Page 37 of The Love Game

Oh God. She needed to go back. Barty was T; she knew it now without a shadow of a doubt.

How had she missed it when it had been staring her in the face all along?

Because he’d hidden it, of course. He’d been deliberately vague, deflecting her questions.

She’d allowed herself to think of it as old-fashioned chivalry towards his friends, but the truth was far more basic than that.

He’d lied to her repeatedly, and it cut Violet deeply.

She needed to talk to him, be the brave woman he’d said she was and ask him for the truth.

But there was something she needed to do first. Climbing from her car, she walked through the park gates to the bench she’d arranged to meet Simon on and sat down.

She was early, deliberately so to give herself time to gather her thoughts.

It was early on Saturday morning, grey and cool despite the fact that it was the height of summer.

She watched as a father shepherded his two tiny children, pushing them on the swings, lifting them onto the slide.

It was all very normal, and yet Violet found it quite emotional, remembering when her own parents had brought her here for the exact same simple pleasures, Grandpa Henry too.

‘Violet.’

Simon appeared beside her, dear and familiar, and she stood up and smiled, awkward.

‘You came back,’ he said.

She sat back down and watched as he laid down his waterproof jacket then sat beside her, prepared for all eventualities as always.

‘Just for a day or so,’ she said. ‘I’m going back again after this.’

His face fell. ‘I thought we could have dinner tonight. I’ve booked a table at the Taj Star.’

Violet sighed. ‘I can’t have dinner with you, Simon.’

‘But I’ve asked them for that special table in the window,’ he said. She could see the look in his eyes sliding from hope to disheartenment and she hated herself afresh.

‘I’m sorry Simon,’ she said, reaching down into her handbag on the floor.

She’d thrown her bags back into the Traveller that morning ready to make tracks – she’d loosely planned to stay with her parents for the weekend, but she was itching to get back to Swallow Beach to see Barty after her mum’s revelation.

‘I didn’t want to lead you on, or give you the impression that I’d be coming back to marry you. ’

She was fairly clear in her mind that she hadn’t done that, that he’d railroaded her into accepting the situation. Even still, he looked hangdog as she placed the ring box in his hand.

‘You’re a lovely man, Simon, and you’ll make someone a brilliant husband. She’ll be a lucky lady, but I’m afraid it can never be me.’

He bunched his mouth up, horribly close to crying. ‘But I don’t want anyone else.’

Vi leaned in and kissed his cheek, saddened beyond words. ‘I never meant to hurt you.’

She got up and walked away, feeling like a cow because she was just as desolate and heartbroken, but over a different man.

Back in Swallow Beach, Lucy and Beau walked barefoot along the damp sand at the water’s edge.

They’d had a leisurely lunch at The Swallow, an unofficial date because Beau sensed Lucy pull back every time he moved too close.

He was okay with that; he was happy to take it as slow as she needed to, because she was the most interesting woman he’d ever met and he just wanted to be close to her on whatever terms she’d let him in.

Vi made it back to Swallow Beach just after two in the afternoon, her heart both soaring and dipping at the sight of the pier jutting out over the sea. She parked by the promenade and sat for a few minutes in the Traveller, just looking.

She’d gained many things since she’d come here, but she’d lost things too, precious things, parts of herself, and every day the scales seemed to tip further against her.

She’d lain awake most of the night, tossing and turning in her childhood bedroom, trying to make sense of everything, to decide what she wanted to do.

Stay in Swallow Beach because she had as much right as anyone, and she’d be damned if she’d let herself feel hounded out by the likes of Gladys and Ursula Dearheart?

Or sell up and find a new corner of the country that was just hers, some place without ghosts of the past and mermaids on the walls and a man she loved but couldn’t have?

She knew that a wise woman would take option B.

She couldn’t go back and live with her parents, but the money from the sale of the apartment would be enough to start again someplace new.

Her work was portable. It was just her heart that seemed doggedly rooted here in Swallow Beach.

It was wrapped around the black fretwork spindles of the pier, and painted into the intricate scales of the mermaids’ tails, and caught on Cal’s coat sleeves.

She wouldn’t run. This place was as much hers as it was anyone else’s.

She was going to face up to them all – Gladys, Ursula, Barty, Cal.

And first thing on Monday morning she was heading back down to the undertakers armed with both her grandmother’s death certificate and her own birth certificate.

She was Violet Spencer, granddaughter of Monica Spencer, and she was damn well going to give her grandmother the funeral she deserved.

‘Hey you.’

Vi was half in the car and half out, reaching across the seats for the handles of her overnight bag. Straightening, she slammed the door and looked at Cal, her eyes scanning the seafront for Ursula.

‘It’s good to see you,’ he said, his dark eyes moving over her face.

‘You look well,’ she said. He did; the Portuguese sun had clearly agreed with him. ‘Good holiday?’

‘It wasn’t a holiday,’ he said.

Vi couldn’t have this conversation. In fact, she found she couldn’t talk to him at all, it was too raw.

‘I need to go,’ she said, locking the Traveller and avoiding his eye. ‘I’ll see you at work.’

‘Wait, Violet,’ he said as she walked away. ‘Please.’

She sighed and swung back around. ‘Wait for what, Cal? For you? What do you want from me?’

He looked as if she’d slapped him. ‘I thought we were friends,’ he said.

‘Fine,’ she sighed, short with him because she couldn’t be anything else without making a fool of herself. ‘We’re friends. There. Happy now? I’ll buy you a pint if I bump into you in the pub, you can help me carry my shopping upstairs. Friends.’

‘That’s not what I meant and you know it,’ he said, stepping forward and catching hold of her hand.

She closed her eyes for a second, trying not to feel the warmth and the strength of him, then opened her eyes and looked out to sea.

‘Things have changed for both of us,’ she said, and he stroked his thumb over her knuckles.

‘Look at me, mermaid girl,’ he said, low and intimate, and her treacherous heart twisted in her chest. ‘Things haven’t changed for me.’

‘Really? Because from where I’m standing you’re fresh off a second honeymoon with your wife,’ she said, pulling her hand from his, hot anger stabbing through her veins.

He stared at her. ‘Is that really what you think?’

‘It’s what everyone in Swallow Beach thinks,’ she said, shrill, half laughing so she didn’t cry. ‘Cal and Ursula. You’re practically Romeo and fucking Juliet.’

He flinched, and she turned on her heel and left him standing there on the seafront, marching across the road to the Lido without looking back.

Lucy let herself in through the front door just after five o’clock, sand in her shoes and the taste of Beau’s kiss on her lips.

‘Only me,’ she called upstairs, getting no answer as usual. Heading into the kitchen, she stopped dead at the unexpected sight of a huge bunch of yellow roses on the kitchen table, instantly nauseous.

And then she started to run for the stairs, yelling out for Charlie, her legs not seeming to carry her to his room fast enough. He looked up when she hurtled through his door, pulling his EarPods out and grinning at her.

‘You’re back then,’ he said. ‘How was your not-a-date date?’

Lucy stared at him, barely able to form words because of the sheer relief that he was okay.

‘The yellow roses,’ she said, too fast. ‘Where did they come from?’

Charlie frowned. ‘What roses?’

Lucy only just made it to the bathroom before she threw up.

Vi couldn’t face Barty yet. She hadn’t got a clue what to say to him when she saw him next, so she’d slipped through the building quietly and let herself into her apartment, closing the door and breathing a sigh of relief to finally be alone.

Going through the motions, she made a sandwich and barely touched it, and the cup of coffee she made turned her stomach so she tipped it down the sink.

Crawling into bed not much after seven, she pulled Monica’s diary from the bedside drawer and opened it at the last entry she’d read.

She’d almost decided not to read any more of it, but knowing who T was changed everything.

She needed to know what had happened, what had been so terrible that Monica’s only option had been to step off the end of the pier.

Her mouth dry with the knowledge that she was drawing close to the final entries, she began to read.

Oh God, oh God, oh God. My period’s late. I’m forty next week, Henry and I haven’t slept together for three months, and I think I might be bloody pregnant. This can’t be happening, I don’t know what I’m going to do. Help me. Someone please help me.

Vi closed the diary abruptly, shocked. Had Monica fallen pregnant with Barty’s child?

Was that what had driven her to such desperate measures?

It was heartbreaking to imagine Monica’s turmoil, it erupted from the stark words on the page, her handwriting less polished than previous entries, no doubt a direct result of her panicked, scattered thoughts.

Swallow Beach had killed her grandmother.

Oh, she knew that Monica could have made different choices, been faithful, put the brakes on before things went too far.

But Violet had learned the hard way over the last few months that it wasn’t always easy to do the right thing, or to even know what the right thing was sometimes.

She’d got in over her head with Cal without even seeing it coming.

Who was she to judge her grandmother for doing the same thing?

Monica’s every diary entry showed her conflict and turmoil; she hadn’t been proud of herself, and that was a difficult way to feel about yourself over a sustained amount of time without something having to give.

‘Okay, Gran,’ she whispered. ‘I know what I need to do now.’

The mermaids around the walls gazed at her, impassive, and Violet closed her eyes and slept, exhausted. Had she been less tired, she might have taken the time to realise that Monica wasn’t the only one whose period was late.