‘Liza—’ I began.
‘You really believe that?’ he interrupted. ‘You really think this area would have been untouched for ever?’
‘No – but it wouldn’t have happened yet. We would have had more time . . .’ Her voice tailed away.
‘What do you mean, “more time”?’
The little room went quiet. Hannah glanced up, then down at her homework.
Liza looked at me and shook her head, a delicate, discreet movement.
Mike caught it and I saw it register on his face as disappointment. I started to tidy away the empty cups, as a kind of distraction. Both Mike and Liza handed theirs to me, as if grateful for it.
‘Look,’ he said, finally, ‘one of you is going to have to do something. You two are the best chance we’ve got to stop this development, and at the moment even that chance is pretty slim. I’ll do everything I can to help you – and, believe me, I can’t do more than I already am doing – but you have to cut me a little slack.’
‘No,’ said Liza. ‘You might as well get this straight, Mike. Neither Hannah nor I will appear in any publicity. I’ll do anything else you suggest, but I won’t do that. So there’s no point you going on about it.’
With that, she got up and left the kitchen, Milly following tight at her heels.
‘So what are you going to do?’ he called after her. ‘Fire rockets at all the jet-skiers like you did with the boats?’
Hannah gathered up her things from the table, gave Mike an apologetic smile and followed her mother.
I heard him sigh deeply.
‘Mike, I’ll think about it,’ I said, more to be kind than out of genuine intention. He was so disappointed, I had to say something. He gazed after Liza’s departing back like a starving man whose last meal has been whipped away from him, and his feelings were so obvious that I looked away.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘On with Plan B, then.’ He gave me a lopsided grin and flipped a new sheet of paper. ‘I just have to work out what Plan B is.’
I discovered pretty quickly that Mike had given up everything to come back to Silver Bay. He admitted he no longer had a job, or a girlfriend, or apparently even an address. ‘I can pay, though,’ he said, when he asked for his old room back. ‘My bank balance is . . . Well, I don’t need to worry about money.’
He seemed oddly changed by his month away. The slickness had disappeared, and a new uncertainty had crept in. He tended to ask, rather than state, and his emotions sat more obviously on the surface, no longer masked by a deceptively bland shell. He also drank more, so I took pains to remark on it, which brought him up short. ‘Is it that bad?’ he asked quietly. ‘I guess I’ve tried not to think about it.’
‘Perfectly understandable,’ I said, ‘as a short-term measure.’
He got the picture. I found the new Mike Dormer rather more endearing. It was one of the reasons I had allowed him to stay. One of the few I was prepared to confide in Liza.
Meanwhile, every disco boat, every two-bit operator who had once seen an oversized sardine and now described itself as an eco-tour, found their way into what our crews had considered their waters. It was as if they were sizing us up, trying to work out how far they could impinge on our business. The coastguard told me there had been talk of extending Whale Jetty, so that others could move in. Twice the disco boats had come as far as our bay, and Lance had complained to the National Parks and Wildlife Service, blaming them for the disappearance of the whales. The official line was that perhaps migration patterns were changing, that perhaps global warming was shifting either the timing or the distance of the migration. The whalechasers didn’t buy it –Yoshi had spoken to some of her old academic friends and they thought it was likely to be something more local. The dolphins were still occasionally visible in the bay, but I wondered if they felt bullied, the focus of so much daily attention because they were now the only thing for the passengers to see. For every pod there were now two or three boats a session stopping nearby, the tourists leaning overboard with their cameras.
Perhaps because she was so distracted by the plight of the whales and – although she would not admit it – Mike’s return, I persuaded Liza to agree to Hannah having sailing lessons. I took her to the first, with her friend, at Salamander Bay, and when I saw her out on the water I saw, with a start, that it couldn’t have been the first time she had negotiated her way alone in a dinghy. She confessed afterwards, with a grin, that I was right, and we agreed that it was probably best not to tell her mother.
‘Do you think she’ll let me take out Hannah’s Glory?’ she said, as we drove home, the dog drooling happily over her shoulder. ‘When the teachers say I’m good enough?’
‘Don’t let that dog take your sandwich,’ I said, pushing at Milly’s nose.
It had been a beautiful day, but clouds were moving in from the west, a dark forbidding line. ‘I don’t know, sweetie. I think we should just take it one step at a time.’
‘Greg says she won’t – just to get up his nose.’
‘He told you that?’
‘I heard him say it to Lance. They didn’t know I was listening.’
I’d have words with young Greg. ‘What your mum thinks about Greg has nothing to do with it,’ I said. ‘You’ll get your boat. But, as I said, you have to be patient.’
I slowed down on the coast road to say g’day to old Mr Henderson, returning on his bicycle from the fish market. When I turned back to Hannah she was staring out of the window. ‘Can you change the name of a boat?’ she said, gazing at something in the distance.
‘Why?’
‘I thought I might change the name of mine. Once I’m allowed to take it out.’
‘It can be done,’ I said. I was half thinking about what I could cook for dinner that night. I was no longer sure how many whalechasers I could expect. I should have asked Mr Henderson what was on special at the market. ‘You might not want to change it, though – there’s some say it’s unlucky.’
‘I’m going to call it Darling Letty.’
I braked so hard the dog nearly fell into my lap.
For a moment neither of us spoke, and then Hannah’s eyes widened. ‘Can’t I even say her name?’ she cried.
I pulled the car over, raising a hand in apology to the van that had had to brake suddenly behind me. When it had disappeared I turned in my seat and stroked her cheek, trying to appear less rattled than I felt. ‘Sweetie, you can say whatever you like. I’m sorry. You just gave me a start.’