Page 32 of A Summer Scandal

‘It’s like sitting on the edge of the world, isn’t it,’ she said, accepting the bottle for first glug. Cal had remembered the wine but forgotten the cups, which they both acknowledged was better than the other way around. He’d remembered to chill it too, Vi noticed, as ice-cold bubbles danced down her throat.

‘Are you pleased with how it’s all coming together?’ he asked, taking the bottle when she held it out.

‘God, yes,’ she said. ‘It’s impacting on my work productivity getting things set up, but can you imagine how fabulous it’s going to be once we’re in?’

‘Worth it,’ he said. ‘I’m looking forward to having my space back at home, it was good timing.’ He frowned and twisted to look at her. ‘I don’t mean your grandpa dying and leaving it to you was good timing, of course.’

She smiled and rolled her eyes. ‘I got that.’

Drinking deeply, she put the bottle down between them. ‘It was good timing for me, too,’ she said. ‘I needed to get away.’

‘And has it helped? Because in my experience, you can’t run away from problems, they have a nasty habit of following you.’

She wondered exactly what he was referring to, but didn’t ask. ‘This one hasn’t. Not yet, anyway,’ she said. ‘I was proposed to, and I said no.’

‘Ouch,’ he murmured, reaching for the wine. ‘Wrong time?’

‘Wrong man, I think,’ she said. ‘I didn’t realise that was the case until he asked me.’

‘Poor guy,’ Cal said.

‘And he doesn’t want to take no for an answer, so has sort of said, “Go and do what you need to do and I’ll wait.”’

‘Ah, fuck.’ Cal shook his head, his elbows on his knees, the bottle in his hand. ‘Is that romantic of him, to you? Or is it stifling?’

Cal’s perceptive question caught her unaware. ‘I guess, if I loved him and was going to be a missionary in some war zone or something for a year, it would be romantic. But seeing as I don’t think I love him anywhere near enough and I’ve come here to run a sex pier, probably not so much.’

He laughed, shaking his head. ‘A sex pier? Is that what you call this in your head?’ He handed her the wine.

‘No, of course not,’ she said, shrugging and half laughing as she took a swig. ‘It’s just that this wasn’t what I’d anticipated when I came here.’

‘I see that.’

They looked out to sea in contemplative silence. Violet could feel the alcohol sliding into her bloodstream too fast; a long day working without stopping to eat would do that.

‘So, besides running away to manage a sex pier, what did you expect to find here?’

He made it sound as if she’d run away to join the circus. It felt a little like that, in truth. She’d come here in search of excitement, and she’d found that in the shape of mermaids on her bedroom walls and Lola the headless go-go dancer and a hot, disreputable neighbour who made whips for a living.

‘I don’t think I thought very much about what I might find. I just felt like I needed to get here.’ She couldn’t really articulate what had pulled her so strongly to Swallow Beach. It wasn’t just about escaping a difficult situation, it was more … ‘A calling, I guess, if that doesn’t sound too fanciful.’

‘And now you’re here, are you glad you came?’

‘Have you been taking therapist lessons from Linda and Melvin?’

They sat shoulder to shoulder, their heads against the wall, looking at each other.

‘Is that your way of telling me to mind my own?’

She bit her lip. ‘I just don’t know the answers.’

‘Well, I’m glad you’re here,’ he said.

‘You are?’

He grinned. ‘My mother needed someone new to moan about. She’s bored of me.’

Violet remembered Barty’s comment about Cal being the apple of his mother’s eye when he was a little boy.

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