Page 62 of A Summer Scandal

‘You’re so like her, it’s uncanny.’

Vi placed the shepherd’s pie down in the middle of the table. ‘Will you tell me about her?’ she asked, ladling food onto the plates. When Barty’s face fell, she added, ‘Please, I don’t have anyone else to ask.’

She sat down and added roasted veg to their plates, picking up her cutlery.

‘She was an enigma,’ Barty said, looking at the photographs again. ‘Full of energy and movement, like a Picasso brought to life.’

Vi considered his words, startled by the description. ‘That’s a lovely thing to say,’ she said.

Barty lowered his gaze to his food as he loaded his fork. ‘Your grandfather was chalk to her cheese. Quiet, stoic.’ He ate slowly, thinking. ‘What she needed probably, an anchor to stop her from floating away.’

‘Were they very in love, do you think?’ Vi said, desperate to hear a good account of her grandmother.

‘Oh, I’m sure they must have been,’ Barty said, drinking his wine. ‘They had your mother, after all.’

Vi nodded. ‘She won’t come back here,’ she said. ‘My mum, I mean. She doesn’t want anything to do with this place.’

Barty frowned. ‘She was just a child when it happened,’ he said. ‘Too young to lose a mother.’

‘Do you know what happened to her?’ Vi said. She was finding Monica’s diary more and more stressful to read, because in the back of her mind she was aware that every entry drew her nearer towards the fateful night of Monica’s death.

Barty didn’t reply, just laid his cutlery down and swallowed more wine.

‘I mean, I know she fell from the pier and died on her birthday, but I don’t know any more than that. How it happened, or why.’

For the first time since she’d known him, Barty looked his age.

‘It’s not my place,’ he said, his hand shaking slightly.

‘Please Barty. There’s no one else I can ask,’ Vi said. ‘I found her diary,’ she added, almost a whisper. ‘I think she might have been having an affair.’

She reached for her wine, feeling horribly disloyal talking about Monica like that, especially in her own living room.

‘Child, don’t ask me any more,’ Barty said. ‘She isn’t here to speak for herself. Some things are best left in the past.’

Violet nodded, almost relieved that Barty was old-school enough to preserve her grandmother’s privacy. She craved details of Monica because she felt such a deep affinity with her on so many levels, but in another way she felt as if she was poking a stick in a hornets’ nest. She was damn lucky to have inherited this place and the pier, she should just count her blessings and either settle down here or sell up and move on. But still something needled away at her, even if she couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was.

‘Am I like her?’

She wanted him to say yes, and she wanted him to say no. There seemed an inevitable affinity between Monica and Violet across the decades, and sometimes in the middle of the night she was scared by the knowledge that Monica hadn’t survived Swallow Beach.

‘In some ways, yes. In features, of course. And you have her charisma too.’

Vi half laughed. ‘No one has ever called me charismatic in my whole life, Barty.’

He shrugged. ‘Charisma isn’t always about being the one who shouts the loudest or looks the slickest, you know,’ he said. ‘She had a presence, like a principal ballet dancer.’

Barty certainly painted a picture of an interesting woman.

‘I wish I’d known her.’

‘I’m sure she would have adored you,’ he said. ‘Don’t judge her harshly for her choices, Violet. Your grandpa was a fine man, but if I recall correctly, a rather absent one for much of the time.’

Vi nodded, because his words echoed Monica’s diary. ‘Oh, I know,’ she said. ‘I’m not, really I’m not. It’s great to hear your memories of her though, because she feels like such a big presence in my life now, which is weird when I didn’t even know anything beyond her name before I came here.’

‘You were brave to come here,’ he said. ‘It’s what she would have done too.’

Vi smiled softly. ‘Everyone at home thought I was crazy. Still do.’

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