The Love Letter

by Fiona Walker

  On behalf of the rest of the family, Legs was now very mad indeed, and very frightened. She didn’t want to go back to the hall, but she had nowhere else to turn. She could hardly ramble down to the village – even supposing she had the energy to walk another mile, which right now she didn’t – and wander into the Book Inn wearing one of Poppy’s old ball dresses and Hector’s tailcoat asking to be saved. This was Francis’s home turf, his future life. She’d make a total fool out of him and herself by making a scene. It wasn’t as though he’d done anything wrong. She’d been nursed lovingly in the past few days, after all, waited on hand and foot, adored and idolised by the man the entire village wanted her to get back together with. She should have no complaints. She had to see this through like a grown up.

  But Legs didn’t want to be a grown-up. She wanted her mum.

  She buried her face in her shaking hands for a moment, fighting to breathe. Then she remembered the old-fashioned red call box in the village. She’d phone Daisy! Of anybody, Daisy would understand and help. But what was the number? She and Will were bound to be ex-directory. And Legs had no money to even call directory enquiries to find out.

  She groped in the tailcoat pockets and found a clutch of raffle tickets, an expensive petrol lighter and several bassoon reeds, along with a roll of many thousands of Italian lire, which told her just how long it had been since the coat had been in active service. There was also the little leather notebook.

  She flipped through it again, waiting for her lungs to stop burning. Page after page of codes floated past, all in neat columns. There was something vaguely familiar about the numbers and abbreviations. Then it struck her. This was a betting system, a record of every horse Hector had laid, its odds and its outcome. In that distinctive spiky hand, he had made a note of the name, date, course, handicap, race odds and initials of the jockey along with his stake and outcome. The sums involved were astonishing, seldom less than five thousand, often ten times that. He bet mostly on favourites and he often saw his money returned which, given the sums involved, meant doubling or trebling the investment. Far from being a hapless gambler, he’d made a decent profit. There was a final column on the far right of each page which he’d only filled in after a win and was made up of acronyms she didn’t understand, ICA, BDRS and NYO amongst them; she assumed it had to be something to do with the ground or whether the horse ran the race from the front or behind.

  The record stopped abruptly with an entry that read Thelonious Monk, 15/02,W’canton, 2mH, 10st, 10/11, BK £75K. Fell. There were no more entries after that.

  She stared at it for a long time. Byrne’s father’s fall had been at Wincanton. BK had to be Brooke Kelly. If so, Hector had bet on him to win; he couldn’t have had anything to do with fixing the race for the opposite outcome; it was his biggest cash bet to date.

  Looking back through the list of horse names, she let out a snort of recognition. His system was very simple. Not only did he bet on favourites, but they all had a musical or jazz association in their name – Bass Clef, Gershwin’s City, Bebop, Scott Joplin, Trumpet Solo and so on. No wonder he’d placed such a huge lump on Thelonious Monk, a genius of jazz improvisation and one of Hector’s all-time musical heroes.

  She closed the book and pressed its spine to her lips, knowing this changed everything. If Byrne had really grown up believing that Hector was a part of the gambling ring that was responsible for his father’s accident, he had to want reparation. They had already had one furious row, and now Hector was once again on the rampage. If their paths crossed, it could spell disaster.

  Pocketing the book once more, she pulled out the lighter and sparked it, so amazed when it burst into flame that she almost dropped it. She flicked its lid shut disconsolately, realising she would have to go back to the hall. With any luck, nobody would have noticed she’d been gone this time. It seemed imperative that she avoided alerting suspicion; she’d stolen the notebook, after all, and asking Poppy seemed the only way to find out where Byrne was. All paths led back to Farcombe Hall.

  She should be grateful Francis hadn’t tagged her ankle, she reflected, the feeling of being a fugitive returning. Chewing her nails in angst, not realising the lighter was still aflame in her hand, she almost burned off her nose.

  She knew she had to start back again if she stood any chance of her flit going unnoticed.

  But still she waited on the Spywood doorstep, hoping to hear her mother’s car engine on the track. Another half an hour, maybe more, passed. She had no watch to judge the time. She’d never asked for it back. Time had stopped mattering this week.

  ‘Go back,’ she groaned to herself, raking her foul, greasy hair. ‘You have to face this.’

  When she stood up, her legs felt like burned-out tapers. In the depth of the woods with no sunlight on her, she couldn’t stop shivering. Instead of retracing her steps, she took the lower path through the deepest old forestry of Spywood to call past on an old friend.

  There it was, the gnarled old oak with a trunk as broad as a double bed, shaped like a tuning fork at its first intersection, with a perfect seat for a first kiss, then higher up on the left, a cradle of equally weighted starfish branches for the most democratic of secret friendship pact meetings; on its right, two parallel branches hidden deep within the canopy of foliage where young lovers had once traded truths.

  Standing at its base, she sank the knuckle of her forefinger into the gouged outline of the heart that encircled hers and Francis’s initials.

  A branch snapped behind her. Something panted.

  Pressed motionless against the hefty trunk, she watched as a figure moved closer, a long-eared, short-legged dog breathing hard at his heels as it snorted into the undergrowth. Byrne was pulling up fallen branches and gathering them under one arm, his ragged grey T-shirt covered in bark chips and lichen. His wide shoulders twisted down as he pulled the dry timber from the bracken and bilberry, separating the rotten, louse-pulped wood from recent fallen branches.

  He moved closer, focused on his task, head bowed in concentration.

  Legs stayed utterly still, heart racing as fast as a wren’s. A weak sun was threading dusty amber fingers through the woodland canopy, barricading the undergrowth between them with tightly focused light-beams that she felt sure would set off a loud alarm as soon as he crossed them. But cross them he did, closer and closer, crouching and sorting.

  Then, inevitably, he saw her, spotting the boots first – those borrowed clodhopping size eight crag-climbers. He studied her boots for a long time.

  Thud, thud, the firewood fell from under his arm as he straightened up. Thud, thud thud-thudthudthudthud.

  Up his eyes trailed, past the mothball velvet the same muted green as the bracken, the frayed tailcoat, to the pale, anxious face.

  Very slowly, he tilted his head, his big dark eyes shifting right for a moment, thinking hard, muttering under his breath, ‘Now I’m really bloody seeing things.’

  She opened her mouth to point out that she was real, then closed it again, remembering she had two-week filthy hair, greasy skin, a face as grey as a gull’s wing and a voice like Linda Blair possessed by Satan. She suddenly wondered if it might be better to stay quiet and let him think she was some sort of apparition? This way, she could hand over the notebook before floating off into the trees in a mystical, willow-the-wisp fashion. It could be straight out of the pages of a Gordon Lapis fantasy adventure.

  He stepped forwards, crossing more dusty sunbeams, inching into her space.

  The sea was so calm they could barely hear it, just distant sighs through the trees, the gulls cawing.

  Legs regarded Byrne warily as he walked right up to her, halting just a couple of feet away, furnace eyes blazing.

  ‘Allegra.’

  ‘I’m a ghost,’ she croaked in panic, her broken voice sinister even to her own ears.

  She felt very silly as his brows creased down crossly. But then he seemed to change his mind and decided to humour her for now, a spark of bra
vura in those dark eyes, like hot coals jumping out: ‘A ghost, you say?’

  She nodded and he tilted his head the other way, more coals flaring as he regarded her face in detail. ‘I must say, you do look pretty ghostly.’

  She flicked a nervous smile.

  ‘And real-life Allegra would never be this quiet.’

  The smile flicked on and off again.

  ‘Jesus, this is weird.’ Byrne laughed huskily and raised a hand to his black forelock, pulling his fingers through it so that it stood up. ‘This week just keeps getting crazier. I half believe you are a ghost.’

  Legs felt as though she was having old-fashioned palpitations; she was far too hyped up to speak. His hair had grown, she realised. And he had a week’s beard. He looked dishevelled and absurdly sexy, like a hunk in a Davidoff advert going native.

  Gazing at her intently again, he pursed his lips in thought. They curled like perfect scrolls. Legs found she couldn’t stop staring at his mouth.

  ‘Are you haunting anything in particular?’ he asked.

  ‘I haunt this tree.’ She sounded like an emphysemic old man, a death rattle in her chest.

  ‘It’s a good tree.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ She tried to inject a little femininity into her voice, but it was still Tom Waits after a bender at best. She watched his lips pursing in thought.

  He looked away, tapping the bark of the trunk beside him. ‘I take it this is you? AN?’

  ‘AN Other lifetime,’ she sighed hoarsely, then cast him a wise look. ‘How’s your friend Ann O’Nymity?’

  ‘Fading fast.’ He reached up a hand to one of the oak’s tuning fork branches, using it to keep balance as he leaned forwards so his face was inches from hers.

  At last she lifted her gaze to his eyes which glittered between amusement and concern, head tilting the other way again, watching her so closely she was certain he was counting each fleck of grey in her eyes. Suddenly her insides were hollowed out and packed with incendiary devices.

  ‘You’re not a ghost, Heavenly Pony,’ he said, but there was just a thread of a question mark at the end of the statement, and she knew he still didn’t quite believe what he was seeing.

  She could hardly blame him. She’d just appeared from nowhere in private woodland looking deranged. The outfit was gothic; the weight-loss was dramatic; the skin was marble pale and spotty; the hair was wild and must smell of decay if not ectoplasm.

  She sucked her lips nervously, noticing that he was watching her mouth now. They were taking turns. Her belly squirmed. A match was being lowered to the explosives packed in her shrunken stomach.

  ‘Do you know how to tell a real ghost?’ she found herself asking in a voice that could have been mistaken for Darth Vader threatening Obi-Wan Kenobi with total annihilation. It certainly scared her because she had no idea what she was saying until it was out there, hanging in the woodland air between them like a dare.

  ‘How?’

  ‘You try to touch them. If they’re real, your hand goes right through.’

  A smile touched his lips. ‘Is that a fact?’

  She nodded emphatically. Being a ghost was incredibly empowering, she realised with relief. She felt as though she could say anything she liked. She tested the theory: ‘Kissing counts as touching.’

  As soon as she said it, she felt faint with embarrassment and then, seeing the expression on his face, she felt equally faint with the desire to be kissed.

  Now they were both looking at each other’s mouths.

  He tipped closer, his lips almost touching hers and, just as she almost exploded with excitement at the thought that he was going to kiss her, he whispered in her ear, ‘Isn’t it easier to simply admit you’re real?’

  ‘But not nearly as much fun.’

  ‘Jesus,’ he laughed, still not moving away. ‘You’re the flirtiest woman I’ve ever met.’

  ‘Ghost. Flirtiest ghost,’ Legs corrected, still watching his mouth, aware of his warm breath on her skin. He was definitely going to kiss her and test the theory, she realised giddily. But she could feel a cough welling in her chest now. As Byrne’s lips touched hers, she fought her damndest stop the cough happening, only for it to crash open in her throat like a wave over a breakwater, hacking out with phlegmy heavy-smoker pensioner sound effects.

  ‘Jesus!’ Byrne was back on his heels in an instant.

  Coughing even more violently, Legs watched in horror as two spools of snot flew from her nostrils like green party poppers.

  ‘Bother.’ She turned her head away, fishing in the tailcoat pockets, past raffle tickets, lighter and cash. There were no tissues there at all.

  As she was about to unroll a wad of lire, Byrne held out a spotted handkerchief, the sort she imagined one knotted around sandwiches and tied to sticks when running away.

  She blew her nose loudly.

  Having plundered his pockets again, he now handed her a Fisherman’s Friend, which she sucked up gratefully. Over a week of intense analgesia, and all it took was a high grade lozenge, she realised as the hoarseness started melting away. She was amazed.

  ‘Any better?’ he asked.

  ‘Much, thanks,’ she nodded, her voice already softened from evil baddie to butch hero.

  A dark cloud moved in overhead, suddenly wiping out the sunshine birdcage bars around them. It instantly broke the spell. There was nothing very normal about the situation, but it no longer felt paranormal.

  ‘Ghosts don’t need to suck throat tablets,’ Byrne said pragmatically.

  ‘Headless ones might.’ Embarrassed, she gazed down at her oversized boots. Then, realising she was giving him a face full of her filthy hair, she looked up again.

  ‘You look different,’ he studied her again, eyes intent with worry for a moment.

  ‘I’m trying out a new look.’

  ‘I liked the old one better.’ He lifted his hand to rake his hair and looked away to glare at AN and FP in the crudely carved heart. ‘What are you doing here, Allegra?’

  She was tempted to blurt that she’d been held prisoner for a fortnight and had just escaped, but stopped herself. The ghost line had already over-stretched his credulity. And the truth was she could have left the hall at any time. Being ill had stopped her thinking straight.

  Instead, she mumbled: ‘I came to see my mother, but she’s out.’

  He gave her a look which made it clear that she might as well have said she was taking a basket of goodies to grandma and trying to avoid the big bad wolf.

  ‘Do you usually dress like this to see your mum?’

  ‘No, I usually accessorise with better shoes and a hat, preferably a fascinator.’

  He was watching her face, and she felt self-conscious knowing he was taking in her pale face and sunken cheeks. The green dress did nothing for her complexion, she knew, and she must have become pretty gaunt. ‘You’ve been ill.’

  ‘Touch of girl flu,’ she joked to fill the long silence that followed. ‘Just dieting with a fever basically.’ Knowing she looked deathly, she ducked behind one of the tuning fork branches, reluctant to be examined in any more detail. Then she eyed him through the greenery, remembering Poppy mentioning that he was under canvas. ‘Are you living rough out here?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Researching a survival book?’

  When he didn’t answer, she pulled a branch of thick leaves aside to peer at him. It was hard to marry eccentric Gordon whose neediness she had looked after for so long with practical, rugged Byrne doing his best Bear Grylls impersonation. He certainly looked very healthy and well.

  ‘So you’re feeling OK?’

  ‘Perfectly.’ He was leaning against the trunk of the Tree of Secrets now, looking up at its canopy as though seeking illumination. ‘Has Conrad sent you deep undercover to determine this?’

  She let the branch swish back, almost taking her nose off. No!’

  On the far side of the tree, he let out a long sigh. ‘Allegra, I don’t know what you’re really d
oing here, but it’s not safe to hang around long. Trust me. You can report back to Conrad that I am perfectly well. I won’t let him down. Now go home.’

  She loomed over the tree’s tuning fork V and glared at him, crunching up the last of her Fisherman’s Friend. ‘I am not spying on you for Conrad! I no longer work for him.’

  He stared at her for a long time.

  ‘It’s over between us,’ she said shakily.

  He nodded, face guarded.

  The notebook was burning a hole in her pocket, her heart burning a hole in her chest. But there was something about his defensive expression that tied her tongue in knots. She wanted to scream I came back to find you! I am Julie Ocean! You’re Byrne and Gordon and Jimmy Jimee, and I would run here from London on my bare feet for all three of you.

  He sucked his top teeth uneasily. ‘Go home. It’s not safe here.’

  ‘Why ever not?’

  His eyes blazed more than ever. ‘Trust me, you don’t want to know. I’m not good for you, Allegra. You don’t want to come where I’m going next. You’re better off not knowing me.’

  ‘You sound just like Ptolemy Finch.’

  ‘Funny that.’ He held up his hands and turned away, suddenly listening like a hare hearing a lurcher coursing towards him. A puttering car engine juddered along the pot-holed track on the far side of the woods. From the open driver’s side window they could distinctly hear Jenni Murray talking about breastfeeding.

  Legs let out a little cry of relief. It was her mother listening to Woman’s Hour as she returned to Spywood. She turned to Byrne urgently. Not pausing for thought, she came out with a blithering, urgent muddle in a breathless croak: ‘I know why you insisted that Farcombe has to be the place Gordon reveals his identity, I mean your identity, I mean you reveal yourself. No – that sounds wrong. Oh hell, Byrne. Nobody would blame you for wanting to get your own back on your mother, and I know you’ve just had a big argument so probably feel even more aggrieved, but I can’t let this happen without saying something. You’re so right that it’s not safe. The house is falling down, and Poppy’s in a terrible state. I heard there have been death threats. I can’t just stand back and watch you or anyone else getting hurt. And I know that your father’s accident happened because of the race-fixing racket that was going on at the time, which was truly awful, but if you think Hector was behind it in some way, he really wasn’t I can prove it – here!’ She groped in her pocket for the little papery rectangle and thrust it at him.