Page 40 of The Love Game

I don’t believe it. She’s pregnant, and suddenly I’m surplus to requirements.

After all that has happened between us, she’s won anyway.

I haven’t told him about our baby, I wish to God that there wasn’t one.

I’ve read that gin and a hot bath can help make it go away.

I’ve bought the gin even though I never touch the stuff, but I don’t know if I can bring myself to go through with it.

How has it come to this? She gets to celebrate her child, and I have to wish mine dead on my birthday?

I’m going to go to the pier and drink the bottle, hopefully I’ll be able to deal with it without Henry ever needing to find out what I’ve done. It kills me to think of the anguish it would cause him.

As final entries, it made horrific reading. Violet closed the diary and placed it back in the drawer where she’d found it, closing it and lying back against her pillows. What an awful end to such a charismatic, talented woman, wonderful in so many ways despite her faults.

She was hugely relieved not to find any mention of suicidal thoughts, and given all that Vi had read and learned about her grandmother over the last few months, it made far more sense to think that she’d fallen to her death accidentally because of the amount of gin she’d consumed in a misguided attempt to lose the baby.

Poor, poor Monica. What a dreadful state of affairs all round.

Getting out of bed with a heavy heart, Violet headed for the shower.

It was the day of the awards ceremony, the day the pier would be lit up with fairy lights and fireworks.

It was somehow fitting that it fell on the fortieth anniversary of Monica’s death.

She’d more than paid her penance – Violet intended to let her gran go in the blaze of colour and glory she deserved.

‘It looks amazing,’ Keris said, standing shoulder to shoulder with Violet part way through the afternoon.

True to their word, the event organisers had turned up and waved their magic wand, creating a raised stage area and podium in front of the birdcage and laying out a dozen white-clothed round tables along the pier.

Crystal and silver tableware glittered in the sunshine, including tall candelabras with fresh flowers wound around their arms.

‘Like a wedding,’ Vi said.

‘There’s a business idea for you,’ Keris said.

‘Maybe,’ Vi said, although after reading her grandmother’s diary the idea of people partying on the pier filled her with fresh dread.

Alcohol and the sea were a lethal combination; she’d be relieved if tonight went without incident.

Was it wrong to assume that the crowd were likely to be the kind of people who liked a party because of the nature of their business?

It probably was; Cal and Beau were pretty regular people.

Or actually, no they weren’t. Vi had endless appreciation for Beau after watching how he’d stepped up to the mark this week and appointed himself as Lucy and Charlie’s protector, and Cal …

well, he wasn’t like anyone else in the world.

Lucy walked the length of the pier, firing off shots of the pier from every angle.

‘Spectacular,’ she grinned, throwing Violet a wink as she passed on her way back inside.

‘She seems better at least,’ Keris smiled.

‘The Beau effect,’ Vi said.

Keris nodded, slanting her eyes toward Violet. ‘And you? Is anyone having a romantic effect on you lately?’

Vi looked somewhere over Keris’s shoulder. ‘I don’t have time for romance.’

‘Only a little bird in a turban and silk glasses might have mentioned something about someone getting jiggy with someone else in the sea, mentioning no names, and I wondered if you might know anything about it.’

A telltale flush shot up Vi’s neck. ‘What the hell happened to client confidentiality?’ she hissed. ‘If I’d paid any money I’d have her bloody struck off.’

‘Oh my God!’ Keris said, her eyes dancing. ‘I thought she was pissed!’

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Violet said, shutting her down. ‘It’s irrelevant.’

‘Because?’

‘Because his wife is back in town,’ Violet said, flat.

Keris huffed. ‘For how long? She’s been here a month, she’ll be off again soon enough.’

Violet’s eyes sparked. ‘What are you saying? That I’m supposed to wait around until he hasn’t got anyone better? I’m not that woman, Keris, not then and not now.’ Hot tears filled her eyes.

‘Hey,’ Keris said, gentle as she laid her hand on Violet’s shoulder. ‘I know that, okay? I didn’t mean to upset you.’

Vi shook her head, annoyed with herself rather than Keris. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me,’ she said. ‘I need to get a grip.’

‘You know what you need?’ Keris said, giving her shoulders a squeeze.

‘A slap?’

‘I can do that if you like,’ Keris said. ‘But I was thinking more along the lines of a glass of fizzy from the eight million bottles in the birdcage. They won’t miss one, surely.’

‘Maybe later, okay?’ Vi said, leaning against Keris. ‘If I start now I might not stop, and how’s that going to look?’

Keris glanced up towards the far end of the pier. ‘Oh shit,’ she said. ‘What’s she doing here?’

Vi wiped her eyes, not wanting to give Gladys or Ursula the satisfaction of seeing her crying. But it wasn’t either of those people. It was Hortensia Deville.

Hortensia saw Vi coming towards her along the pier and watched as she sat down on one of the love seats set into the iron sidings, hooking her brightly decorated walking stick over the rail.

‘Miss Deville,’ Vi said, painting on a smile. ‘I’ve been hoping to see you again.’

‘Have you?’ the older woman said, eyeing her beadily. ‘Why? I told you everything I knew when you called by.’

Vi frowned and sat down beside her on the bench, choosing not to mention the fact that Hortensia had been roaring drunk when they last met and hadn’t told her anything remotely meaningful.

‘I wanted to ask you what you meant when you spoke to me on our open day.’

Hortensia pursed her lips into a thin line. ‘I expect they’ve all dismissed me as a rambling old woman, told you to take everything I say with a pinch of salt.’

Violet didn’t answer, because it would be impolite to agree.

‘The jungle drums will have told you that I sold the pier to your grandparents,’ she said.

Vi nodded, twisting her fingers in her lap.

‘And no doubt they told you why, too.’

‘Actually no,’ Vi said. ‘I don’t have any idea why you soldit.’

Hortensia stared down the length of the pier towards the birdcage. ‘Enchanting, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. I love it,’ Violet said, earning herself a sharp look.

‘Henry was a fool not to sell it on, or give it back to the town when it happened. I told him, even then.’

‘What, Hortensia? What did you tell him?’ Vi held her breath.

‘There’s bad luck built into the bones of this place,’ she said. ‘It’s a poisoned chalice.’

Vi almost laughed. ‘You can’t really believe that, surely?’

Hortensia didn’t laugh with her. ‘Your gran wasn’t the first to die here, you know.’

‘I didn’t know that, no,’ Vi said. ‘But it’s a pier, after all. Surely there’s an inherent danger to places like this? It doesn’t have to mean anything as fanciful as a curse.’

The older woman raised her eyes to the skies.

‘Fanciful. Far-fetched. Fairy tales. I’ve heard those phrases all of my life.

’ She sighed, resigned. ‘No one listens, even when the facts are staring them in the face. Eight people have died on this pier over the last century. Seven others, beside your gran.’

Okay, so that number was higher than Violet had expected to hear. ‘Eight people have drowned here?’

Hortensia shook her head. ‘Not all of them. My husband didn’t drown; he died fifty-six years ago defending me from flying debris in a storm. Another had a heart failure. A child choked.’

They were horribly sad stories, but in the bright wash of afternoon sunlight, perhaps not all that sinister.

Violet wasn’t sure what to say; she didn’t want to give Hortensia the brush-off like everyone else in the town, but she wasn’t going to dwell on the idea of the pier being cursed.

She looked back towards the birdcage, a hive of activity as the crew of catering staff buzzed around.

‘I should probably get back to work.’ She gave Hortensia an apologetic smile. ‘Busy one.’

Hortensia stood carefully and Vi handed her her stick.

‘Don’t work yourself too hard,’ Hortensia said, walking slowly towards the mainland. ‘Remember what Monica said about checking your diary. You need to remember to rest in your condition.’

Violet watched her go, thinking about what she’d said, and then she stopped breathing.

Literally stopped breathing for a second, holding onto the railings out of necessity rather than choice.

Check your diary. Her mind was scrambling through dates, counting backwards, forwards, losing track because she was in a hot panic.

How had she missed this? What kind of idiot was she?

She knew she was needed on site to oversee things in the birdcage, but all the same she bolted for the gates, and she didn’t stop until she reached the top floor of the Lido and dragged her keys out of the back pocket of her jeans.

She needed five quiet minutes alone to think.

Five minutes turned into half an hour. She was late.

Her period hadn’t bothered turning up, and she hadn’t bothered to notice because she’d been in such a state over Cal, Ursula, Gladys, Lucy, and everything else.

She’d been worrying about arranging a funeral forty years too late, and not worrying at all about the possibility of a new life unfurling inside her.

How had this happened? She’d always been so careful with Simon, but she’d been here just a few scant months and her life had spiralled out of any recognition.

Except she did recognise it. Her life was following a track, one laid out in looping script in the diary in her bedside table.

Vi didn’t need to take a pregnancy test to confirm things; the minute Hortensia had suggested it, she’d realised it was true, as if her mind had been holding back on her until it thought she could handle it. Could she?

Vi held her head in her hands. Oh God. She was pregnant with Cal’s baby.

Cal, someone else’s husband. And then, sitting there in the silence, Vi felt something she’d never felt before.

Laying her hands over her tummy, she felt protective of the tiny, fragile bloom of life in there.

She felt the first stirrings of motherhood.

At half past five, Vi stood in her bedroom staring at herself in the full-length mirror.

The dress code for the awards ceremony was ‘red carpet ready’, and even though she wasn’t attending the ceremony as a guest, she’d still made an effort to brush up.

She wasn’t someone who’d ever really achieve much of a suntan, but all the same the sun had given her the lightest of kisses during her summer in Swallow Beach, making her appear far more rested and glowy than she felt.

Her dress was one she’d found in her grandmother’s wardrobe.

She’d barely touched Monica’s things in the drawers and wardrobes since she’d taken over the apartment, but the midnight-blue fifties ankle-sweeping gown was perfect for the awards ceremony and too lovely to languish unloved in the back of a cupboard.

Studying herself from the front and then the side, she stepped into the only pair of heels she owned.

She was too edgy to ever look like a fairytale princess, but she’d managed to wrestle her blue-tipped hair into art deco waves and pinned it back on one side with the gemstone hair comb from her grandmother’s bedside drawer.

Everyone would be there tonight. She hadn’t enquired whether Cal was bringing Ursula as his plus one, but she presumed as much.

Even Barty was coming; he’d invited himself to help out, or hang out, in the birdcage with Keris because he hated the idea of missing out on a shindig.

She’d left him with a hug yesterday; no sense in adding to his guilt and it wasn’t actually any of her business what he and her gran had chosen to do forty years previously.

She’d laid her hands over her tummy countless times since her realisation earlier.

She didn’t know what was going to happen, it was all too new, but she already knew what wasn’t going to happen.

She wasn’t going to do everything in her power to make the situation go away on its own, and she wasn’t going to lie or be pushed around and diminished or frightened into drastic measures.

After all, she wasn’t just Monica’s granddaughter.

She might have featured her grandmother in looks, and she loved that she’d inherited so many of her artistic traits and her spirit of adventure, but Violet was a different woman, and this was a different age.

Their paths might have been eerily aligned up to now, but Vi was determined that this was the point at which they chose different roads.

Heading into the living room, she picked up the black canister containing her gran’s ashes, gave herself a good-luck nod in the mirror, then picked up her purse and set out for the pier.