‘I knocked earlier and left a cup of coffee outside your room, but when I found it stone cold an hour later I figured I’d let you sleep.’ He looked like he wasn’t taking in what I was saying. I gave him a minute, and motioned to him to sit at the kitchen table. I don’t normally let people sit in the kitchen, but I’d just finished preparing the dining room for that evening. I placed a plate and a knife in front of him. ‘They say it usually takes a week to sleep through properly. Did you wake up much?’
He rubbed at his hair. He was unshaven, and wearing a shirt and casual trousers – still smarter than we were used to in Silver Bay, but a good step forward from the formal get-up he’d arrived in.
‘Only once.’ He smiled, a little ruefully. ‘But that was for about three hours.’
I laughed, and poured him a coffee. He had a good face, Mr Michael Dormer, the kind that suggested a little self-knowledge, an attribute I find in short supply in many of my guests. ‘Like some breakfast? I’m happy to fix you something.’
‘At a quarter to one?’ He glanced at the clock.
‘We can call it lunch. It’ll be our secret.’ I still had some pancake batter in the fridge. I’d serve them with blueberries, and a side order of eggs and bacon.
He stared at his coffee for a bit, stifling a yawn. I said nothing, but pushed the newspaper towards him, recognising that his disorientation would ease off after a mug or two of caffeine. I moved quietly, half an ear on the radio, distantly calculating the food I needed to prepare for supper that evening. Hannah was at a friend’s house after school, and Liza ate barely enough to feed a fly, so it was only the guests I had to worry about.
The pancakes were done. Mr Dormer perked up a bit when I put a plate in front of him. ‘Wow,’ he said, staring at the stack. ‘Thank you.’ I’d bet he didn’t get much in the way of home cooking. They’re always the most grateful.
But he ate like most men here do, with enthusiasm and a kind of single-mindedness I don’t often see in women. My mother always said I ate like a man, but I don’t think it was a compliment. While he had his head down I had the chance to look him over. We don’t get many men of his age on their own; usually they’re with wives or girlfriends. The single ones stick to the busier resorts. I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I looked at him in the way I always look at men who might be suitable for Liza. No matter how hard she protests, I’ve not yet given up hope of pairing her off. ‘Whales don’t stick together for life,’ she would scoff, ‘and, as you always say, Kathleen, we should learn from the creatures around us.’
She had an answer for everything, that girl. The one time I’d remarked that it would be good for Hannah to have a father-figure, she’d glared at me with such anguish and reproach that I’d felt instantly ashamed. I’d never brought up the subject again.
But that didn’t mean I couldn’t live in hope.
‘That was delicious. Really.’
‘A pleasure, Mr Dormer.’
He smiled. ‘Mike. Please.’
Not as formal as he seemed, then.
I sat down opposite him, giving myself a coffee break as I refilled his mug. ‘Got any plans for today?’ I was going to point him towards the leaflets in the front hall, but I wasn’t sure he was the amusements-and-day-trip-to-the-tea-gardens type.
He looked down at his coffee. ‘Just thought I’d get my bearings, really. My hire car should arrive later so there’s not much I can do till then.’
‘Oh, there’s lots of places you can go when you’ve got wheels. But you’re right. The bus goes to Port Stephens from up the road, but apart from that you’d be pretty stuck. Did you say you were here on holiday?’
A curious thing: he flushed a little. ‘Something like that,’ he said.
I left it there. I know not to pursue someone who doesn’t want to talk. He might have his own reasons for being here – a broken relationship, a personal ambition, a decision to be made in solitude. I can’t bear those people who rattle on and on with questions. Mike Dormer had paid me for a week in advance, thanked me politely for his breakfast, and those two things alone entitled him to my professional courtesy.
‘I’ll – erm – leave you to it, then,’ he said, placing his knife and fork neatly on his plate and rising from the table. ‘Thank you very much, Miss Mostyn.’
‘Kathleen.’
‘Kathleen.’
I went to clear his plates without another thought.
I had other guests to worry about that week – namely a middle-aged couple here for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. It would have been our first booking through the new Internet advertisement had the Mobys not already been fully booked, forcing Liza to take them out instead. That alone would have put her in a bad mood – she had been adamant that she would play no part in the Internet business – but the man complained about everything. The room wasn’t big enough, the furnishings were shabby, the shower smelt of mildew. On his first two mornings he finished the box of bran flakes and when I set out a fresh box the next day he complained I hadn’t given him a choice. To cap it, he complained that Liza had set off late on their whale-watching trip, even though they’d arrived late at the jetty because he had been determined to look round the Whalechasers Museum, and had made me open it specially. It was included in the price, you see.
His wife, an elegant woman, immaculately put together in the way that makes me wonder about the time and effort people are prepared to devote to such things, followed him round apologising under her breath to everyone he rubbed up the wrong way. The breathless, conspiratorial ease with which she did this suggested it was not a new experience for her. The trip was her anniversary ‘treat’, she told me apologetically, glancing behind her to where he was pacing towards the hotel, his head sunk into his shoulders. I wondered how many years it had taken for the deep grooves to appear on her forehead. ‘He’s enjoyed it much more than last year’s trip,’ she said, and I laid a hand on her arm in sympathy.
‘He was a bully,’ Liza said, when she came in. ‘If it hadn’t been for her I wouldn’t have taken them.’
We exchanged a look. ‘Bet you made her day, though.’
‘Not really. Not a whale anywhere. I gave them an extra hour but it was like the seas were empty.’
‘Perhaps they knew.’