Page 46 of A Summer Scandal

Violet felt hideous. He couldn’t have called at a worse time if he’d tried, it was as if he somehow knew what she was doing and had called to make her feel guilty. He couldn’t have of course, but the guilt piled in hard regardless. She shouldn’t be messing around with Cal, both because she was fresh out of a long-term relationship and because the end of her relationship with Simon had been ambiguous at best. It wasn’t really fair of Simon to expect her to just drop everything and spend the weekend with him, but then in true Simon style, he’d made sure to give her enough notice. Gah.

‘I’ve got loads of work on,’ she said, trying to be diplomatic. ‘Besides, I’m hoping to come back and see Mum and Dad in a couple of weeks. Shall we wait until then, have dinner or something to catch up?’

Part of her felt terrible, and the other part felt pissed off with Simon for inviting himself here. She’d been pretty clear that she wanted a break, in fact more than that. She’d been pretty clear that they’d broken up, but clearly he was sticking to the idea of her coming home at the end of summer and deciding that, actually, she wanted nothing more than to waltz up the aisle. It wasn’t going to happen. She knew that even more clearly than before.

‘You won’t notice I’m there,’ he said. ‘I’ll bring my laptop and can carry on with some work. I’ve got a new line of frozen fish to upload to the supermarket stock-ordering system anyway, that should keep me busy.’

‘No,’ she said, summoning up all of her courage. ‘I don’t want you to come here, Simon. Please don’t. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but I don’t want you to come to Swallow Beach. I was honest about coming here for the summer to be on my own, and I know you said you’d wait but I don’t want you to. It’s not fair on either of us, Simon.’

He fell silent on the other end. ‘Is it because I mentioned the fish? Because I can leave work behind for a couple of days if it bothers you that much.’

‘No,’ she said, exasperated, reaching for her PJ top because it felt inappropriate sitting here half naked. ‘Of course it’s not because of the fish.’

‘So it’s just me, then,’ he said, forlorn, and her heart broke a little for him – because he was right. For a while he’d seemed like he could be the most important person in her life, but coming here had served only to solidify her conviction that he wasn’t the right man for her forever. Maybe she’d been drawn to him because of the safety of familiarity; he reminded her of the people she loved, of her logical, practical, list-loving parents, and of her calm, steady Grandpa Henry. But she realised now that romantic love wasn’t like that at all; it was illogical and impractical, tearing up lists and scattering them on the wind.

When she went back to bed after Simon had hung up, she placed Monica’s diary on the pillow beside her, looking at it in the shadows, wondering if her gran had felt as churned up and disloyal as she did. Turning on the night-light, she began to read.

Before T, I’d have scoffed at the idea of being able to love two people at the same time. Yet I do, I honestly and truly do. I know it sounds self-indulgent and like a convenient mechanism to let myself off the hook, but believe me, loving them both is anything but convenient. I’ve turned this thing every which way in my head; wondered if maybe I couldn’t have loved Henry enough to be able to let T into my heart too. Should that be the decider? I must love T more, or else I would have never allowed the affair to happen? Jesus, how pious. If I’ve learned anything from this it’s that there is no logic to love.

Violet wasn’t the only restless resident at the Lido that night. Cal sat in the armchair in his bay window, his eyes on the beach, his mind anywhere but. He was a groom on his own wedding day, in love with the brown-eyed girl in white. He was the man she’d left behind, and he was the man who had never had a chance to fall out of love with her, because she had disappeared.

He didn’t wear his wedding ring any more because people asked too many questions, but that didn’t mean he didn’t still love his wife. To the rest of Swallow Beach, Ursula was history, someone who used to live there. To Cal, though, she was unfinished business, the woman he’d loved, the woman who for all he knew still loved him and would come home. He wasn’t waiting, officially. But unofficially, even though he didn’t even acknowledge it explicitly to himself, he sort of was.

On the ground floor, Barty pulled the long silk smoking jacket Keris had given him last Christmas closer around his willowy frame, the newspaper in his hand. He looked for a few moments at the old photograph of Monica on the front, then threw it on the fire and prodded it with the poker to make sure it caught.

‘I think we should have a bit of a grand opening,’ Violet said. She was walking arm in arm with Keris to unlock the pier. ‘You know, let people come and use the pier again. Sit on the benches, look out to sea, satisfy their curiosity that it’s not actually a brothel, take the wind out of Gladys’s sails. The coffee machine should be installed on Friday.’

‘Damage limitation?’ Keris grinned. They were all waiting to see how bad the piece about the pier would be after Gladys’s visit.

Violet shrugged. ‘A bit. But also because I want the town to love the pier again.’

They came to a halt outside the pier gates and Vi rummaged in her bag for the keys.

‘Here we go …’ She stopped speaking, her head on one side because something was different. The usual chain and padlock was there, but also a new, shiny silver chain above it, clamped in place with a heavy-duty brass padlock.

‘What the …?’

Reaching out, Violet gave the offending thing a good rattle but it was locked tight.

‘Who the bloody hell thinks they have the right to do something like that?’ she said, fury bubbling in her gut.

‘If I had to guess,’ Keris said, ‘Gladys?’

‘But she has no right, this place is mine by law,’ Violet said, trying to work out what to do.

‘Morning ladies.’ A deep voice rumbled behind them.

‘Beau,’ Violet said, exasperated. ‘I’m sorry about this, I can’t open the gates. Someone added a new chain and padlock overnight.’

‘Bizarre,’ he said, peering close. ‘Want me to chop it off for you?’

Of course, he’d have the tools to get it off.

‘That’d be great,’ Vi said, relieved to have an easy solution.Take that, Gladys Dearheart; it’ll take more than a bit of metal to slow me down for long.

‘I’ll need to climb over the gates and go the workshop for the tools,’ he said. ‘Stand back, ladies.’

Keris and Violet did as suggested, and Beau took a loping run at the gates and kind of vaulted them.

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