The spine of last year’s book was less than half an inch wide. I ran my hand along the row of leatherbound volumes, letting my fingertips register by touch the diminishing widths. Then I looked up at the photograph of my mother and father, solemn in their wedding clothes as they stared down at me. I wondered what they would have thought of my predicament. Nino had told me I could probably sell this place to the hotel people; that, given the right negotiator, I could argue the price up. Maybe get enough to start somewhere new. But I was too old for house-hunting, too old to cram what remained of my life into a boxy little bungalow. I didn’t want to have to find my way round new medical centres and supermarkets, make polite conversation with new neighbours. My life was in these walls, these books. Everything that had ever meant anything to me stood in this place. As I gazed at those books I realised I needed this house more than I had admitted.
I’m not a drinker, but that night I reached into the drawer of my father’s desk, opened his old silver hip flask and allowed myself a tot of whisky.
It was almost a quarter past ten when Liza knocked on the door. ‘How’s your head?’ she said, closing it behind her.
‘Fine.’ I closed the accounts book, hoping I looked as if I’d been working. It didn’t hurt. But I did. Everything about me felt weary.
‘Mike Dormer has just walked in and gone straight upstairs. He acted like he’s not going anywhere. I thought you should probably have a word.’
‘I said he could stay,’ I told her quietly, rising from my seat to place the book back on the shelf.
‘You did what?’
‘You heard.’
‘But why? We don’t want him anywhere near us.’
I didn’t look at her. I didn’t need to – I could tell from her appalled tone that her face would be pink with anger. ‘He’s paid up to the end of the month.’
‘So give him his money back.’
‘You think I can throw that sort of money away?’ I snapped at her. ‘I’m charging him three times as much as anyone else.’
‘The money’s not the issue, Kathleen.’
‘Yes, it is, Liza. The money is the issue. Because we’re going to need every last penny, and that means every last guest who wants to stay here is going to get a welcome from me, even if it makes my darned blood curdle to do it.’
She was shocked. ‘But think of what he’s done,’ she said.
‘Two hundred and fifty dollars a night, Liza, that’s what I’m thinking. More for the girlfriend’s meals. You tell me how else we’re going to make that kind of money.’
‘The whale crews. They’re out there every night.’
‘How much money do you think I make off them? A couple of cents per bottle of beer. A dollar or so per meal. You really think I could charge proper money when I know half of them are living on free biscuits? For goodness’ sake, haven’t you noticed that half the time Yoshi doesn’t have the money to pay us at all?’
‘But he’s going to destroy us. And you’re going to let him sit up there in your best room while it happens.’
‘What’s done is done, Liza. Whether that hotel goes ahead or not is out of our hands. All we need to think about is making the most of our income while we still have one.’
‘And bugger the principles?’
‘We can’t afford principles, Liza, and that’s the truth. Not if we want to keep Hannah in school shoes.’
I knew what she was really saying, what neither of us could bear to say out loud. How could I willingly harbour the man who had broken what remained of her heart? How could I put her through the ache of having to watch him and that girl float around her home, flaunting their relationship?
We glared at each other. I felt breathless, and put out a hand to steady myself. Her lips were tight with hurt and indignation. ‘You know what, Kathleen? I really don’t understand you sometimes.’
‘Well, you don’t have to understand,’ I said curtly, making as if to tidy my desk. ‘You just get on with your business and let me run my hotel.’
I don’t think we’d had a cross word in the five years she had lived here, and I could tell it had shaken us both. I felt that hip flask calling to me, but I wouldn’t take it out in front of her: I didn’t want her to take an example from me and get drunk herself in case it led to another catastrophic encounter with Greg.
In the end she turned sharply and left, bristling, without a word.
I bit my tongue. I couldn’t tell her the truth behind my decision, because I knew she’d disagree: she’d react badly even to the merest suggestion of what I suspected to be true. Because it wasn’t just about money. It was because I understood, more than anyone realised, how that young man had got into the situation he had. More importantly, it was about bait. And despite everything that had happened, my gut told me that keeping Mike Dormer close to us was going to be our best chance of survival.
Fourteen
Mike
The dog-walkers had stopped waving to me. The first morning I ran past them, I assumed they hadn’t seen me. Perhaps my woollen hat was pulled too far down over my face. I’d got used to our little morning exchanges, and had found myself looking out for familiar faces. But on the second morning when I lifted my hand in greeting and they turned away their faces, I realised that not only was I no longer anonymous but, in parts of Silver Bay, I was now public enemy number one.
The same was true at the local garage, when I pulled in for fuel, at the supermarket checkout and in the little seafood café by the jetty when I sat down and tried to order coffee. It took nearly forty minutes and several reminders to arrive at my table.
Vanessa was bullish. ‘Oh, you’re always going to ruffle a few feathers,’ she said dismissively. ‘Remember that school development in east London? The people in the flats opposite were funny about it until they discovered how much it would push up the value of their properties.’
But that had been different, I wanted to say to her. I didn’t care what those people thought of me. And, besides, Vanessa wasn’t having to confront Liza, who managed to behave both as if I were no longer in existence and treat me with a kind of icy resentment.
On the one occasion I had found her alone in the kitchen – Vanessa had been upstairs – I had said, ‘I’ve told your aunt. I’m going to try and stop it. I’m sorry.’
The look she gave me stopped me in my tracks. ‘Sorry about what, Mike? That you’ve been living here under false pretences, that you’re about to ruin us, or that you’re a duplicitous sh—’