Silver Bay(92)
Author: Jojo Moyes

‘Hannah,’ I croaked. ‘You’ve got to get Hannah.’

But Hannah must have become curious about what was going on upstairs because when I looked away from the screen she was already in the doorway, her pen still in her hand. Her eyes flickered from me to Mike and back again.

‘Hannah, sweetheart,’ I said, lifting a trembling hand towards the computer. ‘I need you to look at something. I need you to tell me whether this – this looks like . . .’

‘Letty.’ Hannah moved closer to the screen, lifted a finger and traced her sister’s nose. ‘Letty.’

‘She’s alive, sweetheart,’ I said, as the tears came. I couldn’t speak properly for several minutes, and I felt Mike’s hand on my shoulder. ‘God save us, she’s alive.’ And I was afraid for Hannah, afraid that she would be feeling even more than the shock and disbelief I felt. My thoughts were in turmoil, my heart numbed by the sight of that child, whom I’d never known but whose life and death had hung over this house as surely as if she’d been my own. How on earth could we expect Hannah to cope with this?

But she was the only one of us not crying.

‘I knew,’ she said, a great smile breaking across her face. ‘I knew she couldn’t be dead, not like the sea creatures. She never felt dead.’ She turned back to the screen and traced the image again. They were so alike, it was as if she was staring into a mirror. It’s hard to believe now that I could have doubted it.

Mike had gone to the window. He was rubbing the back of his head. ‘Those bastards,’ he was saying, forgetting Hannah’s presence. ‘How can they have kept the truth from her for all those years? How could they do that to her? How could they do that to the child?’

The size of their deception had hit me too, and the language that emerged from my mouth I haven’t heard since I was a wartime barmaid. ‘That bastard! That yellow-bellied, rat-eating son of a rabid dog! That . . . sh—’

‘Shark?’ suggested Mike, raising an eyebrow.

‘Shark,’ I affirmed, glancing at Hannah. ‘Yes. Shark. I’d sure love to gut him like one.’

‘I’d shoot him,’ said Mike.

‘Shooting’s too good.’ I had a sudden image of Old Harry, my harpoon gun, mounted on the wall of the Whalechasers Musem, and had a thought that would have shocked those who knew me. I knew Mike’s mind was headed the same way. Then Hannah spoke again. ‘I still have a sister,’ she announced, and the simple delight in her voice stopped us both. ‘Look! I have a sister.’ And as Hannah placed her own face beside that oversized image, so that we could both take in the reality of that statement, Mike and I turned to each other.

‘Liza,’ we said, in unison.

We didn’t know how to tell her. We didn’t know how to give her this news. She was out on the boat and it was too huge, too shocking, to tell her over the radio. Yet we couldn’t wait for her to come in. In the end we borrowed Sam Grady’s cutter. With Mike and Hannah at the prow, and me at the tiller, we sailed out past the bay to Break Nose Island. The breeze was light, the seas gentle, and within minutes we were accompanied by pods of dolphins, the joyful arcs of their bodies echoing the mood on our boat. As we bounced across the waves, Hannah leant over the edge and told them. ‘They know!’ she said, laughing. ‘They’ve come because they know!’ For once I didn’t put her straight. Who was I to say how life worked? Who was I to say those creatures didn’t know more about it than I did? I felt at that moment that nothing would surprise me.

And there she was, coming back in, standing at the helm with Milly beside her, looking forward already to coming ashore. She had a full boat, largely Taiwanese. The tourists leant over the front rails, curious as to why we had approached, some still clutching their cameras, then snapping madly as they saw the dolphins in our wake.

As she spotted us and steered towards us, the sun was behind her and her hair looked as if it was on fire. ‘What’s up?’ she yelled, as we pulled alongside. She forgot to be mad about Hannah not wearing a lifejacket: when she saw the three of us crammed into the little boat, she knew we couldn’t be there for any ordinary reason.

I looked at Mike, who nodded at me, and I began to shout, but before I had even said the words, the tears were streaming down my face. My voice broke. It took several attempts, and Mike’s proffered hanky, before I could make myself heard.

‘She’s alive, Liza. Letty’s alive.’

Liza looked from me to Mike and back again. Above us, two gulls wheeled and cried, mocking what I had said.

‘It’s true! Letty’s alive! Mike’s sister has seen her. She’s really, really alive.’ I waved the picture that Mike had printed off, but the breeze whipped it round my hand and she was too far off to see it.

‘Why are you saying this?’ she said, her voice cracking with pain. She glanced back at the passengers, who were all watching the scene intently. The colour had drained from her face. ‘What do you mean?’

Struggling to keep my balance, I unfurled the picture and held it above my head, in two hands, like a banner. ‘Look!’ I shouted. ‘Look! They lied to you! The bastards lied to you! She never died in the car crash. Letty’s alive, and she’s coming home.’

The tourists hushed, and a few of the Taiwanese, perhaps sensing the enormity of the occasion, began a spontaneous round of applause. We waited below, our faces alive with joy and expectation, and then, as the gulls flew off on some predetermined path, Liza turned her face briefly towards the sky and fainted clean away.

Mike said he’d never realised how much he loved his sister till that day. In a three-hour conversation, as Liza sat pressed up to him, still pale with shock, she told him how she had arranged to meet Steven Villiers at his office and, once there, cup of tea in hand, told him she was following up a story about a respected councillor who had deliberately told his girlfriend that her daughter was dead in order to separate them. A councillor who had systematically beaten his girlfriend until she left in fear of her life. A girlfriend who had kept photographs of her injuries and had them verified by a doctor. Okay, so Monica had lied about that bit, but she said her blood was up by then and she’d just wanted to be sure she would win. I liked the sound of Monica Dormer.

The shocking thing was how easily the Villiers man had caved in. He went very quiet, then said, ‘What do you want?’ He had married, you see, and had two young sons, and when Monica told him that Letty would know, one way or the other, what he had done, she had thought, from his voice, that this was a conversation he had probably expected for some time. They struck a deal: restore the child to her mother, and this would remain a family matter. He agreed a little too readily; she had the impression that it wasn’t the happiest of families.