Page 42 of The Love Game

‘Come on,’ she said, linking her arm through Barty’s. ‘People will be wondering where we’ve got to.’

They walked slowly back towards the party, leaving Monica Spencer’s spirit free to turn cartwheels, laughing, her dark hair tumbling around her face.

At the same time as Violet and Barty were scattering Monica’s ashes into the sea, the final scenes of Cal and Ursula’s marriage were playing out on the promenade beside the pier gates.

‘What do you mean, over?’ Ursula said, her blue eyes flashing. ‘You don’t get to say when it’s over, Cal. I say when, I say how. I came back for you.’

Cal stared at her. ‘You left me a long time ago, Ursula. You left me here, and I had to find a way to make my life work without you in it.’

‘And a shit job you made of that,’ she said, her voice rising. ‘Carving a penny-living from making sex toys and screwing every woman in town? You’ve hardly been pining, have you?’

He didn’t want to argue the toss. He wasn’t making a penny-living.

He didn’t say as much though, because Ursula had been rubbing shoulders with movie-makers and millionaire businessmen for the last few years in LA, a fact she loved wheeling out to belittle his choice to stay in the small town they grew up in and run his own one-man business.

‘What did you expect me to do?’ he said, weary of her. ‘Put my life on ice?’

‘You love me,’ she said.

He looked at her, and although she looked undeniably stunning, her spray-on white dress split to her thigh was too much for Swallow Beach and her red lipstick too bright against her ever-lasting tan.

‘I loved you,’ he said. ‘I loved you on our wedding day, and I loved you for a long time afterwards. But I don’t love you any more.’

‘But I came back for you,’ she said again, looking almost confused, as if he should be grateful for the crumbs she’d thrown him.

‘Did you?’ he said, loosening his tie. ‘Because I don’t think you did.

I think you came back because your luck ran out over there, because you realised that you weren’t going to find the fame and fortune you thought would fall into your lap, because waitressing for the money guys wasn’t working out, and because you heard on your family grapevine that I might have finally found someone else. ’

She shook her head as he spoke. ‘You seriously think I’d come all the way back here because I was threatened by some blue-haired nobody?’

Cal shrugged. ‘I’m glad you came back,’ he said.

She flipped her eyes as if that was a no-brainer.

‘You’ve done a bad job of showing it,’ she said.

‘Two weeks in Portugal and you barely laid a finger on me. I get that you want to take it slow, but Jesus Christ Cal, this is stupid.’ She stepped close and tugged his tie, reeling him in.

‘Take me home, Cal. Take me home and screw me. Man the fuck up, I’m sick of waiting. ’

If she’d expected her speech to turn him on, she’d played it all wrong.

‘I’m glad you came back, because now I know for certain that I don’t love you any more,’ he said.

He didn’t enjoy saying it, but honesty was his only weapon.

‘Our marriage meant more to me than it did to you. Even when you weren’t here, I wore my wedding ring for years, because I was a married man.

And yes, after a while, I started to see other women; I’m a man, Ursula, not a monk.

But I didn’t offer them anything, because in the back of my head there was always you.

You, my wife, the woman I thought I still loved.

I’d sleep with other women, knowing you were somewhere else sleeping with other men, and I’d feel like a liar, an adulterous low-life cheat.

I don’t think you were troubled by those same worries, were you?

Because you always had the upper hand with us, you always knew I loved you that little bit more than you loved me. ’

She stared at him, and as he looked at her, unflinching, he watched realisation finally dawn in her perfectly made-up eyes; she didn’t have any hold over him any more. Taking a few steps backwards, she half laughed, an ugly, self-defensive sound.

‘You’ll die here in this town,’ she said. ‘You’ll live your days out here, watching the sea come in and out, making tat from leather, never being any more than you are today. How is that enough?’

He looked back at her steadily. ‘I don’t want what you want. I love this town, and I’m proud of what I do.’

‘I never thought of you as dull until now,’ she said, spiteful.

He shook his head. ‘And I never thought of you as shallow or unkind, but you’ve been both of those things and worse since you came back. I’ve officially outgrown you, Ursula.’

He dug his wedding ring out of his pocket and dropped it in the nearest bin, watching it disappear amongst the sticky ice-lolly wrappers and empty drink bottles, then turned away and walked back through the archway onto the pier, leaving Ursula behind him on dry land.

The awards were drawing to a close in time for the firework display at ten to kick off the dancing.

Violet felt euphoric even though she hadn’t touched a drop of champagne all evening, taking a glass from the tray when it was offered and discreetly tipping it into one of Linda’s potted plants when no one was looking.

She’d slipped away from the party for a breather, heading to one of the benches half way along the pier, kicking off her shoes and tucking her feet up under her dress to watch the fireworks.

The pier had made her proud tonight, it had been an evening of true celebration on many levels.

She sighed, resting her head on her hand, looking back towards the birdcage.

The fanfare of awards, the promise of new love for Lucy and Beau, a fond farewell for Monica.

‘Hey mermaid girl.’

She turned and found Cal sauntering towards her.

He’d dispensed with his dinner jacket at some point and loosened his tie and top button, and his shirt-cuffs were folded back.

Violet tried not to notice the way all of those things came together to create a devastatingly attractive man, one who looked at home in his own skin, a man rather than a boy, a man whose usually laughing eyes were serious tonight and who’d just taken a seat alongside her on the bench.

‘Hi,’ she said, wondering where Ursula was.

He laid his arm along the back of the bench, his fingertips close to her shoulder.

‘It’s gone well,’ he said, nodding towards the party a little way down the pier.

Night had fallen properly now, and Vi had charged Charlie with the task of switching on the fairy lights as soon as the fireworks were done as a signal to the band to kick off the dancing.

He was thrilled to be trusted with the job, and they’d gone over the simple switch ceremony a couple of times before Violet had retreated to the bench to enjoy the fireworks and the big switch-on.

She nodded. ‘It has.’

What was she supposed to say? Congratulations on your nomination? She didn’t know if he’d won the award he’d been up for; she’d deliberately avoided it in case she had to watch Ursula make a show of congratulating her man.

‘Did you win?’ she said.

He shook his head. ‘Beaten to the trophy by a guy who makes sex saddles, would you believe.’

Her mouth twitched at the irony. ‘Sex saddles?’

He shrugged. ‘It’s pretty niche.’

‘You don’t say.’

They fell silent again.

‘Shouldn’t you get back to your wife?’ She couldn’t keep the barbed hurt from her voice.

‘Violet,’ he said, low and warm. ‘I’m sorry for how I’ve been since Ursula came back.’

She refused to look at him. ‘These things happen,’ she said, shrugging as if it didn’t matter.

‘No they don’t,’ he said. ‘Wives don’t usually disappear for years on end and then turn up again at the most inappropriate time possible.’

‘And I don’t usually let men lure me into the sea for sex and then go running back to their wives half an hour later, either,’ Vi said, biting even when she knew she should stay aloof.

He touched her shoulder and she flinched, making him sigh. ‘I can see that’s how it must have looked, but that isn’t how it was.’

Violet decided that she wasn’t up to talking about it any more tonight. ‘You know Cal, I scattered my grandmother’s ashes tonight, right here off the pier.’

She finally turned to look at him when he didn’t answer.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, and she couldn’t tell if he was apologising about the impromptu funeral or for his own behaviour.

She nodded. ‘I’ve decided to leave Swallow Beach,’ she said. ‘It’s not my place after all.’

Cal moved along the bench and took her hand, warm, firm, too firm for her to quickly pull it away. ‘Please don’t go.’

‘I have to,’ she said. She wasn’t saying it to score points. The moment she’d realised she was expecting a baby she knew; staying here was the wrong thing to do. She needed a fresh start, free of ghosts of the past and the complicated relationships she had with the people here.

‘Violet, listen to me,’ he said. ‘I screwed up. I’ve spent years thinking I was in love with Ursula, that our marriage still meant something to me.

I’ve avoided any relationships that came anywhere close to love, because I thought I wasn’t capable because my heart was hers. But I didn’t count on you.’

He bumped his thumb across her knuckles as he spoke, soothing.

‘I didn’t think anyone could make me feel the way you do,’ he said.

‘Like a man again. Being around you is like lying on a beach in summertime, Violet. You make me warm all the way down to my bones, and you make me laugh, and that night in the sea … God, you’re so fucking beautiful Vi.

I can’t get the image out of my head of you, of us. ’

Violet closed her eyes, because she knew what had happened as a result of that night, that they’d created a child together.

Then she opened them again because there was a sudden bang, and a whoosh, and then a rainbow sky full of fireworks illuminated the whole pier, making everyone whoop and clap and stop what they were doing to watch the show.

Cal moved closer, his arm warm around Violet’s shoulders, and she allowed herself that one final moment with him, because this would be her last night here as a resident of Swallow Beach. Come tomorrow, she was going to pack up the Traveller and hit the road.

As the fireworks reached their spectacular finale, she turned her head to look at him, drinking him in. She didn’t stop him when he brushed the back of his hand along her jaw, or when he lowered his head and kissed her slowly, drenched in emotion.

‘Please don’t go,’ he whispered.

Violet moved into the warmth and heat of his arms. ‘I have to, Cal.’

‘No one has to do anything,’ he whispered, cradling her.

‘ I have to,’ she said. She didn’t believe that the pier was cursed, but she did believe that her grandmother had paid the ultimate price for loving a married man, and that it was her duty to learn from Monica’s mistakes.

She wouldn’t stay and let the place and its people eat her alive too.

She couldn’t, because she had more than just herself to consider.

‘Why?’ he said, his dark, agonised eyes searching hers.

‘Because I’m pregnant,’ she whispered, and he stared at her, utterly still as the enormity of her words sank in.

‘I …’ he started, but his words were drowned out by the sudden shock of the hundreds of light bulbs strung along the pier all firing at the same time. But they didn’t blaze with light.

They exploded into fireballs.