by Fiona Walker
The gossip about Conrad Knight and his comely assistant Allegra ‘Legs’ North was already well worn in publishing circles, but the story was always told wrongly. It was said that Conrad’s rock solid marriage had ended when he took up with young Legs, whereas he’d been separated several months and already living alone before anything had ever happened between them. In fact it had been Legs’ long-term relationship which had collapsed, her engagement to childhood sweetheart Francis smashed against the rocks of the affair.
Thinking about Francis yet again she felt a pinch on her heart, those familiar fingers of regret and guilt squeezing together.
Betraying her first, and greatest, love, had been the most painful thing she’d done in her life. Since those heady teenage days together, she’d always believed they would marry and raise a family of blond-haired, blue-eyed children; falling in love with another man had come as a complete shock.
Across the garden, the back door banged in the wind, and Legs glanced down at the time on her mobile, realising that she must start the long pampering and perfecting ritual if she was to look her best for her lunch date, especially given Conrad was clearly taking her somewhere grand.
Picking up her skirts, she swept across the lawns and decking to the house, eager to remove the agonising corset. But the back door had slammed shut on the latch and was locked. She knocked on it, calling for Nico to let her in.
There was no answer; he was probably back in his room, already uploading gruesome close-ups of her legs. Stepping back, she looked up at his window, which was part open. Just as she cupped her hands to shout again, she remembered that Nico was meant to be setting out with a friend to be at choir by ten-thirty. It was already ten to eleven.
Trying not to panic that she was locked out of the house wearing a wedding dress, Legs phoned her sister’s mobile, but it went straight through to voicemail. She left a message and started prowling around the house checking for open windows. Apart from Nico’s bedroom high above her head, there were none, not even in her own little basement flat, where all the sash windows were protected with ornamental grills. Ros was pathological about security.
She stomped along the side return and let herself out through the garden gate, wedging it open with a stone so that it wouldn’t lock behind her as she headed out to the front of the house without much hope of inspiration. But there, just above her head on the raised ground floor, was the answer to her prayers. One of the drawing room’s balcony doors had been left slightly ajar. All she had to do was climb across from the front steps and she could get back in.
Legs liked to think she was reasonably fit and agile in her late twenties; she ran most days, swam weekly and managed the occasional pilates class with her girlfriends, but none of these activities took place while trussed in a corset and farthingale, and trailing fifteen kilos of fabric and embroidery.
By the time she’d clambered onto the outside of the little balcony that fronted her sister’s elegant Victorian villa and was clinging to the neat wrought-iron railing, several passersby had gathered on the pavement beyond the front garden. Then, just as she was trying to cram her hooped skirt onto the balcony itself and edge her way to the open door, a police car drew up. Legs span around in horror to see two uniformed officers striding up the drive, demanding to know what was going on.
‘I can explain – I live – aghhh!’
Any protests she was about to make were abruptly curtailed as one of her flip-flops caught against the railing and unbalanced her, the heavy weight of the dress dragging her off-centre and away from the wall. Scrabbling madly for something to break her fall, she managed to grab a branch of the monkey puzzle tree in the front garden. It couldn’t hope to hold her weight, but it slowed her descent so that she landed back in the front garden with a rather graceful billow of satin and silk. It was impossible to tell whether the collective gasp from the small crowd now gathered on the pavement was as a result of her nifty manoeuvre or because they’d just been afforded a full eyeful of her meaty legs and M&S tanga as she floated down.
As she gabbled her story to the police and apologised that no, she didn’t have any ID with her and no, her sister wasn’t answering her phone, she realised with mounting horror that they didn’t entirely believe her.
‘I think you’d better pop along to the abbey and fetch her back here to let you in, madam, don’t you? Been a lot of thefts and deceptions in this area recently.’
She glanced at her watch again. Conrad would be here in less than an hour. She had to get inside to change. Something about the policemen’s cloddish calm lit a fuse in her.
‘You can clearly see that window is open,’ she fretted, knowing it was at least ten minutes’ run to the abbey and the same back. ‘If I go to fetch my sister, anybody could get in.’ She was aware that she sounded petulant and snappish, mutating from damsel in a wedding dress to Elizabeth I addressing her court. ‘Think about your public duty!’
‘In that case, let me assist,’ said the younger officer, hopping neatly up onto the balcony.
Legs let out a happy cry of relief, thinking that he was going to nip through and let her in by the front door, but the sound died in her throat as she saw him pull the door closed. ‘There, that’s now secure until you’ve fetched your sister and she can let you back in.’
For a brief moment, she was reminded of her anti-fascism marching days as a student, that sense of inflamed political self-righteousness which had made her lie down in front of police horses and spit at riot shields. But today was not a day to cause a breach of the peace, she reminded herself firmly. She had a ‘dress smart’ date with Conrad, meaning it was best to avoid a dressing down at the local nick, or equally staying dressed in bridal regalia.
‘Thanks for nothing!’ She turned tail and started sprinting towards the abbey, soon forced to slow down to little more than a jog when she realised the corset stays didn’t allow her to breathe enough to run. As she shuffled and panted across Haven Green onto Castlebar Road, she attracted stares and laughs from passersby, but she didn’t care.
It seemed to take for ever to jog the length of Blakesley Avenue, her face getting redder, lungs bursting.
‘Make it to the church on time, darling!’ cried a wag builder from some scaffolding.
Legs pounded on, still wearing just one flip-flop, skirts in her arms and farthingale bobbing. Conrad would never understand if he saw her like this; he was the king of cool, his suits cut perfectly, his shirts professionally laundered, not a hair out of place.
At last, the abbey loomed into sight with its familiar fairytale face, butterscotch-yellow stone and huge sweep of steps, which Legs started to scale, not noticing the photographer lurking beside one of the decoratively topped columns.
Just as she reached the top steps, lungs bursting and farthingale drooping, the black doors ahead of her opened and out walked a bride and groom, amidst triumphant organ music. It was too late for Legs to go into retreat. They looked incredibly surprised to find her standing there, red-faced in a too-short wedding dress from which her white bra was now displaying all its wares propped on an embroidered shelf.
She was now too out of breath to speak, but with a gasp of guilt she suddenly remembered the reason Nico was needed in church, and why her sister had been in such a tizz about the flowers: there was a wedding. And she’d just crashed it.
‘Who is this woman?’ The bride turned to her new husband in horror, clearly thinking Legs was a deranged ex-girlfriend determined to steal the show.
‘Virgin Queen!’ Legs managed a breathless croak. ‘Traditionally very lucky at weddings. Have a great marriage.’
Smiling with what she hoped was great Elizabethan benevolence, she dived past them and ricocheted through amused guests to the choir pews at the rear of the church. But Nico and the rest of the choir had disbanded into an anteroom.
A quick frisk through the choristers cassocks confirmed that her nephew had already clocked out, she pictured his long robes gratefully substit
uted for an Arsenal strip.
‘Nico’s mum said something about going to the supermarket?’ one of the remaining choirboys offered helpfully as she looked around in vain. ‘She usually parks her car around the back of St Benedict’s.’
‘Thanks!’ Legs darted out through the back to avoid the bridal party.
‘Just missed them,’ another choir mum told her when she finally located the car park just seconds after Ros and her Golf had pulled out.
‘Oh no, no, no!’ She closed her eyes, knowing her sister would be heading to the huge Lidls in Hanwell, where she shopped as a part of her endless economy drive, claiming Will had left her ‘too poor to be organic’. It was too far to follow on foot, and now she’d somehow mislaid her phone, so couldn’t try calling again, or even call Conrad to cancel lunch. It was half past eleven already. She wanted to cry.
‘I’d drop you back home,’ the mum offered, ‘but I’m not sure I can fit you in the car.’ She eyed the huge hooped skirts doubtfully.
‘We’ll find a way.’ Legs beamed with relief, already climbing in.
Oh, the shame of travelling through west London’s leafy avenues with a skirt pressed to her face and farthingale poking from the sunroof of a Citroën Picasso while her knickers were on full display to twin choirboys. But at least she got back with five minutes’ grace.
The garden gate was still wedged open with a stone. Legs dashed through it, fully determined to climb up to Nico’s window if it killed her. Then, to her utter relief, she spotted a full quota of clothes drying on the rotary airer at the far end of the decking.
There was no time to spare. It didn’t matter that the clothes were all her sister’s; they were better than the hideous farthingale.
The dress was hell to get off, but once she started pulling more carefully at the strings and laces, she found it divided into two parts so at least she could divest herself of the skirts and drag on a pair of calf-length flowered trousers that had seen better days, but had a pretty lace trim and hid her legs well. The corset was stuck put. In desperation, she raided the garden shed and found a pair of secateurs to cut through the stays. Oxygen pouring back into her lungs, she selected a red T-shirt from the washing line and dragged it over her head just in time to hear a car horn beep from the front of the house.
Hiding the dress in the shed with the secateurs, Legs dashed back out through the gate, neatly retrieving her missing flip-flop and phone from the front garden as she bounded towards Conrad’s black Jaguar.
His handsome face was a mask behind expensive dark glasses, but she distinctly heard a sharp intake of breath when he saw her.
She looked down and saw that in her haste, she’d matched a pair of Ros’s pyjama bottoms that had a broken elastic waist with one of her nephew’s T-shirts which was not only far too small, but also bore the slogan ‘Gunners Forever’ across its back. Her hair was still pulled up by the jewelled scrunchy that her sister had put on her earlier and she realised her face must be puce. But such was the force of her smile – and Conrad’s need of a favour – he opened his passenger door with a gentlemanly flourish and kissed her cheek as she leaped in.
‘So where are you taking me?’
Before he could answer, her phone let out a message alert. Is Julie Ocean romantically involved with her Super? Gordon quizzed.
Insuperably, she replied before switching off her phone.
Chapter 2
Driving east, Conrad quickly slid the two Premier Admission tickets to Ascot’s King George Day from the dashboard and stashed them in the glove compartment.
‘Change of plan,’ he said smoothly, resetting the sat nav, the cricket commentary turned down discreetly on the stereo. ‘We’re having a picnic in Hyde Park.’
‘Heaven!’ Legs settled back contentedly and listened as he made a quick call on the hands-free to Betty Blythe’s to have a luxury picnic for two put on standby. His voice always thrilled her; that clipped authoritative tone with its under-note of the South African Cape. She still vividly remembered the electric current of pleasure that had run through her when he’d said in the same husky bark ‘the job is yours’, liberating her from three years as a lowly small press editorial assistant to a plum role as PA to a literary agency legend. From the start, Conrad’s charisma had glowed so brightly in her new world that, despite the engagement ring burning on her finger and the wedding band still branded on his, she’d allowed herself a few clichéd office fantasies about her boss pinning her up against the water cooler and thoroughly kissing her.
Legs had been working at literary agency Fellows Howlett just a few weeks when the rumours reached her that her lovely new boss’s marriage was in crisis, unhitching one of London’s most long-standing literary power couples. For a fortnight, it was an open secret that Conrad slept in his office, shocked and unshaven yet still taking calls and running his authors’ lives like clockwork. He was a man who inspired devotion, and his work ethic never faltered. Without hesitation, his loyal team of colleagues closed ranks to protect him. As the newest agency recruit, Allegra was not a part of this inner circle, yet her heart had gone out to him, so driven and focused and damaged. To her shame, the water-cooler fantasies multiplied.
Legs heard that his wife had issued divorce papers straight away, citing unreasonable behaviour, although Legs had never met anyone more truthful and fair-minded. Apparently Conrad’s children wouldn’t even talk to him at first. It must have taken him great strength and dignity, Legs thought, to pull through those first weeks with minimum rancour.
Too proud to take the many offers of houseroom from friends and colleagues, he asked Legs to book him into a hotel. When he discovered that she’d reserved the suite that the agency traditionally only used for their grandest clients, he stormed out of his office to her desk, green eyes blazing. ‘I don’t need a Vi-spring mattress and plasma television in the bathroom.’
‘I thought you deserved pampering. You look so sad.’
That was the first time he seemed to notice her, his handsome face curiously motionless, as though he was fighting back tears.
‘Book a Travelodge. It’s all I deserve.’
A week later he sheepishly asked her to upgrade him to a Radisson and book him a chiropractor.
Legs had worked for him tirelessly, often staying late, never complaining when he loaded her with extra duties, knowing that little by little she was becoming indispensible, showing her intelligence and initiative, and earning his trust. She soon even managed to make him laugh, a reward equalling those rare, vivid moments of praise from the man of few words and many million-pound manuscripts. But his laughter was always hard won, and she paid the price for trying too hard.
Eight weeks after she started at Fellows Howlett, Legs scored a triumph by rearranging a long-planned trip to Frankfurt in a way that gave Conrad an unprecedented afternoon off, an upgraded flight and a first-steal meeting with an American publisher eager to snap up new British talent. He was highly impressed. ‘You should go far, Allegra.’
‘Are you flattering me, or suggesting I remove myself to a greater distance?’
‘Stick around.’
‘I’ll be as sticky as you want me to be,’ she promised naughtily.
He had flashed that rare smile, as succinct as his speaking manner, but his green eyes remained serious. ‘Flirtation is small arms fire in business; I suggest you drop it from your CV if you want to break through the glass ceiling.’
After that lecture, she stopped the wisecracks. Yet she had often caught him looking at her through the smoked-glass wall that divided their work spaces, his expression impossible to read. Breaking through ceilings and walls became a recurring theme in her dreams, where she would shatter her way through hothouses, halls of mirrors and observatories to get to his side.
As the weeks passed, her crush on Conrad had grown in direct proportion to her increasing dissatisfaction at home. Her fiancé Francis had a far better job, fast-tracking a route through the editorial department of a blue-c
hip publishing group, but he despised it. He was tiring of London, he said. He talked obsessively about returning to his family home, Farcombe, and the festival his father had started up. He talked about the wedding as though it was a baptism to a new life. She suddenly saw parallels with Ros abandoning all her musical ambitions, and it frightened her.
She kept these fears from friends and work colleagues. ‘How’s the wedding shaping up?’ Conrad would ask.
Eager to cheer him up, Legs embellished plans for fire jugglers and jazz quartets, clifftop pyrotechnics and hosts of performance artists. Despite his warning, she started to made her boss laugh again, continually in fact, and loved the sound, like the surf crashing on Devon shingle. Conrad’s laughter became a new favourite song she wanted to hear again and again.
Three months after his separation, he made her feel as though she was beginning to penetrate the inner circle when he took her along to an important lunch with a client, a blustery old academic whose strange fictional tomes set in the Sassanid Empire had proven surprisingly commercial, largely because they contained rather a lot of graphic sex. The academic was a terrible old letch and immediately locked onto Legs as bait, making her suspect that Conrad had invited her along purely to sweeten his client’s palate. Polite and professional, Legs had tolerated his attentions, although the temptation to spear him in the groin with her fork every time his hands wandered over her thighs beneath the table was almost overwhelming. Instead, she’d drunk too much champagne, laughed along gamely to risqué jokes and sought distraction during the academic’s long, boring monologues about himself by focusing her thoughts upon Francis and the wedding. But by then, these subjects were both starting to worry her intensely, as the fairytale compared increasingly unfavourably to the quality, grown-up fiction and fact she encountered daily at Fellows Howlett.
When the old letch had been put on the Oxford train, blowing Legs kisses from his first class seat, she’d shared a taxi back to the office with her unusually quiet boss.
