The Love Letter

by Fiona Walker

  Legs blushed crimson, pressing cool fingers to her hot cheeks. ‘He never said that!’

  ‘You’re right.’ Nico stretched up to kiss her. ‘I made that bit up. Thanks, Legs. You’re the best!’

  When Byrne rejoined Legs at the fireside, he found her perched between Kizzy and Édith, three exquisite Witches of Eastwick faces illuminated by flames.

  ‘I know we share a father,’ Kizzy looked up at him tearfully, her green eyes like rusting copper verdigris in the firelight. Her elbows rested on skinny knees, her chin resting on entwined fingers with knuckles as white as chalk. ‘I promise I’ll not make a big thing of it. I know you think I’m a bit over the top, but I really won’t do anything to embarrass you. You can trust me. You see, Poppy already told me about Brooke last week and Liz told me about it again last night. Now Legs has told me for a third time, only this time I actually know you know too, which is a real relief. I’m not sure I’d be very good at handling this on my own.’

  ‘Me neither.’ He stayed very still.

  ‘And I haven’t made a big fuss at all.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘But I’d quite like to. At some point. When we’re both ready.’

  ‘Me too.’

  There was an awkward pause. Catching each other’s eyes over Kizzy’s head, Legs and Édith took control of the situation. Slotting an arm each beneath Kizzy’s elbows, they stood up as one, lifting her along with them until she was standing directly in front of Byrne.

  They needed no greater cue than that, as they drew together into a warm, tight hug, pulling their lovers in with them.

  On the far side of the crackling fire, Hector serenaded them all with ‘Stranger on the Shore’. Beyond that, a sonorous voice could just be made out reciting ‘At The Word Farewell’.

  ‘Oh God, my brother’s moved onto Thomas Hardy,’ Édith snarled quietly. ‘Sorry Legs, but the sooner he gets a new girlfriend the better.’

  Hearing her own sister’s soft descant echoing the verse, Legs decided he was making a pretty good start.

  Bursting apart from their impromptu rugby scrum of new sibling love and old sibling rivalry, the foursome settled back beside the fire and shared out the last of a bottle of rosé and a tube of Pringles.

  ‘This has been the most amazing year of my life,’ Kizzy laughed, curling up to Édith. ‘Nothing would surprise me any more. If Gordon Lapis steps up on stage tomorrow and turns out to be that basset hound, I’ll hardly bat an eye.’

  Sitting statuesquely in front of them and drooling for a Pringle Fink let out a long, greedy whine that was almost human.

  Byrne looked across at at Legs, dark eyes blazing. ‘Now why didn’t we think of that?’

  The bonfire still glowed and sputtered in Spycove’s clifftop garden, long after the barbecue had been extinguished and the party dispersed. Byrne and Legs shared a log seat in front of it, drawing in its heat.

  They had the garden to themselves now. The guests were all gone. Daisy had long-since crashed into bed exhausted; Ros was in her tent in the woods listening to choral music; Will was in the house reading Ptolemy Finch and the Raven’s Curse to Nico in the watchtower room, not because he needed to be read to these days, but because they were both desperate to know what happened at the end.

  ‘They won’t be happy when they find out Ptolemy’s fate,’ she sighed, hugging her arms around him.

  ‘How can you be sure?’ he breathed into her shoulder before kissing it. ‘You haven’t read the end.’

  ‘I know what happens.’

  ‘Do you now?’ Resting his cheek against hers, he lifted his hand and examined the monogrammed signet ring on his little finger, turning it round one circuit as it gleamed dimly in the last of the firelight. ‘Stay there. I have something for you.’ Leaving a kiss glowing warm on her cheek, he walked across the dew-soaked grass to his car and started searching around inside.

  Legs gazed into the glowing embers of the fire, her heart thrumming faster as she dared to wonder if he was planning to carry on the conversation they’d had in the woods about changing her name.

  But when he returned, he was carrying a leather document wallet. Settling down beside her, he reached into it and pulled out a neat sheaf of printed A4 which he handed to her, holding his torch over it.

  She read the first few lines. ‘This is Raven’s Curse.’

  ‘Read on a bit.’

  Legs did, one hand flying to her mouth, ‘You’ve rewritten the end of the book!’

  Switching off the torch, he looked up at the sky where every autumn star was trying to outshine its neighbour. ‘You were right when you said second thoughts can be as original as first ones, like second love and second chances.’

  ‘And new beginnings,’ she laughed.

  ‘There’s a new endgame.’ He pressed his thumb to the happy tears springing from her eyes. ‘Meet me on the shore.’

  ‘We did that last time.’

  ‘No we didn’t. We never got that far. Meet me on the shore. Promise?’

  ‘I promise.’ She put her hands over his, not understanding, but he silenced her with a kiss before she could ask for an explanation.

  As his lips found hers, that delicious mountaintop kiss burst through her. This time, as she skied down the black run, there was nothing to stop her plunging into clear blue water. Already ripping off each other’s clothes, they raced into the tent where they rolled and wriggled all over the new end.

  Chapter 56

  Legs, Ros, Daisy and their families joined the crowds on the hill that had been nicknamed ‘Gordon’s Green’ in front of the big screen television the following morning to watch the action live from the library in Farcombe Hall. There was a carnival atmosphere in the park with hundreds of fans dressed up as Ptolemy, Purple and other characters from the books, home-made banners everywhere, and picnics galore. Television crews from all over the world were prowling around getting footage, presenters perfecting their scripts and talking into fluffy-topped microphones.

  The big screens were flashing up endless EuroArts TV promos, along with clips from the Ptolemy Finch movies and interviews with a seemingly unending stream of celebrities whose favourite books starred the little white-haired soothsayer.

  Then suddenly the crowd fell silent and Legs looked up to see Francis’s face on screen. God, but he was handsome, Legs realised distractedly. He was born for celluloid.

  ‘Er … hi … thanks for watching … er …’ Unfortunately he wasn’t as naturally gifted a broadcast speaker as he was a looker, his voice as flat as the screen. He looked down, clearly fumbling for his script.

  Thinking he was Gordon Lapis, the crowd started to shriek and whoop.

  Thinking exactly the same, Daisy and her huge pregnancy bump practically rolled on top of Legs. ‘Why didn’t you tell me it was Francis? You must have known!’

  Legs was too dumbfounded to react. This hadn’t been in her script at all.

  ‘I – er – my father was going to say this, but unfortunately he’s got a touch of – er – food poisoning today, so it’s down to me,’ Francis droned, sounding like Prince Harry forced to stand in for Charles at an anti-Nazi organic gardeners convention. ‘I just want to thank you all for coming here today on behalf of the Protheroe family and all, erm, involved with the Farcombe Festival, and I am delighted to take this, um, opportunity to announce a new – er – charitable project which my father has spearheaded called, erm—’ he looked at his script and visibly winced. ‘The Hector Protheroe Foundation for the Promotion of Popular Culture, which will be solely dedicated to art made by the masses for the masses. The charity’s patron, Gordon Lapis, will be with you all shortly, speaking with Falabella Morestrops – I mean Parallella Frostmops. You know who I mean. Thank you.’ He dived off screen to raucous cheers from the park, largely because he’d mentioned that Gordon was up next; few cared for news of rebel philanthropist Hector’s latest kindness. In their minds, he’d already been Sir Hector for years.

  But fo
r his original little princesses, the king’s crown had just been hurled to the hungry crowd, and not before time.

  Daisy and her bump were still on board Legs and almost asphyxiating her now. ‘Please tell me this is a weird dream?’

  Legs was laughing too much to speak. This was Byrne’s revenge, she was certain. How he’d swung it she wasn’t sure, but she so loved him for it. Where was he? She looked around the park, but saw only a sea of eager faces looking up at the screen in eager anticipation. Turning back to watch it too, she saw a reality TV star describing Ptolemy as her ‘main man’ for the third time on the prerecorded loop. This was art by the masses for the masses, she realised giddily, Gordon was the people’s storyteller. The atmosphere around her was supercharged.

  The big screen yielded no new excitements as the interview loop was repeated, along with movie clips and cover shots. As time wore on, there were a couple of shots of the library, which got everybody wildly excited before they realised it was just the crew setting up camera angles. The BBC’s premier arts presenter, a bewitchingly erudite blonde in oyster cashmere, appeared to riotous cheers to record a few trailers and links for the upcoming live broadcast. Then the recorded loop restarted and everyone groaned good-naturedly.

  But beneath the pageantry and cheer, the crowds were growing restless. Thousands of Ptolemy Finch tomes were clutched in eager hands, but Legs wouldn’t be surprised to see a pyre of Raven’s Curses soon forming as high as the hill they were sitting on ready to be incinerated. Rumour had started to spread that he wouldn’t be signing books. Mutters of dissent were everywhere, particularly given the small fortune Francis Protheroe had charged them all for the privilege of being there in the first place, a profit now assumed to be going straight into Lapis’s already swollen pockets. The love–hate pendulum for Gordon kept swinging one way and then the other.

  For one ten-year-old boy, it was all one way. Nico was hopelessly overexcited at the prospect of seeing his hero’s creator, and such was his total faith in Gordon that he believed Ptolemy would come to life again in the next book, a conviction he shared with a lot of the crowd around him.

  ‘I can’t believe you’re not in there with Gordon, Legs,’ he exclaimed for the fifth or sixth time. ‘He trusts you so much. He’s always emailing you.’

  ‘Gordon has a big support team surrounding him, and anyway I don’t work for Fellows Howlett any more,’ Legs reminded him, glancing round. ‘And keep your voice down.’

  ‘Where’s that new chap of yours?’ asked Lucy, who was wearing her increasingly crumpled straw hat, tied round with a jaunty purple silk scarf to mark the occasion.

  ‘He’s just seeing off an old friend,’ Legs said in a shaky voice, looking away.

  He should be back by now, surely? He’d slipped away half an hour ago saying he was going to try to have a quick word with Poppy and he was still gone. Things weren’t going according to plan at all.

  She told her family she was going to brave the portaloos and checked out the hall instead, looking for a way in, but there were security guards everywhere. Every door was heavily guarded, along with the sea passage. Only those in possession of one of the sacred access-all-areas wristbands could get in. She had nothing, not even a bangle.

  Back on Gordon’s Green, she slumped down next to Will who put an arm around her shoulders. ‘You’re looking very wan, darling.’

  She mustered a weak smile, watching as they re-ran another Ptolemy Finch movie clip on the big screen. ‘Just worried Gordon might be having second thoughts.’

  ‘Nonsense, he’s an old pro at this publicity lark. I’m taking notes. And I have the perfect thing to cheer you up.’ He reached into his backpack and pulled out a freshly printed page. ‘See what you think of that. It’s the synopsis of the novel that will make my fortune; incredibly moving stuff, with lots of middle class angst and dead children, and no Swedish detectives, although I have sneaked in a few vampires.’

  ‘Thanks. I look forward to it,’ Legs took it distractedly, glancing down at the page before her eyes returned to the big screen twirling Gordon’s book jackets around.

  ‘At least read the title,’ Will’s ego was brutally wounded.

  She looked down again, and then let out a snort of surprised laughter: ‘George Samson and the Magic Mousetrap. It’s a children’s book, Will.’

  He nodded eagerly, ‘Think Alice in Wonderland with a boy hero; I was going to call it George in Googleland, but I thought I might have legal difficulties. It’s going to be about a boy who escapes into an imaginative world on his dad’s laptop by clicking a little icon he’s found hidden in the logo of a popular internet search engine.’

  ‘Sounds promising,’ she humoured, but she was already distracted again by the big screen where the erudite blond presenter was sharing a joke with the sound engineer. Then the picture abruptly cut to the twirling books once more and the crowd around her groaned.

  ‘The end’s going to be the hardest bit,’ Will was saying. ‘I can’t decide whether the computer should crash and reboot while George is in there or there should be a terrible virus …’

  Suddenly Legs stopped listening. Byrne had written a new ending. A ‘new endgame’ Byrne had said. That’s what he had been delivering to Poppy, she realised. How stupid of her not to realise it. But where was he now?

  She gazed unseeing at the screen on which a picture of the cover of Raven’s Curse seemed to be spinning ever-faster. To appease the crowds, the production team had started a countdown which flashed up on screen. Three minutes to go.

  She looked around the parkland frantically, but there was no sign of Byrne.

  The crowd were joining in the countdown now, clapping in time as they chanted the ever-decreasing seconds. Legs felt as though her life was being wished away as they got down to two minutes and then one. Where was Byrne? Where was he? This wasn’t what they had agreed. Was he going to reveal himself as Gordon after all, without telling her? Had he been duped? He couldn’t abandon her like this.

  When the BBC’s bewitching presenter reappeared on screen, this time to be cued into her live broadcast, there was such whooping and cheering all around Legs, it was impossible to tell at first what she was saying, although her smiling face indicated that all was well and Gordon Lapis was indeed in the building. Legs tried to remember what Byrne had been wearing. Nothing smart. Just jeans and a T-shirt.

  As the camera panned out to reveal the figure seated beside the presenter, she recognised his clothes and her heart felt as though it was going to explode. His huge furnace eyes seemed to be burning holes straight through the screens at her. It felt as though he was looking only at her, trying to speak to her with just those amazing, silent eyes. They’d tricked him, she realised furiously. Conrad had tricked him into revealing his true identity after all.

  But then the camera panned out further and she gasped as she saw Poppy alongside him. Resplendent in lilac crushed velvet, she was sporting a white fascinator of such feathery, sequinned brilliance that she looked as though she had a firework exploding from her head.

  She was already talking, her deep sensual voice stilling the crowd as she started to tell a story that nobody dared interrupt. It was what Poppy had always done best:

  ‘My name is Poppy Protheroe, but you know me better as Gordon Lapis.’

  There was a collective gasp in the park so loud it seemed to suck the clouds overhead lower and pull the screen closer. Poppy had always had a way of dominating a space, however big, so that it felt like an intimate confessional:

  ‘I am sorry that I have kept my identity a secret for so long, but I have been trying very hard to protect the person I care about most, and by association, the one you care about most. Ptolemy Finch is based on my son, Jamie. I know our story will be exposed many times over in coming days and weeks, and so I hope I may tell it first, simply and honestly. I went out of Jamie’s life when he was just a boy, and have regretted that loss every day since. Ptolemy is that little boy I lost. This summer h
e came back into my life, and he is sitting here beside me.

  ‘By the time that Jamie and I were reunited, the Raven’s Curse had already been written. To those of you – and there are many – who I have upset by what happens in that novel, I think I should explain that I have had a change of heart, a total change of heart.

  ‘There is now an alternative end. It will be live on my website by the end of today, and I will be reading it aloud throughout the course of this week here at Farcombe Festival. But first, Jamie has joined me here on camera for a very special reason. He is an intensely private person, but he’s aware that all our lives will be under the spotlight now, and he wants to make a very public statement which will give many of you an idea of why Ptolemy deserves a new beginning.’

  The camera honed in on Byrne and his huge, intense eyes, staring at the camera.

  He had none of his mother’s articulacy. He was tongue-tied and hoarse-voiced, intensely awkward and desperate to be done, like a hostage victim at gunpoint making a tape for his family back home. He would have made a disastrous media personality. But for this one-off appearance, this very handsome, very honest, very private man made himself an instant star with just six words coughed out at speed:

  ‘Allegra. Gráim thú. Marry me.’

  All at once the Farcombe parkland seemed to ignite with shared delight.

  Legs let out a squeak of excitement, which was quite lost amongst the cheering and clapping around her. On all sides, people were demanding to know who ‘Allegra Grime Poo’ was, the real life Purple.

  ‘How do I answer?’ Legs wailed in sudden panicked realisation. ‘How can I give him an answer?’

  Her voice was drowned out by the crowd as they all whooped and shouted at the big screen, which showed one last lingering shot of Byrne’s intense, blazing eyes before cutting to the spinning Raven’s Curse cover again.

  But one person standing nearby had heard exactly what Legs was saying. Immobile amid the frenzied animation, tufty hair on end, Will was gaping at her in amazement. ‘It’s you!’