Silver Bay by Jojo Moyes

themselves and the local economy.
    As far as competition is concerned, there are no local hotels of any size or stature. The only hotel located within the bay is half its original size, having suffered a fire several decades ago. It is run on a bed-and-breakfast basis. There are no recreational facilities, and it would be unlikely to create a problem in terms of competition should the owner be unwilling to sell.
    I couldn’t present anyone with this, I thought. It was all over the place. And it didn’t matter how many facts and figures I had gleaned from the local planning department and chamber of commerce, I still felt as though I was writing about something I knew nothing about.
    I had discovered almost as soon as I had arrived that this was not a straightforward site. I was used to square footage in the City; executive apartments, razed seventies office blocks waiting for a new health-and-fitness chain, new prestige headquarters. On such jobs I could go in, look around unobserved, work out the local rental yields against property prices, the disposable income of nearby residents, and, at the end of the day, disappear.
    This, I had known from the moment I stepped into Greg’s beer-can-filled truck, would be different.
    Here, I was acutely aware of my visibility. Even in a sweatshirt and jeans I felt as if my lack of a salt crust gave away my intentions. And considering how empty it was, the area seemed too inhabited somehow, too influenced by its people. It was a new experience for me, but somehow I couldn’t see straight.
    I sighed, opened a new document and began to type in headlines: Geography, Economic Climate, Local Industry, Competition. I thought, with a little resentment, about my new two-seater sports car, the one I had promised myself on the back of this deal; the car that was waiting for me, paid for and polished, on the dealer’s forecourt. I consulted my watch. I had been sitting there for almost two hours and strung together three paragraphs. It was time for another tea break.
    Kathleen Mostyn had given me what she described as her ‘good’ room, some other guests having recently departed, and the previous night had brought up a tray with tea- and coffee-making equipment. She wouldn’t have given it to the last occupants, she muttered, because they ‘would no doubt have complained that the water didn’t boil fast enough’. She was the kind of woman who in England would have been running a school, or perhaps a stately home. The kind who makes you think ‘Age shall not wither her’, sharp-eyed, fiercely busy, wit undimmed. I liked her. I guess I like strong women: I find it easier not to have to think for two. My sister would have other theories, no doubt.
    I boiled the kettle and stood at the window, preparing a cup. The room was not luxurious but was oddly comfortable; the polar opposite to most of the executive-class hotel rooms I stay in. The walls were whitewashed, and the wood-framed double bed was made up with white linen and a blue- and white-striped blanket. There was an aged leather armchair and a Persian rug that might once have been valuable. I worked at a small scrubbed-pine desk with a kitchen chair. I had the feeling, when I looked around the Silver Bay Hotel, that Kathleen Mostyn had long since decided that decorating for guests required far too much in the way of imagination, and had chosen instead to whitewash everything. ‘Easy to clean, easy to paint over,’ I could imagine her saying.
    I realised pretty quickly that I was her only long-term guest. The hotel had the air of somewhere that might once have been pretty smart, but had long since settled for pragmatic, then decided it didn’t want much in the way of company anyway. Most of the furniture had been selected for practicality rather than some great aesthetic. Pictures were largely confined to old sepia-tinted photographs of the hotel in its former glory, or generic seaside watercolours. Mantelpieces and shelves, I had