Hannah stood braced at the prow. She waved when she saw me, a huge windscreen-wiper of a wave that shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Her legs were thin, with the lean muscularity of pre-pubescence, and in their rare moments of elegance I saw her mother’s.
‘We saw Brolly!’ she was shouting. As they grew closer, she yelled louder, to be heard above the noise of the engine and the slap of the waves against the hull. ‘She was fine! No cuts or anything. It wasn’t her in the nets, Mike. It wasn’t her you cut free! And guess what – she was with her baby!’ She was beaming – they both were, Liza with a mother’s pleasure at her daughter’s uncomplicated joy. I stood up, wishing suddenly that I had gone with them, that I could have shared a simple outing full of small happinesses.
There had been other adventures. They had seen a humpback, although it hadn’t come close, and some really big sea turtles, and they had fished out a piece of baleen they had spotted near the sound, but Milly had eaten part of it when they weren’t looking. That and several biscuits.
‘I do feel sorry for that other dolphin,’ said Hannah, jumping on to the jetty as her mother manoeuvred slowly in, the engine grinding gently to a halt. ‘But you probably saved it, didn’t you, Mike? It would have found its way out. And I’m so happy that Brolly’s okay. I’m sure she recognised me. Mum let me sit in the boom nets and Brolly stayed by the boat for ages.’
Liza leapt nimbly on to the jetty and began to secure the boat with her rope. She had her cap on, so at first I couldn’t see her face.
‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw her,’ Hannah said breathlessly, hauling Milly up and clutching the dog to her chest. ‘I couldn’t believe it.’
‘There. You see? Sometimes good things happen,’ Liza said, her face pink with the effort of tying the knots. ‘If we have faith.’
I didn’t answer her. I suspected Hannah’s illuminated smile had made my decision for me, and I was no longer sure that she was right.
I slept alone in my own room that night – or, rather, I sat in the battered leather armchair until my thoughts were as twisted and frayed as Liza’s bits of rope. I did not have to explain my reticence to Liza – Hannah’s mood had taken a sudden downturn that evening, seemingly in inverse proportion to the highs of earlier in the day, and she spent the night in her mother’s room. As I stared out of the black window at the fishing lights, I could hear her sobbing, heard Liza murmuring reassurance. In the early hours I got up to make myself a cup of tea and found Kathleen in the kitchen in her dressing-gown. She looked at me, and shook her head. ‘It’s tough on her,’ she said, and I wasn’t sure which of them she was talking about.
They say that a mother is genetically programmed to want to stop the cry of their baby. Well, that night I would have done anything to stem Hannah’s tears. In them I heard every bit of loss she had suffered, every loss that stood ahead of her, and while I have never thought of myself as particularly emotional, that night I felt wretched. Anyone not moved by them would have had a heart of lead.
When I finally slept, as it was getting light, she had been quiet for several hours. But I felt the fragility of her sleep, just as I felt Liza’s presence down the corridor, and I knew that twenty feet away, behind the whitewashed wooden door, she was awake too.
The following morning, when she returned from the school run I was waiting for her in the car park. I had positioned myself against the back wall of the hotel where I could not be seen by anyone else.
‘Hey, gorgeous,’ she called, as she reversed in. In her smile was the relief of seeing me alone after what had felt like a day’s separation. ‘You’re a sight for sore eyes.’ She climbed out of the car, and closed the door behind her.
‘Walk with me,’ I said.
She blinked and looked at me suspiciously.
‘What’s up?’
Neither of us had made a move towards the other. Normally I would have had her in my arms by now, would have been unable to resist that brief moment of solitude to pull her close to me, to feel her skin against mine.
‘Mike?’
I forced my face into the most neutral expression I could manage. ‘I’ve got some news.’ I squared my shoulders. ‘I’m going to stop the development. I’ve – I’ve spoken to someone behind it, and I think I can persuade them to go elsewhere.’
She lifted a hand to her brow, the better to see my face. Her own was bruised with tiredness, mauve shadows round her eyes.
‘What?’
‘I think I can stop it – I know I can.’
She frowned. ‘The development will just stop? No more planning inquiry? Nothing? Just like that?’
I swallowed. ‘I think so.’
‘But – how?’ A smile was playing on her lips, as if she daren’t give it full vent until she knew what I was saying to be true.
‘I don’t want you to say anything to anyone until I’ve made sure. I’m going back to London.’
‘London?’ The half-smile vanished.
‘So you don’t need to go, Liza,’ I said slowly. ‘You don’t need to go anywhere.’
She glanced at me, stared fixedly at her feet, then out to sea. Anywhere but at me. ‘You know the development’s only half of it now, Mike. I need a clean slate. I need to stop running.’
‘Then do it when Hannah’s older. Tell the authorities when she doesn’t need you so much. It’ll keep.’
She stood there and I watched every thought I had had flicker across her face, like clouds scudding across the sky. The possibility of not having to go was beyond relief. But I could tell that she’d mentally adjusted to the idea of leaving and was finding it hard to pull back. Finally she faced me. ‘What’s going on, Mike?’
‘I’m going to make sure you’re safe,’ I said, ‘and that Hannah gets to grow up with her mother.’
She stared at me for a long time, her eyes questioning. Then she must have realised that I wasn’t smiling. Given what I had achieved, I should have been. And I knew what she was going to ask next. She kicked at a pebble. ‘Are you coming back? When you’ve done this thing?’
‘Probably not,’ I said.
There it was, out in the open.
‘I thought you wanted . . . I thought you wanted to be with us.’
I said nothing. There was nothing I could say.
‘You’re not answering my question.’