The Love Letter (52 page)

‘I think on balance I’m more of a T. S. Eliot fan,’ she admitted sleepily afterwards.

‘Me too,’ he chuckled, closing the book and kissing her on the forehead, ‘You’re very hot, Legs.’

‘It’s the weather,’ she assured him. ‘And a guilty conscience.’

‘Nonsense. You’re right to get away from that Knight chap. Francis will take care of you. When do you go to Devon?’

‘Tomorrow,’ she said wearily, feeling too ragged to explain that she wasn’t driving there to see Francis, although she knew she owed him an explanation and an unmitigated apology. She seemed to have nothing but apologies to make at the moment.

Dorian was ecstatic at the prospect of having order restored – his beloved future son-in-law back in the fold, and then surely his own wife Lucy to follow. He genuinely envied Legs her first love.

Now he was plundering the shelves for T. S. Eliot.

‘This is your mother’s favourite.’ He settled back beside her and began to read ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’.

She listened with her burning chest full of fireworks. It was a poem of exquisite compassion; the outpourings of an ageing, timid man whose love was as deep as any; the summary of her father.

He’s so like Francis, Legs realised in renewed amazement as she listened to Dorian’s beautiful voice bring the words to life. He tells the biggest emotional truths through high art and third party tricks. He never rants or rages. It was no wonder Francis had become a surrogate son to him.

Afterwards she hugged him as tightly as she ever had.

‘You’re very, very hot.’ He held her anxiously.

‘My generation take “hot” as a compliment.’ She kissed him goodnight. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Francis is a good man,’ he said with quiet purpose.

‘I know.’ She pressed her burning face to his neck for a moment. ‘I know.’

Later that night, she lay in her old bed, staring up at the ceiling where a few luminous sticker stars still clung on for dear life. Her life was spinning on its axis. She kept going hot and cold, and her raging headache was worse than ever. Her chest was an inferno.

The phone on her bedside table lit up. Gordon Lapis was online.

Sleep tight, Heavenly Pony.

Sleep tight, Byrne.

He didn’t tell her to stay away this time. That was all the cue she needed.

Legs drove to the North Devon coast with what felt like a bonfire blazing in her lungs, a thunderstorm on her tail and the new car’s unfamiliar sat nav on her case.

‘In one hundred yards, turn right. Turn right!’

‘Exit roundabout!’

It was like driving with her sister Ros map-reading. Her head screamed with pain. All the time the windscreen wipers swish-swish-swished sheets of rain in front of her. The deluge was relentless. She had to blink continually to stay focused.

‘Turn sharply right!’

Doing as she was told, she almost collided with oncoming traffic several times before finding herself turning into private driveways and industrial estates because she’d misinterpreted the directions. At least the sat nav didn’t complain of car sickness.

But as they diverted far from familiar roads to navigate the labyrinth of lanes deep within the Devon countryside, she was grateful for the bossy female voice. She would never have found
the route to Nevermore any other way. The narrow lanes here were so overgrown that her bumpers snarled up with grass and high, banked verges flipped both her wing mirrors back like a hawk’s folded wings as she dived down the steepest of hills into a hidden valley.

Black clouds overhead had brought a false dusk. Rain was coming down in sheets now, so loud on the roof she could barely hear the voice announce ‘You have arrived at your destination, on right.’

Legs swung into a gateway overgrown with elder, the battered wrought-iron gate swinging off its hinges as though the last person to arrive had rammed straight through it. On closer inspection, there was thick ivy growing around the rusty hinges and the grass was several inches high beneath it, making it impossible to open further. Beyond it, the long driveway that stretched away between rain-lashed chestnut trees was so pot-holed, it was as though a meteor shower had landed there. She abandoned the car and shrugged on her raincoat, head lowered against the deluge as she splashed her way along the final hundred yards. Lightning crackled directly overhead as the storm threw its most ferocious temper tantrum yet. It felt like walking through a waterfall.

The farm was in a terrible state, the outbuildings little more than ruins, its cottage utterly desolate. Clearly unoccupied for a very long time, the windows were boarded up and half its roof slates missing. A threadbare tarpaulin whipped and cracked like a war-torn flag from one chimney where it had ripped loose from its ties. Through the gaping hole it had once covered, beyond the ribs of rotten wooden trusses, Legs could see what had once been a child’s bedroom with peeling teddy bear wallpaper. It was the sort of place that would cause even the most ardent of doer-uppers to refuse to get out of the car on a first viewing. No wonder Poppy had longed to escape, she realised as she looked around in horror.

Yet even as she recoiled from the storm’s whip-lashes and gunfire, she could see that there was a curious lost beauty surrounding her. It had been Byrne’s home once. Its connection with him enfolded her like a safety cage. Abandoned in its lush acres, it remained alive, its heart beating fiercely against the ravages of angry skies.

‘Byrne?’ she called out hopelessly, but the hammering rain drowned out her words.

Forked lightning was crackling through the black clouds overhead, angrily seeking somewhere to discharge its force. Exposed to every element in the middle of a desolate farmyard, Legs was suddenly gripped by panic as she imagined herself struck by a bolt and frying on the spot. She hadn’t told anybody she was coming here. A deafening crack of thunder made her dive for cover, and she crouched in the shelter of an old stable, shaking with cold and fear, waiting for the worst of the storm to pass. Each breath felt as though it was ripping the lining from her lungs.

As she huddled against a wood-lined wall, looking out at the lightning slashing its way into the old orchard beside the farmyard like a god stabbing his trident down in search of apples, she tried to imagine what demons must have possessed Brooke Kelly to keep his young wife and son here after his accident left him wheelchair-bound. His rages against Hector Protheroe must have ripped through the crumbling farmstead like the storm surrounding her now. It was hardly surprising Byrne had run wild as a boy, disappearing from home for hours on end, living a daydream world in which his closest allies were horses. He’d grown up to create an immortal fictional hero who took on the forces of evil and avenged wrong-doings. Was that how Byrne saw himself, too?

A headcollar was still hanging on a peg, its stiff leather layered with dirt, dust and mould. She scraped her thumbnail along its blackened brass name-plaque and read Finch.

*

How Legs made it to the Book Inn she would never know, but the satellite navigator said ‘recalculating’ at least a dozen times, and ‘if possible make a U-turn’ at least twice. The twisting back lanes that fell sharply downhill through the estate to Farcombe harbour made her feel faint with vertigo. Almost flattening a memorial bench, she parked illegally on the sea front, scattering several seagulls.

The wind nearly took her head off when she stepped out of the car, but at least she’d finally shaken off the storm, leaving it inland. Despite the ferocious wind, sea-spray over the harbour walls and the red flag flying on the beach, there were blue patches in the sky.

Almost too bedraggled to be recognisable, she stumbled into the pub. Her face was grey beneath the wet rats’ tails of hair; her clothes were plastered to her body and she was coated with dust and straw.

Pierced Tongue was lolling behind the bar reading the
Daily Star.
She took one look at Legs and disappeared like smoke through the staff only door. Legs could hear hushed voices with the words ‘hippy’ and ‘stalker’ being hissed in a lisping undertone.

Coming through from her office, Nonny rushed forwards in alarm.

‘Darling Legs! What happened to you? Gabs thought it was another Ptolemy Finch crank coming in. You poor duck. Come and sit down. Have a Dark and Stormy to warm you up.’

Legs shook her head, teeth chattering, ‘I’ve had enough of storms for one day, thanks. Is Byrne here?’

Nonny shook her head. ‘He checked out on Wednesday. He’s staying up at the hall, I think. Darling, you look really poorly. We’re fully booked, but you can have a lie down in our quarters if you like?’

Thanking her but shaking her head, Legs reeled back outside and performed a perilous three point turn on the harbour front before rattling up to the main house, now driving so badly that she dented one wing of the silver car swinging into the gates.

Just turning off the engine felt like a major victory. She was boiling hot, her skin clammy and her muscles aching. Her hands were shaking so much she couldn’t take the keys out of the ignition. She thought she might black out.

Somebody wrenched open the driver’s door. She looked up, focus coming and going.

It was Francis.

‘Oh thank God, Legs. Thank God you’re here!’

‘Has something happened?’ Her voice sounded miles away in her pounding head, hoarse with pain. The wind was howling through the courtyards and into the car, making all the clutter on her dashboard take off.

Crouching down, Francis took her hands. His hair was being buffeted off his face, his blue eyes watering in the blasting wind – or were those tears, she wondered in amazement.

His voice crackled with emotion. ‘Your letter arrived this morning.’

‘My letter?’

He bent down to kiss her fingers resting in his. ‘Welcome home, my darling. I don’t need to tell you what my answer is. You wrote the word so many times and, as if I could ever doubt your sincerity, now here you are. Actions speak louder than words as you always used to tell me.’

She stared at him in bewilderment.

Frowning, he reached up to touch her forehead. ‘Legs darling, you’re burning hot. Are you ill?’

‘Feel a bit fluey,’ she managed to wheeze.

He gathered her into his arms and lifted her up, grunting with the effort.

The wind tried to knock him off his feet as he carried her into the house, accidentally banging her bottom on the door frame.

‘Your letter is quite beautiful,’ his voice shook with emotion as he reeled around, not knowing where to put her. She was a dead weight now.

‘My letter?’ she checked again, struggling to make any sense of what was going on. The room was spinning, or was it just Francis lurching in circles in search of a convenient chair?

‘It’s one of the most moving things I’ve ever read,’ he panted along the hallway towards the door to the cosy oak-panelled sitting room, ‘and I am extremely well read as you know: “Childhood, adulthood and old age are lost in the infinity of a love like ours.”’

‘God that’s awful,’ she groaned weakly. In the confused maelstrom of her fevered mind, Legs had a vague recollection of the phrase – horribly self-indulgent – written almost exactly a year ago, not long after she and Francis had split up, when her second thoughts had seemed to rip out her heart, and she’d poured her regret and remorse onto six pages of tear-stained paper to post to him.

‘Second thoughts are never as original as first ones,’ she muttered before passing out in his arms.

She awoke in the Lavender Room, surrounded by suggestive nudes, and almost blinded by sunlight streaming in through the half-open curtains. She felt so hot, she thought she must be wearing layers of clothes and tucked beneath a host of thick duvets, but when she checked she was just in her underwear beneath a cotton sheet. Her hair was soaked with sweat, her skin slick. She ached so much she could barely lift her arms or legs. Her head still throbbed.

It had to be late afternoon, she realised. The sun was still high over Eascombe Cove.

She longed to open the window to let in the sea breeze. With a supreme effort, she made it off the bed and reeled towards the sash. But she only took a couple of steps before her vision tunnelled and an ice cold sweat enveloped her. She flailed for something to hold, falling to her knees.

The door flew open and Francis crossed the room.

‘What are you doing out of bed? Darling you must rest. Let’s get you back in.’

She desperately wanted to ask him what was wrong with her. In her crazed, fevered mind she half believed she had been drugged. But her voice was trapped in her spinning, aching head. As soon as he lifted her into bed, she fell into a restless, sweaty sleep once more.

She dreamed that she was a young girl, and Francis was dressed up as a doctor asking her all sorts of questions. Or was he answering the questions while somebody else pretended to be a doctor? Lights flashed in her eyes, cold metal was held to her chest. Thinking it was a gun, she tried to scream out, but her throat hurt too much to do more than squeak breathlessly. She could hear a male voice talking quietly about ‘rehydration’ and ‘analgesia’, and signs of drowsiness versus delirium.