The Love Letter (12 page)

The path up to the Lookout was massively overgrown these days, sometimes barely passable. Legs kept losing it completely and having to retrace her steps. Mostly she navigated from instinct. Beyond the trees, almost cut into the cliff side, was a narrow stone ledge that ran deep within the gorse and heather, virtually a gully at times, uneven and precarious.

At its end, the Lookout perched on the narrowest of platforms, resembling little more than a neglected birdwatchers’ hide dressed with wooden shipboard. It concealed a large cave, complete with table and chairs, a bunk and even a constant supply of freshwater that trickled along a trough of stone on one corner. Legend had it that a hermit had once lived there, before moving to the relative comfort of Spycove.

As teenagers, the Norths and Foulkes and Francis had double-dared one another to go there, convinced that it was haunted, or worse still occupied by a runaway mass murder from HMP Dartmoor. Eventually, overcoming their nerves, they’d claimed it as their own and styled it in different guises over the years – from fluffy pink to gothic black, bookish retreat to party pad. Now what minimalist signs of habitation remained were neglected, the cave showing evidence of a recent invasion of birds, bats and other visiting creatures.

Legs didn’t suit high drama, and suited heights even less. She had no idea why Francis had suggested meeting here, and had been far too overwrought to think about it until now. She supposed it fitted the moment. He had always been the ultimate stage manager.

After ten minutes, just as she was starting to wonder whether the stage manager had missed his cue, a wiry little terrier wearing a checked neckerchief shot into the Lookout and barked in surprise, clearly as shocked to find her waiting there as she was to encounter a dog.

Francis followed in his wake, his high cheeks pink from running and his mop of blond hair windswept into great peaks.

Legs’ heart crashed against her ribs in sympathy with the waves on the rocks below.

Of course she hadn’t forgotten how good-looking he was – nobody could – but to see it afresh after a year’s total separation was a shock. In the past, she’d grown so accustomed to the perfection of his profile that she’d taken his beauty for granted, along with the length and breadth of his athletic six foot two frame. She’d always jealously noted the way that new acquaintances, especially women, stole glances at him over and over again to check that he really was as gorgeous as he’d first appeared. And he was, just as he was gentlemanly and erudite and kind and almost childlike in his wonder and enthusiasm for life.

In their last few weeks as a couple, perhaps to justify her growing attraction to Conrad, she’d decided Francis’s looks were far too
Fauntleroy, reflecting the fact she found him so maddeningly childlike, spoilt and petulant by then. His stubbornness had always frustrated her, along with his intellectual snobbery. And he was secretly very vain.

But now that the fallen angel had flown into the Lookout every bit as handsome as she could ever remember him, she was too breathless with the impact of seeing him again to think straight.

‘I can’t stay long,’ he apologised. ‘Kizzy has no idea I’m here, but she already suspects something because I offered to walk Byron.’

Legs tried not to feel scalded by the immediate mention of Kizzy, nor succumb to the temptation to volley Conrad’s name straight back. Instead she regarded the diminutive terrier with a nervous laugh. ‘That’s Byron?’

‘He has a limp,’ he muttered by way of explanation, rushing on. ‘Poppy knows I’m here so she’ll cover for me. Kizzy has no idea this place exists.’

Legs said nothing, although her mind was reeling. Since when had Poppy and Francis been collaborators? And why keep secrets from Kizzy with whom he was ‘practically engaged’.

He sat on one of the rusting metal chairs and pulled another alongside it for her.

Being together for the first time since the split made them both so jumpy with nerves they couldn’t look one another in the eye.

She perched awkwardly beside him, ‘Do you know how long this love affair between your father and my mother has been going on?’ she checked, her voice unnaturally high.

‘Over a decade, on and off.’

She gasped. ‘That means they were at it almost the whole time we were together!’

Colour rose in his cheeks: ‘Dad insists it wasn’t a physical relationship until this summer, apart from the odd kiss that is.’

The image of Hector kissing her mother over the years, oddly or not, wasn’t one on which Legs wished to dwell.

‘So they’ve always fancied one another?’ She winced at the term, which sounded so wrong when applied to her mother and Hector.

He winced too before nodding. ‘They both recognised a growing attraction, but they resisted acting upon it because you and I were so deeply in love, it would cause such damage. From what I can gather, the affair largely amounted to secret lunches, phone calls and letters before …’ he paused ‘… we called off our engagement.’

Legs stared at her hands. It was a typically reserved Francis-way of phrasing it. He meant ‘since you ran off with your boss and broke my heart’, but he would never say that.

‘My father says they agreed long ago that nothing more could ever come of what they felt about one another while we were together,’ he went on.

‘And now that we’re not they can do whatever they like,’ she groaned as reality dawned with eye-watering clarity. ‘Mum hasn’t said a thing. No one has a clue, not even Dad as far as I’m aware. He thinks she’s still painting watercolours here.’

His voice was soft with empathy: ‘I’m not sure any of us believe it’s real yet, not even them. They’re like a pair of naughty teenagers having a holiday romance, locked away in that cottage together.’

‘Do you think it might just be a summer romance then?’ she asked hopefully.

‘Dad claims otherwise, but he’s been building up to something like this ever since his name was left off the Birthday Honours list. He was convinced he was getting his gong this year, and now he’s behaving as badly as possible.’

‘Are you telling me he’s only wrecking his own and my parents’ marriage because he’s peeved about not getting a knighthood?’

‘Well there’s a bit more to it than that obviously.’ He looked shifty. ‘I’m just suggesting it might blow over, even if they say otherwise.’

‘I wish you’d told me about it sooner.’

‘I though you knew; I thought that’s why you came.’

‘What? Oh – no, that was about the festival. It’s not important.’ She gazed out across the sea ahead of them, watching waves break in the distance into frothing grey ruffs of surf.

‘You want this nonsense between them to stop, don’t you Legs?’ Francis’s voice was low and reassuring, reminding her of the first love she’d adored so resolutely, the boy-turned-man who was her bedrock, who made her feel safe and cared for. He’d long since lost the preppy American accent that he’d possessed when his father first brought him to Farcombe, but Legs still always heard it in his voice, remembering their giggling delight as they had compared vowel sounds that first summer.

She continued staring out to sea, uncertain what to say. Of course she wanted the affair between Lucy and Hector to stop. It was all wrong. The thought of her mother betraying her father hurt beyond measure. The lies that must have been told over the years, the pretence at happy families when a secret desire was burning – it was almost unthinkable, undermining everything she held dear. But she also knew that it was largely beyond her control. Nothing could take back what had already happened. Hector and her mother had free will; some would say they were more wilful than most. It would be pointless trying to fight that.

Now Francis turned in his chair and fixed her with a gaze that made her skin prickle, even though her eyes still couldn’t quite meet his.

‘There’s only one thing for it. We have to get back together, Legs.’

She snorted with laughter, a nervous reflex. He made it sound so simple and logical, like changing a flat tyre together.

There was a long pause.

‘Why is that so funny?’ he asked stiffly.

‘It’s not.’ She swallowed, raising her eyes to his at last and almost rocking straight back over in her chair as a result. His eyes were as vividly blue and calm as the sea ahead was grey and stormy. She longed to dive in.

‘I thought you just said their affair might burn itself out?’

‘All the more reason to fight fire with fire.’ He was looking so deeply into her eyes now, and she felt completely overwhelmed by emotion, so choked that she was winded by it, tears mounting in the back of her throat.

By contrast, Francis was utterly composed, only a faint quilt of the muscles on both high cheeks betraying the maelstrom of feelings swirling behind the calm facade. ‘I think it’s our only option. This is a frightful muddle.’

‘Muddle
?’ She snorted again, laughter and tears combining to make her sound maniacal. ‘It’s a total car crash, Francis! When Ros finds out she’ll—’

‘Ros will
not
find out,’ he interjected smoothly. ‘It must be kept between ourselves. Please don’t cry, darling Legs. We have no time for that. We can sort this mess out, you and I. We’re the brave ones, remember? “Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” It had been their favourite Eliot quote as literature-mad teenagers, so often recited to one another here in the Lookout, when staring at the horizon had seemed like looking into a future of infinite possibilities. ‘I know my father,’ he went on earnestly. ‘He plays the hippy well, but he has a very reactionary flipside, particularly when it comes to his children. He will stop this affair at once if we resume our engagement.’ He sounded like the hero in a Restoration comedy. ‘And Dorian will be spared the necessity of driving to Farcombe with duelling swords.’

‘Dad would never do that. He’s the real deal when it comes to hippy thinking. He’ll just suffer in silence.’

‘Then we must spare him that pain, Legs. If we remember why we are doing this, then nobody need get hurt.’

He seemed so strong and male, she realised in shock. She wanted to rage and throw herself to the ground in a tantrum, wailing that it was all so
unfaaaaiiir,
and he was taking it like a grown-up. This was the wrong way around; she’d always been the
mature one. Not that either of them had been particularly good at embracing the responsibilities of adulthood, preferring make-believe, holidays and daydreams to reality.

She mopped away the eking tears with her shirt cuffs and then fished around for something more ladylike to blow her nose.

‘Here.’ Francis handed her a silk handkerchief which smelled of washing powder mixed with expensive cologne. It reminded her of his pillow in their shared flat. For a moment she closed her eyes and buried her face in it.

Then Legs blew her hooter noisily and forced herself to get a grip on her sentiment overload. ‘Are you going to marry Kizzy?’

‘We are lovers,’ he stated with an affected emphasis on the word, ‘and you’re still with Con-man.’

She looked away guiltily. ‘Conrad.’

At Francis’s feet, Byron the terrier let out a whining yawn and stared longingly towards the cliff path.

‘So how can we possibly get back together?’ It seemed such a wild and abstract concept to Legs, like changing that flat tyre on the Space Shuttle as their lives revolved on different orbits. And yet it already made her feel weightless with anticipation and giddy with excitement.

There was another long pause as he looked at her sideways, seemingly weighing her up, assessing the changes, searching for the perfect quote to voice his hidden feelings. She was reminded of moments of high drama in their long relationship when there would be a race to fill a silence, Francis with a quote and her with a joke. But today, while she couldn’t find anything remotely funny about the situation, he turned the tables.

Suddenly his handsome face split into a laugh of charming deference, that familiar apologetic amusement that took her back to their golden years. ‘Oh God, you don’t think I mean get back together for real? Hell no. Sorry, Legs! You must be horrified. I didn’t explain properly. This will be just an act, don’t you see?’

‘An act?’

‘If we tell my father and Lucy that we’ve made up our differences and are going to get engaged again, they’ll have to split up.’

The duplicity appalled her. It was totally unlike him to suggest anything as underhand as this. ‘For how long?’

‘However long it takes to ensure they put an end to this ridiculous farce.’

She gaped at him, astonished at the cheerful sangfroid. ‘And is what you’re suggesting any less “ridiculous”?’

He reached across to take her hand in his and squeezed it. ‘It really is the only way. “And to make an end is to make a beginning”,’ he started quoting Eliot again. ‘“The end is where we start from.”’

He came from that stiff-upper-lip school of tortured souls that could only hint at the great depths of passion and torment bubbling within his heart and soul. That was why he used quotes as emotional signposts. Whereas it was easy for Legs to speak from the heart – or indeed pen a six page letter of tearful regret – Francis had no such open vein. Brought up without the close bond of a mother’s love, he needed an art form to articulate his feelings. And just as his father had always found his greatest expression through music, so Francis used poetry. He hid as much behind it as much as he emoted through it.