A Summer Scandal: The perfect summer read by the author of One Day in December. Kat French

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ even know if it’s still standing, Violet. I haven’t been back there in almost forty years. It’s probably crumbled into the sea by now.’

      Even though Violet had only known of the pier at Swallow Beach for a few hours, the idea of it no longer being there filled her with dismay. She wanted to see it, to walk beneath it and find those rock pools, to hopefully walk the length of it and try to connect with the woman who’d fallen in love with it all those years ago.

      ‘That apartment.’ Della shook her head, talking softly to herself more than Violet. ‘I can’t believe he never sold it.’

      ‘He didn’t need the money to come home?’

      Della shook her head. ‘Dad’s business paid well back then. Besides, the house next door belonged to his mum, my gran. We moved in with her when we came back after …’ She paused, struggling to say it out loud even after so many years. ‘And then we stayed here after we lost my gran a few years later.’

      There wasn’t a picture of the Swallow Beach seafront mansion block in the album, but from the way her mum described it Violet was desperate to go and lay eyes on it for herself. Three storeys, graceful picture bay windows, sweeping staircases. It was an impossibly romantic story, and it sliced straight through Violet’s soft heart and ignited her thirst for adventure. Perhaps that was a gift from her grandmother too; adventure certainly wasn’t a trait displayed by either of her parents. Her mum didn’t go anywhere without making at least three lists first, and her father had a special book in his study drawer for plans. Not to mention the fact that they’d shared the surname Spencer even before they married; it was a standing joke that her mum had chosen her dad mostly because she wouldn’t need to change her maiden name on her passport.

      Violet pulled the jumble of keys slowly towards her. ‘Why have I never heard about any of this before, Mum?’

      ‘Your grandpa didn’t like to talk about it,’ Della said. The stiff set of her jaw suggested that Henry wasn’t the only one who preferred to leave Monica’s memory in the past.

      ‘But why?’ Violet knew she was pushing too hard, but it just didn’t make any sense. Her grandparents had clearly been very in love, and obviously Monica’s death must have profoundly affected both Henry and his young daughter, but it was as if they’d tried to wipe her from their memories rather than celebrate her existence.

      Della sighed. ‘I was eight years old, Vi. My mum left the apartment after dinner and never came home.’ A tear ran down her cheek. ‘It was a huge scandal at the time, things like that don’t happen in Swallow Beach.’

      Violet stared at her mum. ‘What happened to her?’

      Della raised her eyes to the kitchen ceiling, concentrating on the light as if she needed something to fixate on.

      ‘She was found on the beach by an early morning walker, someone out looking for treasure washed up on the dawn tide.’ Her face was drawn, remembering. ‘They didn’t expect to find a body washed up amongst the shells and loose change.’

      Violet drew in a sharp breath. ‘Do you think she …?’

      It was a few seconds before Della met her daughter’s anxious gaze. ‘I don’t know, love. All I know is that we left Swallow Beach within days and Dad never spoke her name again.’

      Reaching across the table, Violet squeezed her mum’s hand. She’d never seen her look so troubled; the morning’s revelations had taken a heavy toll. Gathering the letters and keys together, she tucked them back inside the envelope and closed the album.

      ‘Let’s not think about it any more right now,’ she said, setting them aside. They were all so desperately sad about Henry’s death; this extra layer of murk and mystery suddenly felt like too much to handle right at that moment. ‘It’s waited all of these years. A few more days won’t hurt.’

      But even as Violet said it, her fingers lingered on the worn leather edge of the photograph album, desperate to know more about Monica Spencer, the grandmother she was the living image of.

       CHAPTER TWO

      ‘Will you marry me?’

      Violet stared at Simon, on his knees in the local Indian restaurant that evening. To say his proposal had come as a surprise was an understatement; she couldn’t have imagined that anything could top the shock of that morning’s revelations. She hadn’t even had time to fill Simon in on all of that yet; her letter from her grandpa lay in her handbag at her feet. She’d planned to show him over dinner, but she’d barely had time to order a glass of wine in the Taj Star before Simon pulled a diamond solitaire from his jacket pocket and dropped down on bended knee.

      It came as something of a shock; they’d been together for over a year now but marriage was something they’d never even spoken about, and in truth not something that she’d contemplated. She’d just turned twenty-five; too young in her own head for a ring on her finger or a new surname to wrap her head around or a husband to sleep with each night.

      It wasn’t that Simon wasn’t husband material; he was perfectly nice and ticked most, if not all, of the boyfriend boxes. Dependable? Tick. Kind? Tick. Humorous? Almost a tick; it wasn’t that Simon didn’t have sense of humour, it was more that he was so logical that irreverent humour either went over his head or left him cold. He’d opt for Panorama over The Inbetweeners, a fact that fun-loving Violet had found out early on; subsequently she’d chosen not to spend many cosy nights in front of the box with him. If they went to the movies it was either his choice or hers; the only movie they’d ever been equally enthusiastic about seeing was 300, albeit for wildly different reasons. Simon was a history buff, and Vi had a thing for Gerard Butler. They had other things in common, of course, and her parents loved what Simon represented in Vi’s life: a safe pair of hands. He was an all-round decent man, unlikely to bring heartache to Vi’s door, not the type to eye up the girls at work or run up secret bills playing late-night poker. Violet sometimes thought he was more like her parents than she was.

      ‘Violet?’

      Simon’s voice wavered a little, probably because he had a dodgy knee and the people at the next table were gagging to know what she was going to say. She smiled, stretched her mouth wide and laughed lightly. Her shoulders lifted around her ears, stressed, because she knew that really there was only one possible word she should say next and she wasn’t at all sure she wanted to say it. But she didn’t want to say no either, at least not in front of other people. Even the waiters had paused, tikka masalas balanced on their forearms as they watched proceedings.

      Because of all of those things, she reached down and plucked the pretty ring from its red velvet box, looking at it as if overcome.

      ‘Simon, I …’ She paused, as did every single person in the Taj Star. Simon looked pained; there was no other word for the expression on his face. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, pushing a smile out for his benefit. ‘Yes, Simon. I’ll marry you.’

      It was only the beginning of the actual sentence in her head. What she really wanted to say was, ‘I don’t know, Simon. I’ll marry you one day, probably, maybe, in about ten years’ time – if we’re still a couple, which I’m not at all sure we will be because I don’t know if you’re the love of my life or not.’

      She didn’t say all of that though; it wasn’t as much of a crowd-pleaser really, СКАЧАТЬ