The Love Letter

by Fiona Walker

  ‘Then I’ll have to take you both hostage,’ Poppy said in a sinister undertone, reaching into her cavernous handbag.

  Seeing a glint of metal, Legs thought for a terrifying moment that Poppy was pulling out a gun, but it was just her hipflask which she unscrewed with shaking hands before taking a very long tot.

  ‘I hardly think you are in a position to take us hostage,’ Byrne pointed out gently. ‘You came by taxi, for a start.’

  Poppy conceded the point, staring fixedly at Legs now, eyes narrowing. She gazed so intently and for so long that Legs shifted uncomfortably, frightened by what she was going to do next.

  But Poppy merely raised her hip-flask in a toast with a gallant smile. ‘It seems I am destined to be your mother-in-law one way or another, Allegra. I’m very glad.’

  ‘You are?’ Legs gulped.

  ‘You’re really quite witty and it’s useful having a strong soprano like yours at singsongs. You have a lot of brio, and I’ve always rather liked you. It was your taste in men that’s always been too abhorrent to countenance. But you’ve obviously changed your ways completely.’ Her big eyes glowed with affection. ‘I do hope we’ll be friends. I could use someone spirited like you on side.’

  ‘I hope so too.’ Legs beamed back, knowing that such barbed praise from Poppy meant everything; when she gushed, it was just habitual affectation but when she gave a reluctant tribute like this, it was spoken from the heart.

  Now Poppy was staring at Legs even more intently as she announced with great theatricality: ‘I see the solution to your dilemma, Jamie!’ She didn’t take her dark eyes from Legs’ face. ‘It’s right in front of us.’

  ‘It is?’

  She nodded earnestly, turning from Legs to him and then back again. ‘Gordon Lapis must have a sex change!’

  Horrified, Legs and Byrne held hands, fingers tightly knitted for mutual support.

  Chapter 53

  The traffic crawling along the main North Devon coast road was worse than any Legs had ever known. For hours it was at a standstill, only edging forwards when the intrepid few turned off to try to forge a way along the back lanes, or simply executed a three point turn to head back the way they had come. Drivers and passengers got out and chatted, complained and shouted into their mobile phones. Only motorbikes and pedal cycles were making it through, weaving in and out of the static line.

  ‘There must have been an accident,’ Legs groaned.

  ‘This is all festival traffic,’ Poppy pointed out cheerfully from the back seat which she was sharing with Fink, watching as a motorcycle roared past. ‘It’s been the same all week apparently.’

  The local radio station confirmed this, warning listeners to avoid the area around Farcombe at all costs, and reporting tailbacks of ten miles or more.

  ‘They’re all coming to see Gordon,’ Poppy beamed through the window as the driver of a neighbouring car, stepping out for a leg stretch, peered in nosily.

  The Bentley Continental was yet again attracting a great deal of attention.

  ‘Why didn’t I come in something less conspicuous like my dad’s horsebox or cousin Caron’s gipsy caravan?’ Byrne muttered, getting increasingly tense as he pressed the button to close the roof and it flipped protectively over them like a black wing.

  ‘I think they might be onto us,’ Legs looked around anxiously as more onlookers gathered, unable to see through the darkened privacy glass. Fink barked at them sociably.

  A couple of people had begun to take photographs with their mobile phones now. Word was going around the traffic jam that the great man himself might be amongst them. Someone rapped at the door and asked if they could have their book signed.

  Byrne buzzed down the window fractionally. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. Can you leave us alone, please?’

  ‘Irish!’ someone called out. ‘The Mirror said yesterday that Gordon is Irish!’

  ‘Are you him? Are you?’

  Byrne hurriedly wound up the window.

  Then, to his alarm, a man on a moped cruised up with a big digital camera and high powered flash which he pressed against the windows and fired off repeatedly.

  ‘It’s the paparazzi!’ Poppy declared ecstatically, whipping out her lipstick and compact.

  ‘We’ve got to get out of here.’ Byrne put the car into drive again, now at snapping point.

  There was a turning about fifty yards ahead of them. Nosing his way out into the path of oncoming traffic, almost mowing down several bystanders, Byrne sped along the wrong side of the road and swerved into a tiny, high-banked lane, ignoring the cry from the back of the car as Poppy and her make-up were catapulted across the leather upholstery and Fink fell off the seat entirely. They’d barely driven half a mile before they realised the moped was on their tail.

  ‘Shit!’ Byrne accelerated.

  ‘We should have stayed there calling their bluff,’ Poppy grumbled, lipstick now all over her cheek. ‘Now he knows we’re trying to hide something.’

  While Legs fiddled frantically with the sat nav, Byrne blasted through the countryside trying to shake them off their tail.

  ‘We need to try to get back towards Bideford so we can cross under the main road again,’ Legs called out, gripping hold of the dashboard. ‘Otherwise we’ll be in the sea any minute.’

  ‘This is Goblin Granny’s land,’ Poppy recognised excitedly, looking out at the fast-moving greenery. ‘I used to ride all over it on my pony as a girl.’

  ‘Know any short cuts to Farcombe?’

  ‘Hundreds,’ Poppy was rattling around in the back. ‘Such a shame we’re not in a four wheel drive.’

  ‘This is four wheel drive,’ Byrne pointed out. ‘Just point the way.’

  Not content with taking his two-hundred-thousand-euro car camping, he was soon off-roading as they pelted along dusty, rutted farm tracks, through woodland drives no wider than the wing mirrors. Their moped outrider fell back and then finally gave up as they sped across stubble fields which rattled their papery tines against the low-slung car and flicked stones up from the wide wheels.

  ‘This is thrilling!’ Poppy whooped as they splashed through a ford and slithered up a rough stone track. ‘Where did you learn to drive like this?’

  ‘I just followed Legs’ example. Foot down. Close your eyes. Pray.’

  ‘I’m an atheist,’ Legs protested, then wailed as they plunged down a steep escarpment, G-force pulling all her vital organs up into her chest.

  ‘You might be about to regret that,’ he said through gritted teeth as he steered against a slide to stop the car rolling over.

  Eventually they came out on the headland overlooking Fargoe beach, driving through a field of sheep.

  ‘We’re very near the Pleasure Drive,’ Poppy pointed out. ‘Once we’re on that, we can get all the way to the village and cut across to the parkland below Gull Cross.’

  The Pleasure Drive was a private road that had been laid in the late nineteenth century by Farcombe Hall’s great Victorian improvers the Waites to enable the family and their guests to ride, drive and walk through lush rhododendron borders and artfully planted woodland with enticing glimpses of the sea. It had been closed for many years and was practically impassable in places. The land around it was now all leased out for forestry and farming, its once carriage-smooth contours only ever navigated by tractors and pick-ups, if at all.

  ‘Is it safe?’ Legs asked uneasily as they rattled over a cattle grid and started along the narrow, crumbling hoggin.

  ‘Bound to be,’ Poppy insisted, not wanting the adventure to end.

  As Byrne clicked the button to open the roof again, Legs clung onto her seatbelt, wondering at the transformation in Poppy which had taken her from a nervous wreck who needed two Valium to travel in a taxi to thrill-seeking backseat driver in less than twenty-four hours.

  Poppy had been forcibly liberated, she realised, released from her self-imposed prison as surely as breaking her extraordinary sculptures from their fibre
glass shells, albeit temporarily. Legs didn’t doubt her agoraphobia was far from cured, and probably never would be – she was clearly desperate to get back home, insisting loudly that she had no intention of leaving Farcombe again if she could help it. But a sea change had taken place after her night in safe harbour on Chastity.

  ‘I’d forgotten how much I like cars,’ she was saying brightly now, admiring the plush leatherwork. ‘I used to adore driving. Do you remember that old red sports car I had, Jamie?’

  ‘How could I forget?’ he said flatly.

  ‘I just loved that car,’ Poppy sighed nostalgically. ‘Such a speedy little thing. We used to have such fun racketing around the lanes near Nevermore with the top down, didn’t we?’

  ‘When we weren’t trapped upside-down in ditches waiting for the emergency services.’

  Legs began listening in with interest as Poppy giggled and said, ‘There were a few little mishaps, weren’t there? Nothing serious.’

  ‘The concussion wasn’t great that day I fell out when you cornered at a flat seventy.’

  ‘I’d forgotten about that.’

  ‘And there was the time you killed a cow.’ He looked at her in the rear view mirror.

  ‘Well it just walked out in front of me.’

  ‘At two miles an hour, while you were doing a hundred.’

  ‘Oh you’re exaggerating. I can’t have been doing more than sixty.’ She took in a deep breath of brackish air as the shade of an artfully planted lime tree avenue gave way to the bright sun of a stretch of clifftop. Poppy craned out of the side of the car to catch the first glimpses of the village appearing around the headland far below. ‘Maybe I’ll get myself a little banger to pootle around in on the estate? I’m sure I’ll be fine as long as I keep the house in sight.’

  ‘And have a speed limiter fitted,’ Byrne watched her nervously in the mirror, but he was smiling again now, delighted at her growing confidence.

  ‘Keep your eyes on the road,’ Legs muttered as the Bentley started veering towards the sheer drop.

  For Legs, the Pleasure Drive could not have been more of a misnomer for the ten minutes that ensued, swerving around rubble, inching along precipices with tyres almost tipping over the side, bouncing over potholes and scraping between trees. Poppy shrieked with delight throughout. Even Fink was propped up on the back seat, barking his head off, ears flapping. Byrne, clearly a rally driver in another lifetime, was utterly assured and still smiling broadly. When they reached a stretch of unbroken road, he reached over and took Legs’ hand.

  ‘Tell me we’re doing the right thing.’

  ‘We’re doing the right thing.’

  Looking across at him, Legs suddenly found herself laughing, joining in the group high. They were heading back to Farcombe. She had the man she loved at her side, with all his identities intact. Worse things happen at sea, she reminded herself firmly.

  The park around the estate was now one enormous campsite, the little canvas clusters had spread across the faded green velvet of Farcombe’s ample acres like thousands of fallen kites. Many hundred of rows of cars were parked in colourful jewelled string necklaces across the flattest of the farm fields. The camper vans and caravans had swelled to form a great mosaic arc around Home Farm. No hotel, B&B, holiday cottage or chalet park within a twenty-mile radius had a vacancy.

  Closer to the house, the customary big festival marquees had been erected. There were cubist blue rows of Portaloos, along with the usual monolith Portakabin offices and more signage than the M25. But the police barriers were new, as was the massively expanded army of stewards and security guards, and the big television screens Francis had put in place to amuse the masses, currently showing a rolling promo shot by EuroArts TV.

  ‘I’ll call an emergency family meeting tonight,’ Poppy’s deep voice was authoritative and calm now as she clicked into practical mode. She reached into her handbag for a turban, slotting it over her devilish red hair and then tucking in loose strands as though adopting a disguise. ‘Legs cannot stay in the house.’ She held up a hand to silence the protests. ‘Francis will not tolerate it. You have a tent, I gather. Better that we drop her off with that and you stick with me, Jamie.’

  ‘I want to be with Byrne!’ Legs panicked. The scale of Gordon “coming out” was finally starting to hit her, and with it the reality she was about to be thrown into the heart of a cyclone.

  ‘And I’m staying with Allegra,’ Byrne insisted.

  ‘As you wish.’

  Suddenly the air was filled with strains of ‘Ain’t Misbehavin” as Poppy extracted a small, jewelled mobile phone which was ringing in her handbag, an ancient relic in technological terms, but encased in a ravishingly arty skin. ‘Oh, it’s Édith!’

  Legs’ fingers tightened in Byrne’s grip and both listened with concern as Poppy spoke in an excited undertone to her stepdaughter, interspersed with alternate gasps of alarm and cackles of laugher, which hardly inspired confidence.

  As their surreal route gave way to the familiar, the lane climbing from the ford to the cliffs, she finally rang off. ‘Édith says Hector and Francis are holding court in the pub, which is predictable if no less disappointing. Apparently some prankster broke into the room reserved for Gordon Lapis last night and took lots of photos to post on Twitter. Guy’s livid because the room’s unoccupied, and there are plenty of photos already on the pub’s website. But Gordon’s secret identity is getting the world tweeting more than any super-injunction. But so far, nobody’s even close to guessing.’

  ‘That’s reassuring,’ Legs gulped, playing anxious cats cradles with Byrne’s fingers. ‘Let’s go to Spywood.’

  They dropped Poppy off at Gull Cross before speeding along the Spywood track, the dusty Continental making light work of the potholes after its cross-county run.

  Lucy North was naked in her wooded holiday cottage garden, sporting just her floppy straw hat – now very battered from its stormy night in the Tree of Secrets. She was painting at her easel.

  ‘Ah there you are, darling.’ She greeted Legs as though she’d just wandered out of the cottage from a siesta, reaching unhurriedly for a large silk sarong from the branch of a nearby birch to cover her modesty. ‘After two decades, I’ve given up on that bloody harbour. My boat simply won’t come in. I’m trying life drawing. What d’you think?’

  Legs studied the portrait carefully. ‘It looks like Dad.’

  ‘That’s because it is.’

  Then she noticed a figure swinging in the hammock who now raised a glass of wine affably.

  There was an awkward cough behind her.

  ‘You remember Jago, Mum,’ Legs turned to take his hand proudly, pulling him alongside her. ‘And this is Fink.’ She gestured to the panting basset. ‘This is my family. Our family.’

  Lucy turned in surprise, clutching her slipping sarong tightly with her underarms. ‘Oh, I’m so glad she found you again.’ Her face brightened. ‘Dorian darling, this is Jago!’ she called out across the garden. ‘The one I told you about.’

  The figure in the hammock raised his glass again. ‘Welcome!’

  ‘You must get Legs to introduce you to our daughter Rosalind and grandson Nico,’ Lucy was saying to Byrne.

  ‘They’re in Farcombe?’ Legs gasped.

  In the hammock, one finger flicked up from the glass rim pointing south. ‘Just through the woods there.’

  ‘Staying at Spycove with Will and the family,’ Lucy confirmed, smiling proudly.

  ‘Is Daisy in situ too?’ she spluttered.

  ‘Go and see for yourselves.’ Her mother gave her a wise look, somewhere between I-told-you-so and push off.

  ‘We thought we might camp in the woods for a couple of days,’ Legs explained before they left.

  ‘How lovely,’ Lucy beamed at them both. ‘Jago must sit for me while you’re staying.’

  ‘He will not,’ came a gruff bark from the hammock.

  ‘I think I’m already at risk of over-exposure right now,’ Byrne s
miled uneasily.

  As they walked away arm in arm, Legs dipped an apologetic forehead to his shoulder. ‘My parents are rather self-obsessed, I’m afraid. They’ve never exactly been standard-issue, but this past few weeks has set new standards of non-conformity.’

  ‘I like them.’ He swung her round in the path. ‘Your mother’s got the sharpest, kindest wit about her. Like you.’ He fired those blazing eyes straight into hers. ‘Being conventional is very overrated in my opinion.’

  As Legs towed him along the track to Spycove, she chewed her lip. ‘Best not mention that to my sister just yet.’

  Ros was camping at the furthest end of the garden from Spycove, like a peace protestor.

  ‘We could hardly stay with Mum and Dad,’ she pointed out. ‘They haven’t got a stitch on most days and never eat regular meals. Everywhere else is fully booked and I promised Nico we’d come here to see Gordon Lapis.’

  On cue, a wiry streak of joy in an Arsenal strip hurled himself at Legs. ‘You’re here! Are you camping with us? Did you bring my signed book? This summer is so cool!’

  Nico was delighted to be able to flit between families, it transpired, luring his mother ever closer to his second home; she had participated in a rounders match, volleyball and a barbecue, he reported gaily.

  ‘Somebody has to keep watch,’ was Ros’s excuse for the arrangement, adding with some satisfaction, ‘There’s no sense of safety around here. Daisy is hopeless.’

  ‘She’s a fortnight away from giving birth,’ Legs excused her wryly.

  At this, Ros’s eyes began twitching, so her sister hastily introduced Byrne.

  ‘You’re Irish,’ Ros registered the accent as soon as he said hello. ‘Are you Catholic?’

  ‘I am.’

  Ros’s eyes glittered as she regarded Legs with newfound respect, realising the family might yet host a wedding at Ealing Abbey with Nico singing before his voice broke. The Ditchley dress could star again.

  ‘You always appear at the luckiest times!’

  Daisy was on a celebratory high because she’d completed all her commissioned scripts while Will and a bunch of friends hurriedly packed up Inkpot Farm to make way for their cash buyers and they could now kick up their family heels: ‘Before you ask, everything we own’s in storage, which is why it’s so tidy,’ she laughed, struggling to open a bottle of cheap fizz. ‘We are on a long holiday because we can’t face our own mess and we all want to have a gawp at Gordon Lapis. Have you seen how many people are here? Mum turned down six thousand pounds for one week’s holiday let in this place to let us stay. Isn’t that amazing? Nico is beside himself at the thought of seeing his hero in person.’