Page 56 of A Summer Scandal

‘Ursula.’

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Back in her apartment alone a few minutes later, Violet took a hot bath and then headed into her bedroom with a coffee liberally laced with brandy. What a tangled mess she’d got herself into. Cal had been like a deer in headlights out there on the landing, powerless against Ursula, all waif-like and exuding waves of charisma Marilyn Monroe would have been proud of. She’d smiled at him, and he’d looked from her to Violet, fear and turmoil in his dark eyes, and she’d known. She’d known what was going to happen next, and she didn’t want to wait around to see it play out.

‘I need to grab my keys,’ she’d said, and he’d looked at her as if she wasn’t making any sense. ‘Cal. Open your door so I can get my stuff?’

He’d frowned, fishing his keys from the plant pot where he’d chucked them for safekeeping on his way out of the Lido earlier.

Ursula had laughed, said something about how she’d wished she’d known they were there, she’d have let herself in. Cal didn’t come inside as Violet dashed around gathering up her belongings in her arms, clothes and shampoo and lotions, like someone grabbing things to run from a crime scene. It was a little like that; she felt seedy, fleeing the scene like a humiliated lover when the wife turns up. She hadn’t looked back, closing her door and flinging all of her stuff on the hall floor in a fury of frustration and temper. She felt a fool, and she felt let down, and she felt hurt, because what had happened out there on the beach deserved better.

Propping herself up against the pillows with the soft glow of the lamp to soothe her, she picked up Monica’s diary and held it over her heart as she sipped the hot, comforting coffee.

‘It’s this place,’ she whispered, to the mermaids around the walls, to her grandmother, to herself. ‘It’s got a grip on me too, I can feel it pulling me under.’

Opening the diary, she began to read.

T didn’t come to me last night. I waited for him in the birdcage, but he never came. He wanted to, but she needed him at home, he said when I saw him this morning. I’d moved heaven and earth to be there. I’d lied to the people I love, and he didn’t show because his wife needed him more. How can he know that? How can he compare her needs with mine and deem me less important? I know the answer, of course. Because she is his wife, and I am someone else’s.

Oh God, Henry. In my lowest moments I want to confess all, to throw myself at his mercy, but I can’t, because what will happen then? I’m a selfish, selfish woman. I want all of the things I already have – Henry, Della, my beautiful pier, our life here in Swallow Beach. But then when I’m with T … I didn’t mean for this to happen.

Henry is my husband, my pragmatic, kind hero who indulges my flights of fancy. But T … When I’m with him I’m violently alive, punch-drunk on him. I’m as luminescent as a firefly, I’m a mermaid on the rocks, a siren calling him to me.

Tears hovered on Violet’s lashes as she read the latest entry. Her grandmother was right; shehadbeen selfish to allow herself to be caught up in a love affair with someone else’s husband, someone other than her own husband.

She read and re-read Monica’s sloping handwriting, knowing that she was reading a warning as if it had been written in advance just for her. She was punch-drunk on Calvin Dearheart. She’d felt all of those same emotions tonight out there in the sea with Cal. Luminescent, siren-like, punch-drunk on him. Her grandmother’s life had spiralled out of control because of secret love and unstoppable lust, and she hadn’t survived it. Right now the man Violet had had sex with in the sea a mere few hours ago was across the landing with his wife, the woman he’d already told her that he still loved.

For the first time since she’d arrived in Swallow Beach, Violet wanted to go home.

Sunday dawned grey and cool, a fitting contrast to the wall-to-wall blue of the previous day, and a fitting accompaniment to Violet’s frame of mind. She’d slept fitfully and woken with a banging headache, rising at dawn to take a couple of pills and crawling back under the blankets until midday. Someone had knocked on her door just after ten – she hadn’t even entertained a thought of getting out of bed to answer it. She’d just pulled the blankets over her head and curled up on her side and gone back to sleep.

At two o’clock she sat in the chair in the bay window and watched the sea, ominous and grey today, not at all the mystical, magical place where she’d given herself to Cal.It looked threatening, swirling around the legs of the pier, throwing flotsam and jetsam up on the shore in vicious bursts. It was a place of all or nothing, of feeling like the centre of the universe and then as insignificant as a leaf on the wind, as strong as the steel girders of the pier and then as fragile as the glass roof of the birdcage pavilion.

Violet watched the beach, the occasional dog walker or jogger tracking left to right or right to left, feeling overwhelmed and a little broken by the place, and then in turn protective and attached, and then a small part of her wished she’d never even heard of Swallow Beach. It was a place that consumed people like her, people like her grandmother. She understood now why her grandfather had walked away from here so soon after Monica had died; he’d taken Della away to save her from the spell. He’d probably been terrified that he’d lose his only child to the place as well as his beloved wife. And now she saw why Della had been afraid of her only daughter coming here – she knew the power of Swallow Beach, that beauty can be smoke and mirrors, that a pretty face can hide an ugly heart.

A little after five, she pulled on her jeans and a jumper. She had no milk, and nothing for dinner beside a couple of eggs, and the thought of scrambled eggs made her kick the fridge and then apologise to the lovely old fifties-style larder. It took a couple of minutes hovering inside her front door to make sure all was quiet out there on the landing before she dared set foot outside, and then she tiptoed across to the stairs and made a run for it so as not to risk encountering Cal or Ursula.

She needn’t have worried. She made it to the shops and back without seeing anyone she knew, and prepared herself a bowl of soup and a sandwich, the kind of dinner her mum used to make her when she was a kid if she was off school ill. Lying on the sofa underneath a blanket afterwards, she dialled her mum and then cancelled the call before it connected because she knew she’d burst into tears at the sound of Della’s voice. She wanted her mum in the most basic sense; she craved her comfort and familiarity. Opening her laptop to click through photographs instead, she wrapped the images of her family around herself like a metaphorical security blanket. Birthdays, Christmases, a lifetime of love. She needed to remember that she had a life before Swallow Beach, and it was still there waiting for her to finish her Rumspringa and go home again, if she wanted to. She could sell this place, the pier too, even. She could go back to her workshop in her mum and dad’s garden, and back to Simon and his engagement ring.

But then wasn’t it selfish of her to think that way? Maybe she was even more like her grandmother than she knew. It was a stark thought; not because she judged Monica harshly for the decisions that she’d made, but because her own life seemed to be eerily hurtling along the same tracks towards disaster. There was no pretty way to dress up the fact that she was involved with a married man. It had been pretty easy to ignore Ursula when she was just a name from the past, but now she was here, a model-esque LA kind of girl in denim cutoffs and messy hair, as if Sienna Miller had wandered in and claimed Cal as her own.

Hearing his door open an hour or so later, Violet hovered by the window to catch sight of him. She wasn’t prepared for the sucker punch of seeing them together – Ursula still in those cutoffs to show off her suntanned legs, but this time sporting Cal’s oversized hoodie as protection against the wind.

They weren’t holding hands, but Violet watched with sickened fascination as Cal reached out a hand to steady Ursula when she stumbled, and how Ursula took the opportunity to link her arm through his afterwards as they walked away. Were they going to The Swallow? Would they trade memories and get to know each other again over lasagne and wine, would Ursula be exclaimed over and remembered and welcomed home? The thought had her turning from the window and heading for the kitchen in search of the largest glass of wine she could lay her hands on.

‘There’s someone here to see you, Vi.’ Keris looked apologetic as she put her head around Violet’s door at lunchtime on Monday. Violet had told Keris just enough for her to know that she’d appreciate solitude at work today. Cal and Beau were both out for the next couple of days at a trade show in London, a fact Violet found herself relieved by. She’d made sure not to run into Cal since Saturday night, and ignored the text he sent on Sunday asking if she was okay. She didn’t ignore him to be ignorant, she just wasn’t in the mood to lie and say she was fine when she wasn’t.

‘Who is it?’

Keris didn’t have a chance to answer, because Ursula appeared behind her and pushed the door open.

‘Me,’ she said, wandering into Violet’s studio, wearing Cal’s hoodie even though the day was too warm to warrant it.

Keris shot Violet a silent look of apology, and Violet just shrugged while Ursula wandered over to get a closer look at Lola the headless showgirl.

‘This stuff isn’t too bad,’ she said, turning to look at Violet when Keris closed the door.

Violet looked steadily at her visitor, fighting her urge to poke her eyes out. ‘Is there something I can help you with?’

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