by Fiona Walker
‘Oh that’s all right then,’ Legs said with relief. ‘Vegan Megan is totally not Dad’s type. The only pulses she sets racing are mung beans.’ She stared at Ros as something ground-breaking occurred to her. ‘Did you just say you actually went to Inkpot Farm?’
Ros straightened her neat bob in front of the mirror over the basin. ‘Of course not. We met Nico’s father at Taunton Services. He was late, of course.’
‘It’s so great you’re doing some of the driving.’ She yawned tiredly, knowing Will and Daisy would be hugely gratified; they desperately needed Ros to be more practical and onside.
But Ros looked pained by the compliment. ‘It’s just this once. I wanted to come here and say goodbye to the old place before I lose it.’ She gazed around the bathroom tearfully, at the bowing whitewashed beams, the cracked old enamel, broken tiles and rusted taps. Then her eyes alighted on her sister. ‘You look terrible, Legs. Are you feeling cold? Clammy? Difficulty breathing? Let me look at your pupils.’
‘I’m fine.’ She pulled off the tattered coral dress, exhaustion overwhelming her.
Ros eyed her with concern. ‘Why are you wearing men’s underpants?’
‘I’m toying with the idea of a sex change.’
‘I really have never understood your sense of humour. That letter you wrote to Francis had some very odd jokes in it. I was in two minds about sending it frankly, but I’m terribly pleased I did. It’s made all the difference, hasn’t it?’
Legs gaped at her. ‘You sent it?’
With a saintly smile, Ros turned to the door. ‘I discovered it when I was cleaning your flat after that dog stayed the night. The letter was spread out on your bed, along with my wedding dress which you bought from eBay. That is just so sweet.’
Legs closed her eyes. She’d blamed Kizzy for falsely framing her, but it had been a team effort all along; working independently, one had dug out the misleading clues, the other had packaged them up and labelled them as evidence.
‘I would have given the Ditchley dress to you had I known, Legs,’ Ros went on. ‘I always said you should wear it to marry Francis. The least I could do was help fate along with a first class stamp. You scrub up for his return – he’ll be back any minute.’ She blew her a kiss as she slipped out of the door, immensely proud of her act of big-sisterly kindness.
Legs plunged into her bath as eagerly as Ophelia seeking oblivion.
It was such heaven to wash her hair at last that for a brief moment Legs almost forgot her woes, water lifting every follicle, threading its warm fingers through the loosening tangles and caressing her scalp like Vegan Megan’s Indian head massage. She lay for a long time in the bath, letting the water go cold and running more hot in, listening to the candles guttering and the storm circling around the headland. Spywood’s little, flickering bathroom felt safe, this deep enamel tub she’d once shared with her sister and later shared many times with Francis, those summers that they had spent nights here alone, crammed together in the hot bubbles, legs hanging over the side of the bath, lust and laughter keeping the water hot.
She topped up again with a scalding jet from the hot tap and sank back more miserably, dreading the conversation to come.
To add to her turmoil, she could hear Francis returning now and talking loudly to Ros outside the door, obviously about to come in and see her.
‘Nobody there apart from Imee,’ he was complaining. ‘The police have all gone home. Kizzy’s taken Liz Delamere back to her wardened flat. Édith’s buggered off too, and Dad’s had to take Poppy to hospital – she’s still quite convinced Liz wanted to kill her, and that she mistook Legs for her because she was wearing Poppy’s turban and dress. She’s suffering the most ghastly panic attack, although Dad seemed quite cheerful about it when we spoke on the phone, saying that at least he was getting the old girl out of the house for once. Is Legs in here?’
Splashing water everywhere, she managed to clamber out of the bath and wrap herself in a towel just as he came in.
‘Darling, don’t get up on my account,’ he joked. ‘You look much better.’ He’d put on a jumper and was wearing old jeans now. He looked so incredibly handsome and cheerful, she wanted to cry.
‘I just need to – um …’ She rushed past him into the main cottage room, towel trailing and hair dripping. ‘Mum, can I borrow something to wear?’
Having had another schooner of brandy, Lucy was flying high on nervous energy and alcohol. ‘Of course! Anything!’
Legs started up the stars, Francis predictably on her tail.
Suddenly Lucy let out a scream, remembering that the questionable, pilfered Lucian Freud nude was lying on the bed. ‘Francis! Wait! Tell me how everything is at the hall?’
He hovered politely but reluctantly. ‘I’ve just told you that.’
‘Tell me again!’
Legs dived into the bedroom and borrowed a bright blue kaftan which made her look like a floating portaloo, but was at least cool and clean. She carefully put the tiny hairy Mary oil painting in a spare pillowcase from the wardrobe and folded it up tightly before hiding it behind a beam at the top of the stairs.
‘Well tonight will certainly give you some material for your wedding speech, Francis,’ Ros was laughing happily at something he’d just recounted.
Halfway down the stairs, Legs swayed in horror, and then caught her mother’s tormented, sympathetic eyes over Francis’s head.
Already reaching for Legs’ hand to help her down with customary gallantry, he smirked back over his shoulder at Ros. ‘I shall be far too busy complimenting my wife’s beautiful maid of honour to recount such horrors.’
‘As well as thanking me for getting you two back together in the first place,’ Ros simpered.
‘How do you mean?’ asked Francis.
‘“More than kisses, letters mingle souls”,’ she quoted warmly. ‘Let’s just say I Donne right.’
Francis beamed back at his future sister-in-law. They’d always basked in mutual admiration.
Legs felt the room closing in. ‘I have to get some fresh air.’ She headed towards the door.
‘It’s about to pour down out there,’ Francis pointed out, once more in control and exerting his authority, ‘You’ve almost fallen to your death tonight, darling, best not risk catching your death now.’
Laughing at his witty turn of phrase, Ros backed him up. ‘Yes Legs, don’t be selfish. You have wet hair.’
‘At least wear a hat,’ Lucy hiccupped from the table.
Cramming a floppy straw hat on her head, which was the only one she could find, Legs dipped her feet into her mother’s flower patterned wellies by the door and extracted the walking socks before stepping into their rubbery depths again. Then she turned to look at Francis over her shoulder. ‘Come with me.’
‘I haven’t got an overcoat.’
She wrenched open the door just as thunder rolled directly overhead. A huge gust of wind blew her hat straight off, spinning it back into the house where it hit Francis on the nose. ‘Neither have I.’
‘Legs, this is ridiculous.’ Picking up the hat, he turned up his shirt collars and hurried after her.
Chapter 45
Amazingly, the storm held off its big, wet machine gun attack. It blasted them with wind and thunder, lit up the sky with flashes rather than forks, made the sea spit and roar beyond the cliffs and the trees creak and shudder, throwing twigs everywhere. But it stayed dry, as did Legs’ tears.
She marched purposefully through the swirling, eddying leaves to the Tree of Secrets where she kicked off her wellies and climbed up to settle on one of its twin arms, waiting for Francis to haul himself up into the trunk’s crook in front of her. He was still carrying the straw hat, she noticed, which he settled on his lap like a shield, hands protectively on top, as though she was planning to attack his groin. In a way, she was.
Wearing just an oversized kaftan and a sad smile, she tried to soften the blow: ‘You are a wonderful man, Francis. I care for you very deeply, but
I don’t want to marry you.’
‘I haven’t asked you to,’ he snapped back.
‘Then we’re agreed?’
‘Absolutely.’
Legs almost wept with relief. That had been so much easier than she imagined. Overwhelmed by a wave of sadness and affection, she reached forward to take his hands in hers. But then he started to kiss each one of her fingers and she realised she might not have got her point across yet.
‘We need to take it much more slowly than that,’ he went on. ‘Get the festival out of the way, have a holiday, spend time together. You need to build up your strength again. I thought a safari in Africa, or if you prefer the beach maybe the Maldives … or Pembrokeshire?’ he offered the last option with added gusto, eager to push the budget option.
‘No Francis.’ She prised her fingers away. ‘You don’t understand. I don’t want us to get back together at all.’
He looked up at the branches swaying and rustling madly overhead, ‘That’s not what you said in the letter.’
‘It was written a year ago.’ She hung her head. ‘I originally sent it the week we broke up, but that copy obviously got lost in the post-traumatic stress.’
What he said next almost made her fall out of the tree in shock. ‘I got your first letter.’
She stared at him for a long time. ‘Why didn’t you reply then?’
‘It was very overwritten. The original was much more real and raw. It felt as though it had been written for me, not for yourself.’
‘Thank you for the literary criticism. Maybe you should add a foreword and footnotes?’
He glanced up again as more lightning flashed through the sky. ‘You always dumb down too much, Legs.’
‘I wrote that letter from my dumb heart which was bleeding. Entirely self-inflicted, I know. Only an academic would differentiate between the version I sent and the first draft.’
‘Actually they’re almost entirely different,’ Francis started to lecture, but stopped himself when he saw her murderous expression. He flashed a nervous smile. ‘Perhaps I knew it was past tense even when I read it. All those references to last year’s Summer Exhibition were a giveaway (wasn’t it X Factor in the first version?). But then the day I got it, you drove here like the clappers and collapsed in my arms and … here we are.’
‘Here we are,’ she echoed hollowly. ‘I got your reply.’
‘I never intended it to land in your hands!’
‘Touché.’
‘What did you think?’
‘I’ve heard it all before, Francis.’
A spirit of stagnant indignation reigned, undercut with wistful regret. They sat in silence in the Tree of Secrets for many minutes, listening to the circling thunder. Legs felt swords of emotion push and pulling at her sides. Still offshore, the storm turned and began retreating towards Wales, taking its heavy rain-clouds with it, saving its force for more worthy star-crossed lovers.
But then Francis let out a furious bellow, rallying to his own indignant cause.
‘I can’t believe you’re doing this to me again!’ he suddenly exploded, the tree shaking as he shifted upright, looming in its hollow. ‘You carry my heart with you, Legs. Are you trying to set it loose or cut it out a string at a time? Either way it bloody well hurts. I wish you’d never come back here.’
She hid her face behind her arms. ‘I’m so sorry!’
‘You have no idea how painful it’s been trying to fathom out what’s going on in that capricious head of yours, while all the time my father has been sharing a bed with your mother.’ He was waving the straw hat about like Lear in the storm ranting about his ungrateful daughters.
She pressed her forearms tighter to her head, face buried in the crooks of her elbows, hating herself. ‘I know, I know. And now Hector has gone back to Poppy, so nothing we could have done would have made a jot of difference anyway.’
He let out an ironic grunt, part anger and part regret. ‘That’s good at least.’
‘And you and Kizzy split up because of me—’
‘Actually I’m very relieved about that.’ Another conciliatory grunt. ‘So is she.’
Legs couldn’t reign in her dam-burst of penitence. ‘Then you were so kind looking after me when I was ill, and I’ve been so ungrateful.’
‘I rather enjoyed it,’ he admitted, sounding quite surprised. ‘It meant I reread some favourite works and it spared me enduring Poppy.’ He sat back down in the crook of the tree, anger already spent, like a Labrador exhausted from barking on Bonfire Night. ‘Although I must say you behave even more unpredictably when you’re ill than well, running off to find gold rings in the woods.’
‘Oh, God, what have I put you through, Francis?’ She peered out at him between her forearms. ‘You thought I was dead. That must have been awful.’
‘After the initial shock that bit was quite cathartic,’ he confessed. ‘But the publicity would have been appalling.’
She laughed hollowly. ‘Woe betide my death were to cast a negative light on the festival.’
‘Indeed. Gordon Lapis is really going to put us on the map this year. You did Farcombe an enormous favour there.’ Francis was looking increasingly cheery. ‘Even the insurance fiasco has turned out rather well thanks to our star attraction. We have no premium to pay at all. Vin Keiller-Myles is underwriting the lot, saving us thousands.’
Legs remembered the banker’s draft that had gone into the safe before dinner and Francis’s gloating expression. She felt as though she was swallowing dust. ‘If the Freud is recovered.’
‘Of course it will be. The police are supremely confident of bringing this to a swift conclusion. And Vin’s not going to see the festival called off while that’s happening.’
‘That’s very charitable of him.’
‘Au contraire, Vin’s also taking a hefty share of any profits, and a private supper with Gordon Lapis for himself and Gayle as reward.’
They’ve already eaten together, Legs found herself thinking wildly. ‘But Gordon’s not … that is, he’s …’
‘Entrenched in Ireland, we know.’
‘You do?’ she baulked, knowing he couldn’t have even caught a flight yet.
‘Conrad got a text from Gordon tonight saying he’s planning on staying in Ireland until the very last moment and is not to be disturbed. Apparently he’s working on something big. A pop-up dinosaur story or lift-the-flap monster book, one presumes,’ he sneered.
Legs swallowed hard, realising that Byrne had texted his agent while counting up the eighteen ‘I love yous’ in her letter to Francis, plus one from Donne. Her voice crackled with emotion: ‘Are you sure he’ll come here?’
Francis narrowed his eyes. ‘Conrad’s given Poppy his word that our star act will not back out of his Farcombe appearance. He’s got his most trusted girl on the job, he tells us.’
‘I am no longer his trusted girl or whipping boy,’ she huffed indignantly.
‘Not you, Legs,’ he scoffed. ‘Kizzy’s booked flights to Dublin already; I think we can rest assured Lapis will be policed all the way here. That girl would do anything for Poppy and the festival. She’ll seduce him if she needs to.’
‘But they’re—’ about to say ‘brother and sister!’ Legs managed to stop herself and splutter ‘lesbians!’ She wasn’t sure the statement had as much punch, despite an element of truth.
For a moment, Francis looked stunned, but he swiftly regained his composure. ‘I shouldn’t think Kizzy would let a minor detail like that put her off her career trajectory. Con-man has her under strict instructions to deliver Gordon to Farcombe at any cost; I overheard the pep-talk. One can’t help admiring his bravado.’
Legs felt as though the branch beneath her was whipping around like a serpent’s tail. She sat up, gripping on tightly. ‘Conrad is an utter bastard!’
Francis chuckled. ‘Say that again.’
‘Conrad is an utter, utter bastard!’
He smiled up through the tree’s branches at the clearing ni
ght sky. The clouds were rushing off as fast as socialites moving on to a better party now, allowing the half moon to stage a shy epilogue, casting a faint light on his amused face.
‘Perhaps you have suffered enough,’ he reflected, tilting down his face to look along his perfect nose at her. ‘After all, neither of us is going to die of a broken heart, are we?’
Her battered but unbroken heart was bursting with relief. ‘I’m so glad you feel like that.’
‘I won’t pretend I’m not hurt, but the truth is, darling, I’m not sure you were clever enough for me. You have such a carpe diem mind.’
Relief turned instantly to outrage. ‘What?’
He flashed his handsome, condescending smile. ‘When you were ill, I was reminded of the thing that used to irritate me about you most: your inability to concentrate, to engage; to care for the written word beyond its first reading.’
‘You only say that because you talk in quotes all the time!’ she defended, hot tears of indignation chasing away all those of guilt. ‘Even your letter was full of Joyce.’
‘You weren’t supposed to read it yet; I haven’t finished the appendices.’ He looked indignant, but then a hint of vanity crept into his voice. ‘What did you think of it?’
‘Flammable.’
‘You mean inflammatory?’
‘I mean inflammable.’
He let out a long, patronising sigh. ‘Which just goes to show how much you know about literature.’
‘Does that make me a lesser person?’
‘Frankly, yes.’
Legs fell silent. This time she would let him take victory. She recognised his need for a deadly verbal blow, that final word she must nobly concede, especially when it was accompanied by the sort of expression Francis now bore, which in most other men she knew would relate to a hat-trick scored in injury time followed by an orgy of two-girl-on-one-hatrick-scorer bedroom action. He had won the match. And while he didn’t exactly rip his shirt off and thrust his groin at the crowds for adulation, he still needed to make his victory salute.
