I think he thought that if he could stop it by other means I wouldn’t go to England and somehow everything would be all right. When I told him I’d go anyway, he told me I was a masochist. My greatest fear was that the ‘story’, as he put it, wouldn’t be enough to save them.
He had got petitions running on all the boats, and was trying to haul together a protest for when the architectural model went on view at the Blue Shoals Hotel. He was finding it hard going: many people saw the new hotel as a given now and were already planning ways to capitalise on its presence. Even among those who didn’t want it you couldn’t guarantee action. People in Silver Bar weren’t the agitating kind. The sea does that to you: living so close to something over which you have no control can make you fatalistic.
Hannah was his greatest support. He had got her and Lara writing banners saying their school didn’t want the money or the new facilities if they came as a result of the new development. They had created new petitions, rallied their classmates, even been on local radio talking about the different personalities of the bay’s dolphins. When Kathleen and I heard Hannah’s voice on our station we almost burst with pride. Mike had set her up with an email account so that she could alert all the whale and dolphin societies she had found on the Internet. It had focused her attention nicely, stemmed her shock over the ghost nets. In the daytime, she seemed like a different person, more confident, enthusiastic, determined.
But more nights than not, she padded down the corridor to my room, just as she had when she was six, to hang on to me.
As soon as I could I told my daughter. One warm Friday afternoon after school I bought her an ice-cream and we sat at the end of Whale Jetty, letting tiny silver fish nibble our toes, while Milly drooled on our shoulders hopefully. The solicitor had told me that if I went back there would be a court case, and I’d have to explain what had happened. It was likely Hannah would be asked, too, and would have to tell them everything, just as she had told Mike, I said.
She sat there, her ice-cream untouched. ‘Will I have to go back and live with Steven?’ she asked.
Even the mention of his name made me go cold. ‘No, lovey. You’ll stay with Kathleen. She’s your closest blood relative after me.’ I thanked God, as I always have, that Steven and I had never married, that he had no rights over Hannah, at least.
‘Will you go to prison?’ she asked.
I would not lie to my daughter so I told her it was possible. But I added that if I was lucky the judge would find that I had been temporarily unbalanced, or something like it, so with luck I might get a short sentence, or even a suspended one.
That was what the solicitor had said, as Mike and I had sat in her office the previous day. Mike, grim-faced, had held my hand under the desk. ‘You do realise it wasn’t her fault?’ he had said to her repeatedly, as if it were she he had to convince. Afterwards it dawned on me that he had been testing the waters, trying to gauge what kind of reaction my tale would get if told elsewhere to less-sympathetic ears. She was a cold fish, despite the inflated fee Mike paid for her time. The most he could get out of her was an admission that the way things had worked out was ‘unfortunate’. Then she had said it was not her role to pass judgment on what had happened, in a tone that suggested she already had.
The important thing, I told Hannah, forcing a smile, was that once it was over we would be free to get on with our lives. She would be able to go where she wanted, and we would talk about Letty and help the whales and dolphins. ‘Hey,’ I said, holding her shoulders, ‘you might even be able to go to New Zealand. That school trip you were talking about. How does that sound?’
I didn’t see her expression at first. She was looking at the far side of the bay, turned away from me. When she turned back the depth of her horror shocked me. ‘I don’t want to go to New Zealand,’ she said, her face crumpling. ‘I want you to stay with me.’
She wasn’t buying any of it. There was nothing but fear and desperation in her eyes, and I hated myself for putting them there.
‘Everybody leaves me,’ she whispered.
‘No, lovey, that’s not—’
‘And now you’ll go and I’ll have no one.’
She cried for a while, and I dropped my ice-cream and held her tight, trying not to cry with her. The truth was that the prospect of being separated from my daughter made me feel ill. When I held her now it was no longer casual, no longer pleasurable, but as if I was trying to imprint her on myself. When I looked at her I was trying to burn her image on to the backs of my eyelids. It was as if I was already preparing for the months? years? when I would not have the privilege of holding her close to me.
It was these and future losses that kept me awake at nights. The prospect of her going through the delicate adolescent years without me. There was no knowing who she would become. Would she forgive me? Would she forgive herself? I closed my eyes, breathing in the smell of her hair, scenting in it an echo of my lost Letty. When I realised I was teetering, I pulled back and allowed her to do the same.
She composed herself. My daughter’s bravery and self-control were heartbreaking. She said sorry as she wiped her eyes with the ball of her palm. ‘I don’t mean to cry,’ she said.
‘It might feel bad now, but it’s going to get better,’ I told her, trying to convey a certainty I wasn’t sure I felt. ‘We can write to each other and speak on the phone and we’ll be together again before you know it.’ A blade of seagrass had blown into her hair and I picked it out.
She sniffed.
‘And, most importantly, whenever I talk about Letty, I’ll make sure to talk about the whales. And the dolphins.’
‘You think that would stop the hotel?’
‘It might. And that way her life and death might mean something good.’
We sat there, staring out over the water, mulling over what I had said. Hannah was too polite to tell me what I knew to be true: that I was wrong, that nothing good could ever emerge from Letty’s death. Then she turned to me. ‘Does she have a grave in England? Somewhere you can put flowers?’
I had to tell her I didn’t know. I didn’t even know whether my own daughter had been buried or cremated.
‘Doesn’t matter where Letty is,’ she said, perhaps seeing my discomfort, ‘because she’s always here.’ She took my hand and pressed it to her heart. She didn’t say the rest, but I saw it in her eyes, in her clenched jaw: Just like you will be. And I didn’t know whether I should treat that as a promise or an accusation.