The Love Letter

by Fiona Walker

  She stared mulishly up at the light from the pink sunset spilling across the ceiling, her hand automatically reaching beneath the pillow behind her to check for the little notebook. It was still there, sticky with electrical tape. She tucked it further into the folds.

  ‘Could I have a glass of juice?’ she croaked.

  ‘There’s water in the jug.’

  ‘Bit of a sugar low,’ she rolled her eyes pleadingly towards him.

  The moment he’d gone, she felt under the pillow and pulled out the notebook, peeling the tangle of tapes from its dark red leather covers. It was filled with that same spiky handwriting she remembered from the ‘Dear Alligator’ letter she’d received as a young girl, and it seemed to date from the same era. The pages were packed with columns containing tightly written words and numbers that made no sense to her. It looked like code.

  Hearing Francis struggling with the stiff door handle as he returned, she thrust it under the pillow again just in time, her face turning telltale pink.

  She drank the orange juice with such guilty speed and lip-smacking appreciation she could have been auditioning for a Del Monte advert.

  ‘Better?’ he asked, returning to his sentry post in the wing chair.

  ‘Much,’ she nodded, and realised it was. The concentrated sugar-rush after all that clear soup was like a dose of speed.

  It had all started coming back to her clearly now, the reason why she’d driven here from London in that storm: Byrne, the man behind Gordon Lapis, blamed Hector for his father’s racing accident, and now he was seeking revenge.

  ‘How long exactly have I been ill?’ she asked, turning her face to Francis.

  ‘Almost a fortnight.’

  She gaped at him in disbelief for a moment. ‘I must have missed so much happening here.’

  ‘Such as?’

  She wanted to demand ‘death threats?’; ‘insurance crisis?’; ‘Byrne going native, possibly plotting to kill Hector?’, but managed a vague wave of the arms instead and said, ‘There must have been repercussions from the argument you told me about for a start?’

  ‘Nothing much.’ He looked away shiftily. ‘All quiet on the Western front.’ He clearly wasn’t going to spill any gossip.

  Legs let out a frustrated sigh, reluctant to trigger a barrage of evasive Remarque quotes, possibly in original German. ‘Can I make some phone calls?’

  ‘Maybe tomorrow. You look wiped out, darling, and Poppy’s hitting the landline this evening arranging one of her last minute soirées; you know what she’s like. But I’ve spoken to everyone important on your behalf at least once this week. I even called Conrad.’

  ‘Conrad?’

  ‘I hadn’t appreciated that you’d,’ – he cleared his throat – ‘handed in your resignation. I thought you might be missed at work.’

  She sat up in horror as she remembered that awful day afresh. ‘I walked out.’

  ‘So I gather.’ His eyes glittered with approval. ‘You could hardly stay at the agency after your relationship ended. It would be like Kizzy still working here.’

  Legs knew she was definitely getting better because she could now think about Conrad without wanting to cry. Instead she felt a more familiar blend of irritation and intimidation.

  ‘Oh God, he’ll probably sue me for breach of contract,’ she groaned.

  ‘I very much doubt that, given that you introduced your successor the day you left like the good PA you are.’

  ‘What do you mean? Conrad’s a shit to work for. He’ll never replace me before the festival.’

  ‘He already has.’

  Legs didn’t need to ask who; Francis’s expression said it all; he was clearly dying to deliver the punchline. This must be the new job Poppy had mentioned earlier which was keeping Kizzy so busy.

  To his surprise, she burst out laughing. ‘How wonderful! It was obvious Kizzy was the perfect fit when she came into the office that day after she’d slept on my sofa. Conrad should have hired her in the first place.’ Laughing had triggered a racking cough and she reached for the last of the juice.

  Francis was looking horrified. ‘Kizzy stayed overnight with you? Did anything happen?’

  ‘I told you she stayed. She drank all my wine and Byron pooed on my doormat.’

  ‘When you said that, I thought you were delirious.’

  ‘I was quite annoyed actually.’ She slumped back into her pillows, sweat rising and painful breaths shallow. She was feeling sick now, the orange juice burning acidly in her belly, threatening to come back up.

  She waited wanly for Francis to probe her about what Kizzy might have told her, the big family secret that she’d eagerly let slip as soon as she was away from Farcombe and Hector’s reach. But he said nothing, and she realised that it would never occur to him that Kizzy might confide in her. He really didn’t understand the way women worked at all, she realised. In the same way, he was no doubt currently anticipating that she would explode with indignant fury that Kizzy had walked into her job, but she was secretly relieved, guessing that the redhead had the brain, guile and charm to cope admirably with Conrad.

  Legs just hoped Kizzy looked after the agency’s most important client, Gordon Lapis AKA Jago Byrne AKA Jamie Kelly. Her eyes filled with tears and she turned her head away so Francis couldn’t see. If the insurance crisis meant the festival was really called off, she might never see Byrne again, she realised. He would get his revenge on Hector and move on. Then, sooner or later, Byrne would lose his life to Gordon Lapis in another carefully staged coup de grâce, and become public property protected by private security guards. Legs would never be able to get up close and personal after that. She would just have to kidnap his dog, she decided feverishly.

  She was dying know where exactly Byrne was and why Fink the basset was still hanging around, but she was feeling increasingly vile and finding out from Francis would be impossible. He was still choosing the conversational subject headings, tonight’s being employment.

  ‘You have a job here now.’ He perched on the bed and handed her a glass of water to ease the orange juice reflux. ‘When you’ve got your strength back, of course; I could certainly use a good PA in the coming three weeks. Now drink your fluids. Doctors orders – boss’s too.’

  She stared at him in disbelief, wondering if he was winding her up. But Francis didn’t do winding up.

  ‘You want me to job swap with Kizzy?’

  ‘It makes perfect sense, you must agree.’

  ‘Is that all you want me to swap with her?’

  ‘You know it’s not.’

  She drank her water, eyeing him over the rim of the glass, revisiting that feeling of not trusting him at all. She kept remembering what Byrne had said about Francis wanting to hurt her, and being out to teach her a lesson.

  ‘Don’t you feel at all sad about what happened between you and Kizzy?’ she asked.

  “Women were made to be loved, not to be understood’,’ he said in a plummy Pathé newsreel voice and he picked up the photograph of Legs sporting her tam-o’-shanter in Père Lachaise cemetery.

  ‘Meaning?’

  He rubbed his chin. ‘You were the big Oscar Wilde fan as a student; you tell me.’

  She gave up in frustration, sulked for a few moments and then changed tack.

  ‘You’ve been so kind, looking after me. Thank you.’

  The photographs of their years together were still scattered around her bed. She picked up one of them posing in a dinghy. She must have been fourteen by then, but still sticking her tongue out for any camera. It was high summer. Her skin was freckled and pink, clashing with her orange life jacket. Francis was doing his handsome pouty thing, staring into the mid-distance, although he had a proprietorial suntanned arm slung over her shoulders. Dangling at his wrist was the digital watch that had so entranced her the first night they’d ever slept together, wholly respectably, in adjacent bunks.

  ‘That was taken the week we camped in Eascombe woods and your tent collapsed,’ he rem
inded her.

  He didn’t need to say more. Legs was transported back to the night they had first slept together very unrespectably, in a too-tight sleeping bag with their underwear entwined around their ankles.

  She peered more closely at the photograph, looking for signs that she had recently been deflowered, but the tongue-out, crosseyed immaturity was there for all the world.

  All the North and Foulkes children and assorted friends had set up camp in the woods that week. She and Daisy had been sharing a terrible old ex-army tent with rotten guy ropes which they’d failed to slacken off meaning that the night it rained a monsoon, they firstly got soaked and then almost suffocated as the tent came down. Daisy decamped to share with big brother Freddie and a friend who were doing their Duke of Edinburgh award that year and bossed her about a lot. Legs, who was by then almost-officially Francis’s best friend too, happily accepted his offer of a place in his high tech bivvy. They had been practising their kissing techniques together for quite some time by then, neither acknowledging the racing excitement it elicited within each heart.

  Alone together in the bivvy, Legs and Francis had practised kissing a lot.

  Then, the day the sun finally came out and set steam rising from the tent skins, they skipped the early swim and sat up in their favourite tree together to tease, touch, giggle, gaze and tell the truth. The Tree of Secrets still bore its ‘FP loves AN’ scar within a chipped bark heart to this day. Francis told Legs he loved her, Legs said she loved him too. It was time to learn more than just kissing.

  She was acutely aware of him sitting beside her right now, still silhouetted by the sunset. She could hear his breathing and smell his aftershave. He had his weight propped on one outstretched hand, and she noticed the soft blond hairs running along its length. His watch was a silver and expensive-looking Tag now.

  She suddenly wanted to be transported back to that day in the tree so desperately, she could barely breathe.

  He shifted closer, a warm hand reaching out to cup her face.

  ‘I feel the same way,’ he breathed.

  When they kissed, the tears on their cheeks touched and blended at the same time as their tongues met. Legs wasn’t sure if it was nostalgia or lust – or even pneumonia – that was making her chest pound so hard and her head go light, but it felt so exciting she couldn’t stop.

  They kissed for a long time, but she hadn’t the strength for more. Her coughing soon became too obtrusive to even kiss.

  Penitent, Francis tucked her in and fetched the bottle of Galcodine.

  He didn’t retreat to his chair that night. They slept curled up together. Plagued by nightmares in which she was suffocating, Legs clung to him in her sleep and then felt the familiar kick of guilt when she woke the next morning feeling much stronger, her head clearer than it had been in two long weeks. She was determined to take back control and get away from the hall.

  Francis brought her a breakfast tray of apple juice and dried toast, with a jaunty bunch of scented sweet peas crammed in a little Delft jar. He certainly knew how to make a girl feel bad about her fickle-hearted shabbiness.

  ‘We shouldn’t have kissed last night,’ she said apologetically, echoes of another voice ringing in her head.

  Still holding the tray edges, he looked up at her through his dark gold lashes and said nothing, not even retreating behind a quote.

  Feeling awkward, she bolted back her breakfast too fast and got indigestion. She then started to make her way shakily towards the bathroom, her legs bandy with lack of use. ‘I thought I might take a shower. My hair’s revolting.’

  ‘Better leave it a couple more days,’ he insisted. ‘You’re still having night sweats. You were wringing wet last night.’

  ‘Was I? Ugh. Even more reason to wash.’ Her voice, strained from so much coughing, had started to sound like Tom Waits again.

  ‘Listen to you. We can’t risk you getting a chill,’ he lectured. ‘You still look dreadful, darling.’

  She now felt so repulsive she scuttled back towards the bed like a slimy toad to its familiar rock.

  ‘In that case, perhaps I’ll make a couple of calls instead,’ she told him fractiously, voice croaking ever-deeper. ‘Do you know where my phone ended up?’

  ‘Probably still in your car with the rest of your stuff.’

  She felt further aggrieved that for all his immaculate bedside manners, he hadn’t thought to bring in her bag. It was no wonder she had to resort to pilfering clothes from the wardrobes when her own personal items were denied her. She was experiencing that unpleasant sense of being kept prisoner again. She longed to escape, but didn’t want to appear ungrateful, and after yesterday’s escapade she was acutely aware that she had the stamina of a gnat.

  ‘I’ll go and have a look for you.’ He loped off.

  She watched him leave, feeling ungrateful. Heaving herself out of bed again, she went into the bathroom to splash cold water on her face. Her reflection stared back more wraith-like than ever, her filthy hair a limp mass of greasy rats tails tipped by frizzy ringlets after all Francis’s brushing.

  He’d been so attentive, she thought wretchedly, and so forgiving. She should be indebted to him for nursing her through illness, not itching to run away like this. Kissing him had been blissfully nostalgic, after all. Perhaps the magic was still there. There had been moments in recent days when she’d felt genuinely adoring. They shared so much history. Now that she was getting stronger at last, she could try to work things through with him. If she felt clean and healthy again she might start to feel sexy too.

  Unlike the window in the bedroom which looked out across the lawns to the sea, the bathroom window was angled, overlooking the courtyards. She could see the converted coach-house that now housed the festival offices, a hive of activity this close to the event, with figures racing around behind the windows, white vans galore parked outside and huge banners propped up against the walls ready to be raised above the marquees when they were erected.

  There was her little silver Tolly car still abandoned on the cobbles where she’d parked it a fortnight ago, horribly dented from its prang with the Farcombe gatepost.

  She saw Francis walk up to it, so handsome and kind. He peered inside, kicked a tyre, and walked away.

  She then cleaned her teeth for a long time, wondering if kissing was fate’s way of keeping your tongue tied.

  To her shame, she could only think about kissing Byrne and how amazing it had felt, knowing that it had blown her away so much she was utterly spoiled for Francis now.

  ‘Your car keys are locked inside,’ he reported back a few minutes later, sitting back on the bed beside her and drinking a cup of strong Arabic coffee, the smell of which made her both crave caffeine and feel queasy. ‘I can break in if you like.’

  ‘No! I love Tolly.’ She was Don LaFontaine with laryngitis now, deep voice crackling its way out. ‘I’ll get out the AA or something.’

  He shrugged and sipped his coffee. ‘What happened to your old red car by the way? I thought you loved that like no other?’

  Legs stared at him wide-eyed, then rasped: ‘Don’t you know?’

  He laughed fondly, eyebrows lifting questioningly. ‘All I know is that you kept banging on about how much you loved it, then you turned up here close to death in a racy silver number. You are so contrary, darling Legs. Marriage will never be dull.’

  She was too shocked to speak, then started coughing too much to speak.

  He rubbed her back, reaching for the Galpodine bottle. ‘Poor darling, you must let your body recover. I have to drive into Barnstaple this morning to meet with the insurers. There’s some fuck up about public liability for the festival. Then I have to – well, there’s other business to attend to.’ He looked strangely shifty. ‘Will you be OK while I’m gone? Do you want anything to read?’

  ‘The letter I wrote to you,’ she managed to splutter.

  Laughing fondly, as though she’d just kitten-clawed him with playful ironic wit, he gave her
a plate of fruit and a copy of James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Then he kissed her on the lips, breathing ‘Stay here. No dressing up this time. Don’t let me down.’

  Legs’ squeaky clean teeth stayed clamped together as his lips formed a seal with hers.

  Her hand was under the pillow before he’d even closed the door, extracting the leather notebook. She was going to go and see her mother and Hector, and she was going to get some answers. If she happened to see a basset hound on the way, she’d follow it wherever it went.

  As soon as she heard the Land Rover start up in the courtyard, Legs raided the moth-bally wardrobes again, this time pulling out a long olive green velvet dress which was outrageously Maid Marian but at least looked warm, and a man’s black tailcoat with frayed piping and a few trails of party streamers still clinging from its wide shoulders. She slipped the little notebook into a pocket.

  Putting them on over her nightie, she stole out of the room and along the landing to the back stairs. She still had bare feet, but had already planned ahead and, sure enough, lined up by the gun room door were several pairs of sturdy walking boots. She stepped into the warmest looking pair. Then, stealthy as a daylight raiding fox, she crept outside and stole across the gravel into the topiary maze, where she ducked and dived behind the cover of clipped green geometry to the parterre, dashing across that, through the rose garden, behind the kitchen garden walls and over the rails past the lake until she finally reached the safety of the woods, Spywood in her sights.

  Chapter 35

  When Legs finally trailed along the track to Spywood, ragged with exhaustion, she found her mother’s little car missing and the cottage locked up.

  She knelt on the doorstep and felt like weeping. It had taken every ounce of energy to get there. Her chest was roaring, and coughs ripped though her like machine gun fire. She could hardly breathe. Her legs were wrung-out rags, her head mush. And her mother wasn’t here.

  Worse of all, the spare door key was missing from its hiding place. Lucy was always mislaying hers and borrowing the spare, then forgetting to put it back. It drove the rest of the family mad.