Silver Bay(87)
Author: Jojo Moyes

He shoved his hands into his pockets. ‘Apart from the fact that I wouldn’t mind staying there myself? I see employment. I see life in an area that’s pretty short on it. I see a new bus and a brick-built library for the school, and I see commerce. I see opportunities.’ He smiled wryly at me. ‘You should know, Mike. It was you who got me to see those things.’

‘I’ll tell you what I see,’ I said. ‘I see men who’ve had a beer too many skidding too fast round the bay in motorboats. I see dolphins injured by rudders when they can’t get out of the way in time. I see disco boats trying to catch passing trade and too many dolphin-watchers, disorientated whales beaching themselves on that pristine white shore. I see what remains of the humpback migration moving many miles from here, perhaps losing numbers in the process, and the people who relied on them losing their jobs. And I see a bloody great hole where a family-run hotel, a place that has existed seventy-odd years, should be.’

‘There’s no reason why the Silver Bay Hotel can’t exist quite happily alongside the new development.’

I pointed at the model. ‘They don’t seem to think so.’

‘You can’t expect them to include every local building.’

‘You a betting man, Mr Reilly? You want to lay five hundred dollars that the Silver Bay will still be around a year after this thing goes up?’

We were silent for a minute. An elderly couple stood in the doorway of the hotel, glancing nervously at us. I realised I had been shouting. I had to get a grip. I was exhausted, and I was losing my perspective. Reilly nodded reassuringly at them, then turned back to me. ‘I gotta tell you, mate, you’ve surprised me. That’s some about-turn,’ he said. But his voice was not unfriendly. ‘Tell me something, Mike. You’re against the development now, but you must have seen the advantages once. There must have been a reason why you tried to sell it so hard. So you tell me now. When you came to me all those months ago, back when you wanted this thing, what did you see when you looked at this plan – truthfully, mind?’

I looked at this thing, at this unstoppable force, and my heart felt like lead. ‘Money,’ I said. ‘I saw money.’

When I got back Hannah was in my room on the computer. The window was open, and bright sunlight streamed in on to the white-painted floorboards, showing up the faded colours of the Persian rug, and the sandy footprints my training shoes had walked in after my morning run. Outside, someone’s car spewed music, a resounding, relentless thud, and a distant trailbike whined across the dunes. A light breeze passed from the open window to the door. I rarely shut my door now – there had been no guests for weeks, and Kathleen behaved as though I lived there. She wouldn’t even take rent.

‘Mike!’ Hannah exclaimed. She spun round on the chair, beckoning me closer, and showed me an email she said was from someone in Hawaii, who had fought off a similar development. ‘She’s going to send us a list of the organisations who helped her,’ she said. ‘We might be able to get them to help us.’

‘That’s great,’ I said, trying to sound positive. I wanted to sink my head into my hands. ‘Good work.’

‘Me and Lara have been emailing everyone. I mean everyone. Someone from the South Bay Examiner rang and wants to take our picture because of the petitions.’

‘What does your mother say?’ I said.

‘She said to ask you.’ She grinned. ‘I’ve made a list of everything we did today – it’s in the blue file in the corner. I’ve got Hockey Club now, but I’ll carry on when I get back. Are you still coming out with me and Mum?’

‘Hmm?’ I was thinking about Mr Reilly. The planning inquiry would close in three days’ time, he’d told me as he left the Blue Shoals. But he’d added that between ourselves, nothing had been submitted that was persuasive enough to change the panel’s mind.

‘Mum said we could all go out, the three of us, on Ishmael – remember?’

‘Oh,’ I said, trying to smile. ‘Sure.’

She pulled on her school cardigan and thrust a newspaper at me. ‘Did you see Auntie K’s picture with the shark? She’s raging. She says she’s going to have Greg’s guts for garters.’

The headline said: ‘Shark Lady Warns of Tiger’s Return’. Underneath it, the photographer had caught Kathleen as she stepped towards Greg, her own expression almost as baleful as the dead shark’s. Beside it, in inset, was the now familiar picture of her as a seventeen-year-old in a bathing-suit.

‘I’ve scanned it in. I’ve got to give that one back to Mr Gaines, but he said not to let Auntie K know he’d bought a copy or she’ll harpoon him. It’s on your desktop if you want to read it, with two others, the Sentinel and the Silver Bay Advertiser, but their pictures aren’t as good.’

Poor Kathleen. She was right: she’d be haunted by that shark till her dying day.

I watched Hannah gather her things and, with a cheery wave, she was off down the stairs. She seemed to have blocked out her mother’s imminent departure. Perhaps some things were too big to contemplate when you were eleven. Perhaps, like me, she was hoping for divine intervention.

I listened to her sing-song voice as she and her friend made their way up the road. For the umpteenth time, I offered her a silent apology.

It was then that my mobile phone rang.

‘Monica?’ I checked my watch. It must be nearly two o’clock in the morning in England.

‘How’s it going?’ said Vanessa.

My first fleeting thought was: Where the hell is my sister? My second was irritation. Vanessa would know very well that my opposition to the plans was coming to nothing.

‘How’s what going?’

‘Life. Stuff. I wasn’t talking about the development,’ she said.

‘I’m fine,’ I said.

‘I hear you’re still in Australia,’ she said. ‘I spoke to your mother the other day.’

‘Still playing Canute,’ I said, ‘against the unstoppable tide.’

There was a dull noise in the background at her end – and I had a sudden picture of our apartment, the sleek flat-screen television in the corner, the vast suede sofas, the expensive furnishings. I hadn’t missed it.

‘Dad’s got a cuttings file,’ she said, ‘all the pieces you’ve placed about opposition to the development. He throws things at it daily.’