investment. His cell chirped: two text messages.
The first was from Sandy Rowan, local journalist and Leo’s occasional drinking companion. Sandy’s passions in life were second-hand books, his cat (called Shakespeare), Cleo the waitress at his favourite bar in town and the Orleans wine company, a local vineyard in which he had made a modest investment some years ago and whose Viognier-Syrah blend he had pioneered, proclaiming the result to be better than anything out of California.
Hoover story really got them going. Watch your back – and your front.
The second message was from Margot. An official letter from the Institute had been delivered at home by courier. It was from the chief executive’s office.
Margot Kemp held the mug of coffee tight in her hands – no shakes today – and looked out over the roofs of Falmouth down to the harbour. She was hungry and needed breakfast. She checked her watch. It was 11 a.m. Call it brunch then. Betsy’s Diner with its large neon sign saying ‘Eat Heavy’ would do; eggs, bacon, waffles, more coffee, anything but a drink.
She turned the letter over in her hand: ‘From the office of the President, Coldharbor Institute for Marine Studies’ was engraved on the envelope.
She knew what it would say. Leo had blown it. All that stuff about Hoover the talking seal, the coded attack on the science establishment and the abuse of the big money that flowed into Coldharbor. Add in her husband’s obsession with the lobby behind the fishing industry and his unfashionable view that seals had nothing to do with depleted fishing stocks and you had layer upon layer of controversy: press reports, angry letters to the papers, the snide, back-stabbing comments of his colleagues.
He had been warned, of course. The Institute had told him a year ago to stay out of the media, stop giving interviews, stick to his work. It was in his contract, for God’s sake. She could recite the wording because she had read it out to him – well, shouted it at him – during one of their many rows.
‘In no circumstances must you bring the Institute or its officers into disrepute, nor damage in any way its reputation for academic excellence…approval for all media interviews must be sought from the director of communications…’
And now it had come to this. She fanned herself with the letter. A warm spring was turning into a hot summer, and it was not even Memorial Day yet.
Well, good. They could get out of this place, she thought.
‘Mrs Kemp?’
She turned. Tilda had finished in the kitchen.
‘Can I do the bedroom now?’
‘No, let’s leave it for this morning.’
‘You want another coffee?’
‘No thanks, Tilda.’
She went into the kitchen to check. It was spotless, as ever.
Tilda even rearranged the fridge letters which said sweet, silly things like I love you Mum and No 1 Dad, and made sure they also said We need milk.
She opened the fridge door. Tilda’s attention to detail extended to making sure that every level of the fridge had its own produce: dairy, fruit and meat, with eggs, wine and milk neatly slotted into the side section. Maybe she would have that drink. She took out a bottle of Pinot Grigio. There was enough for a decent glass left in the bottom. She poured it into a tumbler and slung the bottle into the recycling bin.
They had been married sixteen years, nine of them spent here in Coldharbor, where she had watched her husband vanish into a world of his own, a world in which the language of seals seemed to mean more to him than anything she had to offer.
That was what men did, of course, she thought: they displaced you, diminished you and then deserted you. What had happened to her interior-design business? It didn’t take a lot of money with it when it went bust, but it took away her pride, her sense of self-confidence. Leo had tried to help, but typically did so in the most hurtful way. ‘You’re a wonderful teacher. That’s where your talents lie, and that’s what you should stick to,’ he would say. ‘Do what you do best.’
She had told him over and over that teaching qualifications gained in the UK did not allow her to teach in America, and that she would have to retrain. But he didn’t listen. He just told her to face the facts: she was not good enough to be an interior designer, exterior designer, any kind of designer, at least not here on the Cape; she didn’t have the talent. It might have worked in Scotland, where they think haggis is haute cuisine, but it wouldn’t here. Cape Cod was stiff with designers, artists, interior decorators and every kind of smart-ass, trendy, boutique-owning fashionista.
The business collapse didn’t finish them, nor her drinking, nor his endless belittling of Scotland (why did he hate the place so much?).
What lay between them would always lie between them. It looked down from the mantelpiece, from the painting in the sitting room and from her bedside: Julian with the uncertain look of a 9-year-old in his first school uniform; Julian on the beach, tousled hair and head poking out from a sand burial; Julian aged 10, the last picture, on his bike outside the bookshop on Main Street. He had gone on the research trip in the Zodiac rubber dinghy the next morning with his father.
Margot took the wine into the bedroom and placed it on the bedside table beside the framed portrait of her son. She kissed the tips of her fingers and laid them gently on his forehead. She turned the frame to the wall, drank some wine and lay back on the bed. There were only ever two painkillers that worked for her and drink was one of them. The postman had been, the housekeeper had gone, and Leo was God knew where. She pulled up her skirt and let her hand drift between her legs, fluttering her fingers like butterfly wings.
She thought of the last time at the Squire bar in Chatham, the fisherman with salt tang on his body, the dragon’s head tattoo entwined around his thighs with long tongues pointing to his crotch, and whisky on his breath. It was quick, sordid, car-park sex. And why not? It was great. It made her feel good just thinking about it; not because it was any kind of revenge against Leo, far from it. But because, as she told herself, it was my choice, my pleasure, my sex, my lust, and I’ll have it how and when I want. I am a mother of two – well, one now – and with a husband lost to the sea just as all those widowed women on the Cape lost their husbands to the sea.
The sea is made of women’s tears, they say on the Cape, and they’re right. I know how those widows feel. I don’t have affairs; too bloody complicated, and anyway, you always wind up with a needy, whining man telling you he loves you more than anything in the world, when all he really wants is guiltless, risk-free, zero-cost sex. I will take my pleasures as and when I want to. She raised herself on to an elbow, drained the glass of wine, took the phone off the hook and reached into the bedside drawer. It was always there, her ever-dependable friend, none too discreetly covered by a clothing catalogue. She wondered if Tilda knew. She didn’t care if Leo knew or not. She lay back on the bed thinking of the fisherman with salt on his skin and whisky on his breath.
The Dark Side was a steakhouse on the main street of Coldharbor with a long teak bar that stretched the length of the building to a small conservatory overlooking the inner harbour, called Eel Pond, at the back. The place was unlit except for candles which cast their flickering light over every table. Summer or winter, day or night, the Dark Side was
