Michael Ridpath - Final Venture

'Sure you do,' he said, dismissively. 'Is that it?'

'I think you're reading too much into my dinner with Diane.'

He held up his hands. 'Who you have dinner with is your own affair,' he said.

'Precisely.'

'As long as you don't hide it from my daughter.'

'I didn't hide it.'

Frank raised his eyebrows.

'I mean, I didn't tell her. But I would have. If it was important. Which it wasn't.'

Frank's eyebrows gathered together. 'If you think having a date with another woman without telling my daughter about it isn't important-'

'It wasn't a date! We were just having something to eat after work.'

'I've seen the way she looks at you.' Frank glared at me. 'That woman is bad news, Simon. A friend at Barnes McLintock told me she wrecked a marriage when she worked there. I don't want her doing that at our firm, and especially not when the marriage in question is my daughter's!'

I bit my tongue. There were things I wanted to say, but I didn't say them. I had come here to look for a reconciliation, not to pick a fight.

'OK, Frank, I understand. I give you my word I won't do anything to jeopardize our marriage. Especially not with Diane. And I don't want it to interfere with our professional relationship.'

'It won't,' said Frank. 'I told you that on Monday. And like I told you, that's not the problem. If I were you, I would concentrate on not making any dumb decisions like promising a company more money when you haven't got the backing of the partnership.'

I felt anger rise in me, but controlled it. I was getting nowhere.

'And if you've come here to ask for money, the answer's no. I'm sorry about your nephew, but as I told Lisa, I have a real problem with medical litigation. I told Lisa no, and I meant no.'

I stood up straight. 'I didn't ask you for money.'

'That's OK, then.'

'All right, Frank, I understand. Thank you for seeing me.'

I held out my hand.

Frank turned away as though he hadn't seen it, and moved towards his desk.

'OK. Goodbye Simon.'

'Goodbye Frank,' I said to his back, and let myself out.

I drove a couple of miles to Shanks Beach, leaped out of the car, slammed the door, and stomped along the sand. A stiff" breeze blew off the sea, and the beach, which had been covered with sprawling bodies only six weeks before, was now virtually empty. The waves, whipped up by the wind, crashed against the shoreline, scattering the wading birds in front of them. I walked along the water's edge, head down, dodging the occasional wave that reached farther up the sand than the others. I kicked a chunk of driftwood as hard as I could, almost hitting a surprised sandpiper.

Frank, Diane, Helen, Craig and Net Cop tumbled over and over in my mind. Something was wrong with Frank; I had no idea what it was. But I could still keep things under control. If I concentrated on saving Net Cop, and limited my contact with Diane, then everything would blow over. Give it time.

Although I still didn't see any way I could help Helen.

I spent an hour on the beach, and then drove round Route 128 to Net Cop. I didn't arrive there until about half past five. I was told Craig wasn't in. Apparently he had been out all day. This was unusual for him, but everyone deserves a day off every now and then, I reasoned. So I headed home.

'Why don't you come with me to see Dad tomorrow?'

We were eating dinner, some kind of pasta dish Lisa had put together.

'No, you go,' I replied. 'I'll stay here. It'll give me a chance to get some work done.'

'Can't you come, Simon? Please. I don't like you two not getting along. You're both important to me. I'd like to straighten things out between you.'

I put down my fork and rubbed my eyes. I really didn't want to see Frank again that weekend. 'I tried it and it didn't work,' I said. 'I think it would be better to leave things alone. Besides, you know he just wants to see you.'

'That's typical of you, Simon,' Lisa protested. 'You never want to talk about your feelings. I'm positive it will help to talk it over with Dad.'

This was a common complaint of Lisa's, although actually I had talked more about how I felt with her than I had done with anyone else. But perhaps she had a point. Where I had failed to talk her father round, there was a chance she would succeed. It was worth a try.

'OK, we'll go,' I said.

Lisa rapped on the door of the cottage. No reply. She rapped harder. Still nothing. She turned the doorknob, and pushed. The door was locked.

'His car's still here,' she said, nodding towards her father's dark blue Mercedes, which was parked exactly where I had seen it the day before.

'He must have gone for a walk,' I said.

We looked around. In front of us stretched the marsh, a soft carpet of brown and gold grass. No sign of Frank. Behind was the wooded knoll down which we had approached the house. There was no sign of him there, either. In fact there was no sign of anyone. There were a couple of houses in the distance, at least two miles away, and although there were some closer dwellings behind us, they were out of sight in the trees.

'Come on! Let's go down to the dock,' said Lisa.

I followed her along the rickety wooden walkway down to the creek. The tide was out, so the dock itself had floated down below the level of the surrounding marsh. We sat on the end of the walkway, and looked around us.

It was a surprisingly warm day for October. Although there was no sound of human life, there was noise. The wind whispered through the marsh grass, and water lapped against the wooden platform below us. The warm smells of the marsh, salt and vegetation, rose up to meet us. An egret that had been standing tall and still as we approached, started and rose up into the air, beating its wings, as if struggling to keep a few feet above the long grass. You couldn't see the sea from here, the marsh was surrounded by thickly wooded islands, green with yellow fringes. Just beyond Hog Island, a mile and a half in front of us, was the ocean.

'I love this place,' said Lisa. 'You can imagine what it was like to be a kid here in the summer. Swimming, fishing, sailing. I really missed it when I went to California.'

'I can imagine,' I said.

Lisa had often talked about Marsh House. In fact it was here we had first met. I had only been at Revere a couple of weeks, and Frank was having a barbecue for a dozen or so people, me included. I was listening to Art talk about what he described as Massachusetts' draconian gun laws. I disagreed with him. Everyone else fell silent. At the time, I took this to be tacit approval of Art's views, but afterwards I realized that they just knew it was useless arguing with Art about gun control. Anyway, Art launched into a tirade about the constitutional right of Americans to bear arms, and the necessity of defending oneself when the criminal classes were armed to the teeth, when a slight, dark-haired woman leaped to my defence. Barbed comments flew back and forth for about five minutes, to the embarrassment of most of the onlookers, before Frank diplomatically suggested that the woman show me his old dinghies, kept in a dilapidated boathouse a few yards away.

She did as she was told, and we spent much of the rest of the evening together. I was drawn to Lisa straight away. I liked the way she said what she thought, I found I wanted to talk to her, and I found her physically attractive. She mentioned the only French film I had happened to have seen, and on the strength of my enthusiasm, suggested we see something else by the same director. I suddenly became very interested in French films.

She turned and kissed me.

I smiled. 'What was that for?'

'Oh, nothing.' She giggled.

'What is it?' I asked, nudging her.

'Did I ever tell you I lost my virginity here?'

'No! You can't have. Right out here in the open?' It was hard to think of a more public place.