‘Your turn.’
There was a painting on the wall behind Cal’s head, a landscape oil of Swallow Beach.
‘I own the pier.’
He stopped tapping and stared at her. ‘Say again?’
Violet sighed, repeating herself quietly. ‘I own Swallow Beach Pier.’
Cal scraped his seat in under the table and leaned forward, his elbows on the table. ‘You own our pier?’
Nodding, Vi smarting slightly at the incredulous way he said it; ‘our’ as if the pier belonged to the town, and ‘you’ as if she wasn’t part of it. Well, she wasn’t really, not yet, but her grandparents had been and she felt oddly like she was representing them in the community. His words also gave her pause for another reason; she hadn’t for a second stopped to imagine that she might meet resistance to her presence from the locals.
Oh God! Were they all going to hate her?
‘My grandparents, Henry and Monica Spencer, honeymooned here. Gran fell in love with the place, and the pier was up for sale so my grandpa bought it for her. They moved here to the Lido lock, stock and barrel on the strength of it.’
‘That’s some story,’ he said, nodding slowly.
She still couldn’t tell if he was being off. ‘I think it’s romantic.’
‘Oh, it is, it is,’ he said slowly, as if choosing his words with care. ‘But you might want to tread a little cautiously, that’s all. The pier’s become a bit of a bone of contention in recent years. Some of the locals feel that a compulsory order is appropriate to get it out of private hands.’
Violet blinked, feeling her cheeks start to heat up. ‘A compulsory order? What does that even mean?’
Cal emptied the rest of the wine into their glasses. ‘You know, a forced sale. There was even talk of it being dismantled, although that seems to have gone quiet.’
‘No!’ The word left Violet sharp and laced with fear; they couldn’t take her grandma’s pier down. ‘Why would they do that?’
‘Hey, don’t panic,’ he said, sliding her glass towards her. ‘It’s not going to happen. Especially not now you’re here.’
‘But …’ She trailed off and swallowed a mouthful of wine. She’d had her rose-tinted glasses firmly jammed on up to now, seeing only romance and fairytale where the pier was concerned. Whereherpier was concerned. ‘Is everyone going to hate me?’
A smile tugged at the edges of Cal’s mouth. ‘How could they hate a girl with blue hair and candy-stripe nails?’
Violet looked down at her hands. Her mum despairedof her penchant for painting her nails in weird and wonderful designs, and she dearly wished her daughter would stop dip-dyeing the ends of her dark hair all shades of the rainbow. Teal, orange, fire-engine red; she’d tried them all. Right now Violet was in her peacock-blue period. She didn’t do it to stand out. She just liked colour, and patterns, and didn’t see any reason to be bland.
‘Want to go out and look at it now?’
She looked up again and found Cal watching her. ‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘I’d love that.’
Darkness had already fallen when they stepped out of the pub, and the nip in the air had Violet buttoning her coat as they crossed the deserted seafront road.
‘Is it always this quiet?’
Cal shook his head. ‘It’s Sunday, and it’s cold. Anyone sensible is doing something warm.’
Was that flirty? Did he mean sitting around the table with their family eating a Sunday roast, or did he mean in bed with a lover? It was hard to tell; Calvin Dearheart seemed to have a permanent glint in his eye. Vi didn’t pull away when he linked his arm through hers and steered her along the sea wall towards the looming pier gates.
‘Have you ever been beyond them?’ she asked.
He slanted his eyes towards her. ‘Not as an adult.’
She watched him, waiting for more, until he laughed and looked away.
‘What kind of kid would grow up in a seaside town and not explore the deserted pier?’
Ah. She nodded, wrapping her arms around herself as they reached the gates. It looked different at night; more ominous and ramshackle, like something from a Stephen King book. It wasn’t hard to imagine Cal as a boy, scrambling over the gates with his mates when they thought no one was looking.