‘Why are you telling me?’
‘I don’t know. To let you know that what you’re doing is not totally in vain.’
‘But it’s not stopping him.’
There was a brief silence.
‘No,’ she conceded. ‘It’s not.’
Outside, a flock of parakeets had landed in a tree. I watched them, still with the jolt of surprise that something so vivid could live naturally in the wild.
‘Tina left.’
So what? I wanted to say, gazing out of the window.
I closed my eyes. I was so tired. During the day I spent my time wrestling with the immovable, my mind constantly turning over possible opportunities and loopholes, and at night I lay awake watching Liza, frightened to miss the last moments before she disappeared.
‘I miss you,’ said Vanessa.
I said nothing.
‘I’ve never seen you like this before, Mike. You’ve changed. You’re stronger than I thought.’
‘So?’
‘So . . . I’ve been thinking.’ She took a breath. ‘I can get him to stop. I know he’ll listen to me.’
The world seemed briefly to stop turning. ‘What?’
‘If it means that much to you, I’ll stop it. But I’m asking you – please – let’s give it another try.’
My breath, which had risen like a bubble, stalled briefly in my chest. ‘You and me?’
‘We were a good team, weren’t we?’ She was uncertain, pleading. ‘We can be even better than I thought. You’ve made me understand that.’
‘Oh,’ I said quietly.
‘You hurt me, Mike, I’m not going to deny that. But Dad says Tina was a troublemaker, and I don’t think you’re the kind of person to deceive me intentionally. So . . . so I guess I don’t want to lose what we had. We were a team. A great team.’
I stared, unseeing, at the floor.
When I spoke, my mouth, suddenly dry, stuck on the words: ‘You’re saying that if I come back to you, you’ll stop the development.’
‘That’s putting it very baldly. It’s not a quid pro quo, Mike. But I miss you. I didn’t understand what this meant to you so I want to put it right. And we could do some serious business with one of the alternatives.’
‘If we’re together.’
‘Well, I’m hardly likely to go to all that trouble for someone I don’t care about.’ She sounded exasperated. ‘Is it so hideous a prospect? Us giving it another go? The last time we spoke I thought . . .’
I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts.
‘Mike?’
‘Vanessa, you’ve really . . . surprised me. Look – I’ve got to go out now, but let me ring you later. Okay? I’ll ring you later. In the morning. Your time,’ I said, as she began to protest.
I ended the call and sat, my ears ringing. I had nowhere to go. Vanessa Beaker was the only person in the whole world capable of stopping the development.
In the end I made excuses. I told them I had a headache and I had to return some calls. That I had used two excuses where one would have been adequate immediately alerted Liza to the truth: that some other reason lay behind my decision not to go with them on our planned outing. As Hannah, disappointment naked in her face, pleaded with me to change my mind, her mother eyed me curiously and said nothing. I wondered afterwards if she saw it as part of an emotional continuum: that I was choosing deliberately to separate from her in stages . . . that I was trying to protect myself.
‘I’ll see you both when you get back,’ I said, trying to sound casual.
‘Whatever you want,’ Liza said. ‘We’ll be a couple of hours.’ The dog was already on the bridge, pressed close to the two of them.
It wasn’t what I wanted, but I needed to think. Liza and I were so attuned to each other’s moods and thoughts that if she spent more than a few minutes in my company she would see straight through me. I waved at the boat as the engines powered up and it bounded over the waves and away from me. I kept waving until I could no longer see them. Then, as they disappeared round the head, I sat down on the sand, drew up my knees and placed my head on my hands, not caring if anyone could see me.
That was how I began the longest afternoon of my life. Then, unable to face the hotel, I got up and walked down the coast road, over the dunes, and lost myself for a couple of hours, not sure where I was headed, not really noticing my surroundings. I had to walk, because the idea of being still, with those thoughts, was worse.
I walked with my hands in my pockets and my head down. I nodded at those people who said g’day to me, and failed to meet the eye of those who didn’t. My footsteps, even on the uneven terrain, became as regular and plodding as those of a packhorse. Without a hat, or a wallet, seemingly without purpose, I must have attracted a few curious glances, but if I did I didn’t notice. Unused to the strength of even the spring sunshine, I got burnt, and by the time I headed down through the pines and landed by the side of the Newcastle road, the skin on the bridge of my nose was tightening. I didn’t feel heat or thirst or tiredness, despite my sleepless night. I walked and I thought, and every possible solution felt ruinous.
I, Michael Dormer, a man renowned for his acuity in decision-making, for his brilliant ability to weigh up the pros and cons of any situation and hit the right answer, now found that whichever way I turned the options made me want to sink to my knees, like a small boy, and howl. And the one person whose advice I could have asked, whose opinion I would have respected, was the one person I needed to protect from what I knew.
I was back on Whale Jetty when they returned. It must have looked as if I hadn’t been away. I had allowed myself a couple of beers, and sat there, suddenly conscious that my jeans were scruffy and that I was holding a bottle. I would have liked to stick a cap on my head but suspected that if I did I might morph into Greg.
I watched Ishmael come round the headland, turning from a small white blob to a gently bouncing white cruiser. Its swimming nets were stretched across the boom, where Hannah must have been allowed to sit in the water to see the dolphins. As they came closer, I could see her, lifejacket strapped round her, treading surefooted on the deck in her swimsuit and shorts. Milly was standing up at the helm in front of Liza, already anticipating the return home with the same pleasure that, every morning, she looked forward to her journey onto water. They looked beautiful and joyous, and in other circumstances, the sight of them out on the water would have made my heart sing.