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.
‘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, was it?
Taking Simon’s ring from the box, Violet slipped it onto her third finger and tried not to feel as if she wanted to slide it straight off again and hand it back.
Pulling into her parents’ driveway, Simon looked across at the illuminated front windows.
‘Shall I come inside and we can tell them together?’
Vi looked at her watch, glad they’d lingered for coffee at the restaurant because she could legitimately say it was too late in the evening.
‘Let’s leave it for tonight,’ she said. ‘They’ll be tired now.’
‘But they’ll notice your ring,’ he frowned.
Violet splayed her hand, and then slipped the ring from her finger. ‘There. Nothing to see.’
For a moment, they sat in loaded silence. Had he picked up on the fact that her heart wasn’t one hundred percent on board with the idea of getting married? Should she have cried with joy? She was actually feeling quite tearful, but more because she’d had the most overwhelming day of her life than because she was cock-a-hoop at the prospect of marrying Simon.
‘I’ll come over in the morning then,’ he said, watching as she put the ring back inside its box. ‘Ten thirty on the nose.’
Violet nodded, pushing the ring into her handbag beside her grandpa’s letter. Her plan to share her news with Simon over dinner had fallen by the wayside after his proposal; there was no tangible way to explain her sudden reluctance to tell her new fiancé about Swallow Beach. Leaning in to kiss him quickly with her hand already opening the passenger door to get away, she smiled, small and tight.
‘Night,’ she said. ‘See you tomorrow.’
She glanced over at her grandpa’s house next door as she delved in her bag for her keys, forlorn at the dark, empty house. Henry had been a cornerstone of her life forever; a safe corner of the world to escape to. And he was gone now, yet still somehow there offering her a safe haven, a different door to walk through than the one everyone expected her to take. Perhaps he saw Monica in her eyes or somewhere in her smile, knew the wanderlust that made her bones restless in a way no one else could.
‘Thank you, Grandpa,’ she whispered, then stepped inside without looking back.
She’d been wrong about her parents still being up. They’d left the lights on for her, calling down goodnight when she let herself in and locked the front door.
Still too wired to go to bed, she headed into the kitchen and made herself a coffee, laying her grandpa’s letter and Simon’s ring on the table in front of her. Left, and right. A more orderly person (her mum, her dad, Simon) might have switched them over – Simon’s ring on the left, ready to go on her wedding finger. Violet, however, felt them more appropriately arranged as they were: Simon on the safe and conservative right, her grandpa’s letter on the avant-garde, unpredictable left. Looking from one to the other, there was no denying which made her heart beat faster. Opening the ring box, the diamond winked up at her under the kitchen spotlights. Opening the letter, her grandpa’s spindly black writing lay stark against the pale blue paper.
Simon or Swallow Beach. Swallow Beach or Simon.
Could she have both? Did she want either? It had been a day of huge revelations and unexpected twists, and now Violet found herself at the end of it with choices to make and decisions to take. Sipping her coffee, she sighed and wished she’d opted for a brandy instead.
Simon’s here, love. He’s brought