Page 2 of The Love Game
Alone in the kitchen, Violet held the picture of her grandmother in her hands and stared into her oh-so-familiar eyes, trying to see more than was there, to understand this woman with who she shared so much.
And not just physically. Violet might not paint particularly well, but all of the things she’d ever truly excelled at had been art of some form.
She’d dabbled with various mediums over the years, but she always ended up back at her sewing machine under one guise or another.
Piecing together intricate quilts, making up clothes from vintage dress patterns – and for the last couple of years she’d been working to build up her own business from the converted old brick-built stable at the end of her parents’ long garden.
She laid the photograph down as her mum came back in, sniffing, a balled-up tissue in her hand.
‘Sorry, love. Got me there. Unexpected.’
Sitting back at the table, Della placed an envelope down. Violet recognised it as the same pale blue stationery as her own letter from Grandpa Henry. Della shook it until a set of keys fell out onto the waxed pine table.
‘These were in my envelope to pass onto you.’
Violet made no move to pick them up, just looked at them, and as she studied them she could almost feel fate trying to give her hand a subtle shove towards them.
‘So this pier,’ she said. ‘Is it open to the public?’
Della laughed softly. ‘It used to be.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t even know if it’s still standing, Violet. I haven’t been back there in almost forty years. It’s probably crumbled into the sea by now.’
Even though Violet had only known of the pier at Swallow Beach for a few hours, the idea of it no longer being there filled her with dismay.
She wanted to see it, to walk beneath it and find those rock pools, to hopefully walk the length of it and try to connect with the woman who’d fallen in love with it all those years ago.
‘That apartment.’ Della shook her head, talking softly to herself more than Violet. ‘I can’t believe he never soldit.’
‘He didn’t need the money to come home?’
Della shook her head. ‘Dad’s business paid well back then.
Besides, the house next door belonged to his mum, my gran.
We moved in with her when we came back after …
’ She paused, struggling to say it out loud even after so many years.
‘And then we stayed here after we lost my gran a few years later.’
There wasn’t a picture of the Swallow Beach seafront mansion block in the album, but from the way her mum described it Violet was desperate to go and lay eyes on it for herself.
Three storeys, graceful picture bay windows, sweeping staircases.
It was an impossibly romantic story, and it sliced straight through Violet’s soft heart and ignited her thirst for adventure.
Perhaps that was a gift from her grandmother too; adventure certainly wasn’t a trait displayed by either of her parents.
Her mum didn’t go anywhere without making at least three lists first, and her father had a special book in his study drawer for plans.
Not to mention the fact that they’d shared the surname Spencer even before they married; it was a standing joke that her mum had chosen her dad mostly because she wouldn’t need to change her maiden name on her passport.
Violet pulled the jumble of keys slowly towards her. ‘Why have I never heard about any of this before, Mum?’
‘Your grandpa didn’t like to talk about it,’ Della said. The stiff set of her jaw suggested that Henry wasn’t the only one who preferred to leave Monica’s memory in the past.
‘But why?’ Violet knew she was pushing too hard, but it just didn’t make any sense.
Her grandparents had clearly been very in love, and obviously Monica’s death must have profoundly affected both Henry and his young daughter, but it was as if they’d tried to wipe her from their memories rather than celebrate her existence.
Della sighed. ‘I was eight years old, Vi. My mum left the apartment after dinner and never came home.’ A tear ran down her cheek. ‘It was a huge scandal at the time, things like that don’t happen in Swallow Beach.’
Violet stared at her mum. ‘What happened to her?’
Della raised her eyes to the kitchen ceiling, concentrating on the light as if she needed something to fixate on.
‘She was found on the beach by an early morning walker, someone out looking for treasure washed up on the dawn tide.’ Her face was drawn, remembering. ‘They didn’t expect to find a body washed up amongst the shells and loose change.’
Violet drew in a sharp breath. ‘Do you think she …?’
It was a few seconds before Della met her daughter’s anxious gaze. ‘I don’t know, love. All I know is that we left Swallow Beach within days and Dad never spoke her name again.’
Reaching across the table, Violet squeezed her mum’s hand. She’d never seen her look so troubled; the morning’s revelations had taken a heavy toll. Gathering the letters and keys together, she tucked them back inside the envelope and closed the album.
‘Let’s not think about it any more right now,’ she said, setting them aside. They were all so desperately sad about Henry’s death; this extra layer of murk and mystery suddenly felt like too much to handle right at that moment. ‘It’s waited all of these years. A few more days won’t hurt.’
But even as Violet said it, her fingers lingered on the worn leather edge of the photograph album, desperate to know more about Monica Spencer, the grandmother she was the living image of.