Page 43 of The Love Game

Everyone panicked. Flames licked hot and fast down both sides of Swallow Beach Pier, confusion and screams, people in red-carpet dresses and dinner suits shouting and scrambling towards dry land.

Cal grabbed Violet, pulling her up onto her feet.

‘Go!’ he shouted, almost shoving her in the direction of the surge towards the gates. ‘Get to safety, I’ll make sure everyone gets out of the birdcage and be right behind you.’

‘No,’ she shouted, her heart banging, tears streaking her cheeks. ‘I’m not going anywhere until I know everyone else is safe! This is my pier, my responsibility!’

He shook his head, his hands on her shoulders. ‘Fucking go, Violet,’ he said roughly. ‘I swear, if anything happens to you, I’ll never forgive myself.’

All around them people shoved and streamed, calling out the names of those they were desperate to find.

‘Violet, Cal, thank God!’ Keris appeared beside them, hand in hand with Barty, barefoot and her dress streaked with black soot. ‘We need to get off here right now,’ she said, fast and urgent, grabbing Violet by the hand. ‘Come on.’

‘Take her with you,’ Cal said. ‘Don’t let her go, Keris.’ He looked at Violet one last time, and then threw himself against the direction of the crowd to check the birdcage.

‘It was the lights,’ Barty shouted. ‘Electrical fault.’

Somewhere behind them, someone screamed above the noise, high-pitched and terrified.

‘Charlie! Charlie!’

Vi knew it was Lucy desperately searching for her son, and shook Keris off, shouting, ‘Get Barty off here, Keris!’ before she turned and fled.

‘Lucy! Lucy!’ she shouted, staring wildly around the orange-illuminated faces moving all around her, their expressions masks of alarm and panic.

A wild-eyed man in a dinner suit scrambled over the railings, ripping his jacket, taking his chances by jumping into the sea.

Another followed his lead, filling Violet’s head with the haunting thought of her gran tumbling into the cold water below and washing up on the morning tide.

This was unbearable. She didn’t stand a chance of finding Lucy, so ducked her head down, covering her mouth as she ran for it towards the birdcage. Maybe she could find Charlie herself.

At the other end of the pier, people were reaching the gates and finding to their horror that they had been closed and padlocked.

They were trapped; rats on a sinking ship, and a mad desperate struggle began of people clawing and shouting to get the attention of passersby.

Keris screamed at the top of her voice, aware that Barty was probably the eldest person on the pier that evening and the most likely to suffer from smoke inhalation.

A man appeared from the darkness on the other side, standing still, staring at her.

‘Get help!’ she yelled. ‘Call the fire brigade, call the police, there’s more than a hundred people trapped on here!’

He didn’t move, and then he smiled, a rictus, horror-movie grin as he held something up in front of his face. A key.

As Vi reached the birdcage, Beau came flying out the door with someone over his shoulder.

‘I’ve got him!’ he was shouting. ‘Luce, I’ve got him!’

Violet sagged with relief, catching sight of Lucy at last, a streak of red silk as she hurled herself at Beau and Charlie sobbing, ‘Thank God, thank God, thank God.’

Vi watched them start to run, hand in hand like a scene from a disaster movie, Charlie still flung over Beau’s shoulder. ‘Thank God,’ she sobbed, echoing Lucy’s words.

Everything on the pier was hot to touch: the railings, the boards underfoot, the metal of the birdcage. The flames had well and truly caught; Violet needed to get off to prioritise her baby. But she couldn’t leave; not without Cal.

‘Everyone’s out of there,’ she heard someone say as they hurtled out of the door. It wasn’t Cal.

‘Everyone?’ she said, grabbing the man’s jacket. ‘Are you sure?’

‘All staff accounted for,’ he said, already moving away. ‘Get clear love, now.’

‘But Cal …’ she said, but the guy had already moved out of earshot. She stared one way, towards the mainland, but she couldn’t see through the smoke and orange glow, and she looked back towards the birdcage, agonised in case Cal was still in there.

She started to cough; her chest hurt. She had to leave.

She needed to go. But when she tried to move, she stumbled, twisting her ankle as she fell down hard onto her knees, coughing.

She needed to leave, but she couldn’t stand up.

Hot, frightened tears rained down her cheeks as pain fired through her leg.

She was going to die here. The pier was going to take her, just as it had taken Monica. Hortensia had been right.

‘I don’t want to die,’ she sobbed. ‘Please don’t let me die here.’

And then someone was behind her, scooping her up, cradling her like a child in his arms, telling her that he wouldn’t let her die, and to hold on.

‘Cal.’

‘Ssh, don’t try to speak,’ he said. ‘Just hold on tight Vi, because I’m going to run and I won’t let you fall, okay? This place is going to go down, and we’re not going down with it.’

She buried her face in his neck, breathing in only the scent of his skin, trusting him implicitly, thanking her lucky stars for him as he ran, the pier creaking and rocking underneath them.

‘What the …?’ he said, and she looked up and saw the crowd up ahead, people clambering over the locked gates, crushing forwards as sirens wailed in the distance.

‘The gates,’ he said. ‘Why are they locked, Vi? Where’s the key?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, the words hardly leaving her throat.

Cal pushed through to the front, still carrying Violet, and when he reached the front he could see people dragging each other over the gates, ripped clothes, screaming fear.

‘Cal!’ Beau yelled, pushing through to them. ‘Some fucker’s locked the gates.’

Lucy was beside him, and suddenly she started to scream and punch the gates, yelling.

‘Ian! You bastard, you did this!’

Vi looked on, confused, trying to work out why Lucy was shouting at the electrician who’d rigged up the lights for her that morning, and why he was just standing there staring at them instead of trying to help.

‘Is that him?’ Beau shouted, at the same time as a huge scream went up behind them – the central section of the pier lurched downwards into the sea, leaving everyone clinging to the land end and the birdcage an island out at sea, cut off.

Help was coming, but it wouldn’t be soon enough.

And then help came from the most unexpected of places: Gladys Dearheart came bombing along the promenade and launched herself onto the back of the man holding the key, her arms locked tight around his neck, clinging on as he went down under her weight, shocked.

She whacked him hard over the head with her ever-present briefcase and grabbed the key from his hand, running at the gates and finding Cal on the other side with Violet in his arms.

There wasn’t time for words. Gladys twisted the lock around, fumbling, and Cal reached through the gates and helped her, both of them crying as the lock sprung open.

‘Stand back everyone,’ Beau yelled, head and shoulders above most people. ‘Gates are open, don’t stampede or people are gonna die here!’

Vi’s last memory before she passed out was of Beau standing with his foot pressed into Ian’s back to hold him down, Charlie over his shoulder and Lucy at his side, and of Cal sitting down on the sea wall holding her safely in his lap, his other arm around his mum beside them.