The Legacy, Caroline Bond [popular books to read txt] 📗

through the windows of the silent outdoor ballroom, imagining it in its heyday, when the tiled floor would have been full of twirling couples falling in love to the strains of a live orchestra.

For Liv and Noah, the nostalgia was far more personal. The underbelly of the ballroom was where they used to play as kids.

Liv had forgotten how deafening it was beneath the Spa at high tide. The salt-rimed arches amplified the noise of the waves, creating a surround-sound effect. It was as if the sea was simultaneously behind and in front of you. It was disorientating, and strangely threatening. At least that was how Liv felt now, as a chilly adult picking her way around the deep puddles of sea water in her duck-down coat and all-terrain footwear.

As a child she used to find the furious howl of the waves against the sea wall exhilarating. Liv and Noah had had what might be viewed as an idyllic childhood, at least from the elevated, anxious promontory of modern parenting, with its focus on every potential threat and hazard, real and imagined. Not for Eloise such protective paranoia. From a young age, Liv and Noah had been allowed to roam free, as long as they stayed together. In hindsight, Liv found their mother’s misplaced confidence in the two of them ‘not to do anything too stupid’ quite shocking. The thought of letting Arthur and Freddie go anywhere on their own until they were teenagers seemed ludicrous and irresponsible. But for Noah and Liv, it had been their norm.

They used to explore the cliffs below the house as if they were an extension of their garden, mindless of the hazards. The winding, broken paths down to the sea, the derelict shelters covered in graffiti that smelt of piss, and the hidden pockets of Victorian landscaping: it was all their territory. They’d spend hours looking for rabbits, picking primroses, building dens and, if Noah had managed to filch any matches, trying to light fires – all far from adult supervision or sanction.

By unspoken agreement, they would always keep an eye on the sea, waiting for the incoming tide before venturing down to the passages underneath the Spa’s old outdoor ballroom. Its position, jutting out into the South Bay, made it the best place to play their own unique version of Chicken. This involved taking it in turns to creep down the barnacle- and seaweed-encrusted steps, being very careful where they put their feet, flirting with the incoming tide. They would dare each other to go lower and lower, timing the waves. Legend had it that the seventh one was always the biggest and, therefore, the most likely to sweep you off your feet and out to a watery grave.

How they had made it to adulthood unscathed was a mystery. Yet at the time Liv hadn’t questioned it. They lived near the sea. They played near the sea. Their mother trusted them to be sensible and to look after each other. That was the way it was.

Being back on the crumbly paths beneath the Spa with Noah after all these years was an experience soaked in nostalgia and sea spray. The sound of the waves was the same – loud and booming. It was like being inside a headache. The tide was smashing against the sea wall, sending sheets of spray up onto the path. Noah walked near the edge, tempting fate. Liv stayed back, fully aware of the metaphor. It was far too noisy to have a conversation, which was fine with her.

Suddenly Noah stopped walking and stepped up to the edge. He dramatically threw his head back and his arms wide, as if embracing the onslaught. Jesus, he was such a poser! Liv walked past him, refusing to be an audience for his histrionics. But after fifty metres or so she couldn’t stop herself looking round. Noah hadn’t moved. He was still standing right on the lip of the walkway. Just as she was about to shout at him to stop pratting about, the seventh wave hit. For a split second he disappeared in an arc of water, and she was sure he’d been swept off his feet into the sea. She froze. The wave crashed, broke apart and spread a sheet of white foam across the concrete, then retreated, leaving Noah standing, covered in spray. Her anxiety switched to anger. ‘You dickhead!’

He turned and grinned at her, sea water dripping off his cap. ‘Oh, lighten up. Don’t you remembering us doing it as kids?’

‘Yeah, I do, and you were an idiot then.’

Noah seemed about to make one of his usual sarcastic comebacks, but the look on her face stopped him. He took off his cap, shook it, replaced it – then smiled at her, looking for a second so like his eight-year-old self that Liv felt a bubble of affection rise to the surface of her irritation. Having had their fill of wave-dodging, they climbed the pebble-dash stairs back up to the promenade level, side-by-side.

Despite the late hour and the scarcity of visitors on a wild winter afternoon, the little gift shop on the arcade was open – an act of defiance and optimism that Liv found touching. The shop front looked exactly the same as it had when they were kids: the carousels of buckets and spades, the fishing nets, the board smothered in fridge magnets, the tubs of beach balls. Without saying anything, Noah made a beeline for the shop. Liv groaned inwardly. All she wanted was to sit down and have a hot drink. The shaky feeling that had swept over her down by the sea had lessened, but hadn’t lifted completely. She was certainly not in the mood for rooting through tat. Noah, however, obviously was. He went inside and she was forced to follow him.

The inside of the shop was as rammed as the outside: shelf upon shelf of tacky ornaments, snow globes, plaster crabs and – for some reason – money boxes in the