by Fiona Walker
She looked at her hands. ‘The truth is I have no idea who my birth father is, some village stud from the Hartland Peninsula, I think. Mum was very young and a bit capricious.’ She smiled ruefully, tears still wet on her freckled cheeks. ‘They’d probably call it ADHD now, but in those days it was just seen as waywardness, and a family like the Delameres could still brush such things under the Axminster – or keep it in the nursery wing. Liz is incredibly bright, over-bright really, but she didn’t finish her education; she had no social skills by the time she reached adulthood, and was hopelessly naive, just living at home in their big country pile like a neglected pet, which is probably why she loves animals and lame ducks more than anything. Poppy’s family and the Delameres were close friends, and it was Goblin Granny who suggested Liz become a mother’s help at Nevermore to give her something to do.
‘Liz was probably nineteen or twenty by then, but acted like a little girl playing house. She clucked around Poppy’s brood like a little mother hen, living in her own fantasy world, which is what she does a lot of the time. She loved caring for all the horses, and it meant Poppy could get out of the house. Brooke used to get Liz to wheel him to the local pubs – his alcoholism was legend – and it gave her her first taste of a social life. She was terribly pretty back then and men found her charming, even though she was wild as celandine with no grasp of social mores whatsoever. She was also far too kind-hearted to say no.
‘But then she got pregnant. She was so innocent it’s easy to see how some local letch took advantage. She was almost six months gone by the time anybody found out. She wouldn’t say who the father was, but a few discreet enquiries made it pretty obvious that by then she was thought of as little more than the village bicycle. The Delameres disowned her, and so it was left to Poppy and Goblin Granny to pick up the pieces.’
‘And you were the pieces?’
She nodded again, big green eyes cheerless. ‘Poppy got Liz on the local council house list and she was already in a little flat by the time I was born, but her benefits didn’t go far and she had no real understanding of the world. She can behave inappropriately, obsessively sometimes; it’s hard to explain. People took advantage of her, difficult situations frightened her. She started having panic attacks. The Delamere family had played down her differences so much as she grew up that there had never been formal help or any diagnosis of a mental health issue, so she got no extra money or assistance. She just had Poppy.’
Legs suspected there had to be more to the connection between the two women than an old family friendship, but she wasn’t about to interrupt with awkward questions.
‘Poppy had just started to work for the Farcombe Festival at the time,’ Kizzy went on, ‘Liz still did a few part-time hours for her, bringing me along with her, but she became unreliable, not turning up on time or not turning up at all. I think Brooke had to go into respite care for a bit; Jamie kept running away. Poppy was really struggling and terribly unhappy.
‘Then Liz made a suicide attempt – not her first by any means, but her most determined by a mile – and that got social services on high alert, given I was still under two. They were soon talking about taking me into care. That’s when Liz asked Poppy if she could sign over my custody to her.’
‘Isn’t that a bit extreme?’
Kizzy stretched out a thin freckled hand and stroked Byron’s soft undercarriage. Now lying belly up between them, lame leg twitching in sleep, he was snoring contentedly.
‘Liz is incredibly loving, but she isn’t at all maternal. It’s hard to explain. She’d abandon me on the pavement as a toddler to cross the road and pet a dog. She’d stay up all night reading a book or writing stories of her own and then sleep all the next day, forgetting my needs totally. Goblin Granny used to call it a goldfish memory, but she’s just hard-wired differently.’
Legs watched her small, pretty face, amazed at how rational and sane she was about it all. She looked terribly pale, the puffiness from crying having subsided to reveal big grey smudges under her eyes.
‘Could I possibly scrounge a biscuit or some bread and butter?’ Kizzy asked faintly.
‘Of course! When did you last eat?’
‘Imee’s walnut starter thing.’
‘Kerist! Hang on in there.’ She headed to the kitchen. ‘I’m afraid I don’t have any raw fish.’
‘Francis stopped me eating raw fish,’ Kizzy sighed. ‘It’s full of B vitamins, but he said it was weird and made me spotty.’
‘He used a similar argument with me about chocolate,’ Legs sympathised.
Having not yet shopped for food, she knew her fridge was on its last offerings, but she managed to scrape the mould off a slab of cheddar and grate enough to cover a slice of pitta bread that she hacked from its icy tomb in the freezer compartment. Toasted under the grill, it delighted Kizzy, who fell on it like a famished refugee, sharing it with the suddenly alert Byron while Legs made herself a cup of tea.
Kizzy was still plundering the wine, raising her glass in a wonky salute now. ‘You are so kind, Legs. I can see why Francis says you’re the sweetest person he ever knew.’
‘He said that?’ She spluttered hot tea in shock.
Kizzy looked into her glass as she remembered. ‘He used to shout it really, when he wanted to get at me.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. We both went into the relationship with such huge agendas, we needed a secretary to take minutes. This is delicious.’ Kizzy was already noshing the last corner of pitta bread. ‘Is there any more?’
Legs shook her head apologetically. ‘There’s some elderly Stilton I haven’t explored yet, and I might have some biscuits …’
‘Please!’ She gazed at the photos framed on the walls and shelves while Legs raided cupboards in search of digestives. ‘You have lots and lots of friends, don’t you?’
‘Very neglected ones,’ Legs pulled a regretful face as she lifted bags of spilling rice and pasta looking for biscuits. ‘They keep hitching and hatching while I’m – well, busy,’ she fudged around the Conrad issue. It had all been so much easier with Francis at her side. Granted, her school and university friends hadn’t always taken to him at first, her long distance, bright yet aloof boyfriend with his quasi-American accent who had been presented as a fait accompli and had always prevented her sowing her wild oats alongside her old London pals and peers. But that was a long time ago. They’d all eventually grown to love him as a part of her. Over the years many had become close to Francis’s school and university friends, knitting together the social circles, and in time this embroidered alliance had been joined by other colourful new threads, acquaintances from jobs and pastimes. It had made for a muddling tapestry to unpick when they’d split up. In the wake of the broken engagement that nobody had seen coming, a few had sided pointedly with Francis, the wronged party, banished to Devon. Many had stuck with Legs, the friendly socialite, who had stayed conveniently in London. Quite a few had dropped out of contact totally.
‘When a couple split up, the address book quickly changes from current affairs to history in the making,’ she admitted to Kizzy now.
Between them, they demolished all the digestives and aged Stilton, which was actually sublime, even though Legs knew it dated back to the previous Christmas; the only thing that had been in her fridge longer was the Fridge Fresh Egg that Ros had given her as a moving in present. Legs found her appetite as sticky as the weather, but Kizzy was comfort-eating like a Tasmanian Devil on a binge.
‘Francis and I had no friends in common apart from Édith,’ she admitted in a small voice as she chased biscuit crumbs from creases in her shorts.
‘And Jax,’ Legs added automatically.
Kizzy started crying noisily again. She was really very drunk now, Legs realised. She wondered whether it would be terribly rude and uncaring to call her a taxi. As Kizzy threw herself against Legs’ side and sobbed into her yellow dress, she decided it would. Besides which, she felt certain she was close to uncov
ering the big secret.
‘It was Édith who persuaded me to try to find my mother again,’ said Kizzy. ‘Liz had been a live-in c-carer for a long time and moved all over the c-country. She’d m-married one man she looked after and had a bit of a breakdown w-when he died and his family tried to take her to court over money. Then she went on the rebound and married somebody else, another old m-man who treated her horribly before he died too. Her life was a mess.’
The Black Widow of Bideford, Legs remembered with a shiver.
‘She’s always frightened me,’ Kizzy admitted. ‘She’d write to me from time to time, long, rambling letters full of potty conspiracy theories. I threw them away and never wrote back. It was Édith who said I should face my fear, but I kept flunking it. I refused to talk about her; it was like my memory had blotted her out. It drove Édith mad. Then we had a horrible argument and I went to see Liz to prove I had the nerve as much as anything.’
‘And what did you find out?’
‘That I was right to be frightened.’ Her voice shook and she picked repeatedly at the frays on the chewed cushion, unable to look up.
‘Have you talked to anyone about this?’
‘Not properly.’ She shook her head. ‘Édith had stopped speaking to me. I t-tried to have a quiet word with Francis, but he thought I was propositioning him. That’s how we ended up on a first date.’ She looked up apologetically, pale skin starting to colour. ‘And I’d never tell Poppy, just as I’ve never dared tell her the t-truth about my real f-feelings,’ she hiccupped, tears welling afresh. ‘I’d do anything for her, and I couldn’t let her down. Without her, my life would have been utterly different. I thought Francis was s-so lovely and safe, that he w-would look after me. Poppy wanted me to be an official part of the Farcombe dynasty, not just a cuckoo chick she was forced to g-give away.’
It was starting to dawn on Legs that Kizzy had not just been abandoned once as a young child, but twice over. It was enough to make anybody unstable. ‘You say your mother made Poppy your custodian?’
‘That was the legal term, yes,’ she nodded tearfully. ‘When Liz’s life reached crisis point, Poppy was in a very unhappy place too. Brooke was hell to live with; Jamie was such a wild child, obsessed with his horses, fearless of danger and lost in his own world. He’d stopped talking to her. Nevermore Farm is something to behold; it hasn’t changed much, even now. Back then, it was an angry, male dominated house with practically no home comforts. Poppy saw me as compensation, the pretty little girl who danced for her and giggled at her jokes, the daughter she never had maybe. She didn’t take a lot of persuading to become custodian.
‘But I wasn’t so pretty and entertaining to live with twenty-four seven. I woke ten, fifteen times a night screaming, I had tantrums and was impossibly clingy.’
‘You must have been so traumatised.’ Legs hugged Kizzy’s shoulders tightly.
But the green eyes facing her glittered with a little of the old Kizzy that she remembered from Farcombe. ‘I was attention seeking even then, and I think I must have sensed my biggest rival close at hand.’
‘Byrne?’ Legs whispered, finally getting to the secret she longed to hear most.
But Kizzy shook her head woozily. ‘Hector,’ she corrected. ‘He was already circling overhead like a big eagle when I came into the nest.’
‘And you got cast overboard when he landed?’
Settling back amongst the cushions on the sofa, Kizzy played with the soft little flaps of Byron’s ears. ‘Poppy had never mentioned my existence to Hector. Their flirtation was already in evidence when she took on my custody, but they were in their own little bubble. She says theirs was a courtship based on cerebral and carnal compatibility; their home lives were of little interest, although he knew her marriage was a living hell, and she knew he was desperately lonely and wounded by grief. When the love affair took off, they were blown out of the water by its intensity. Everything around them disappeared, or was made to disappear.’
‘Loving Hector clearly has that effect on women.’ Legs thought about her own mother whose real life no longer seemed to exist to her.
‘Poppy is so full of regret now.’ Kizzy hugged Byron closer. ‘But at the time, it was a case of out of sight, out of mind. Brooke took Jamie to Ireland, of course; Francis was sent away to school. And I went to Goblin Granny, where I was placed in a spooky attic with a hired nanny and told to keep quiet.’
Legs could barely conceive of the trauma that would cause such a little girl with an already blighted life.
But Kizzy remained calm as she recited events: ‘Then Poppy met my parents. Yolande had spent so long battling the sexes in the City that she hadn’t found a window in her diary for conception until long after the recommended deadline for childbirth had passed. Years of IVF had brought no joy. She was desperate to adopt a child, but Howard has a criminal record – don’t ask; we always say it’s political – and the British system kept spitting them out. The media was full of stories about Romanian orphans, and they had started a long application process, but then Poppy spoke to them about me, and Yolande knew it was kismet.’
‘Is that where you got your name?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Isn’t Kizzy short for Kismet?’
‘No, my real name’s Clarissa. It’s a family name. I’ve always hated it.’
‘Oh,’ Legs smiled, ‘everybody should change their name at least once in life.’
‘Yolande and Howard never pushed me to call myself Hawkes or refer to them as “Mum” and “Dad”. They’re not the most conventional parents. I sometimes wonder if Yolande thinks I’m an asset she’s best investing offshore to accrue the highest interest, and Howard sees me as a living repository for all his knowledge, but they have given me every opportunity, with such heart and thought. I shall always be grateful to them for that; they will be so disappointed that it hasn’t worked out with Francis; Yolande shared Poppy’s vision of our taking on the mantle of Farcombe together.’ Her eyes filled with tears again. ‘They even cooked up the idea of getting me a job at the festival so I’d be perfectly positioned to attract Francis’s attention.’
‘Ah, Francis.’ Legs pressed her knuckles to her nose, the familiar twin sword hilts of guilt and jealousy trapped in her hands. Her fingers smelled of Stilton. She eyed Kizzy over them. She couldn’t help but like her, this curious landlocked mermaid who loved her city sirens despite dipping her tail in the sea. Her childhood had been horribly disjointed, and yet her loyalty to Poppy was extraordinary.
But something wasn’t quite adding up. She distinctly remembered Édith mentioning a big argument with her parents which had left them barely on speaking terms, with Kizzy forfeiting the Hawkes’ coastal retreat for a room in the village.
‘When I got to Farcombe, I found it really hard to settle. I missed my London life desperately. I went to see a fortune teller who told me my soulmate was lost at sea, but I could call them home. And she told me all about the guardian angels and spirit guides helping me. It was so cool. I really felt I could let down my hair and trust in fate. I made lots of amazing new friends.’
Legs eyed her warily. ‘You don’t really believe in all that clairvoyant stuff do you?’
‘You sound like Howard and Yolande,’ she sighed. ‘They totally disapproved of my “rebellion” as they called it. We fell out big time.’
‘Until you called Francis home from sea.’ Legs looked away, surprised how much it still hurt.
‘If you can call it that,’ Kizzy muttered. ‘I think he was already in a dry dock. I was naive to think that I’d love Francis just because we’d both lost our hearts elsewhere and might find comfort with one another. I knew when I moved in that I couldn’t ever love him. Then Hector left and the pressure became unbearable. When Poppy agreed that the best way to get him to come home was for you and Francis to get back together, I saw a way out. I’d begun to feel so trapped, it was a liberation.
‘Liz says we both take after her grandmother – my nam
esake,’ she went on. ‘Clarissa had our red hair and writing passion, and she couldn’t live without love.’
‘“I am two fools I know, for loving and for saying so”,’ Legs sighed.
‘How perfectly put,’ Kizzy smiled wanly. ‘Is that Byron?’
‘Donne. Francis wrote a thesis on him at university.’
Kizzy groaned and closed her eyes, relaxing into a strange laugh of relief. ‘Oh God, I should have known that. I feel like one of those hapless girls one sees photographed on Hugh Grant’s arm at parties, knowing full well that nobody will ever suit him as well as Elizabeth Hurley and vice versa. You two are just destined to be soulmates for ever.’
Legs closed her eyes for a moment, hardly able to believe that she could add Kizzy to the list of people telling her that she and Francis were the perfect couple. She rubbed her aching forehead. The smell of Stilton was making her feel queasy. ‘Friendship is love without his wings,’ she sighed.
‘Now that is Byron,’ Kizzy was instantly tearful once more. ‘Francis is in love with you, Legs. And his wingspan is wider than the Farcombe Hall roof.’
Legs unfurled her fingers to cover her cheeks, but not quickly enough to stop Kizzy seeing the red blush that was racing up her face. She had a sudden, ludicrous image of Francis soaring over Eascombe cove like a sea eagle while she perched nervously in the rocks uncertain if she could take off or not. They’d both been sea eagles once, but now she was more of a fledgling guillemot.
Kizzy’s green eyes were crossing a great deal now. ‘You two must get back together, Legs. Francis is lost without you. Édith is right; I should never have come between you, like Conrad Knight should never have got in the way in the first place. That’s my fault, too. If I’d got the job, you and Francis would still be together.’
‘You can’t think like that,’ Legs gaped at her in shock.
‘It’s true! I want to make things better. You have to see that there really was nothing more between me and Francis than two friends comforting one another because they couldn’t have the people they really love.’
