But towards the end of that winter something odd happened. At first it was the slapping. When a whale is sending a warning, either to humans or other whales, it engages in 'the peduncle slap', thrashing the water with the flukes of its tail or, occasionally, just slapping the surface, its tail flat side down, sending out a noise that reverberates for miles. We don't see it often - we try not to upset the whales - but suddenly I seemed to see it in all of the few that surfaced.
Then, at least two weeks earlier than they should have done according to migration patterns, they disappeared. Perhaps it was the extra boat traffic; perhaps they had sensed somehow that things were changing, and chose not to grace us with their presence. Either way those of us who operated off Whale Jetty gradually found it harder to locate them - even at a time when they should have been surfacing at a rate of two or three a trip. At first we hardly liked to admit it to each other - it was a mark of honour to be able to find the whales, and only those like Mitchell Dray hung off everyone else's coat tails. When we got talking, each of us discovered that our experience was not unique. By mid-September, things had got so bad that both the Mobys switched temporarily to dolphin trips round the bay. It was less lucrative, but it meant less disappointment for the customers and, more importantly, fewer refunds.
Then the dolphins seemed to disappear too. There were so few some days that we knew them by sight, and were conscious of the risk of harassing them. As we headed for October I was the only boat still going out every day, more in hope than expectation. The seas, dark and swaying around me, seemed alien, even on the brighter days. I felt the whales' absence, as I felt the absence of all those things I've loved. I couldn't believe so many sea creatures would just leave us, that they would change the behaviour of centuries at whim. And grieved by the past weeks' events, perhaps a little unhinged by loss, I found myself yelling at them one day when I had gone out alone. I stood, holding the wheel, my voice bouncing off the waves, ignored by the creatures who perhaps swam beneath me, hiding themselves from an increasingly unfriendly world.
'What the hell am I meant to do?' I shouted, until Milly stood up on the bridge and whined with uneasiness. But I knew that somehow it was my fault, that I had failed the creatures of the sea, as I had failed my children. And my question disappeared, caught and carried away on the wind: 'What the hell am I meant to do?'
At four p.m. on the last Thursday in September John John rang to say Mr Gaines had suffered a heart attack. My aunt Kathleen was a tough woman. They didn't call her Shark Lady for nothing. It was the first time I had ever seen her cry.
Sixteen
Mike
Monica's guest bedroom was a guest bedroom in only the loosest of senses. It was not remotely geared up for guests, and was a bedroom only in that, along with the fourteen cardboard boxes, two electric guitars, a mountain bike, forty-nine pairs of shoes, a 1960s pine chest of drawers, framed posters of various rock groups I had never heard of and my childhood train set, it contained a camp-bed.
'I'll clear you a space,' she had promised, when I had concluded that it made no financial sense for me to stay long-term in a hotel and had tentatively mentioned moving in. But in Monica's world that didn't mean clearing some boxes, or even transferring the bike to the communal hallway, but instead shifting a bin-bag or two of clothes so that there was room, just about, for the camp-bed to open out on the floor.
There I lay, night after night, the springs digging through the foam mattress into my back, the leathery scent of my sister's old shoes permeating the dusty room as, like some penitent, I considered the mess I had made of what had seemed at the time a rather good life.
I had an ex-fiancee whose hatred of me was only exceeded by her determination single-handedly to propel the new hotel I didn't want into existence. I had no home, since she had informed me in a typed letter that the very least she expected was that I should allow her to buy out my half; the same went for the car. She had promised me a market rate, although I hadn't bothered to check what that might be and had merely agreed. It seemed pretty irrelevant now, and if it made her feel better to score a few thousand off me, then I was happy to let her.
I had a dead-man-walking role at work where, although I had retained my position as partner, I was no longer consulted on any of the remaining deals, let alone deferred to, even by the secretaries. At the moment Vanessa had contradicted me at the Silver Bay project meeting, my authority had been fatally undermined. I found that there were crucial 'meetings' at the pub to which I had somehow not been invited, messages for me that were somehow diverted to other people. Dennis ignored me. Even Tina, perhaps scenting my diminished status, no longer found me attractive. All of which left me with two choices: fight to hold on to my job, trampling over anyone who stood in my way, in order to become, again, a Big Swinging Dick in the office, as Dennis so elegantly put it, or leave, and take what remained of my reputation to a rival developer. I had the appetite for neither.
Worst of all, I sat in at the meetings with Vallance, read the copied-in documentation and watched, at a distance of several thousand miles, the slow but steady progress of the project that would ruin Silver Bay, and the lives of those at the Silver Bay Hotel. The site was restored, the derelict Bullen property already bulldozed. There was a planning inquiry, which, we were assured, should go through 'on a nod and a wink'. I knew that Dennis was only holding me in position because of Vallance - if he lost such a key member of his team at this crucial moment they would look twice.
I also knew that to survive professionally beyond this deal I had to sharpen up. But I was immobilised, unable to apply my old analytical rigour to the state of my career, paralysed by indecision and guilt.
And night after night I lay sleepless on the camp-bed, surrounded by the detritus of someone else's life, waiting for my own to make sense again.
One thing was clear: Vanessa had released me at the moment she had said she wanted the development to go ahead. When she had looked at me every last atom of love was gone, and I was sobered by the depth of her enmity.
'Bloody hell. You can't blame her.' Monica handed me a glass of wine. One of the many conditions of my stay with her was that I had to put together the flat-pack chest of drawers she had bought several weekends ago, so I was seated amid piles of MDF and clear plastic bags with too few screws. In the interests of effective engineering, I should have stopped drinking several glasses earlier.
I got through quite a lot that month - in fact, I was drunk much of the time. Not that anyone would have guessed. I was not like Greg, loud, obstreperous, demanding. I was a subtle drunk. The third double whisky slipped down discreetly. The glass of wine turned into a bottle and a half. It was not that I had an addictive personality, but break-ups are not suited to male patterns of behaviour. We do not have groups of friends to prop us up and endlessly analyse our former partner's actions. We do not go in for aromatherapy baths and scented candles to 'pamper ourselves' or read inspirational stories in magazines to feel better. We go to the pub or sit alone in front of the television with a drink or two.
'I don't blame her,' I said. 'I know it's all down to me.'
'My brother the serial shagger, eh? Watch that screw - you're about to lose it.'
'I'm not a serial shagger.'
'Snogger.' She giggled. 'Serial snogger, then.' I couldn't help laughing too. It sounded so ridiculous.
'There,' she said, pointing her cigarette at me. She was seated cross-legged on a rug. 'There - you see? You can't have loved her that much or you'd be devastated. Told you I was right.'
'You have no heart,' I accused.
But perhaps she was right. I felt bad, admittedly, and guilty, and a bit horrible, but I knew I wasn't drinking because I'd lost Vanessa. I was drinking because I no longer knew who I was. I had not just lost material things - the flat, the car, my position at Beaker Holdings - but the things I thought defined me: my analytical skills, my drive, my strategic focus for deals. My hunger. I was not sure I liked the elements of my ch
aracter that had revealed themselves to me recently.
And I was drinking because one thought hung over all the others: that I had inadvertently destroyed the lives of three people who had no facilities with which to fight back. 'What do I do, Monica? How can I stop it happening?' I dropped the screwdriver on to the floor beside me.
'Why does it matter?' she asked, picking it up, and studying the instructions. 'You lose your job if it doesn't.'
I stared at the pieces of wood in front of me, which didn't even look like wood, then at the tiny, chaotic flat, where the sound of traffic penetrated the walls. I felt homesick.
'Because it just does,' I said.
'Mikey, what the hell went on out there? You went out as Billy Big Shot and came back a bloody mess.'
So I told her. I told her everything. And the odd thing was that in saying the words, I realised what was going on. It took me two hours and several more glasses of wine, but I sat with my sister, in her cramped, untidy flat in Stockwell, and talked into the small hours. I told her about Kathleen and the hotel, Hannah, Liza and the whalechasers, and as I spoke, their faces came alive to me, and I felt briefly as if I were back there in the wide open space with just the sound of the sea in my ears and the salt breeze on my skin. I told her about Letty's death and the baby whale, and the sound I'd heard when Liza had dropped the microphone into the water. And when I got to the part where I had watched the thin, blonde figure recede in my rear-view mirror, I understood. 'I'm in love,' I said. The words had just slipped out. I sat back, dazed, against the sofa, and said them again. 'God. I'm in love.'
'Hallelujah,' said my sister, stubbing out her cigarette. 'Can I go to bed now? I've been waiting for you to work that out since you got here.'
When Dennis Beaker yawned, he made the same sound as a large dog does when you meet it first thing in the morning. It was a genuine sound, impossible to reproduce, which was odd, because I knew that yawning was a tactic he used to considerable effect when underlings or rival firms were making presentations, or when someone was attempting to say something he didn't want to hear. Which was often.
He leant back now, in his leather chair, and yawned so widely that I could count the number of amalgam fillings in his upper jaw. 'Sorry, Mike. What did you say you wanted?'
I stood in front of him, and said evenly, 'I quit.' I had planned a speech, refined it through several hours of sleeplessness, but when it came to it those two words were all I wanted to say.
'What?'
'I've put it in a letter. I'm giving notice.'
Dennis's yawn stopped abruptly. He looked at me from under lowered brows, then leant back in his seat. 'Don't be ridiculous,' he said. 'We've got the Carter deal lined up for spring. You've babysat that from the start.'
I shrugged. 'I don't care about the Carter deal,' I said. 'I'm hoping you'll let me go immediately. I'm happy to forgo my salary.'
'Don't piss me about, Mikey boy. I haven't got time.'
'I'm deadly serious.'
'I'll talk to you this afternoon. Go on, get lost. I'm waiting for a call from Tokyo.'
'I won't be here.'
At that point he saw I was serious. He looked irritated, as if I were trying something on. 'Is this about money? I've told you you'll get a salary review in January.'
'It's not money.'
'And we're bringing in better private health insurance as part of the package. Much wider cover. Plastic surgery, if you fancy it. You won't even need to pay contributions.'
My shirt collar was uncomfortable, and I fought the urge to pull off my tie and loosen it.
'Is this about Vanessa? You think I'm trying to force you out?'
'You want me to go, but it's not about Vanessa. Look . . . I know you don't want me to leave while Vallance are wobbling.'
'Who says Vallance are wobbling?'
'I'm not stupid, Dennis. I read the signs.'
He picked up his pen. He let his gaze travel round the room as if he were considering something. Finally it settled on me and he gave a grudging nod. 'Oh, sit down, for God's sake. You're making the place look untidy.'
London was not beautiful that autumn: the skies sat low, threatening and sulky, and the rain came down in sheets, creeping up my trousers from the uneven pavements where it collected in puddles. Sometimes the clouds seemed so close to the tops of the buildings that I felt almost claustrophobic. But it might, I thought, looking out of the window, have been almost any season for the amount of time I spent outside. In winter months I occasionally brought an overcoat, and in summer I might wear a lighter shirt, but closeted day after day between double-glazing and air-conditioning, ferried to and from work by tube or taxi, years could pass without my needing to adapt at all.
I sat. Outside, I could hear car horns and some kind of altercation. Normally Dennis loved a good scrap, and would stop whatever he was doing to peer outside. But now he studied his hands. Waiting, thinking.
'Look, Dennis, I'm sorry about Vanessa,' I said, at last, into the silence. 'I never wanted to hurt her.'
His demeanour changed then. His shoulders unbraced themselves, and he leant towards me, his expression briefly softening. 'She'll get over it,' he said. 'She'll find someone better. I should be madder at you, given that she's my daughter, but I'm well aware that Tina's a minx. Nearly headed down that road a couple of times myself. It's only because Vanessa's mother has pretty well all our assets in her name that I haven't dared.' He chuckled. 'Plus she's told me she'd have my bollocks for paperweights.'
He let out a huge sigh, and chucked his pen across the desk at me. 'Bloody hell, Mike. How has it come to this?'
I caught it, and placed it back on the desk in front of him. 'I can't be part of this development, Dennis. I told you.'
'For a few effing fish?'
'It's not just the whales. It's everything. We'll be . . . ruining people's lives.'
'It's never bothered you before.'
'Perhaps it should have.'
'You can't protect people from progress. You know that.'
'Who says this is progress? Anyway, some people need protection.'
'It's a ruddy hotel, Mike, not a nuclear-waste plant.'
'Might as well be, for the effect it's going to have.'
I could tell he couldn't quite believe what he was hearing. He shook his head, dug a few black crosshatches on to his telephone pad. Then he looked at me. 'Don't do this, Mike. I admit I've kept you out of the loop since you got back, but you'd turned into such a bloody pious git. I can't trust you if you're not a hundred per cent with me.'
'I am with you, Dennis, just not with this development.'
'You know we're too far down the road to back up now.'
'We're not. We'd earmarked two other sites. Both are viable, you know they are.'
'They're more expensive.'
'Not if we offset the costs of the S94. I've been through it.'
'It's going ahead, whether you like it or not.' He was apologetic rather than bullish, and I saw suddenly that this was not about business: it was about Vanessa. He could forgive me, but to undermine his daughter publicly was asking too much. 'I'm sorry, Mike. But it's going ahead as planned.'
I shook my head regretfully. 'Then I have to quit.' I rose from my chair, and held out my hand. 'I'm really sorry, Dennis. More sorry than you know.'
When he didn't shake my hand, I walked towards the door.
His voice, lifted in exasperation, followed me: 'This is effing ridiculous. You can't ruin a bloody good career for a few fish. Come on, boyo. We're mates, aren't we? We can get past this.'
I hesitated by the door. Oddly, I heard reflected in his voice what I felt - an almost greater regret than I had experienced in splitting with Vanessa. 'I'm sorry,' I said.
As I opened it he spoke again: 'You're not going to fight me on this, Mike.' It was a question as much as a statement. 'You go if you have to, but don't try to fuck up my deal.'
I'd hoped he wouldn't ask. 'I can't sit by and watch it go ahead,' I
said, swallowing hard.
'I'll screw you, if I have to.' He nodded, to make sure I'd got the message.
'I know.'
'I'll shitbag you all over the City. You'll never get a job anywhere decent again.'
'I know.'
'Don't expect me to hold back. You know what I can do.'
I nodded. More than most, I knew.
We stared at each other.
'Oh, bollocks.' Dennis stepped forward and enveloped me in a bear-hug, until Tina's voice came over the intercom, announcing that his call from Tokyo had come through.
I met Monica in a bar a short walk from her newspaper's offices. She had nipped out for a drink, but said she'd be returning to her desk until late that evening, trying to follow up a story. Still mulling over my meeting with Dennis, I had asked her, more out of politeness than genuine interest, what it was about, and she had muttered something vague about farming fraud and EU subsidies, then looked rather cross. 'I hate stories that involve finance,' she muttered. 'You spend weeks trying to understand the figures, and when you run it nobody cares because there's no human interest in it.'
'Want me to help?' I said. 'I'm not a forensic accountant, but I can find my way across a spreadsheet.'
She seemed a little taken aback. 'I might.' Her face lit up with a brief smile. 'If I get stuck I'll bring some home, and you can take a look.'
I had to admit that one of the unexpected benefits of my collapsed personal life was that my sister and I had discovered, to our mutual surprise, that we liked each other. I still thought her overly sarcastic, ambitious and chaotic, and that her taste in men was appalling. But now I understood that insecurity lay beneath the sarcasm, and that at least some of her ambition stemmed from having an elder brother who appeared to have scaled the career ladder effortlessly, and parents who, I saw with some shame, had used that success relentlessly and unthinkingly against her. I suspected now that she would have liked a boyfriend more than she was prepared to acknowledge, and that the longer she lived by herself, the less likely she was to leave room for one. If we stayed close, if we were able to leave this particular door open, I would have that conversation with her. One day.