“I’ll think of something.”
She paid up, to his visible relief, and headed into the ticket hall. At the kiosk, a billboard for the Gazette proclaimed that Cordwainer’s name had been wrongly blackened.
She walked back out again, suddenly needing air, and headed back to the beach. Once there, she began to walk in a mindless easterly direction, with no aim in mind other than the mechanical perpetuation of motion, and its attendant calming effect on the brain.
When she reached the viewpoint at the far end, where the beach met the low incipient swell of the cliffs, she stopped and sat down on the bench, catching her breath. She had walked for forty minutes and her soles were beginning to smart in their unsuitable sandals.
She watched a group of people on Jet Skis off the wooden pier, churning up the waves, little dots of fun, oblivious to the weight of her soul.
“Where am I going?” she asked aloud.
“I don’t know,” replied a voice behind her, “but perhaps you’ll consider going there with me.”
She stood and confronted the speaker, suddenly unnaturally calm, against all expectations.
“Charles. Are you sure you’re well enough to be out?”
“It was a scratch,” he said, peering down at the damaged arm, its bulk straining against the shirtsleeve. “They wanted to keep me in, but I can’t lie around all day. I discharged myself.”
“You look pale.”
“I’m fine. And besides, so do you.”
“Well, I’ve seen a ghost. What do you expect?”
“Did they tell you I was dead?”
“All but.”
“So why aren?
??t you in mourning?”
He was close now, close enough to reach out a hand. But was it conciliatory, or was it conniving?
“After the way you treated me?”
He let the hand drop.
“Yes. I know. For what it’s worth, Michelle, I’m truly sorry about that.”
“So it’s Michelle now? I have a name. I am a human being.”
“Yes, I accept that. In the bizarre artifice of our relationship, you must admit, it was easy to forget. You enjoyed the objectification, didn’t you?”
“Up to a point.”
“Yes, and I miscalculated the location of that point. For which I apologise. Sincerely. Profusely.”
“Sincerely,” echoed Michelle. “Where are you going? What’s your plan now?”
Cordwainer grimaced. “The plan is, there’s no plan. Regardless of your retraction in the press, I’m finished in Goldsands. Too many councillors, movers and shakers, diving for cover. They won’t want their names associated with me. Despite what you’ve said, the mud has stuck.”
“It was real mud,” Michelle pointed out. “I didn’t say a word that wasn’t true.”
“Yes, well, truth and I have a glancing acquaintance at best. Where are you going?”
“I don’t know.”