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

She looked up again and found Cal watching her. ‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘I’d love that.’

Darkness had already fallen when they stepped out of the pub, and the nip in the air had Violet buttoning her coat as they crossed the deserted seafront road.

‘Is it always this quiet?’

Cal shook his head. ‘It’s Sunday, and it’s cold. Anyone sensible is doing something warm.’

Was that flirty? Did he mean sitting around the table with their family eating a Sunday roast, or did he mean in bed with a lover? It was hard to tell; Calvin Dearheart seemed to have a permanent glint in his eye. Vi didn’t pull away when he linked his arm through hers and steered her along the sea wall towards the looming pier gates.

‘Have you ever been beyond them?’ she asked.

He slanted his eyes towards her. ‘Not as an adult.’

She watched him, waiting for more, until he laughed and looked away.

‘What kind of kid would grow up in a seaside town and not explore the deserted pier?’

Ah. She nodded, wrapping her arms around herself as they reached the gates. It looked different at night; more ominous and ramshackle, like something from a Stephen King book. It wasn’t hard to imagine Cal as a boy, scrambling over the gates with his mates when they thought no one was looking.

‘What’s it like in there?’

Her eyes moved beyond the gates towards the barely visible glass pavilion perched out over the sea.

He followed her gaze. ‘I can barely remember. More sound than it looks, I think. Must be to have survived all these years; a lot of the old piers have fallen into the sea by now unless they’ve been looked after.’

They stood side by side in the quiet evening, their breath misting in front of them. Violet could taste the sea-salt on her lips, and looking down the length of the wooden pier towards the pavilion, she could easily imagine the sound of footsteps running the length of it, or dancing along it, as she fancied when she thought of Monica.

‘I’ve got the key to this,’ she said, touching her fingers against the cold padlock.

‘I don’t think you should use it tonight,’ Cal said. ‘Wait until you know if it’s safe.’

She didn’t answer, just curled her fingers around the gate, much as she had that morning. The truth was she knew it was safe. Her legacy from her grandpa hadn’t been neglected; he’d paid for a structural survey every three years. The pier had been given a clean bill of health just the summer before.

It was hard to fathom Henry’s thinking; on the one hand he’d left Swallow Beach and never returned, and on the other hand he’d ensured that both the pier and the Lido apartment were maintained. It was almost as if he’d mothballed them for something. For Monica? Not for her mum, surely – Della’s reticence about all things Swallow Beach was more than clear. The simple truth seemed to be that he’d kept them because they were part of the woman he loved, and now he’d passed them on to Violet because he’d felt, rightly or wrongly, that she’d know what to do with them.

‘Will you come with me tomorrow?’ she said. ‘At dawn?’

‘Are you serious?’

She nodded. ‘I’d like to open it up and take a look without anyone knowing I’m here, and that seems like the best time to do it.’

‘Will you come without me if I say no?’

‘Yes.’

He shook his head and pushed his dark hair back from his face when the wind whipped it forwards.

‘How did I know you were going to say that?’ Placing his hand on the base of her back, he steered her away from the gates and back towards the Lido. ‘Come on, let’s get inside, it’s too cold out here. I’ll come back with you in the morning.’

‘Morning catwoman,’ Cal said when he met her on the landing early the following morning as agreed. It was a completely nonsensical nickname derived from cat burglar, but Violet didn’t pull him up on it because, for one, it was harmless, and for two, it was kind of cool. Catwoman wore skintight leather and exuded sex appeal; no one had ever called her anything remotely sexy before. The closest Simon had come to giving her a nickname had been the couple of occasions he’d referred to her as darling, which didn’t really count. Unless Cal meant catwoman in the sense of a spinster who turned to keeping cats out of desperation, which was something else entirely. Caffeine; her brain needed more caffeine before she could distinguish between compliment or insult.

‘How did you sleep?’

‘Not the best,’ she said. ‘First night in a strange bed and all that.’

It was a massive understatement. She’d barely slept at all, too churned up by the events of the previous day. Less than twenty-four hours previously she’d been in the relative safety of her parents’ familiar kitchen, and now she was here in a strange town, in an even stranger apartment.

It wasn’t just that, either. Every time she’d fallen into fitful bursts of sleep, surrounded by mermaids, she’d found herself thinking about her new neighbour with his easy smile and laughing dark eyes. God only knew why; the one thing she definitely didn’t need was any distractions of the romantic kind. And now here he was again, with his low-slung jeans and disreputable air, and she couldn’t help noticing how his old leather biker jacket fitted him like a glove or the way his dark hair tumbled forward over his brow. He looked like trouble and laughed like a man who didn’t care what people thought. Vi couldn’t decide if she found that attractive or scary – a bit of both, probably.

‘Got your keys?’

She nodded and patted her pocket. Last night she’d shown Cal the paperwork from her grandpa’s engineers confirming the stability of the pier, and it had been enough to convince him they were safe to venture out there that morning as long as the weather was on their side. The huge landing window facing out towards the sea confirmed it; it was one of those rose-bright mornings, dewy, still and clear.

‘All set,’ she said. She didn’t wait for Cal to lead the way. This was her destiny and she was going towards it herself, best foot forward.

Cal watched his interesting new neighbour strike off down the stairs, her blue-tipped hair swinging beneath her chunky red bobble hat. She wasn’t very tall, yet she had a presence, an undeniable spark that crackled from her English-rose skin and shone from her unusual grey-green eyes. They were the exact same shade as the sea out in the bay; maybe she was a mermaid washed ashore to tempt him. If she was, it had worked. He was beguiled by the soft curve of her hips as she dashed down the stairs, taking care to step lightly due to the early hour.

‘Come on,’ she called up, a loud whisper that had his feet moving to catch her up. He’d cancelled a date last night to keep Violet company, and today he was going against his better judgement about the pier. But then it was no good being the black sheep of Swallow Beach if you didn’t do stuff that marked you out as rebellious, was it? The thought of how much Violet’s presence was going to rile his mother was enough to put a skip in his step as he followed her down towards the street.

She was waiting for him at the bottom of the Lido steps, rubbing her hands together in red-and-blue-striped fingerless gloves.

‘Nervous?’ he said, unnecessarily because it was written all over her face.

‘No,’ she said, and then laughed and rolled her eyes. ‘Yes.’

‘Standard,’ he said. ‘Come on. Let’s do it.’

In truth, he was undeniably fascinated to go onto the pier without climbing the gates like he used to as a kid, and he’d never been inside the pavilion. Aside from the engineers, no one had been inside it for the last forty years.

It took them all of three minutes to reach the gates, and he watched as Violet stood jiggling on the spot, keys in hand. Come on, he thought. Be brave, mermaid girl. He smiled when she turned her uncertain eyes towards him. Had they really only met yesterday? She felt familiar, as if she’d been here far longer.

‘Do it,’ he whispered. He didn’t offer to do it for her; it was one of those things she needed to do for herself. She nodded, turning away, and then stepped forward and slid the key into the clunky black padlock with shaky fingers.

Violet found the key fitted easily inside the lock. She’d worried it might be rusted or too stiff, but clearly her grandpa’s upkeep of all things Swallow Beach extended to ensuring that the hefty lock keeping the public at bay was fit for purpose. The gates themselves had rusted and creaked though, screeching like angry seagulls as Violet twisted the padlock off and unwound the chains that bound them together.

‘Sshh,’ she whispered, worried that the noise would attract unwanted attention.

‘It’s fine,’ Cal murmured. ‘No one will hear it.’

She pushed the gates open just wide enough to allow them to step through.

‘Are you worried it’s going to crumble into the sea with us at the wrong end?’ she said, turning to look at Cal again.

‘Are you looking for a reason not to do it?’ he countered, half smiling.

Was she? Kind of. Not because she was scared of it crumbling; she trusted her Grandpa Henry better than that. Her reticence was much less tangible than that, almost a muscle memory of being here before, a whisper of yesterday, a ghost from the past.

She was being fanciful; aware that her gran’s blood ran in her veins, that she looked so very much like her, that her spirit seemed to have lain dormant in her daughter and skipped down a generation. In actual fact, Violet was ever so slightly afraid. What had happened to Monica for her life to come to such a sudden, tragic end in Swallow Beach? It was unreasonable to fear the same fate, the sensible part of Vi’s brain knew that, but all the same her gran had arrived in Swallow Beach a bride and died far too young as a result. The thought sent a portentous chill down her spine. Maybe her mum was right to fear this place. Perhaps she shouldn’t have come here at all.