by Fiona Walker
Crouching over her now, he bestowed a kiss of such tenderness on her cheek, the heat of her tears creeping out to meet his lips seemed to melt her skin.
‘Is it utterly pointless hoping for friendship?’ she asked in a fractured voice.
His coldness took her by surprise. ‘Utterly pointless.’
Thus, without warning, she found the scream bellowed from her like a toddler staging the mother of all hissy fits: ‘I WANT my CAR back! NOW!’
He took several seconds to comprehend what she was saying. ‘I’m hardly going to get it right this minute.’
‘Yes you are! I’m going to Ireland.’
Francis’s ancient Land Rover racketed along the tracks through the moonlight, pulling up outside a Dutch Barn located amongst the cluster of neglected piggeries and sheep holds in one of Home Farm’s outer yards.
As soon as she saw her little silver dream machine stored inside, Legs threw her arms over its firm back like a small girl with her pony, visualising herself galloping away.
Francis watched her from the big double doors, silhouetted in brightening moonlight, ‘You can hardly call the AA at two in the morning and expect them to be here within half an hour.’ He stepped forwards.
‘No need.’ She scouted around, spotted an ancient rusting scythe propped up against an old corn thresher, and grasped it, holding it aloft victoriously.
With a terrified wail, Francis leaped out of sight, clearly believing the Grim Reaper had arrived.
Taking no notice of him, Legs hurled the weighted base of the handle at the driver’s side window, which smashed obligingly, the car alarm shrieking straight away.
Leaning inside, she extracted the car keys and silenced the alarm with the fob button. Across the Home Farm fields, dogs barked inside tents.
‘I would have knocked out the passenger’s side,’ Francis said helpfully, peering around the barn door again. ‘Less wind in the face.’
‘I can’t wait to smell fresh Eire.’ She shivered happily, jumping in.
As soon as she started the engine, the sat nav burst into life, still seeking its last requested destination.
‘At the next available opportunity, take a U-turn,’ came the bossy voice.
‘This lady’s not for turning,’ Legs shouted back just as bossily, and pressed her foot on the accelerator.
She drove straight to Spywood Cottage, which was now in darkness.
Ros was dozing on the sofa, and woke with a start to find her sister hurriedly writing a note at the kitchen table.
‘I’ve left the spare bed free for you.’ Still half-asleep, yawning and rubbing her stiff neck, she sat up stiffly. ‘I made it up with fresh sheets and put out my spare pyjamas.’
‘I’m not staying.’
‘You can’t leave Francis!’
‘I don’t love him any more. I did when I wrote that letter you sent, but it was just aftershock, afterthoughts, after burn … after Byrne.’ The words caught in her throat. ‘The writing was on the wall; I should have had “Live for the Moment” tattooed across my brow before I came back here to bang it against Farcombe’s brick walls.’
‘They’re stone,’ Ros pointed out, regarding her suspiciously. ‘You’re not thinking of getting another tattoo?’
Legs could hear Byrne’s voice in her head, What’s written, once read, is like ink on skin. She hit upon a sudden idea. It would be the ultimate love letter. ‘You know, I just might.’
Her sister’s grey eyes marked her as she screwed up the note, ‘You’re running back to Conrad, I assume?’
She shook her head: ‘I’m going to County Laois – louse – leesh,’ she struggled with the pronunciation.
‘You will find nothing but louses, leeches and letches out there, Legs,’ Ros stood up and headed wearily into the kitchen. ‘I’d better make you a Thermos of coffee if you’re driving.’
‘Is Mum asleep?’ Legs craved a Lucy hug, longing to explain what she was doing to the one person she was certain would understand.
‘Cognac coma,’ Ros switched on the kettle then stretched out her arms between the handles of two wall cupboards crucifix-style, drooping her head at forty-five degrees. ‘I can’t believe you’re swanning off, leaving me to pick up the pieces as usual.’
Legs ignored the martyr pose. ‘Get Mum and Dad face to face ASAP. They can sort it out for themselves. Just don’t let them trust to letters. You know what they’re like; they only open post once a month to avoid the scary bills.’
Her sister looked up quickly, appalled. ‘Is that your expert advice in marriage guidance?’
‘What do you suggest then?’
Ros could only focus on the detail as usual. ‘Mum told me tonight that she’s had “intimate waxing”.’ She dropped her voice, glancing up. ‘Dad can’t see her until it’s grown out, don’t you agree?’
‘He might like it.’ Legs pointed out, then remembered the miniature fake Freud, whose nude model had definitely not had any intimate waxing before she was painted.
‘Don’t be absurd,’ Ros was going redder by the second. ‘He’s far too old.’
Legs quickly scaled three quarters of the stairs to retrieve the folded pillowcase. ‘Can you do me a massive favour?’ She thrust it at her sister. ‘I need you to get rid of this.’
‘Is it drugs?’ Ros held it by her fingertips like a bomb that might explode at any second.
‘No.’ She picked up the Thermos gratefully; ‘Just a naked truth that needs covering up.’
Ros handed it straight back, ‘I’m all for covering up nudity, but I draw the line at smuggling. Just post it into the nearest police station’s letterbox.’
‘I am no longer a woman of letters,’ Legs sighed as she carried it out to the battered, breezy car to stash it in the boot. ‘This time I’m going to say what I need to face to face, even if I have to write crib notes on my skin first.’
Chapter 46
‘Legs!’
‘Daisy!’
‘At last! Where have you been?’
‘Long story.’
‘What’s that noise?’
‘I’m on a ferry.’
‘Brian or Otis?’
‘Ha ha. Going to Ireland. How’s Inkpot?’
‘Actually, I’m in Farcombe. Your tyre tracks are still smoking outside Spywood, you minx. I heard you were on the run. What have you done here? Even Ros stopped to tell me about it, she’s so shocked.’
‘What do you mean?’
The signal cut out and the line went dead.
Having plundered her dwindling current account to book a cabin for the crossing, Legs had liberated her weekend bag from the boot of the Honda at last and fell on it like an old friend, pulling out clothes that she’d personally chosen and were in fashion with the ecstatic gratitude of a released prisoner no longer obliged to wear arrows. Byrne had never even seen her in her own clothes, she realised in amazement. When they’d first met she’d been sporting an Arsenal away kit, followed later by the party frocks of an ageing society hostess. At least he’d been spared her mother’s blue kaftan which resembled something Nelson Mandela might wear on a state visit. She dragged it off now like a tarpaulin from an Aprilia, eager to put on her race farings.
But when she started to try things on, she had a confidence crisis. She had lost so much weight while being ill that nothing fitted any more. She knew she should feel elated, but all her jeans had unflatteringly baggy bums, and her boobs appeared to have shrunk drastically, leaving her bras gaping at the top like mussel shells.
She took a shower and then tried hard to have a power nap, aware that she was running almost entirely on adrenalin and coffee having not slept properly in two days. But it was impossible to settle with her heart racing so fast. No matter how many times she told herself that she was simply going to Ireland to tell Byrne that Kizzy was his half-sister, she knew she was also on a mission to hand-deliver something far more personal and life-changing for herself.
She got up and painted her face w
ith great care, trying for the barely-there look but just ended up with a matt pancake render that she hurriedly washed off before settling for pale and interesting with bedhead hair, lashings of mascara and a lick of lip-gloss. Matched with a clingy dove-grey tunic that slipped seductively off one shoulder and sea-green pedalpushers that made her thighs look almost slender, she started to buck up. Lifting her hair up, she pouted at the mirror, turning this way and that, astonished at her newfound cheekbones. The old Allegra was back, and ready to live for the moment with all her heart.
It was almost time to write her letter. First, she needed the address.
Within half a mile of Rosslare, she got one signal point on her phone and a welcome text from her new Irish host network. She dialled straight out: ‘I need to locate a family called Byrne, or possibly Kelly, in Laois or possibly Kildare. They train horses.’
‘Initial?’
‘No idea.’
‘Oooookay, madam. I am the White Pages, and I have no intention of turning the air blue here, but have you any idea just how many people we are talking about roughly?’
‘Fifty? Eighty?’
‘Thousands.’
‘The initial would be B, I think. Brooke. That’s it! Kelly, Brooke.’
‘Kelly Brook?’
‘Yes. I need the address.’
‘She’ll be ex-directory. And she doesn’t live in Ireland. Lovely girl.’
‘OK, forget that. I just need the number of a tattoo parlour in Portlaoise.’
‘Is this to do with Kelly Brook?’ asked her operator excitedly.
Legs took the number and rang off. Bracing herself, she called Conrad.
‘Where does Gordon live exactly?’
‘Right here. But the bastard isn’t in.’ He held his hand over the phone and talked to someone at the other end, presumably Kizzy. ‘I catch a flight back to London in an hour. Why d’you want his address?’
‘Good luck card.’
‘You’ve typed it on enough letters in the past,’ Conrad reminded her rudely, hanging up.
Legs had a similar blank spot with addresses as she did telephone numbers if they were stored in electronic media that she could simply cut and paste or speed dial. She closed her eyes and tried really hard to concentrate, even clicking her heels together and saying ‘there’s no place like home’ a few times for luck, much to the amused alarm of her fellow passengers, one of whom started videoing her.
Then she let out a whoop and opened her eyes, remembering: ‘Coolbaragh Farm!’
‘That seriously stings,’ Legs winced as the needle painted its way delicately along the top of her neck.
‘You want me to stop, darlin’?’
‘No, I can take it. My friend likes a sting in his tale.’ Legs smiled at the artist, who had worryingly cross eyes and clearly used his body as a portfolio for both his ink and his piercing needlework ‘You wouldn’t happen to know how to find somewhere called Coolbaragh Farm by any chance?’
‘How would you be spelling that? There’re a lot of “cools” round here – Coolanoma, Coolbanaghar, Cooltoran, Coolnacarrick.’ He lifted his gun and reached for a sterile swab. ‘This is a cool place.’
She wrote it down for him while he changed needles.
‘Doesn’t look familiar.’ He peered at it, ‘but then again I’m dyslexic.’ He started the machine up again and peered at her neck, irises sliding closer together. ‘Funny, I don’t get asked for this phrase much any more. Can’t remember the last time.’
She cleared her throat nervously. ‘Why’s that d’you think?’
‘I guess “tá grá agam duit” would be more accurate.’ He nodded towards the ‘Buy One Get One Half Price’ poster beside her head. ‘It’d look grand on your lower back.’
‘I’ll stick with the one, thanks. I wrote too much last time I tried something like this.’ Legs gritted her teeth, eyes watering, grateful she’d chosen only two words, and hoping that he wasn’t writing it phonetically.
An hour later, listening to the whining grinding of a needle engraving into gold, Legs flinched as she reached up beneath her hair and pressed her tentative fingertips to the fiery new mark protected by a clear dressing there. ‘You wouldn’t happen to know how to find somewhere called Coolbaragh Farm by any chance?’
‘Sure, that’s Mr Byrne’s place, a mile or two off the Kildare Road.’ The whining stopped as the jeweller wetted his newly marked signet before holding it up to examine. ‘He buys a lot of pretty gems for Mrs Byrne in here, and the son’s been a good customer since he took to the foreign wife.’
Legs stared at him in disbelief. ‘Did you say wife?’
‘That’s right. They’ve grand stables up there, I hear. Fine horses. Now who would be living there with the initial P, I wonder?’ he pried.
‘The P is silent,’ Legs explained as she took the ring with shaking hands and turned it between her fingers, admiring the curling monogram. ‘Do you suppose there’s room to add “rick”?’
The jeweller gave a nervous laugh. ‘We sell a very handsome titanium identity bracelet with gold accents which I can engrave at no extra cost.’
‘I’ll just take the ring, thanks.’ She handed it back. ‘It’s best the corpse isn’t identified until after I leave the country. Could you give me directions?’
The Byrne family lived in a white farmhouse on the outskirts of the tiny village of Coolbaragh just south west of Kildare, with a ruined stone tower squatting by its front gates like a truncated dragon leg and fields full of glossy, tail-flicking thoroughbreds. It wasn’t at all as Legs had expected, although her imaginings had always veered wildly between the sort of romantic hideaway castle Gordon Lapis could afford, and a modest rural hovel adored by home-loving Jago, with chickens wandering in and out of the kitchen and peat loaded on the fire.
Instead, Coolbaragh Farm was large and immaculate, with newly painted render, freshly creosoted fencing and tarmac so uniform and glossy black it looked like polished granite. It was alarmingly WAG-mansionesque. There were smart carriage lights dotted along the drive, beautifully edged flowerbeds bursting with red valerian, and a large stone horse rearing in the centre of a fountain on the flawless green grass in front of the house. Electric gates with a discreet CCTV camera were the only hint at the security required to protect its occupants, although that could equally have applied to the ones in the stables of its adjoining stud.
It wasn’t very Byrne-like. It felt wholly anti-climactic. It was also punishingly hot, the storms in England having long since left its near neighbour which was basking in a late summer heatwave. She could smell the tarmac melting.
‘Who’s that?’ a cheerful female voice crackled through the intercom attached to the gatepost.
‘Legs,’ she said without thinking. Driving there from Portlaoise, she had been too busy veering between emotional extremes to formulate any sort of plan, one moment convinced that the jeweller’s hearsay had to be wrong and Byrne couldn’t be married; the next, wanting to kill him. Now that she had arrived, all she wanted to do was see him.
‘Did you say “Legs”?’ The accent wasn’t Irish. It sounded deeply European.
‘Yes. I’m here to see Byrne – Jago – Lapis – Gordon – Finch,’ she struggled. He was everything to her. He had no need for one name.
But the cheerful voice was clearly more than satisfied that she’d passed muster. ‘At last! My husband’s been waiting on you all day. Come on in.’
To her amazement, the gate was opened with an electronic whirr.
A gorgeous blonde was already coming out of the front door, in possession of the sort of endless legs, pale blue eyes and cream complexion that only the purest gene-pool could contrive to reproduce. To prove the point, she carried a perfect Silbury Hill bump between her narrow hips and her pert bust, the advanced stages of pregnancy sported like a fashion accessory. Hopping along as she pulled on boots, she beamed across at Legs.
‘Come straight to ze yard. Ve are so glad you’re here.’ Her accen
t was very thick indeed, possibly Polish or Russian, with American vowel sounds and curiously Irish intonations. ‘My aul man’s on phone. He’ll be here shortly. He hasn’t slept in forty-eight hours. No doubt you have been told of ze situation.’ The blonde vision began striding ahead on those endless slim limbs, now pursued by Fink the basset who cast Legs a mildly penitent look, like a serial adulterer caught out so often he no longer raised more than an eyebrow.
‘Not really …’ Having not slept for almost as many hours, Legs was struggling to keep up mentally and physically too. The blonde could cover ground like an ostrich, pregnant or not.
‘My husband has been frantic for you to get here.’ She was leading the way along the granite shiny tarmac to a stable yard of such gleaming perfection it looked like a little girl’s toy, complete with another pretty fountain and lots of hanging baskets bursting with colour like pick-n-mix scoops. The blonde headed to a far corner, where the half door had an ominous prison cell metal grille above it. ‘Ze vorst one’s over here. Nobody can get near him right now, so be careful.’ She slid open the bolt and ushered Legs in. ‘Can you see how poofy zey are?’
Before she could answer, Legs found herself sharing a very small space with very big, angry horse that was standing on three swollen legs. He hopped one way, Legs jumped the other.
‘I think there’s been a mistake …’ she bleated at the door.
‘I’ll make tea an get my aul man.’ The blonde walked away.
Legs flattened herself back against a wall as the horse bared its teeth at her. ‘Um … help!’
There was nobody outside to hear any more. Hay was munched, hooves stamped, and another horse whinnied. She crept to the door and reached through the bars of the grille to slide the lock, only to find the door was still stuck fast, a lower bolt on the outside holding it closed with steel force.
Legs’ disconsolate new companion, eager to see what was happening on the yard, limped towards its door too, still shooting her evils out of the corner of its eye which sent her scuttling against a side wall. A moment later its very large, glossy brown bum was facing her. She had very little working knowledge of horses, but she remembered a line saying that they were equally dangerous at both ends. She edged away into a corner and fought panic.
