‘I recognise this picture,’ he said, stopping in front of the newspaper cutting.
‘Yes, well . . . One thing we do know about you, Mike, is that you certainly do your research.’
It came out harder than I’d intended, but I was tired and I still felt unbalanced because I’d had him under my roof for so long yet failed to get the measure of him.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I deserved that.’
I sniffed, and began to dust the souvenirs on the trestle table, next to the old till. They seemed tacky and pathetic all of a sudden: whale key-rings, dolphins suspended in plastic balls, postcards and tea-towels featuring grinning sea creatures. Children’s gifts. What was the point when no children came here any more?
‘Look, Kathleen, I know you might not want to talk to me right now but I do have to say something to you. It’s important to me that you understand.’
‘Oh, I understand, all right.’
‘No, you don’t. I wanted to say something,’ he said. ‘Really. I came out here expecting it to be a straightforward development job. I thought I’d be in and out, that I was building in an area that no one would be fussed about. Once I realised that wasn’t the case, I was trying to work out a solution that would keep my boss happy in England and you lot happy out here. I needed to find out as much as I could.’
‘You could have shared that with us. We might have been able to contribute something. Especially since I’ve lived in the area for seventy-odd years.’
‘I know that now.’ I noted with a weird satisfaction that his shoes had become very scuffed. ‘But once I got to know you all it was impossible.’
‘Especially Liza,’ I said. Call it a wild guess.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, and Liza.’
‘Well, Mike, for a quiet man you’ve made a big impact around here.’ I kept polishing, not sure what else to do with myself. I didn’t want to stand there in front of him. We were silent for a few minutes, as I worked with my back to him. I sensed him staring at me.
‘Anyway,’ he said, coughing, ‘I appreciate that this probably changes things. I’ve been ringing around. There’s a place up the coast that will have me – us. We’ll go this afternoon. I just wanted to say how sorry I was, and that if there’s anything I can do to – well, to mitigate the effects of this development, you should let me know.’
I paused, my duster raised in my hand, and turned to him. My voice, when it came, sounded unusually loud in the cavernous space. ‘How do you mitigate killing off a seventy-year-old family business, Mike?’ I asked.
He looked shattered then, as I’d guessed he would.
‘You know what? I don’t really give a fig about the hotel, no matter what you might think. Buildings as such don’t hold a great deal of importance for me, and this one’s been falling down for years. I’m not even that fussed about the bay. And the whales and the dolphins, I’m hoping that the busybodies who look out for them now will see they’re okay.’
I shifted my weight, passed my duster into the other hand. ‘But there’s something you should know, Mike Dormer. When you destroy this place, you destroy Hannah’s safety. This is the one place she can be in all the world where she doesn’t have to worry, where she can grow up safe and untouched. I can’t explain more than that, but you should know it. Your actions will have an impact on our little girl. And for that I can’t forgive you.’
‘But – but why would you have to leave here?’
‘How can we afford to live in a hotel with no customers?’
‘Who says you’ll have no customers? Your hotel is completely different from what’s planned. There’ll always be customers for a place like yours.’
‘When there are a hundred and fifty rooms with en-suites and satellite television next door? And winter three-for-two offers and a heated pool indoors? I don’t think so. The one thing we had going for us here was isolation. The kind of people who came here wanted to be in the middle of nowhere. They wanted to be able to hear the sea at night and the whisper of the grass on the dunes and nothing else. They didn’t want to hear karaoke night in the Humpback Lounge, and the sound of forty-eight cars reversing in and out of the car park on their way to the subsidised buffet. Come on, Mike, you deal in hard figures, in commercial research. You tell me how an operation like this stays afloat.’
He made as if to speak, then mutely shook his head.
‘Go back to your masters, Mike. Tell them you’ve done their bidding. You’ve sealed the deal, or whatever it is you City types say.’
I was close to tears and this made me so furious that I had to start dusting again, so he couldn’t see my face. Seventy-six years old and about to cry like an adolescent girl. But I couldn’t help it. Every time I thought about Liza and Hannah disappearing, about them having to settle somewhere far from here, having to start over, I got short of breath.
I had half expected him to leave, I’d had my back to him for so long. But when I turned he was still there, still staring at the floor, still thinking.
At last he raised his head. ‘I’ll get it changed,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure how, Kathleen, but I’ll put it right.’
I must have looked disbelieving because he took a step towards me. ‘I promise you, Kathleen. I’ll put it right.’
Then he turned on his heel, hands deep in his pockets, and walked back up the path towards the house.
The following day I dropped Hannah at school, then took the inland road to see Nino Gaines. He was one of the few people with whom I could have an honest discussion about money. Trying to convey to Liza how little there was would have made her even more anxious, and I had always taken pains to disguise how little her whale-watching trips offset the costs of running our household.
‘So, how much have you got?’ We were sitting in his office. From the window I could see the rows of vines, bare now, like battalions of barren twigs under an unusually grey sky. Behind him there were books on wine and a framed poster of the first supermarket promotion that had included his shiraz. I liked Nino’s office: it spoke of healthy business, innovation and success, despite his advanced years.
I scribbled some figures on the pad in front of me and shoved it towards him. It may sound daft but I was brought up to think it rude to discuss money, and even at my age I find it difficult to say out loud. ‘That’s the pre-tax profits. And that’s the rough turnover. We get by. But if I had to put on a new roof, or anything like it, I’d have to sell the boat.’