The Love Letter (28 page)

Yet now she rang off as fast as a bankrupt with a cheery ‘I’ll see you later!’, unsettled by the way nostalgia kept warping her thoughts. She was also worried by his ‘do or die’ line, which didn’t sound like Francis at all. She tried to remember what it came from and was almost sure it was Robert Burns, part of a bloodthirsty, patriotic anthem about slaying tyrants and usurpers. Francis, who had never been beyond Edinburgh, was no Scottish Nationalist. The only Scot she knew of in Farcombe right now was Kizzy. Images of Kizzy the man flashed before her eyes, a diminutive, sinewy kilted redhead in blue face-paint waving a skean dhu about.

It made her shudder. She needed Julie Ocean onside, with Jimmy as backup. Instead she now just had a crocheted dress, transparent underwear and a promise to Francis to keep. Do or die.

She picked up the newspaper again and checked her horoscope, which was lousy, predicting conflicts, bad decisions and even disaster.

Legs trailed upstairs to Skit.

Instead of boosting her confidence, the Once upon a Times had made her feel sluggish and drained. She lay down on her bed for a moment to gather her thoughts, trying to distract herself with a manuscript she had brought in from the car. It was the crime
thriller Gordon Lapis had forwarded onto her, written by his fan, Delia Meare.

The prose style was all over the place, with no punctuation to speak of. There were two spelling errors and a split infinitive in the first paragraph, followed by two grisly murders in less than a page. Usually this would lead to Legs casting it aside without another thought. Her rule of thumb was that if there were more than three grammatical errors before the first murder, Conrad wouldn’t look at it twice. But there was something absolutely compelling about the way this one was written, however ludicrous, that she read on.

Both victims were redheads, both disembowelled, their bodies left in shopping trolleys on piers. Legs wondered vaguely how one got a stiff in a trolley up a pier undetected.

It was, she decided, a very promising start. There was an idiosyncratic wit to it she couldn’t help liking. She let out a garlic burp and turned to page two, on which yet another redhead died, this time left in a DIY store trolley on a harbour wall. The writer’s style was absolutely gripping.

She was in danger of becoming seriously hooked when she flipped over page three and howled with frustration as she realised the author had committed the heinous sin of sending non-consecutive chapters. Action had suddenly skipped ahead ten chapters, and she found herself reading through a spine-chillingly grisly scene set in a meat fridge, with even less punctuation. No longer able to concentrate, she gathered together the pages, now feeling quite sick, although whether that was from too much brandy or murder overkill was hard to tell. Her eyelids were leaden and the muggy air weighed down on her chest like hot, wet towels.

She put the manuscript on her bedside table. Seconds later she was asleep.

She awoke to the sound of her phone ringing ‘Teenage Kicks’. She checked the time and realised, to her horror, that it was just a few minutes before she was due at the hall.

‘Please tell me you’re coming,’ Francis whispered breathlessly. ‘All hell’s broken loose here. I need you.’

‘I’m coming,’ she reassured him. Scattering
The Girl Who Checked Out
far and wide, she scrambled from the bed, heart bursting with pride and gratitude that he could still trust her.

With no time left to get ready, the crocheted dress went unaccessorised, and Legs barely graced her face with more than a dab of lipstick and mascara. In truth she looked a great deal better than she would have after yet more hours of pampering, she realised as she gave herself a quick glance in the mirror. Her hair was truly bedhead-ruffled and her cheeks pink, skin radiant now that it had calmed down from the previous evening, leaving a healthy sun-kissed glow. She belted out of the Book Inn barefoot during its busy Happy Ever After Hour, carrying her killer heels.

‘Was that Kate Winslet?’ one male guest asked Guy as he cleared empties from the outside tables.

The Book Inn landlord watched Legs hopping over the harbour cobbles towards the back lane to the hall. She looked ravishing. She had a breathless, unselfconscious air about her which had made heads turn as she dashed out. The overall effect was bombshell-seductive, but Guy knew she was far too flustered to think herself any more alluring than when she was dressed in her too-tight Arsenal strips.

‘Yes. Stays here all the time,’ he told the guest, picking up the cocktail list. ‘Can I tempt you to another? Make Believe, with vodka and fresh lime, or Tragic Pathos with whisky and bitters?’

*

Legs paused to regroup by Farcombe Hall’s gateposts, overlooked by the unicorns as she washed her feet in the fierce little brook before pulling on her new shoes. They were so unstable that she tripped along Farcombe Hall’s cobbled side drive like a comedy turn who’d had half a dozen Once Upon a Times.

Seeing a flash of red hair beneath the cloisters, her heart sank as she registered Kizzy smoking a roll-up, observing her teetering approach with a frozen expression.

There was another figure alongside her, hidden in the shadow of an arch. On the grass beyond the rhododendron walk, glowing in golden evening sunlight, Byron the lame terrier was playing with a basset hound.

Legs wobbled to a halt, also cast in golden rays, unaware that the see-through g-string was doing just as Nonny had promised and the evening light angling through the crochet dress made it look as though she was wearing no underwear.

Stepping out of the shadows, Byrne regarded her warily. Ahead of him, Kizzy’s demeanour was completely different than the previous day. She was clearly seething, red lips curled around her bared white teeth in an aggressive smile. Dressed immaculately in a high-necked emerald shift dress, her red hair pulled into a Hepburn chignon, she was every inch the immaculate Farcombe hostess-in-waiting, making Legs feel impossibly blousy in plunging crochet, and acutely aware that she and Francis had been locked in a clinch right under her nose last night. Her green eyes smouldered with such venom, Legs half expected a forked tongue to dart out from that fixed smile. Yet she was utterly courteous.

‘Allegra. Good you could make it. Poppy apologises, but she’s had a bit of a shock, and is taking a quick lie down. Mummy’s with her. The Keiller-Myleses aren’t here yet. Let me introduce you to Jago Byrne.’

He held out his hand to her. ‘We’ve met.’

‘We’re both staying at the Book Inn,’ Legs explained, seeing Kizzy’s green eyes narrow. Byrne’s handshake was firm and
formal. His face gave nothing away; they could have shared no more than a nod at reception.

‘What a coincidence.’ Kizzy flicked her cigarette butt into an urn.

‘Where’s Francis?’ Legs bleated, desperate for an ally.

Her green eyes now widened like an offended owl. ‘With Édith in the kitchen. They mustn’t be disturbed,’ she flashed an acid splash smile, modulated Scottish voice still smooth and deep as a loch. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I must check that Jax and Daddy are OK.’

As Legs watched her go, she looked out for signs that she had once been a man, but apart from that whip-thin boyishness and a certain determined jut of the chin as she turned to go indoors, there was nothing obvious.

There was an uncomfortable pause, during which Byrne’s furnace gaze drifted downwards followed by his brows shooting upwards, and Legs realised that in her haste she’d put her new shoes on the wrong feet, which at least explained her total inability to walk straight. Her face flamed. He must think her a complete dipsomaniac.

‘Kizzy’s not my biggest fan,’ Legs explained, blushing even deeper because he was the last person she’d expected to encounter tonight.

‘That was just bad timing. She’s angry with you because you interrupted my marching orders.’

‘Are you a gatecrasher then?’

‘In a manner of speaking.’ He let out a gruff laugh then looked up, almost knocking her off her mixed-up shoes with the intensity of his eyes. ‘Perhaps I should have mentioned last night that I’d been invited here.’

‘We had other things to talk about,’ she said carefully, knowing that if she’d been less drunkenly attention seeking, he might have got a word in edgeways about himself. He was one of the most infuriatingly oblique men she’d ever met. Knowing that she’d
confessed so much about her feelings for Francis to him made her very jumpy indeed.

‘You have your shoes on the wrong feet,’ he pointed out kindly.

‘I know.’ She perched on the base of a cloister column to refit them, regarding him warily. ‘Jay Goburn. I heard you were an American academic?’

‘I never said that I was anything.’ He gave a guarded smile. ‘Poppy is as eager to fill in backgrounds as a child with new crayons, it seems. Perhaps I should have enlightened her too. I wouldn’t be in this mess.’

‘What mess?’ She stood up, high rise shoes now on the right feet, her eyes level with his.

He stepped closer, voice lowered discreetly, making all the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. ‘It may not have escaped your notice that the atmosphere here is rather – odd. Our hostess has taken to bed and your fiancé is—’

‘Ex-fiancé,’ she interrupted.

‘
Ex
-fiancé is conducting emergency family talks in the kitchens while his pretty girlfriend is sent outside to try to persuade me to wait at the Book Inn.’

‘And why is that?’

He lifted his chin, fixing her face with those intent, dark eyes. ‘Poppy Protheroe is my mother.’

Legs gasped. ‘You’re the … ?’

‘The son of a shotgun marriage, yes.’

‘The Prodigal Son,’ she gulped, trying to take it in.

He nodded, casting his gaze to the sea, which this evening was reflecting the sun’s misty-faced yellow hue so it seemed the colour of milky tea, its rocky outcrops dunked into the high tide to the far left.

‘How long is it since you saw her?’ Legs asked cautiously.

‘Nearly twenty years; the day she left my father to run away with Hector. I thought it was about time we caught up.’

She hugged herself tightly, realising goosebumps had popped
up all over her arms; she wished she’d bought one of the many Masai shawls Cici had flogged her now. Two thoughts kept hammering through her head, the first was that Kizzy probably wasn’t a transsexual avenger after all – which was something of a relief – and the second was that last night, not long after she had confided that she was still in love with Francis, Byrne had confided in her that he was about to lose his life. It made for tricky small-talk.

‘So Poppy didn’t realise it was you coming today?’ she asked falteringly.

He shook his head. ‘Jago Byrne probably means nothing to my mother. I was christened James, and she knows me as Jamie; Dad’s always called me Jago.’

‘And Byrne?’

‘Our family name is Kelly; Byrne is my grandmother’s name from her second marriage. When Dad and I returned to Ireland, he insisted we took it. He was terrified Poppy would follow and claim me back. But of course she never even tried.’ He let out a cheerless laugh.

She gazed at him in amazement, remembering his comment the previous evening that everyone should change their name at least once in life. She could see the likeness now. His eyes were incredibly like Poppy’s, so huge, clever and soulful, and he had her high cheeks and enviable olive skin. No wonder he was such a character assassin; it was in the genes.

The basset hound was looking up at her with even more mournful eyes than his master, longing to be stroked.

‘This is Fink,’ Byrne introduced her.

Legs stooped down to make a fuss of him, nerves and tension playing to her reflex action silly humour: ‘And what do you Fink about all this, boy?’

To her relief, Byrne let out a gruff laugh above her head, ‘Poor old Fink’s as deaf as a post and as thick as a plank. Can’t hear himself Fink even if he knew how.’

Legs gave the dog a sympathetic look, covering his huge ears and kissing his nose. ‘Fink positive.’

Yet her own head was reeling with the looped memory of Byrne saying ‘I am about to lose my life’ playing over and over, like one of the maddening modern video art installations Poppy regularly commissioned for the festival.

She straightened up and smiled anxiously at him. ‘Please take no notice of what I said about Poppy last night. I was always on Francis’s side, remember, and theirs was never an easy relationship. She’s such an amazing person. She went through a lot, and it can’t have been easy coming here.’

‘Easier than staying with her husband and child, though, clearly,’ he muttered in an undertone before glancing across at the house as Francis came storming out from the Moroccan lobby, adding sardonically: ‘Ah, a happy stepsibling.’

Blond hair on end, blue eyes blazing, fallen-angel face high with colour, Francis looked absurdly dashing in a long-cuffed shirt and faded jeans, although his expression was thunder.

‘I can’t believe you knew all about this!’ he raged at Legs.

‘I didn’t!’ she squeaked.

Behind Francis, his half-sister Édith Protheroe wandered onto the step and lent prettily against the doorframe, a willowy, raven-haired blade of beauty and ill-will, glass of wine in hand. It didn’t look like it was her first. ‘Hi Legs. Fabulous dress. We might have guessed you’d be involved in today’s surprise.’