Kathleen nodded. ‘Thank you,’ she said. She was stooped. It was the first time I had seen her as an old woman. ‘I’m going to make a pot of tea. Do you want some?’
I guessed that the death of the baby whale was unusual enough to have shaken her, although I was surprised that someone renowned for killing a shark could feel such grief for another sea creature. And all the while I was pondering this, sitting at the kitchen table because Kathleen had insisted on making the tea herself, I realised I was half waiting for the sound of the door, for Liza’s oilskin to swish against the wall as she came in and dropped her keys into the bowl on the hall table.
‘Poor bloody creature,’ she said, when she finally sat down. ‘Didn’t have a chance. We should have shot it at the beginning.’
I drank two mugs of tea before I had the courage to say anything. In the end, I tried to sound casual. I observed that Liza had obviously decided to go out early on Ishmael, and almost before the words had left my mouth Kathleen gave me a look that suggested there was no point in either of us pretending. ‘She’s with Greg,’ she said.
The words hung in the air.
‘I didn’t realise they were an item.’ My voice sounded high and false.
‘They’re not,’ she said wearily. And then, apparently apropos of nothing, ‘She took the calf dying very personally.’
There was a lengthy silence, during which I eyed my empty mug and tried not to let my thoughts stray. ‘But surely there wasn’t anything she could have done,’ I said. It was a platitude. I couldn’t understand how a dead whale meant she had to sleep with Greg.
‘Look, Mike, Liza lost a child five years ago, just before she came to live here. This is her way of dealing with it.’ She dropped her voice, pulled her mug closer to her and took a sip of tea. Her hands, I noticed, were large and workmanlike, not soft and gentle like my mother’s. ‘Unfortunately it means that once or twice a year that poor fool thinks he has a hope.’
While I was digesting this news, she stood up, using her palms as leverage, and announced through a barely suppressed yawn that she had better get Hannah up. Her abrupt change of subject told me she didn’t want to discuss the matter any further. The light flooding through the kitchen window made her skin seem washed out, a far cry from her usual ruddiness. I wondered what she’d been through, down on the beach. It was easy to forget how old she was.
‘I’ll drive her to school if you want,’ I said. ‘I’ve got nothing else planned.’ Suddenly I knew I needed a task to stop me thinking. I wanted Hannah’s cheerful chatter about the pop charts, technology lessons and school dinners. I wanted to be going somewhere in my car. I wanted to get out of this house. ‘Kathleen, did you hear me? I’ll take her.’
‘You sure?’ The look of gratitude as I went for my keys told me just how tired Kathleen Whittier Mostyn, legendary game fisher and apparently tireless hostess, really was.
It is entirely possible that on paper I appear, as my sister would say, to be more of a player than I am. In fact, during the four years of my relationship with Vanessa, until the night with Tina, I had never so much as kissed another girl. That’s not to say I haven’t thought about it – I’m only human – but until the night of the office celebration, the idea of cheating on Vanessa had seemed so far from possible, let alone likely, that even as I held Tina’s slim, hard body to me, as her hands burrowed urgently down the front of my trousers, some part of me wanted to laugh out loud at the ridiculous idea that it was happening at all.
I met Vanessa Beaker at Beaker Holdings, while she filled a temporary position in the marketing department and, although many people have suspected differently, we had been dating for several weeks before I discovered the significance of her surname. When I found out who she was, I considered ending the relationship; I really wanted my job, had identified the way my career might progress within the company. The possibility of jeopardising it over a relationship I was unsure about seemed not worth the risk.
But I had bargained without my new girlfriend. She told me not to be ridiculous, informed her father of our relationship in front of me, adding that whether we stayed together or not was no concern of his, then announced to me afterwards that she knew I was The One. Then she gave me the kind of smile that said the possibility that such a statement might alarm me was not even worth considering.
And I suppose I hardly did consider it. My sister Monica said I was lazy in relationships; I was happy for attractive women to chase me, and had had to end a relationship myself only once. Vanessa was pretty, sometimes almost beautiful, happy, confident and clever. She told me she loved me every day, although even if she hadn’t I would have known it because she fussed over me at home, had an uncomplicated appetite for sex, and spent endless amounts of time and energy worrying about my appearance and well-being. I didn’t mind: it saved me having to. And I trusted Vanessa’s opinion. She was clever, as I’ve said, and she had her father’s aptitude for business.
I didn’t know why I had to defend my relationship to my sister, but I did. Frequently. She said Vanessa was too ‘jolly hockey sticks’. She said I’d probably marry anyone who made the same efforts as Vanessa, who made my life that easy, anyone at all. She said I had never been truly in love because I have never been hurt. I told her that her version of relationships all sounded more like masochism to me.
My sister hadn’t had a relationship in fifteen months. She said she was getting to the age when eligible men found her ‘too complicated’.
‘What do you want?’ she said, when I telephoned her.
‘Hello, brother dear. I’ve missed you,’ I said. ‘How’s life on the other side of the planet? How’s your career-breaking deal shaping up?’
‘Are you ringing me to tell me you’re emigrating? Are you going to pay for me to visit? Buy me a club-class ticket and I’ll tell Mum and Dad for you.’
I heard a cigarette being lit. In the background a television burbled and I glanced at my watch, calculating what time in the evening it was at home. ‘I thought you’d given up,’ I said.
‘I have,’ she said, exhaling noisily. ‘Must be something wrong with the phone line. So, what do you want?’
The truth was, I didn’t know. ‘Just to talk to someone, I guess.’
That threw her. I’d never before expressed an emotional need to my sister.