by Fiona Walker
‘Beware of guilt and pity, Allegra. They are the worst possible foundations for any relationship. I’ve seen the way you behave with him.’
‘You don’t understand what he’s been through.’
‘I think I do.’
‘His mother can never come back; Francis used to say that Ella left him with nothing but the memory of her beauty because she died young.’ Tears filled her eyes. Then, realising what she had just said to a man who was self-confessedly about to lose his life, she let out a horrified gasp.
But Byrne was too agitated to pick up on it. ‘At least she died before she could let him down.’ He paused outside one of the little tea shops near the harbour where a poster in the window boasted two for one on angel cakes.
‘Poppy running away must have been terrible to come to terms with,’ she ventured cautiously. ‘I can’t imagine how differently my life might have turned out if my mother had left us all like that.’
‘You think I’ve turned into some sort of screwed up misogynist as a result, don’t you?’
‘No!’ she protested, adding, ‘I’m sure you hate men just as much.’
But the joke misfired as he glared at her humourlessly, ‘It’s what love makes men and women do to each other I can’t bear.’
‘So what’s it made you do, apart from mistrust absolutely everybody?’ she demanded angrily.
‘You just said it,’ he replied matter-of-factly. ‘My last girlfriend was still saying she loved me the day before she ran off with my best friend. How can that be?’
Horrified, Legs stared at the angel cake poster. ‘How long ago was this?’
‘Two years.’
‘Did you love her very much?’
‘I certainly thought so at the time, but I guess I didn’t really know her. The woman I’d been in love with wasn’t capable of doing that to me. Nor would the old friend I’d have trusted with my life.’
Legs thought about Francis again, and that terrible day she’d told him she wanted to be with Conrad. How long had it been since she’d said ‘I love you’ to him? A week? A fortnight? She’d grown accustomed to using it in place of a full stop at the end of phone calls and pillow talk.
‘Did you want revenge?’ she asked in a small voice.
He nodded, face deadpan. ‘I killed them both.’
Legs’ jaw dropped in horror and she felt her skin chill over. Then she saw a glitter in his eyes and laughed as she realised with a punch of relief that he was just joking, returning fire on her own wisecracks.
They turned towards the harbour again and started along the final steep, cobbled descent, the sea wind sharp against their faces. ‘They moved to Cork last year to start up an IT business,’ he explained. ‘I heard they got married and are expecting their first child in November.’
‘Can you forgive them?’
‘Why would I want to do that?’ He looked across at her sharply, and this time there was no glitter of amusement.
‘It might help you move on,’ she suggested. ‘Perhaps you’ll even find new love waiting at seven thirty-six one evening?’
He shook his head. ‘You can’t take love where I’m going.’
Legs’ skin chilled again, this time to sub-zero as she thought about him losing his life.
They were in front of the Book Inn already, the sea still troubled by the storm and lashing hard against the harbour walls.
On the hotel steps, Byrne took her hand in his and shook it, which felt so formal after their two extraordinary nights’ acquaintance. ‘Thank you for what you did for me tonight.’
‘Anytime,’ she dismissed, handing his jacket back: ‘There are better ways to—’ She was about to say ‘die’, but managed to stop herself just in time and blither, ‘There’s more than one way to crack a nut.’ In the circumstances, she wasn’t sure that was a much better way of putting it.
He held open the door for her. As she was about to step through it, Legs turned back to peck him on the cheek. In her hurry, she planted her lips far closer to his mouth than she intended, almost biting his chin.
For a moment she could feel him freeze in horror and then, to her astonishment, his hand reached up to the back of her head and his mouth moved to hers.
The kiss probably only lasted a couple of seconds, but afterwards she knew for certain that she had never been kissed like that in her life. The pit of her belly sizzled like a cymbal, her head was as light as a helium balloon and she seemed to have forgotten how to breathe.
Byrne let her go and looked away, clearing his throat. ‘I shouldn’t have done that. Go back to your lover in London, Heavenly Pony,’ he told her softly. ‘There’s only stormy water here, not deep blue sea.’
He turned to climb the stairs to his room, leaving her banging a palm against her head, her heart thudding against her ribs, as she tried to stop the walls spinning around her, feeling as though her morals were round her ankles.
Back in Skit, she peeled off the crocheted dress and positively danced around the urinals bathroom cleaning her teeth before falling ecstatically into bed, then picking up her iPhone to set the alarm, although she doubted she would sleep a wink knowing Byrne was lying in bed under the same roof.
One look at the long list of new messages made her want to hurl it from the room. She hadn’t even replied to the old ones yet. She’d leave them all until morning, she decided, feeling bad about it. But in one corner of its glowing screen, she could see that Gordin Lapis had just sent her a live message.
Beware the Devil in disguise, was his cryptic opening.
Legs longed to press the ‘offline’ option, knowing the last thing she needed was an exchange with the eccentric author. But she thought guiltily about his long, heartfelt email to which she hadn’t yet responded. And then she thought about Conrad, to whom she had shown no loyalty whatsoever. She’d hardly thought about him all day, she realised with a jolt, except one painful moment surrounded by nude art when she realised she no longer fancied him the way she once had. Her dedication to lover and career was feeble. She had to be professional and show Gordon that she cared tonight.
All gone v well this end. She messaged him back.
Look like an angel. Gordon’s reply came almost immediately.
Know you will be a total star here during festival week.
Walk like an angel.
Conrad will confirm details next week.
Talk like an angel.
Now he had truly gone off the rails, poor man. She’d email Kelly in the morning to check what was going on, just as soon as she had escaped Farcombe and its lunacy.
Are you listening to Elvis? she asked carefully.
Title ideas for Julie Ocean and Jimmy Jimmee, he replied. I fear sexual tension may be getting out of control. Am thinking of sending Jimmy deep undercover to a Carthusian closed order.
She laughed. That sounded more like the old Gordon.
She started to type, Thank you so much for the message you sent to me earlier – but it looked so clichéd that she couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence. Instead she rolled back to the start cursor and wrote: Sleep tight.
Don’t go! he messaged faster than she could dream of typing herself.
She waited.
Still there? he enquired eventually.
She impatiently miss-typed Yss.
There was another endless pause.
At last his dialogue line was refreshed, Sleep tight.
And he was declared offline.
Legs cast the phone aside and lay in darkness, still wide awake, listening to the pregnant bat colony budging up overhead. There seemed to be so many devils in disguise around her, she had no idea where to start looking for an angel. She certainly didn’t feel like one right now.
Chapter 19
The bats in the roof above Skit woke Legs just before dawn. They were having a busy night, all the new mums dashing back into the maternity colony after foraging for their offspring, the roost overhead chattering, chirping and scolding. It wa
s like trying to sleep beneath a school assembly.
Unable to get back to sleep, she turned on her light and picked up the manuscript of the crime thriller Gordon had recommended, but within two pages her heart was pounding and her mind jumping backwards and forwards trying to tie the clues together. The Girl Who Checked Out was too high grade for relaxation. She no longer had an appetite for well-crafted murders, especially those involving redheaded corpses in shopping trolleys. Last night’s antics at the hall had left her perplexed and strangely depressed. She felt silly to have been so frightened, yet she’d had a very real sense of foreboding, and Kizzy’s sudden disappearance still alarmed her, as did Francis’s attitude. He seemed so cruel and detached.
Casting the script aside, she switched off the reading light and padded to the window to watch the dawn steal over the village roofs. The last of the bats were flying in, soft brown missiles hurtling past on their black umbrella wings. The silver light seemed to transform the higgledy-piggledy roof tiles into pewter and pearl scales. Curling away from her up the steep hill along its two cobbled lanes, the village looked so trapped-in-time, picture-postcard medieval that she half expected to catch sight of a flapping black cloak as Francis or Édith swept back up to the hall after a night blood-sucking.
Sleep had brought her no heart-ease.
Francis had hardened and cooled, his broken heart reconditioned all wrong just as Lucy had said. Legs felt the responsibility for that new cruelty resting on her shoulders. Glimpses of the old Francis still showed through, tempting her to surrender herself back to the safe haven of nostalgia and mutual comfort, but something kept stopping her from responding to his calls to ‘say the word’.
It occurred to her that in their heyday he would never have seen her off with a peck on the cheek as he had last night, however angry he was with Poppy. The Francis she remembered would have pursued her to the Book Inn and been outside her window by midnight, ready to scale the ivy and make love feverishly before talking until dawn. Admittedly the bats nesting overhead might have put him off his stroke, but he would have braved them, just as he would have braved wearing his heart on his sleeve with a few well-chosen quotes and long, heart-pulling, groin-buzzing kisses.
She found it alienating the way Francis seemed to control his passion and curb his emotions these days. She’d always been the more outspoken, impulsive one of the two, shooting her mouth off and daring to be different. Francis had traditionally chauffeured life forwards like a pro while she rode shotgun. He’d kept his foot on the accelerator throughout their relationship, turning fantasy into reality as he prepared the ground for their publishing dynasty, their wedding, their family life together. She sensed he was still in the driving seat, but now he was going round in circles, not slowing down long enough to pick up passengers or listen to directions.
She heard a door slam and looked down to see a figure setting out up the steep cobbled lane, dark hair gleaming in the first rays of sun that were now stealing over the woods at the village brow which screened off the estate walls, car park and the inland hills. It was Byrne, Fink the basset hound waddling behind.
Legs’ feet itched to pull on trainers and run after him. But she forced herself to stay and watch as he strode off, his hands in pockets and head bowed, so deep in thought that he almost walked straight into the very same lamp-post beneath which he had demonstrated the meaninglessness of saying ‘I love you’ the night before. Now he stopped and looked up at it briefly while Fink lifted his leg at its base before both carried on with their dawn dog walk. He had his own demons, Legs told herself, and he’d made it clear he didn’t want her complicating his life, whatever little of it he had left. He had kissed her just once, and even though it had felt like a whole new world to her, it had been a kiss goodbye.
Stamping into the shower, she remembered his parting words last night. ‘Go back to your lover in London.’
The cool, high-pressure water rained down on her head, rattling her unspoken thoughts to the surface.
She didn’t want to go back to Conrad. Nor was she yet certain she wanted to stay for Francis. Meeting Byrne had made her want something else entirely and as always, the thing she wanted most of all was the one thing she couldn’t have. He’d told her that he was about to lose his life, repeatedly insisting she must leave, said ‘I love you’ without meaning it just to prove a point, yet she felt as though the past forty-eight hours had opened up that part of her heart which had been cauterised for years.
She distractedly washed her hair with body scrub and rubbed volume-enhancing conditioner into her armpits.
If she hadn’t met Byrne that weekend, she realised, she would almost certainly have hot-headededly rushed straight back Francis’s arms. She was frightened by the damage she’d already done. As her mother said, she owed it to Francis to try to recapture what they’d once had. But how could they hope to recapture it when just a year apart had pushed such estrangement between them?
And now she had to go back to London and to Conrad. She’d done what he asked. Gordon Lapis was on the Farcombe bill. She should feel delighted by the result, but she felt as though she’d traded her heart like a counterfeit note.
She stepped out of the shower and wrapped her oddly gritty hair in a towel before crossing the main room to check her phone.
Francis had texted her very late last night. Say the word. ILY.
Was he making a romantic statement or dictating ‘the word’, Legs wondered. She found she couldn’t reply, still raw from Byrne’s lecture about how easy it was to say ‘I Love You’. The only three-letter acronym in her head right now was SOS. A well brought up man like Francis would interpret it as ‘Save Our Souls’, but Legs was a texting veteran whose many quick exchanges with friends like Daisy included the phrase SOS or ‘Same Old Shit’. And she was definitely up to her neck in it this time.
Running away from Francis and back to Conrad again made the rock and the hard place seem indistinguishable. For now, she reached for her battered Nikes and decided to simply run.
Setting off for a final breezy jog along the cliff-path before the drive to Somerset and on to London, Legs’ heart seemed to set down markers with every footfall as she breathed in the familiar sea air, hating the thought of leaving, wishing more than anything that she could stay and sort things out with Francis. She couldn’t hope to say everything she needed to over breakfast. In her head, she had an image of herself weeping penitently over a bowl of muesli, crying ‘sorry, sorry, sorry!’ over again.
The thought of trying to make her mother and Hector see sense was another vast thorn in her side that gave her a stitch as she ran.
When she then swallowed two flies and crashed through a cow pat, Legs realised she craved Ealing Common with its neat, flat paths and poop scoop vigilantes. Before embracing that, she was equally eager to talk to Daisy, to spill beans and seek magic advice.
Running back into Farcombe from the top lane, she detoured via the Visitors’ Centre public car park at the top of the village to fetch the Honda, knowing that she would have a hefty fine to pay for abandoning it there most of the weekend.
But the little red rust-bucket was missing altogether. Its broken door must have made it easy pickings for a car thief, she realised with a wail of dismay, imagining her longtime driving companion now discarded and torched on a beach somewhere.
Furious, Legs stomped back to the Book Inn, where Nonny was manning the reception desk computer, updating the guests’ bills with last night’s dinner and bar tabs. ‘Everything OK?’
‘Somebody’s stolen my car!’
‘No, it’s cool. The man from the garage just dropped it off.’ Nonny reached behind her for a padded envelope which she handed over. ‘Better get it moved before the good bergers of Farcombe march on us. You know how officious the Parish Council are about illegal parking on the quayside.’
Inside the envelope were a set of Honda keys. Although these looked almost identical to her own, they were far less scuffed and dog-eare
d, and were attached to a large luggage tag which read: ‘take outside and point at the sea.’
Intrigued, she did as instructed, pressing the ‘unlock’ button.
There was a chirrup immediately beside her, making Legs jump. A shiny silver car was parked beneath the Book Inn’s swinging hanging baskets, already covered in brightly jewelled petals. It was the same size and shape as hers, but far less battered.
She peered through the windows and let out a shriek, because inside was all the clutter and detritus from her own runabout, neatly stacked up on the rear seat. When she opened the door to investigate further, breathing in leather upholstery and newly valeted carpets, the log and an insurance certificate were on the passenger’s seat, both in her name.
She rushed back inside the pub to corner Nonny. ‘What do you know about that car?’
‘Just that it was delivered here while you were out running. Isn’t it yours?’
Legs raked urgently through all the paperwork and the contents of the padded envelope, but there was no explanation whatsoever.
She checked through her phone messages: Ros entreating her not to be late bringing Nico home; Daisy telling her to arrive after midday because they’d been up half the night and wanted a lie-in; Conrad asking her to ring him urgently; Francis saying that he’d just called into the Book Inn for breakfast with a surprise for her, and where was she?
She dashed down to the restaurant and then into the bar, but he was no longer there.
Running back out past the still unlocked car, its passenger door wide open and an eager seagull pecking at the trim, she panted her way up the cliff path and through the parkland to the hall, her heart on fire.
That’s why he’d conducted that strange conversation about her car last night, she realised. He must have been planning this surprise all along. Byrne was totally wrong about Francis. This was a gesture of love, not revenge. He was the same man she’d loved for all those years. Francis had never been one for jewels or flowers; it was typical of him to be so pragmatic, and she found it wildly romantic. He did still love her. This was better than a moonlit serenade outside her window any day.
