A Summer Scandal by Kat French

Author:Kat French
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008236793
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2018-04-04T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

‘I need to check who it is,’ she gasped, because everyone knew that late-night phone calls were often portents of bad news. Cal looked at the table, tortured, and then leaned across and grabbed Violet’s phone for her. Even as he picked it up, he knew the mood had been broken, and then when he glanced at the screen and saw the name flashing up, he knew he was screwed.

Simon.

Handing it to her, he sat up and turned away from her to avoid the guilt in her eyes.

‘Simon.’ She said his name too softly. ‘Is everything okay?’

He could tell from the way she reacted to his response that there was no emergency to deal with, and from her hushed-tone response that her ex had phoned just to hear her voice. Cal didn’t blame him. Was he wooing her? Was he telling her that he couldn’t live without her? Was he begging her to come home? Cal didn’t want to listen, and knew she’d probably rather he wasn’t here while she had this conversation. Picking up his T-shirt, he scrubbed his hands over his face and then quietly left her to it.

‘I’ve got Friday off work,’ Simon said. ‘I thought I’d come and see you, make a weekend of it.’

Violet felt hideous. He couldn’t have called at a worse time if he’d tried, it was as if he somehow knew what she was doing and had called to make her feel guilty. He couldn’t have of course, but the guilt piled in hard regardless. She shouldn’t be messing around with Cal, both because she was fresh out of a long-term relationship and because the end of her relationship with Simon had been ambiguous at best. It wasn’t really fair of Simon to expect her to just drop everything and spend the weekend with him, but then in true Simon style, he’d made sure to give her enough notice. Gah.

‘I’ve got loads of work on,’ she said, trying to be diplomatic. ‘Besides, I’m hoping to come back and see Mum and Dad in a couple of weeks. Shall we wait until then, have dinner or something to catch up?’

Part of her felt terrible, and the other part felt pissed off with Simon for inviting himself here. She’d been pretty clear that she wanted a break, in fact more than that. She’d been pretty clear that they’d broken up, but clearly he was sticking to the idea of her coming home at the end of summer and deciding that, actually, she wanted nothing more than to waltz up the aisle. It wasn’t going to happen. She knew that even more clearly than before.

‘You won’t notice I’m there,’ he said. ‘I’ll bring my laptop and can carry on with some work. I’ve got a new line of frozen fish to upload to the supermarket stock-ordering system anyway, that should keep me busy.’

‘No,’ she said, summoning up all of her courage. ‘I don’t want you to come here, Simon. Please don’t. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but I don’t want you to come to Swallow Beach.

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