The Love Letter

by Fiona Walker

  ‘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.’

  ‘I knew nothing!’

  ‘You two had a very cosy tête-à-tête over supper in the pub last night before I arrived, I gather,’ Francis snarled, having clearly just been debriefed, probably by Kizzy.

  ‘We had to share the last free table in the restaurant.’ Legs immediately became defensive. ‘I had no idea he was Poppy’s son, did I, Byrne?’

  His face was deadpan. ‘It was like eating in a busy Prêt. Didn’t even know I’m called Jago. Spent all evening trying to avoid addressing me by my first name, so she did.’

  ‘You noticed?’ she gasped, mortified.

  ‘Well, Jago here has certainly made tonight’s meal one to remember,’ Francis snapped, grasping Legs’ elbow and steering her towards the house, calling back to Byrne. ‘You can stay there. Talk to him, Édith.’

  ‘Isn’t that a bit unfriendly?’ Legs muttered as he marched her through the Moroccan arches, footsteps echoing and her high heels buckling under her. ‘He’s family now, after all.’

  ‘Not my bloody family,’ Francis hissed, whisking her behind an amoebic statue and taking her by surprise with a long, hungry kiss. There was no courteous request tonight.

  ‘Christ, I needed that,’ he laughed with relief as they surfaced for air.

  She looked at his face, so handsome and indomitable, longing to cut him down to size for manhandling her mind and body so much in the past forty-eight hours than both were dizzy, yet too fearful of hurting him again to cross him.

  ‘What about Kizzy?’

  ‘She’s going off the rails faster than a faulty coathanger this evening. You’re so right, Legs. There’s no point in faking. Say the word and it’s over.’

  Even though she now she knew that he’d only been cohabiting with the fish-eating Babooshka-singer for a fortnight, it sounded terribly cruel. ‘What word?’

  By way of an answer, he settled another kiss on her lips, this one longer and gentler, but no less possessive.

  Oh hell, Legs thought in a panic, casting her eyes nervously over her shoulder in case Kizzy was nearby. But there was no denying the frantic heartbeat rattling right through her, from pulse to pulse via every erogenous zone.

  ‘Have you been eating garlic?’ he asked when they surfaced again.

  She had no time to answer as there was a commotion from the staircase in the main hall and Francis dropped her like a hot brick as Poppy’s deep voice boomed into earshot. ‘I am going to spend time with my son, who has returned to me!’ she was announcing theatrically.

  ‘Are you sure that’s wise?’ Her friend Yolande was right on her heels, sixteen stone of breathless panic in a kaftan, harem pants and clicking flip-flops.

  Puce in the face, her lip-gloss kissed off, Legs mustered a winning smile. As the duo swept past, she and Francis were standing a respectable three feet apart like butler and housekeeper. Poppy didn’t bat an eye in their direction. Yolande, however, reserved a venomous look for her daughter’s rival. Unlike her friend, whose low, jewelled turbans lent her wizened Middle Eastern ethnicity, Yolande favoured an exotic millinery modelled on well-upholstered Nigerian friends from London. Thus Legs received a furious glare from beneath a foot of orange satin, silk and feather folds of such weight and plumage that Cici’s fascinator would look like a small slaughtered budgie by comparison.

  As soon as they were out of earshot, Francis let out a sigh of relief.

  ‘I need a stiff drink.’ He led the way towards the service door, as though the kiss hadn’t happened, adding over his shoulder. ‘What’s he like,Jago Byrne?’

  ‘Pretty combustible.’

  ‘Then we’ll sit him close to a candle.’

  ‘I think I’ll just pop to the loo.’ Legs dived through the door to the cloakroom, slamming it gratefully behind her and sliding the lock.

  Her detective head was trying to add up facts, but there were so many new developments she was running out of fingers on which to count.

  She fished a fresh tampon from her bag with shaking hands, wishing she hadn’t come. A pale crocheted dress with just a transparent g-string for protection was making her paranoid, despite all the adverts for sanitary protection starring women leaping across streams and stepping stones in tight white jeans with no knicker line during their periods. But really, it was the cross-currents that were causing her heart to hammer as though taking a shower with Norman Bates holding her soap just beyond the curtain. Francis was as abrupt and snappy as she could remember. And while angry Byrne might have plenty to distract him from her silly flirtation, Kizzy looked absolutely murderous tonight. She could almost hear the knives sharpening beyond the door.

  Pulling herself together, Legs washed her hands and stepped out into the hallway, turning towards the green baize service door. An angry voice just the other side made her stall.

  ‘How could you bring her along tonight? That is so cruel.’

  She stepped back, throat clutched with shame. It was Kizzy, her voice hacked through with tears.

  ‘You lied to me!You said her love affair was just the excuse you needed to be free, and now you bring her here and rub my nose in it. You still love her, don’t you? You just used me to try to get information. But you don’t know the half of it. I could bring this family to its knees. You’re all rotten to the core apart from Poppy. You’ll get your just desserts. I am not going to be humiliated like this!’ Footsteps hammered away along the back lobby.

  Legs retreated hastily across the chequered marble floor to the base of the staircase, debating whether it was better to make a run for it past Byrne in the cloisters or down the dramatic sweep of entrance steps.

  Before she had made up her mind, she heard the baize door swing and a click of heels as Édith appeared carrying her topped-up wine glass, along with a heavy crystal glass in which ice cubes rattled like bones beneath deep amber liquid.

  She jumped when she saw Legs. ‘What are you doing skulking about out here? Francis is looking for you. Do you think the Prodigal will notice this is Amaretto not Irish malt? He asked for scotch, but there’s none in the house.’

  ‘I think he might.’

  ‘Oh well, I guess it will be a test of good manners.’ She smiled wickedly and swept off through the Moroccan wing, ice clanking.

  Stealing herself, Legs summoned the last traces of Julie Ocean grit and headed to the kitchen, knowing that running away would just make the situation with Francis worse; equally aware that she couldn’t drag herself away from Byrne and his extraordinary revelations.

  The vast Farcombe kitch
en was as big and deep as a squash court, and little modernised since its Victorian heyday, apart from the replacement of the original cast-iron range with a custom-painted turquoise four-door Aga and the addition of several fifties-styled fridges and quite a lot of Poppy statues.

  To Legs’ embarrassment, she had to edge past Kizzy who was standing directly in the doorway, stiff-jawed and wild-eyed as she spoke with Édith’s girlfriend Jax. Both appeared viciously angry as they turned to let her past.

  At the opposite end of the room, Francis was prowling around by the French windows looking trapped.

  ‘There you are!’ He had already poured Legs a glass of Gavi, which he quickly handed to her, blue eyes desperate to convey a message. Apart from an obvious topnote of fear and irritation, she couldn’t read any more detail.

  ‘Francis!’ Kizzy called him to her side and he melted reluctantly away.

  Legs watched the gathering storm clouds through the windows, wondering anxiously how Kizzy could bring the family to its knees. Perhaps she was planning to become a vicar, she thought hopefully.

  Having originally planned to stick to mineral water after last night’s excess and the sleep-inducing Happy Ever Afters, she sipped the Gavi unenthusiastically but discovered it was so delicious that she couldn’t resist snorkelling up some more. She then crossed the room to greet Jax, who was now alone, pressed up against the Aga despite her leather jacket and the heat of the evening, her hackles raised. She had a nervous smile like a terrier. Legs had always found Jax good company and refreshingly down to earth once one penetrated the edgy coolness.

  ‘Knew you’d be back,’ Jax said in an undertone as she approached.

  ‘So good to see you.’ She kissed her cool, porcelain-pale cheeks. She smelled deliciously of Antaeus. ‘I don’t think I’m very welcome.’

  ‘You and me both,’ Jax snarled, then flashed another defensive smile. ‘Édith always reckoned you and Fran is the real deal,’ her gruff little Dublin-meets-Cockney voice made Legs suddenly homesick for city hustle and bustle.