Page 39 of The Love Game

Keris was easily identifiable, white-blonde and cheeky as a child clinging to a young woman’s hand, her mother presumably. Barty was easy to spot too, especially now she knew him to be the man in the newspaper image. But here she saw him as a family man, and as a husband.

‘Is this your wife?’ she said, looking up as Barty came in carrying two china teacups, slightly rattling on their saucers.

He put the cups down carefully and came to stand beside her.

‘Yes. That’s my Florence.’ His voice was full of tenderness as he gazed at the black and white photograph.

It was a formal wedding day pose, Barty tall and proud, his wife willowy and blonde beside him in ivory parachute silk and a clutch of dark roses.

‘And this is Keris of course, with her mum.’ Barty touched the image of Keris as a child.

‘Your daughter,’ Vi said, looking for other images of the woman and not seeing any.

‘Alison,’ Barty said, his voice devoid of emotion.

‘Is she …?’ It was too difficult a sentence to finish.

‘Dead?’ Barty said, then huffed wearily. ‘No, she isn’t dead. She just … well, she wasn’t a settler. Still isn’t, truth told. She left Keris with us because she couldn’t handle the pressure of motherhood.’

‘Do you never see her?’ It seemed unimaginable to Violet to lose touch with the people you love.

‘Sometimes,’ Barty said, his voice gruff. ‘Every now and then when she needs money or she’s exhausted herself and needs to clear her head.’

He didn’t say it with any trace of malice or mistrust, more heartsick resignation about a situation he was powerless to change.

Inside Vi’s head, the cogs whirred as she scanned the various photos, finally coming to rest on an image of Barty cradling a tiny baby beside a Christmas tree, his daughter presumably, because it was too dated to be Keris.

‘That’s lovely,’ she asked, keeping her tone light even as her heart grew heavier in her chest. ‘When would that have been?’

A thoughtful frown creased Barty’s forehead as he recalled the details. ‘Alison was born in a snowstorm, the worst Swallow Beach had ever seen. She was a month early and we didn’t have a prayer of making it to the hospital, so she was born right here in our bedroom on Christmas Eve.’

‘In 1978?’ Violet said.

Barty looked at her oddly. ‘Yes. How did you know that?’

Violet held his gaze, unsure what to say next, and his expression cycled from puzzled to something else. Fear, fleetingly, and then pure despair.

‘It was the same year my grandmother died,’ Violet said, barely more than a whisper.

‘Yes.’ Barty turned and walked to his armchair, suddenly looking his age as he lowered himself down and reached for his tea. Violet did the same, perching opposite him, her hands clasped in her lap.

‘I know, Barty. I know about your affair with my gran.’

His face blanched, and for a moment the air crackled with tension as he made his decision: truth, or more lies.

‘Monica was utterly captivating,’ he said at last, with the heaviest of sighs.

‘I knew it was wrong Violet, but I couldn’t help myself.

There isn’t an excuse in the world for what I did, it was an unforgivable sin to both Florence and Henry.

He was my friend, and she my wife, yet I was consumed by your grandmother.

I like to imagine that she was fond of me too,’ he whispered.

‘Tolly, she used to call me. I’ve always been Barty to everyone else, but your gran always called me Tolly. ’

Barty put his cup back down again untouched, because his hand was shaking so violently that tea was spilling into the saucer. Violet sat quietly, watching him, glad he hadn’t made her ask him outright.

‘Florence and I had been told that we couldn’t conceive, and it took an inevitable toll on our marriage.

Oh, it’s no excuse,’ he said, his mouth downturned, shaking his head slowly.

‘But Monica was as blinding as a ray of sunlight, always laughing, always with that flash of devil-may-care about her that drew me in. It went from friendship to so much more with a speed that scared us both.’

Vi nodded, knowing she was listening to the other side of the story she’d already read in her grandmother’s diary.

‘And then Florrie found out she was expecting, a bolt out of the blue.’ He covered his hand over his mouth, haunted by his memories.

‘I had to end it. We’d talked about the idea of confessing, leaving Swallow Beach for some place else.

But how could I do that with a baby on the way?

’ He stopped to gather himself together, looking at Violet with none of the usual sparkle in his blue eyes.

‘I told Monica it was over, that I had to stay here because of the baby.’

‘But …’ Vi said, and then she stopped herself. Her grandmother had obviously never told Barty about their baby. What good would it serve to add to the burden of his guilt now?

‘I never saw her again,’ Barty whispered. ‘She died three days later, and I swear to you there isn’t a single day of my life when I haven’t apologised to her for what I drove her to. I lived, and she didn’t, and all because of what we did.’

‘Barty, don’t,’ Violet said, rounding the table to put her arm around his shoulders, distressed by the fact that Barty had pulled his handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his eyes. ‘You didn’t drive her to it. It wasn’t suicide, Barty. I’ve read her diary and I’m sure of it.’

He lifted his kind blue eyes slowly.

‘Can you be certain?’

She rubbed his shaking shoulder. ‘Absolutely certain, Barty. She was upset, but she was never suicidal.’

She paused to give him time to recover himself, glad that she’d come here. He’d obviously lived with the ambiguity of Monica’s death for decades; Vi felt sure that her gran wouldn’t have wanted him to feel responsible for what happened to her.

‘I’m sorry to have brought all this back for you.’

He patted her knee as she perched on the arm of his chair.

‘It never leaves me, child. I’ve been a blessed man, Florence and I had many happy years when Alison was a child, and Keris has been a godsend since her gran died.

I’ve had more than I deserved, but your grandmother will forever be my biggest regret.

The last thing she said to me was to rot in hell. ’

Vi rubbed his shoulder, hurting for him.

Her grandmother may have been captivating and charming and the life and soul, but her diary had also revealed her devil-may-care streak too, a deep seam of selfishness that Vi had tried to ignore because she wanted to adore the woman she so resembled.

And she still did, because people were flawed and complicated and made mistakes.

‘No one is without fault, Barty,’ she said softly.

‘People mess up all the time, do and say awful things, fall in love with people they shouldn’t fall in love with.

My grandmother was a grown woman, she was equally responsible for what happened between you, and for the choices she made afterwards too. ’

‘Don’t blame her, Violet,’ Barty said. ‘If you need to blame anyone, blame me.’

‘Did Florence ever know?’

Barty shook his head. ‘Blessedly not.’

Vi could only hope her Grandpa Henry had been granted the same mercy, but somehow she doubted it.

Violet checked the weather report when she woke up a little after five the following morning, relieved to see that the storm everyone was starting to talk about wasn’t due to blow in until the end of the weekend.

The forecast for Saturday was fine and dry; maybe Beau hadn’t been kidding about putting in his order for sunshine.

She was due at the pier by seven to meet the electrician who was going to rig up the fairy lights, but there was something she wanted to do first. Pulling her grandmother’s diary out, she steeled herself to read the final entry.