if to prove as much, hoardings rose round the wire mesh of the demolition site promising ‘an exciting new investment opportunity of 2-, 3- and 4-bedroom holiday homes, part of a unique recreational experience’.

I read the phrases I had proposed and felt sick. The gleaming, twelve-foot-high hoardings looked out of place on the near-deserted stretch of beach, and highlighted the shabbiness of the Silver Bay Hotel, whose peeling paint and stripped weatherboard now appeared a badge of pride. It stood next to the tarred barn as a silent sentinel to a lost age, when a hotel had been somewhere to escape to, just another place to be, not a unique, shiny recreational experience or investment opportunity.