Page 31 of A Summer Scandal

They walked through the birdcage, assessing which spaces to use themselves and which to try to find new tenants for.

‘Six,’ Keris said, standing in the first room, soon to be her new shop. They’d talked about it over the course of the morning, and agreed that, alongside her current stock, Keris would include Cal’s leatherwork and perhaps other lines from whoever else rented the other units. ‘That’s us three and three others. Any ideas?’

Cal nodded. ‘I do, actually. I was at an adult convention a couple of weeks back and had a beer with an old mate there who works in a similar line of work. I know he’s looking for premises, this would be right up his street.’

‘Go on,’ Violet said, hoping he wasn’t going to say his friend was a gigolo or anything.

‘He’s an artisan metal-worker. Supplies a lot of the metal elements I use for collars and bondage gear, and some bigger stuff too.’ He looked away. ‘Cages, shackles, that sort of thing.’

‘Cages?’ Vi said. ‘As in … cages?’

Keris pulled a faux scandalised face, and Cal nodded, meeting Vi’s eyes again. ‘Yeah. Cages as in human cages. For adults that get off on being locked up.’

‘Oh.’

She couldn’t think of a single appropriate response to that. ‘Shall we start cleaning the windows?’

They worked solidly for the rest of the week, cleaning and scrubbing until their arms ached and their knees complained. Even Barty got in on the action, paying regular visits to see how things were coming along. They hadn’t put the word out officially about the pier’s new use for fear of incurring the early wrath of Cal’s mother – it would all be grist to her mill when it came to her proposed compulsory purchase application, and therefore best kept on a need-to-know basis until they were ready to open. Word, it would seem though, got round as far as Melvin and Linda Williams, Swallow Beach’s resident sex therapists.

‘We came as soon as we heard,’ Linda said, tucking a stray dark curl back inside her silk turban. ‘We take a room over the chiropodist’s in the High Street at the moment, but between me and you the clientele can be quite unsavoury. Let’s just say hygiene isn’t always top of the list.’

She screwed her nose up to indicate that the smells coming from below their consulting room weren’t always complementary to their line of therapy.

‘Although, that said, feet can be terribly erotic to the right person. We had one man who orgasmed if he even so much as saw a painted toenail.’

Melvin nodded. ‘Terrible for him really, couldn’t leave the house in the summer.’

‘On account of all the sandals, you see,’ Linda said, inspecting Violet’s footwear, presumably to see if she was wearing accidentally orgasmic shoes.

‘All safe here,’ Vi said, wiggling her toes inside her plimsolls.

‘So we heard about this place, and straight away we thought, “Where else? Where better?” Didn’t we, Mel?’

Linda looked at her husband, who though slightly shorter than his wife, made up for it with his block-heeled boots and backcombed hair.

‘We did,’ he said. ‘We did. And look at this place!’

Violet preened, because now that the windows were cleaned and every inch of the birdcage scrubbed, it was starting to look pretty darn magnificent. She’d shown Melvin and Linda around, and they’d fallen in love with the smallest of the glass studios in the building.

‘I’m quite overcome.’ Linda brushed non-existent tears from her eyes. ‘This place has a good energy about it. Healing.’

‘That healing feeling,’ Melvin mused, handing his wife a tissue from his trouser pocket. ‘Come, let me take you home, Linda.’

He put an arm around his wife’s shuddering shoulders and turned to speak to Violet in hushed tones. ‘She’s a husk. I need to take her home and replenish her.’

Unsure what that might involve, Vi gave him a little thumbs up and a cheesy grin. They were certainly going to fit in around here, she thought, watching them walk back along the deck towards the shore. Then Cal wandered into the room and she wondered instead if Linda and Melvin could explain why her body twanged to attention whenever he appeared.

‘Drink because it’s Friday?’ he asked, a bottle of fizz in his hand. Given her ever-increasing predicament where he was concerned, she should say no.

‘Yes.’

CHAPTER NINE

‘Beau’s going to come over on Monday to check the place out,’ Cal said, dropping down on the floor beside Violet in the room earmarked as her new studio. This time next week it would be set up with all of her equipment and stock, but for now it was gloriously empty and pristine, all the better to show off her grandmother’s paint-work on the floor. ‘He’s really keen, space permitting.’

Beau, affectionately known by Violet and Keris as Cage-Guy, was the artisan metal-worker Cal thought would suit the larger of the two empty rooms. As long as he wanted to rent it, that left only one space to fill, the one in the opposite corner to Violet.

They sat with their backs leaning against the wall looking out to sea.

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