Page 36 of The Love Game

Handing the black canister back to Stuart was more difficult than she’d imagined it would be.

She’d dried her eyes and tried not to look like a weepy mess before she returned to reception, but then when he held his hand out for Monica’s ashes Vi clung to them, fresh tears in her eyes as she lifted the canister to her lips and pressed a kiss against the lid.

‘I’ll come back for you,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll put things right.’

Violet threw her overnight bag into her beloved Morris Minor Traveller early on Friday afternoon, then paused to look out at the pier, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand.

Keris was going to lock up for her that evening so she could get on the road in the hope of stealing a march on the Friday rush-hour.

‘Going somewhere?’

Vi turned and found Barty standing watching her on the promenade.

‘Home,’ she said.

He was dressed for Zumba, splendid in turquoise. ‘Ah. I rather thought that was here now.’

She half smiled, half shrugged. ‘I miss my mum, thought I’d go back and see her for the weekend.’

‘But you’re coming back?’

That much she was certain of, even if she didn’t know for how long. ‘Yes. Sunday evening.’

Barty looked relieved, touching her cheek briefly before leaving her alone.

Violet watched him stroll off towards town, his back ramrod straight.

He was another part of Swallow Beach she’d miss if she decided not to stay here after the summer.

In the absence of Grandpa Henry, and of her mum too while she was here, Vi had unofficially allocated him as her elder, because she’d never not had someone to defer to or lean on.

Maybe that’s what this is , she thought.

Perhaps it’s time I stopped looking for someone to lean on and stood on my own two feet.

‘Mum?’

Violet called out, dropping her overnight bag on the hall floor as she let herself in.

She hadn’t called ahead to let her parents know she was coming, partly because she wanted it to be a surprise and a little bit because she didn’t want to hear anything that prevented her trip.

She badly needed to get away from Swallow Beach for a few days, to clear her head of all things pier, Lido or Dearheart related.

She’d taken the risk of banking on her mum being at home, and she was heartily relieved to find herself in luck.

‘Violet!’

He mum came running from the kitchen, her face wreathed in delight. Vi threw herself into her mother’s arms like a five year old at the end of school, breathing in her familiar scent, clinging on until she felt fortified enough to let go again.

Setting her daughter at arm’s length, Della scrutinised her face. ‘Is everything okay? You look peaky.’ She brushed Vi’s fringe aside and laid her palm flat on her forehead to check her temperature. ‘You should have called ahead, I’d have made you something special.’

Vi shrugged, feeling a stone lighter already for leaving Swallow Beach. ‘Just fancied a change. It was a last-minute thing.’

Della didn’t look entirely convinced but didn’t press for details as she sat her daughter down at the kitchen table and made them both a cup of tea.

Violet drank it all in. The comfort of the home she’d grown up in, the place and the people she knew so well.

That was what was missing in Swallow Beach, she realised; history.

The place was steeped in it for everyone else around her there, but Vi was very much the new girl still and felt the pressure to fit in, to be accepted – a difficult enough task for anyone, and an impossible one for a blue-haired girl the Lady Mayoress had taken a dislike to.

Sitting around her mother’s pine dining table, Vi felt her shoulders inch down from their perpetual spot close to her ears, and her jaw ached because it was the first time in weeks she hadn’t had her teeth clenched.

‘So what’s really brought you home?’ her mum asked. They’d chatted about surface issues whilst her mum made the tea; how the garden was coming on, a weekend trip Della was planning to surprise Violet’s father with on their wedding anniversary, how work was progressing for Vi in her new studio.

Vi cradled her hands around her cup, looking for comfort in its warmth, even though it was a shorts and T-shirt kind of day. She thought about attempting to brush her mum’s question under the carpet, but even as she tried she knew she wasn’t going to be able to.

‘Oh Mum,’ she said, and however much she tried, she couldn’t stop her bottom lip from trembling.

Della sighed and shuffled her chair close enough to pat Violet’s arm. ‘Come on, out with it. What’s going on?’

Vi really didn’t know where to start. ‘Well, things are going all right at the pier, pretty much, except for the way Gladys keeps trying to interfere,’ she said, looking for positives first. ‘She’s having a bit of a meltdown because I’ve agreed that the pier can be used for an awards evening.

She’s telling anyone who’ll listen that it’s going to be an orgy. ’

Della’s eyes opened wide. ‘Why does she think that?’

‘Because she’s dead set on getting her hands on the pier, and she’s clutching at straws,’ Vi said. ‘And because she doesn’t like me.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true,’ Della said. ‘Why on earth would she not like you?’

Vi huffed. ‘Oh, it’s a long list. She thinks the Lido is a haven for hippies and weirdos, and that my use for the pier is a step away from running a brothel, and …’

‘And what?’

Vi looked at the ceiling. ‘And she disapproves of my relationship with her son. Not that I’m having one, as such, any more.’

Della looked understandably confused. Violet had told her mum about many of the comings and goings at Swallow Beach, with the notable exception of Cal.

‘What I mean is, I was sort of having a bit of a relationship with him, but then his wife came back.’

‘Violet!’ Della said, her voice shrill. ‘You were having a relationship with a married man? No wonder his mother is livid! I’m your mother and I’m not impressed either! And what about poor Simon in all of this?’

Vi rubbed her temples. ‘Okay, so he does have a wife. But she moved to America a few years ago, just left him out of the blue, so he was doing what anyone would do and getting on with his life. It wasn’t seedy, honestly. He just didn’t expect her to ever come back again.’

‘But she did,’ Della said, dully.

Vi nodded, resigned. ‘She did, and he’s taken her back, and now his mother thinks I’m some kind of scarlet woman trying to ruin her son’s life and bring the town into disrepute. Or I think she does, anyway. I’m paraphrasing.’

‘But it’s definitely over, you and this man?’

Vi sighed and looked down at her hands. ‘It was over before it began, really. Ursula came back and that was that.’

Della squeezed her daughter’s hand. ‘And how do you feel about that?’

‘Does it matter?’ Violet said.

‘It does to me,’ her mum said. ‘Because from where I’m sitting, I’d say you’re the one who’s lost the most here.’

Violet didn’t even pretend it wasn’t true; her tears would have made a liar of her if she’d tried.

‘I never wanted to be the other woman,’ she said, sniffing. ‘And I know it was disloyal of me to fall in love with someone else so soon after Simon.’

‘Oh Violet,’ Della said, on her daughter’s side in a heartbeat. ‘It’s even worse than I thought. You love him?’

Thoroughly miserable, Violet nodded. ‘And he lives in the apartment opposite mine in the Lido, and no doubt she will too soon now, so if I stay there then I’m going to be living next door to them.’

‘So don’t. Come home,’ Della said softly.

Home. It was a funny word; when she was in Swallow Beach Violet called her parents’ house home, but now she was here, home conjured up the Lido, and the beach, and Cal. What a god-awful mess.

‘I can’t just give up,’ she said, firming up her thoughts as she went along. ‘And I don’t want to, Mum. I’ve made friends there, and I’m proud of what we’re doing at the pier. I’ve carved out the beginnings of a life for myself at the Lido.’

Vi knew her mum would like nothing more than to have her safely back under her roof again, and it was blissful to come back for the respite of her mother’s kitchen table, but even just being here for a little while and talking about it solidified things in her mind.

She’d entrenched herself in Swallow Beach over the last few months, and while she might not have belonged to one of the town’s all-hallowed established families, why should that make her feel less entitled to live there?

She’d allowed herself to feel sidelined by Ursula; she saw now that what she’d actually done was run from trouble instead of facing it head on.

She’d been hiding herself away in the apartment when she wasn’t at work, scurrying between work and home, feeling browbeaten and small.

It wasn’t brave, and it was time to flick from defence mode to attack.

‘The Lido,’ Della said, shaking her head and laughing softly. ‘Some things never change.’

‘I wish you’d come,’ Vi said. ‘Barty said to send you his regards.’

Della frowned. ‘I don’t think I remember him, Violet.’

‘Are you sure? He definitely remembers you.’ Vi had mentioned Barty over the phone sometimes and just assumed her mum knew who she was talking about.

‘He does?’ Della’s mouth twisted as she thought back. ‘I was so young, Vi, it was a long time ago.’

‘He lives on the ground floor of the Lido, he has done for decades.’

‘What did you say his name was again?’

‘Barty. Barty Harwood.’

The creases lifted from Della’s brow. ‘Harwood? You must mean Tolly, surely?’

Vi shook her head. ‘Nope, I’m pretty sure Barty’s surname is Harwood.’

Della smiled, remembering back. ‘No, I mean Tolly is his first name, Tolly Harwood. Or that’s what my mother always called him, I’m sure of it.’

‘Tolly?’ Vi put her head on one side, puzzled. ‘His full name is Bartholomew, so maybe?’

Della got up from the table and pulled down an old box of photos from on top of the kitchen dresser.

‘I’ve started to sort through things since you’ve been gone. No sense in ignoring it all any longer,’ she said, sitting back down and leafing through the pictures and old birthday and Christmas cards with sure fingers. ‘I’m sure I’ve seen it in here somewhere … Ah, here you go.’

She pulled out a yellowed, flimsy newspaper cutting and smoothed it out carefully on the table between them.

‘This must be from the mid-seventies at a guess,’ she said. ‘There’s the pier of course,’ she outlined it with her finger, ‘and your grandmother there by the wall, and see the man standing beside her? That’s Tolly.’

Vi didn’t need to study the photograph; it was the exact same image the local newspaper had pulled from the archives back in Swallow Beach just a few weeks ago. The exact same photograph Barty had studied and categorically denied any knowledge of who the man in the photograph was.

Barty Harwood.

Tolly Harwood, to Monica.

Or more simply, just T.