The Love Letter (11 page)

Legs parked on the main woodland track and let herself in through the boundary gate, knowing that her old Honda’s suspension would never take the cottage’s driveway. The ruts here were even deeper than she remembered, now filled with storm water, and it had clearly been used quite recently, although not by her mother’s little runabout. These deep gouges came from a big off-roader with tyres like boulders.

Hurrying between the ruts because she wanted to get into the cottage to use the loo, Legs slowed in surprise as she noticed a bicycle propped up against one oak post of the porch. Again, the memories hit her as sharply as the sea air and cool breeze.

Francis has always propped his bike there, day after day as he paid court to her each school holiday. The kick of déjà vu to her chest was breathtaking. This was a rusting sit-up-and-beg antique, not the garish yellow and purple mountain bike of which he had been so proud, but it made her stifle a nostalgic hiccup nonetheless. Then, as she ducked beneath the curtain of clematis overhanging the porch, she let out a gasp of surprise.

There was a note on the door.

I LOVE YOU.

The latch was off, the door unlocked.

Inside, all was as she remembered – the scrubbed pine table
with its mismatched chairs, the threadbare sofas and rugs, the collected paraphernalia of tens of family holidays on the sills and shelves, driftwood and shells, bric-a-brac and bottles.

There was a vase of sweetpeas on the table, along with two champagne glasses.

Legs caught her breath, heart hammering. Still hesitating in the doorway, she saw another note pinned to the narrow stairs door. It was an arrow pointing upwards.

Hardly able to breathe for excitement, she followed its point. As she creaked hurriedly up the old elm treads, she heard strains of music coming from the main bedroom. It was the bassoon solo from Stravinsky’s
Rite of Spring.

Now on the top step, Legs froze with alarm as a cold splash of self-awareness drenched her senses. She was here to talk quietly to Francis about Gordon Lapis. She was with Conrad now. Any rapprochement should be calmly handled, with dignity on both sides. This was all wrong, surely?

Yet her honest heart continued to race with hope, and her overheating body bubbled with anticipation. She no longer cared that she was sweaty and unwashed after her journey, and hadn’t had time to sport Magic Pants, fine perfume and make-up.

She crossed through the landing room and burst into the furthest bedroom. The windows were all wide open, the long muslin curtains billowing in the wind, the scent of the sea as fresh as a wave’s spray.

‘Arghhh!’

Hector Protheroe, a man she had once believed to be a king, and later thought of as her future father-in-law, was sitting naked on the bed playing his bassoon.

With classic sangfroid, Hector didn’t play a dud note as he finished the refrain with a flourish, stretched back and reached for a towel to first dab his lips and then cover his long torso. For a man of over sixty, he had a great body, like a veteran tennis pro, all six foot four of it, lean, sinewy and tanned. Apart from a slight paunch
in the middle and a soft dusting of white hairs on his chest, he could pass for Conrad’s age.

‘Good afternoon Allegra.’ His deep bass voice let out a bark of surprise. ‘We weren’t expecting you, were we?’

Legs hid behind the door.

‘What are you doing here?’ she gasped.

She heard a creaking of floorboards as he stood up. ‘Waiting for Lucy. She popped to Bude for champagne.’

Legs was dumbfounded, trying to make sense of her mother playing hostess to a naked Hector Protheroe in the cottage. Was he a closet naturist, too?

‘Are you celebrating something?’

‘Every day is a celebration at the moment.’ Now wrapped in a jaunty, orchid-strewn silk kimono that was far too short, Hector and his bassoon joined her in the landing room, ducking beneath the low beams, his voice hushed with concern. ‘My dear, you do know, don’t you?’

‘Know what?’

His faded blue eyes softened amid their tanned creases, and he studied her shocked face thoughtfully before steering her downstairs where it was less cramped and he could straighten up to his full six foot four and make an announcement that left Legs’ jaw hanging yet lower.

‘I’ve left Poppy.’

Legs reeled back. So that was it. Her mother was providing sanctuary for Hector, who had finally left his troubled marriage of twenty years. There had been many occasions in the past when he’d threatened to do so, and his flirtations and affairs had been legend, but he’d never actually done the deed.

Her first thought was for Francis. As a young boy with a stepmother he loathed, this was news he could only have dreamed of. Now, in adulthood, he might feel differently. How was he taking it?

Only after she’d pondered this for a moment did a second thought strike her. Why was Hector naked, and why had he written
I LOVE YOU on the door? He must have a mistress and be using Spywood to conduct his trysts. He was an incorrigible flirt, well known as a roué and a terror to barmaids at the Book Inn in Farcombe.

‘Lucy has been amazing,’ Hector was saying.

Legs gasped in ever-dawning shock. With typical naivety and kindness, her mother was obviously providing a refuge for the lovers, and even catering for them. No wonder Lucy had been away so long watercolouring. She’d always had a soft spot for Hector and run errands for him, forever at his beck and call, the swine.

‘That’s such an abuse of friendship!’ Legs squeaked.

Hector shook his head. ‘
Au contraire,
my dear Allegra,
recevoir sans donner fait tourner l’amitié.’
He smiled benignly at her baffled face. ‘Receiving without giving turns the friendship.’

‘That’s as might be, but there was still no need to bring my mother into all this!’

‘She rather came of her own free will.’

They were standing in the kitchen now, Hector’s bassoon still aloft, like a fertility symbol. Legs felt she should cast around for a phallic symbol of her own to even things up – the ornamental bedpan that hung from the wall, maybe, or one of the sausage-dog draft excluders? She could use a weapon if things got heated; Hector was hardly a threat in his flowery kimono, but his acid charm was such high grade uranium that he could flatten an ego with one barbed comment.

She’d never enjoyed an easy relationship with the man who lived up to his name by being something of a hectoring bully and vociferous critic. A controversial, anti-establishment figure and notorious gambler with a knack for making money, friends and headlines easily, Hector Protheroe had famously launched the
Commentator
magazine in the seventies when he was fresh out of Cambridge, later selling it for a fat profit which enabled him to open the Fitzroy Club in the eighties, one of the first of the swathe
of private members’ clubs that cashed in on London’s glitterati clique. But the main source of Hector’s considerable income came from Smile Media, a company at the cutting edge of mobile telecommunications, of cable and satellite and later digital broadcasting and publishing. ‘Spread the Smile’ had been one of the biggest advertising campaigns of the nineties, a catchphrase familiar to every Brit. Smile phones were, for a time, the ultimate in cool, along with Smile palmtops, laptops and Smile internet.

The man behind renegade publishing, trendy nightclubs and multimedia communications might maintain that he was an ‘inspirer’, and he certainly had plenty of hippy attributes that made him appear laidback and easy-going, but Legs knew enough to appreciate that the retired entrepreneur, reformed gambler and passionate music lover could be a tyrant, albeit one with a positive spin. He’d certainly pushed his only son incredibly hard over the years, expecting nothing less than perfection. At times, the pressure on Francis had been almost unbearable, and Legs had often stood up to his father on her lover’s behalf, but that was where the famous Protheroe charm came in. Hector’s seductive charisma made him a difficult man to challenge. He could turn any conversation in his favour, twisting the argument to serve his purpose so that ultimately one was left not only feeling rather silly, but also hopelessly in his awe and debt. It was why he was so lethal in business, inspired such loyalty amongst friends, and was so totally irresistible to all who met him.

Yet he was supremely selfish in his personal relationships, particularly with women. His third wife Poppy could be awkward and eccentric, but for two decades she had coped admirably with his rages, infidelity and self-absorption, and was his match intellectually. Hector self-confessedly relied upon his wife’s steely stoicism to keep him in check, crediting her with bringing his long-term gambling addiction under control, stemming his drinking and redirecting his energies into supporting the many altruistic causes that had earned him such an exemplary public reputation today.
She’d also turned a blind eye to his many flirtations, which some in their inner circle put down to her incredibly short sight. Cast adrift from the marriage, he could cause havoc, and sideswipe poor, kind-hearted Lucy in his slipstream. Legs felt highly protective.

‘So where are you living?’

‘Here.’

‘You have plenty of houses. Isn’t it a bit selfish to squeeze in here?’

He barked with laughter.

Legs wanted to snap at him that he’d have to move out now that she was here (as she rather hoped her mother would, too, to clear the way for long chats with Francis), but her bladder was fit to burst now and so she was forced to retreat to the bathroom and regroup.

There were definite signs of male occupation here – an extra toothbrush, aftershave, a beard trimmer and some enormous slippers which appeared to have been stepped out of as a bath was stepped into and then abandoned beneath the antique towel rail.

For the first time, Legs began to wonder what her father made of all this.

Just then she heard a car engine coming along on the wood track. With relief, she washed her hands, splashing cool water on her face and then unbolting the door, determined to sort out this nonsense.

The bassoon was back in its stand by the chaise longue, and the front door was wide open, meaning Hector was braving the elements in his kimono in welcome. Legs dashed in his wake.

Hector had made it almost as far as the car, from which Lucy was only just emerging. His frantic hand gestures and facial expressions were not enough to alert her to danger.

‘Hector, my lionheart!’ She threw out her arms in embrace, imagining that he was rushing to greet her with amorous impatience. ‘I have bought oysters for passion, and ice cream that we can eat from one another’s most intimate love cups.’

At that moment, Lucy North caught sight of her younger daughter gaping at her over the swinging gate.

‘Ah.’ Lucy’s smile turned from joyous to mortified, but all teeth remained on show in a brave attempt at a bluff.

Legs barely recognised her own mother. That wild peppery hair had been bobbed and bleached a flattering ash blonde, the jolly, freckled face disguised with lots of smoky eyeliner and red lipstick, and she was wearing a wraparound dress that revealed her waist for the first time in over a decade and showed a lot of leg. She looked sensational, but to Legs it was like staring at a stranger.

Her phone started to ring. She wanted to ignore it, but it was playing ‘Teenage Kicks’, the song she’d assigned to Francis, added to which Hector was suddenly all over her like a rash.

‘What network are you on?’ he demanded as she delved into her pocket to retrieve it. ‘There’s never a signal here.’

‘Virgin,’ she admitted, making him reel back in shock as she mentioned Smile Media’s business arch-nemesis.

She answered the call, stepping behind a tree in a hopeless quest for privacy.

The signal was in fact so poor that the line was barely holding together. Francis sounded like he was speaking from a tin on a three-mile string.

‘How much do you know about this?’ she demanded furiously.

‘I knew … should ha … warned you.’ Despite the interference, hearing his voice was like a warm breath in her ear, his bass tone was softer and lighter than his father’s, still tinged with American top notes, but the timbre strikingly similar. ‘You’ve just caught … together?’

‘Not exactly in flagrante, but flagrant enough.’

‘We must talk. I’ll meet you … the Lookout … ten min …’ The line went dead.

Face flaming, she swept past her still-smiling mother and headed for her car. ‘I’ll book into the pub.’

‘Aren’t you coming back?’ Lucy called, voice shaking.

‘I’ll come and see you tomorrow when we’ve all calmed down enough to talk. Enjoy your oysters.’ I hope they choke Hector, she added with unspoken venom.

It was only once she was behind the wheel and emerging from woods to sunlight that she started to sob, overwhelmed by what she’d just witnessed. She drove back to the Gull Cross fork and swerved blindly down the lane towards the bay. At the point where the track started to snake down through the coastal heath, she braked hard and then cut the engine. The Honda was left parked at a jaunty angle with the bonnet crammed in a gorse bush.

The sea wind whipped away her tears as soon as she got out, and the panic subsided. Francis would make sense of it all. He always did.