The Love Letter

by Fiona Walker

  Clearing up together after the massive fried feast that Legs would be running off all week, Daisy looked across at her friend slyly. ‘Looking forward to seeing Conrad?’

  ‘Of course.’ Legs tried and failed to hold a self-assured smile.

  ‘You know,’ Daisy pondered idly as she rinsed plates, ‘perhaps it would be good if you and Francis got back together.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Legs could hardly believe she was hearing this after Daisy had been so against it two days earlier. Et tu, Brute, she thought weakly.

  ‘He can hardly care much for the redheaded poet if he lets her swan off halfway through a dinner party without a by your leave.’

  They watched through the windows as Will and Nico built a bonfire outside; the girls were having a nap upstairs, the baby monitor propped on the sill between two aloes in need of repotting.

  ‘Mind you, have you read her stuff?’ Daisy went on. ‘I Googled her, and it’s like those dreadful poems you used to write as a teenager, Legs – “our love is a wound razed from the shards of our hearts that splinter with the impact of every quaking orgasm” …’

  ‘Did I show you that?’ She was mortified.

  ‘Duh!’ Daisy stretched her eyes. ‘It was on the wall above your bed. Francis never struck me as the quaking sort.’

  ‘We quaked in our day.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘He’s changed a lot,’ Legs admitted, relieved to be able to talk about it. ‘He seems so much colder, tougher too.’

  ‘He’s always been pretty impenetrable,’ Daisy sighed as she thought back. ‘It was one of the things we all found wildly attractive about him.’

  ‘I can’t remember him ever being this calculating. He even suggested putting on an act to break up our parents’ affair at first, and he made it pretty clear that he was happy to act out the bed-scenes as well as the ensemble pieces.’

  ‘You can hardly expect him to behave like a saint after what you did to him a year ago,’ she muttered, irritation mounting. ‘He’s bound to try to protect himself.’

  ‘But now he says he still loves me.’

  ‘Well that’s progress.’ Daisy was deep in the dishwasher, cramming plates in any old how amid a lot of angry clanks. ‘Did he mention the letter you sent?’

  ‘Not once. My mother has a theory that his broken heart has been put back together in all the wrong order. Somebody else suggested he might be after revenge?’ Legs thought back to her dinner with Byrne, when she’d banged on drunkenly about her feelings for Francis. It seemed like a lifetime ago now.

  But Daisy clearly couldn’t imagine honourable, conservative Francis to be capable of such a thing. She straightened up with a plate still in one hand. ‘C’mon, Legs. Francis says he wants you back even if it’s just make-believe for a little bit, he can’t keep his hands off you and he kicks his new girlfriend out. Anybody can see he’s still mad about you. Just don’t break his heart a second time, because it could be fatal. You’re playing with fire here, remember? Ex-lovers can be very flammable; that’s why they’re called old flames, especially one that was kept alight as long as Francis. I don’t want you to get burned.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve already got burned, trust me.’ Legs felt weak, thinking about her flirtation with a near-stranger, the devastating free-fall lust of that brief kiss with Byrne compared to the bittersweet nostalgia of reuniting with Francis.

  ‘But you two are getting back together, yes?’ Daisy asked. To Legs’ alarm, she looked as eager as she would asking Agnetha whether Abba really were going to stage that final arena tour.

  ‘I’ve promised him I’ll think about it.’ She swallowed a lump of panic.

  Daisy still wasn’t tuned into her wavelength at all: ‘If you two get together again that will mean you’re in Farcombe lots so we’ll get to see each other. It could be like the old days; we children raising our broods by the cove where our parents left off.’

  Again, Legs thought uncomfortably about the Adulteryhood years.

  ‘I have Conrad to think about too,’ she said firmly, although saying it felt like secretly proving her own point. The Adulteryhood years were already upon her generation, and as usual she had been a rebellious pioneer, along with Daisy herself.

  ‘Nico says Conrad’s impossibly pompous and that he’ll never marry you.’

  ‘Since when did you listen to the opinion of a ten-year-old over your oldest friend?’ she said hotly.

  ‘I happen to think Nico has a very good take on life. And he loves you to bits. He’s worried about you. We all are.’

  ‘Well I am perfectly capable of making my own romantic decisions, thank you.’ She shelved any intentions to confess all her darkest secrets to Daisy; that kiss with Byrne, which had felt like a last farewell, still haunted her lips.

  But Daisy already knew one dark secret. ‘Is that why you’ve bought your sister’s wedding dress on eBay? You always said it was hideous.’

  Legs almost dropped the glass she was washing.

  Daisy smiled wickedly, ‘Nothing gets past a ten-year-old conspiracy theorist.’

  ‘I should have taken him to Farcombe as my detective sidekick,’ she sighed. ‘He might have helped unravel the riddles there.’

  Chapter 22

  Driving Nico back to London was just the distraction Legs needed; he didn’t pause for breath long enough for her to dwell upon the maelstrom she was leaving behind or the challenges that lay ahead.

  After just forty-eight hours at Inkpot Farm, Nico was a totally different boy, his yells louder, body looser, attitude cockier and laughter endless. And he was very opinionated. Whereas Ros encouraged educational talk about subjects like history and wildlife, all carefully modulated and slotted in between church and after school activities, conversations at Inkpot revolved around people they knew, gossip, emotions and intrigue.

  ‘Daisy says we’ll all be able to have holidays together at Farcombe soon,’ he told his aunt excitedly. ‘Dad wants the Spycove tower room overlooking the sea as his writing study, but Daisy reckons he’ll kill himself on the spiral stairs if he’s drunk, which he often is, so I might get it as my bedroom, which would be so cool. Daisy says she wants a desk near a loo because she has a weak bladder and writes “loo-ney and loo-ed comedy”. She’s so funny. I think Daddy is a bit jealous that her stuff gets put on telly and he only ever gets things published in boring newspapers that nobody reads, but I told him his novel might make him as famous as Gordon Lapis one day, and that would mean movies and everything.’

  He didn’t stop chattering the entire way to Ealing, almost all sentences starting with ‘Dad says’ this and ‘Daisy says’ the other, along with many an opinionated ‘I think’ the complete opposite. In Ealing, he was encouraged to learn, in Somerset to debate. He benefitted from both, although the transition could be tricky at times, especially given Ros’s protectiveness.

  The hug between mother and son on the doorstep was all tears and delight, as cuddly as two bears reunited after a treacherous winter. But it all went rapidly downhill.

  Furious that they had got back an hour later than promised, Ros was in a picky mood, her lovingly prepared supper burned beyond repair. At first she blamed her sister, ‘you never look at your watch, Legs’; and then Will, ‘I can’t believe he let you stay in bed until lunchtime, Nicholas; it will completely ruin your sleep pattern’; and finally Daisy, although her name wasn’t mentioned, as usual, ‘I suppose somebody gave you all the wrong things to eat and encouraged you to stay up too late. Why aren’t you eating?’ She hovered over him as he picked his way through hastily defrosted and undercooked wholemeal crust pizza, as chewy and crumbly as brown polystyrene.

  It was a tricky course for Nico to steer. Increasingly subdued, he agreed that he did have a bit of a funny tummy now he came to think about it.

  Ros then started unpacking his bag in the kitchen, complaining that half his clothes were missing and the rest filthily covered with sand. ‘Your father knows I need everything back here clean an
d organised. I bet he let somebody else pack this.’

  Seeing Nico’s miserable face, Daisy hurriedly tried to explain, ‘Actually I packed it because I took it to Devon by mista—’

  But Ros was on a roll. ‘Will has no idea what it’s like to scrimp and save for clothes.’

  ‘He does!’ Nico defended. ‘Daddy has holes in all his clothes because he can’t afford new ones.’

  ‘Rubbish. That’s because he’s scruffy. He was always getting holes in his clothes when we were married, but unlike some people, I used to take the time to mend them for him like any good wife would.’

  Nico stormed up to his room and slammed the door.

  ‘Oh hell,’ Ros rubbed her face but made no move to follow, adopting her martyred expression as she continued sorting clothes to wash. Legs hovered nearby, uncertain whether to put the kettle on and offer sympathy, tell her sister off, or scarper. As usual, the kitchen floor was spotless, but she saw emotional eggshells everywhere as she crossed it to Ros’s side.

  ‘Have you spoken to Dad at all?’ she asked carefully.

  ‘No,’ Ros had that clamp-faced look which said she was close to tears. She always missed Nico dreadfully during his weekends away, counted the hours until he came home, but these days the reunion was increasingly tense and embittered by her resentment at Nico’s growing independence.

  ‘Mum’s still in Farcombe …’ she ventured.

  But Ros was focused entirely on the family microcosm in W5. ‘I think I’ll get Mum to drop Nicholas off and collect him next time that Will can’t do the run,’ she said tersely. ‘She never stays for more than a cup of tea. It isn’t good for him to have these long lunches with you there. It gives him a false sense of perspective.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Family life.’

  ‘But Will, Daisy and the girls are his family too.’

  Ros said nothing, angrily unpairing two little socks and throwing them into the laundry skip.

  ‘Those ones are still clean,’ Legs pointed out kindly. ‘I didn’t wear the socks and pants.’

  Ros carefully folded a pair of small Y-fronts featuring Darth Vader on the front. ‘How is Francis?’

  ‘Fine. He sends his love,’ she lied, knowing it would cheer up her sister.

  Ros managed a tight smile. ‘Have you two made up your differences?’ She made it sound like two school friends reconciled after a playground brawl.

  ‘It’s a bit more complicated than that.’

  ‘Yesterday, I said a prayer that you two would get back together,’ she sighed. ‘I even lit a candle. Silly of me.’

  Legs thought about the ring, still locked in the glovebox of the lovely new car parked proudly outside. In her head, she could still hear Daisy enthusing about them all raising their children in Farcombe, could see herself sitting back at the big, paper-strewn breakfast table in the hall, and she was suddenly shot through with sentimental overload. ‘Not so silly at all.’

  ‘I knew it!’ The Darth Vader pants were raised like a victory flag. ‘You must fight for him, Legs,’ Ros announced zealously, as though preaching from the pulpit. ‘Do whatever it takes to seek his forgiveness. Francis is everything you could ask for in a husband – financially secure, family oriented, faithful and honest. He has values that belong to our parents’ generation, and that’s so rare in men these days.’ She whisked away a tear with the Y-fronts.

  Now was certainly not the time to break the news about their mother and Hector, Legs realised. But she knew she had to tell Ros about the offer on Inkpot Farm before she left. Will clearly hadn’t mentioned it when calling earlier to say that they were on their way, and her sister would be apoplectic if she heard it from Nico, being of the belief that the parents should discuss all ‘grown-up’ matters before children were informed.

  To Legs’ alarm, her sister’s tears started to spill as soon as she learned Will and Daisy were taking their family to live in Spycove.

  ‘How dare they live there?’ Ros was distraught. ‘That means I can never go to Farcombe again, never show Nico all the places I used to play as a child.’

  ‘Of course you can,’ Legs soothed. ‘They lived there a few years ago, after all.’

  ‘But that was just temporary. Before …’ She couldn’t bring herself to elaborate on Will’s other children being conceived and born. ‘Farcombe should be neutral territory – a refuge for us all.’

  Legs privately thought that if her sister had witnessed what she had this past weekend she’d never want to go to Spywood again, but she kept quiet. Instead, she determinedly stayed positive: ‘Don’t you see that this could really work out for you and Nico? You two can stay at the cottage for holidays, perhaps with Mum and Dad, and me too, and he’ll have his whole family around him.’

  ‘That,’ Ros glared at her, ‘is one of the most hurtful things you’ve ever suggested.’

  Realising she’d misjudged the situation totally as usual, Legs apologised and retreated to her basement flat. She could hear Ros’s feet pounding upstairs before she had even closed the door.

  Wearily, she unpacked her own case – Nico hadn’t taken advantage of any of her Browns weekend wardrobe, she noticed – and switched on her laptop to tackle her messages. Lots of neglected friends were queued in her inbox, complaining as always that she had no time for them since Conrad had sent her careering away from her social life. She knew she must appease them soon.

  First she emailed Gordon: Back in London. Have new (non-red) car thanks to lovely ex. Know you’ll approve! How’s Jimmy bearing up in the Carthusian order?

  An automated out-of-office reply flew straight back saying that Gordon was no longer taking personal emails and all correspondence should be directed at his PA.

  Reading it in alarm, conscience pricking, she emailed Kelly, carefully shrouding her mounting concerns about her boss’s overall wellbeing and his attitude to appearing at Farcombe with a cloak of assurances that she was dedicated to assisting with this first public appearance, and so it would help to have an indication of how he was currently feeling about it and any worries he might have. She had no idea if Kelly was party to his long emails and live chats with her, but didn’t want to risk further indiscretion: I’m sure you agree we all want to make this as stress-free a process as possible. She fought an urge to add ‘ha ha’ in brackets before pressing send.

  Then she called Conrad. Alone in his big Wandsworth house once again, he was far more forthcoming than in recent days, if no less concise.

  ‘So good to have you back,’ he growled. ‘Want to debrief my Legs in private. Come round tonight.’

  ‘I – um – not right now. I said I’d go round and see my father tonight,’ she lied. ‘But I can’t wait to see you tomorrow.’ She winced at her platitudes, and her Pavlovian eagerness to please, ever the teacher’s pet when it came to Conrad.

  He accepted her excuse with unflattering complacency. ‘Sure. Wear something sexy tomorrow. Dinner after work. You stay here. We have a big week ahead.’ He rang off.

  Stifling yawns, Legs repacked her washbag and a change of clothes into her weekend case. She had been suggesting to Conrad for months that she should leave a few spares at his place, but he always resisted, worried that his kids might find them and kick up a fuss. Now she found she dreaded the thought of going there again, like an enchanted cave that might entrap her. She wanted to turn tail and drive back to Farcombe instead.

  Francis had sent a text. Hope you got back safe.

  It wasn’t exactly Hamlet this time, but she felt a hot glow of happiness nonetheless, replying. Home safe. The car is truly lovely. Makes me think of you. X

  Not sure how to take that, he replied while she was changing into her running gear. Want to talk?

  He would want to know about her conversation with her mother, she realised, the thought of Adulteryhood hanging on her conscience. Being back in London and speaking with Conrad made her guilty head spin more than ever.

  Later maybe. Need time to thi
nk. x

  She pocketed the phone, pulled on her running gear and headed outside to pound her way towards the common. She hadn’t run this much in months. It was a sure sign of a troubled mind, she reminded herself. If her love-life didn’t sort itself out soon, she’d be joining Eddie Izzard on marathons, cracking jokes about blisters and SheWees.

  Chapter 23

  The storm that had blown in across the Devon coast last night was buffeting west London now, its power reduced to a few electric crackles in the sky and a dark rain-cloud rumbling on the horizon somewhere near Hayes, but it was enough to make the park nearly deserted. Legs joined the hardy runners and late afternoon dog walkers lapping the windswept perimeter as she tried to sort out the muddle in her head. But all she could think about was Byrne saying ‘I am about to lose my life’ and that kiss which had turned hers upside-down.

  Her brunch was still sitting like lead in her belly, giving her a stitch.

  She stopped to rest by a bench, not caring that huge raindrops were starting to splash down on her.

  Her phone was beeping with another message in her pocket. Hope you’re thinking about me … or are you unblocking a sink?

  Looking at it, she realised that she hadn’t locked the screen properly when setting off and it had rung through to Francis’s mobile as the last number she’d contacted. He must have picked up to be greeted by the sound of her panting non-stop.

  Just running! She hurriedly replied.

  You’ve been running through my mind all day; fitting that you should be running through my phone too. Hope you’re thinking hard about me – or should that be thinking about me hard?

  Legs wiped a raindrop from her nose, face flaming in the knowledge that she hadn’t been thinking about him at all. Now he was text flirting. Badly. On balance, she preferred Hamlet. Cringing with shame, she sat on the bench in the rain, trying to think up a witty reply.