Page 13 of The Love Game

Surrounded by red feathers and gold sequins, the radio on quietly in the background, Vi rediscovered her happy place.

She had an order in from a theatre in London for a set of eight identical military-styled corsets, all embellished in gold and red with matching feather headdresses.

Completing the first one had been a work of art, but thankfully the company loved it and had given Vi the green light to go ahead with the whole order, one of her most ambitious to date.

She’d borrowed her grandmother’s tailor’s dummy from the bedroom, setting it up in the corner of the living room dressed as a military showgirl to serve as a consistent reminder to ensure they all matched.

It looked fabulous, and given how kitsch the Lido apartment was, not even that much out of place.

‘I’m going to call you Lola,’ she said, positioning the dummy to best show off the costume. ‘Barry Manilow himself would be impressed.’

Everything about her work soothed her. The low hum of the sewing machine, the tape around her neck, the feelof the feathers as she sorted them by colour and size to ensure a spectacular finish.

Tall ostrich plumes to work into headdresses, shorter dyed marabou feathers for the corsets.

Black grosgrain ribbons, gold buttons … She had everything sorted into boxes and the open drawers of the sideboard, and for a few blessed hours she forgot all about Swallow Beach, or the pier, or that damn meeting.

Much as she’d come here in search of adventure, what she was actually used to was peace and simplicity, both of which were in short supply around here.

When someone knocked the door just after one, she debated whether to pretend she wasn’t home. What if it was another angry local come to tear a strip off her?

‘Violet, open up. I’ve brought lunch.’

Cal. And more to the point, given that Violet had yet to eat, Cal with food. Laying her work down carefully, she stepped over the sewing machine’s electricity cord and went out to open the door.

Cal looked her up and down, taking in the tape measure around her neck and the red feathers tucked into the pocket of her work apron. ‘Busy?’

She nodded. ‘Working.’ He was dressed as he’d been earlier, so probably just returning. ‘And hungry, so you’re welcome.’

He followed her inside. ‘You mean you only want me for my burgers?’

‘There’s burgers in that bag?’ she said, sniffing. He wasn’t lying, and her stomach grumbled in appreciation.

‘Best burgers for miles,’ he said, distracted, his eyes moving over her bright, busy workspace. ‘What are you doing?’

His appreciative, interested eyes found Lola standing to attention in the corner.

‘Ooh,’ he said, putting the burger bag down on the breakfast bar. ‘You didn’t say you had company. I’d have brought extra food.’

Vi rolled her eyes. ‘Meet Lola.’

‘Is she a go-go dancer, same as you?’

‘High kicks like you wouldn’t believe,’ Violet said, opening the food bag flat to dispense with the need for plates because she’d forgotten to buy washing-up liquid. Burgers and fries, and he’d even thought to supply strawberry shakes. ‘My kind of food, thank you.’

He perched on one of the stools. ‘Guessed as much.’

She wasn’t certain if being thought of as a burger kind of girl was a compliment or not.

‘So,’ he said, unwrapping the waxy paper from around his burger. ‘Is this what you do?’ He nodded towards her temporary workspace, which, now her machine was set up and her accessories displayed, seemed to have taken over half of the living room. ‘Make costumes?’

Violet nodded. She couldn’t speak, because she was experiencing burger nirvana.

‘Oh my God,’ she mumbled.

‘I know, right?’ Cal high-fived her across the breakfast bar. ‘I did tell you.’

‘Yeah, this is me,’ she said. ‘I’ve been working for myself for a while now, I love it.’

His eyes strayed to the dressmaker’s dummy again. ‘Bloody good at it, by the looks of our Lola.’

It had taken Vi quite a while to accept compliments about her work without automatically shaking them off. The fact was that she’d worked damn hard to be good at it, so she wasn’t going to apologise for it.

‘Thanks. I’m pretty proud of it. I make dancers’ costumes, the occasional wedding dress, even, but theatrical and club stuff mainly.’

‘You should be proud.’ He nodded, looking at her again now. ‘And your family? Are they cool with what you do?’

That was an unusually perceptive question; some of the outfits she made were incredibly skimpy and designed to show off the wearer’s body to best effect.

Thankfully, her parents didn’t have any issue with it – she’d have had to take their feelings into consideration while she lived under their roof and worked in their garden.

‘Yeah, they’re not stuffy about things like that.’

He huffed under his breath, screwing up all of the empty papers into a ball. ‘What?’ Vi asked.

‘You’re lucky, that’s all.’

It was Vi’s turn to be inquisitive. ‘I guess I am. Why do I get the feeling that you understand?’

He sighed, his face bunched up. ‘It might be easier to show you, rather than tell you.’ Scanning the kitchen, he found the bin and shoved their rubbish in. ‘Come on. It’ll only take five minutes.’

Intrigued, Violet searched around the floor for her shoes.

‘Don’t bother,’ he said. ‘We’re only going across the landing.’

‘You work from home too?’

He nodded, leading her across the landing. ‘You haven’t heard the noise?’

‘I just assumed DIY,’ she said.

He laughed softly, unlocking his front door. ‘Not quite.’

Cal’s apartment looked to be the same layout as hers, a small hallway with doors leading off it.

That was where the similarity ended though; his was clear of clutter and kitsch, lots of white and neutral greys to make the most of the light and space.

It wasn’t cold – he’d added a few touches of colour to avoid that – but it was a world away from her place across the landing.

‘These places are all about the views, aren’t they?’ he said, nodding at the living-room bay window. ‘I tried to keep it un-distracting in here, because I can’t compete with what’s going on out there.’

‘My grandmother clearly didn’t feel the same way,’ Violet laughed.

He led her through one of the other doors, and she found herself in what would be the spare bedroom in her own apartment, or Della’s yellow bedroom. This, however, wasn’t a bedroom. It was a busy workroom, masculine and far more cluttered than the rest of his place, everything jammed in.

‘What do you make in here?’ she asked, surprised, taking in the cutting equipment, the workbench, and what looked like an industrial overlocker.

Rolls of leather. Hammers, scissors, tools.

It looked like a beefed-up version of her own set-up, though she was pretty sure there weren’t any feathers or sequins.

‘My family have been leatherworkers for more generations than I can count back,’ he said. ‘Saddles, equine equipment mostly.’

‘Wow,’ she said, glancing around for evidence of a saddle and finding nothing. ‘Can I see? I used to love ponies as a kid.’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t work for the family business any more,’ he said. ‘I branched out on my own, much to my mother’s disgust.’

‘Oh, that’s rough,’ she frowned. ‘So do you have to compete with them for work?’

The ghost of a smile passed across his face. ‘You’d know how funny that was if you knew my mother.’

‘So what are you working on at the moment?’ she asked, intrigued.

He paused, and then bent to retrieve something from the lower shelf of his workbench. He held a long sturdy box in his hands when he straightened.

‘These.’

Violet stepped closer as he shook the box lightly to get the lid off, looking inside as he held it out for her to inspect.

‘Are they …’

He finished her sentence for her. ‘Floggers. Yes.’

The box contained about a dozen of them, slender midnight-blue leather handles with a wrist strap, long fronds of tassels. Cal turned and picked up another box, opening it up to show her its contents.

‘Collars,’ she said, her eyebrows raised as she looked at the collection of black studded rings. ‘I wouldn’t like to see the dog big enough to wear those.’

‘You won’t. They’re designed for six-foot men with a submissive side.’

Violet’s mouth formed a perfect O. Floggers. Collars. She was sensing a theme.

‘So you make …’ She tailed off, unsure how to categorise his line of products.

‘Sex toys. Floggers, whips, cuffs, collars, handcuffs, harnesses, masks.’ He reeled it off like a supermarket shopping list. ‘I do bespoke too, if people are looking for something unusual.’

‘I’m genuinely lost for words,’ Violet said, half laughing.

‘It’s just another branch of leatherwork,’ he said.

‘And a bloody lucrative one at that. The family business was struggling – that’s how I got into this originally, trying to think outside the box to bring new business in.

There’s a big crossover between the equine and sex industries: crops, whips, stirrups, spurs. It wasn’t that big a leap.’

‘But your parents don’t agree?’ Violet was starting to understand the rift.

‘Just my mum,’ he said. ‘My dad died when I was three, a horse riding accident.’ His melancholy shrug said please don’t offer pity, so she just nodded and held her tongue.

‘My mother has been more than vocal about the fact that she thinks all of this is a disgrace. Dragging the Dearheart name through the mud, apparently.’ He shook his head.

‘These products are officially unwelcome in the factory.’

Violet picked up one of the navy floggers, appreciating the fine leatherwork and the contrasting scarlet stitches. ‘You’re seriously good. This is gorgeous work.’

He swallowed. ‘I’ve trained for years at what I do.’ He put the lid back on the box of collars, looking down for an inch of space to set it down. ‘And business is booming. I’m going to have to move my workshop into the main bedroom at this rate and sleep in the box room like a moody teenager.’

‘There’s really no chance of healing the family rift?’

‘Not unless I go back to making saddles for a living, no.’

They looked at each other across his workbench.

‘Well, we’re going to go down well at the meeting,’ Vi said. ‘You make sex toys and I’m practically a go-go dancer.’

‘The Lido, otherwise known as a den of iniquity,’ Cal laughed. ‘You should probably quit hanging around with me. I’m the black sheep of Swallow Beach thanks to my—’ he broke off to pick up a flogger and thwacked it against the workbench, ‘proclivities.’

Vi nodded. ‘And you should probably swerve me too. In the summer months I wear nothing but hot-pants and feather bras.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Roll on summertime, I say.’

‘I don’t, really,’ she said.

‘That’s a crying shame, Violet.’

Once again, she wasn’t certain whether or not they were flirting. They seemed to dance right along the line between friendship and more, even though both knew that, as neighbours, it was a line to stay on the right side of.

‘Although I have to say, I don’t strut the seafront in a harness and gimp-mask, either,’ he said. ‘Just so you know.’

‘So we’re both pretty normal, despite our frankly salacious line of work,’ she said, trying not to let herself imagine Cal in fetish gear.

‘Don’t tell anyone though,’ he said. ‘Far more fun to be talked about.’

Violet wasn’t sure she agreed there, but then it appeared that he’d had far more practice at it than she had. If she’d known she was walking into a town with attitudes buttoned up tighter than Queen Victoria’s corsets, she might have thought twice about moving here at all.

‘Will you come to the meeting?’

The same look crossed his face as downstairs earlier with Keris, one that suggested there were things Violet didn’t know.

‘Barty’s coming,’ she said. ‘We could go for a drink afterwards, my shout?’

He sighed. ‘How can I say no to a mermaid?’

Violet smiled, complimented, reminded of her bedroom across the hallway. ‘You can’t?’

He picked up his overalls from the back of a chair. ‘I’m going to strip off now. You should probably go before you’re overcome with unstoppable lust.’

For a second, she didn’t move, and in that same second, they eyed each other more seriously than either of them expected.

Then he reached for the hem of his T-shirt and started counting backwards from three, so Violet shot out of the apartment, shouting that he should meet her and Barty in the lobby to go to the meeting later as she left.

‘And thank you for lunch too!’ she called belatedly, slamming his door as she headed back to her side of the building. Full of jangling nerves, she sat down to work, her mind on the man across the hall doing the same, and more ominously on the meeting in the parish hall about her pier.

‘It’s mine and you can’t take it from me,’ she muttered into the quiet room. ‘Don’t worry, Gran. I’ve got this.’