The Love Letter (26 page)

‘I’m going shopping.’ She scrambled back up the perilous path.

‘I rest my case,’ Lucy muttered, just loudly enough to be heard. As Legs turned she saw her mother start to draw the harbour afresh.

Headache now screaming in her ears and stabbing her temples, Legs hurried back to Farcombe, quite forgetting the need to buy another parking ticket for the Honda in her haste to get to the fishing village’s one and only overpriced boutique before it closed for lunch.

She Sells Seashells – known to all as ‘Shh’ – was run by ageing temptress Cici, who had bought the little shop with her divorce settlement five years earlier. Shh contained an eccentric mix of beachwear, old ladies’ twinsets and just occasionally a hidden fashion gem. The front window was its owner’s post-divorce tour de force, a dramatic installation of driftwood, chains, organza, ribbon, chicken wire and crystals. Scattered throughout were photographs of Cici as a young glamourpuss, many of them accompanied by a man whose face she had carefully cut out. Several were wedding photographs. Into this packed mix she occasionally squeezed an item of stock, so that the overall effect was of a beach where a
suicidal woman had examined her life in photographs before stripping off all her clothes and swimming out to sea.

Today, a few twisted looking rags were draped over the rocks, weighed down with beads and pebbles. A handmade card beside them read ‘New Catwalk Collection’.

As soon as she heard the bell ping, Cici appeared with a dramatic sweep through the velvet curtain that divided her storeroom from the shop. With silvery blonde hairpieces piled up on her head like a nest of sleeping chinchillas, she was dressed in a T-shirt covered in leaping gold leopards, very shiny leggings and beaded flip-flops from which her gnarled toes poked like the knuckles of tree roots, the nail of each painted a different colour. Her eyelashes were so thick with mascara that she looked as though she had two spiders glued to her face.

Realising that she had a client who was under fifty and not plus-size, she fell ecstatically on Legs. ‘Beautiful girl! You want a pretty dress for a party, no?’ The Italian accent was as heavily embellished as her T-shirt. Cici in fact hailed from Plymouth.

‘Nothing too fancy,’ she insisted as Cici began to flick through the rails, hauling out sequin and taffeta horrors. ‘It’s just kitchen supper.’ With optional thumbscrews by the Smeg and stocks by the Aga, she thought worriedly.

‘We dressa uppa for supper!’ The red talons raked some more hangers and burrowed for chiffon and silk. ‘You leave it all to Cici. I weel style you from head to toe.’

Having forgotten the pushiness of the village’s only fashionista shopkeeper, Legs was tempted to abandon retail therapy and raid her ten-year-old-boy capsule weekend wardrobe again instead. But she knew it had nothing to offer her fragile ego. She couldn’t hope to borrow anything from diminutive Nonny, who was at least a dress size smaller, so she was at Cici’s mercy.

She gazed longingly out of the window at the tourists milling past, a few of them looking in at the headless photographs, driftwood and chain window display trying to work out what the shop
actually sold. Her eye was caught by an attractive man standing on the opposite side of the road, looking lost. He was gazing up at the building numbers and then down at a piece of paper. At his ankles was a very noble-looking basset hound.

Then he turned towards the shop window and she realised it was Byrne.

‘Wow, he ees ’andsome, no?’ Cici followed her gaze briefly before holding up something fuchsia pink and ruffled under Legs’ chin.

‘I’m not keen on pink.’ She rejected it politely, still watching curiously as Byrne located a door further along the lane and rang a bell before disappearing from sight.

‘Peacock blue!’ Cici thrust out a shiny miniskirt and matching bustier trimmed with ostrich feathers that made Legs sneeze.

She shook her head apologetically. ‘I was thinking more along the maxidress line?’

‘Ah ha!’ Cici raided another rail.

Glancing out of the window once more, a flash of Titian-red caught her eye and she spotted Kizzy wafting past in an absurdly pretty lime green tea-dress, matched with strappy espadrilles and a meshy copper shrug. She stopped by the ‘New Catwalk Collection’ window.

Oh God, she’s coming in, Legs realised, diving behind a shelf of cashmere twinsets.

But Kizzy merely inclined her pretty head at the twisted rags and then set off again, crossing the cobbled lane to the same door which had admitted Byrne.

Before Legs could follow her progress, a huge curtain of bold print purple and orange fabric blocked her line of vision as Cici held up a maxi dress made of such cheap nylon that it was letting off static like a plasma globe.

Having realised the tea-dress was just daywear to Kizzy, Legs was now doubly determined to find something ravishing to wow them all that evening. She had nothing smarter than easy-wash football shorts and a range of branded baseball caps. Shh had to
have something better that wouldn’t make her look like a Moulin Rouge chorus girl.

She turned to the rails behind her and started searching while Cici tried to persuade her to try on a custard-yellow catsuit with a cut-out back that looked like a banana with a bite taken out of it.

At last Legs let out an excited gasp as she winkled out the perfect dress hidden deep within the rock-pools of glittering voile and satin. Hand crocheted in duck egg blue lace lined with nude silk, it fell to her ankles on the bias, guaranteed to hug her waist, emphasising her toned shoulders and golden skin, while hiding the pale embarrassment of her chunky legs. As soon as she tried it on she knew it was perfect.

‘I think that colour is a little drab,’ Cici sniffed, noticing that the price tag boasted fifty per cent off, which meant it was old stock that she was selling at little more than trade price.

‘It’s the perfect dress-up, dress-down day to evening wear,’ Legs insisted, making Cici sniff even more as her client suddenly sounded like Mary Portas on a mission. Legs circled in front of the mirror, seeing a girl from more carefree days. It reminded her of a dress she’d worn to Francis’s college’s May Ball, a long, clingy swathe of silver net that had rendered him speechless with lust. The fall of the fabric and the cut were identical. The only drawback was that this one was far too long.

Sensing some profit, Cici insisted she had just the right footwear, scattering boxes everywhere in her search for a pair of sky-high strappy cream mules that were at least a size too small and cost three times more than the dress. She also decided that the outfit needed accessorising with bright colours, and was soon winding beaded necklaces around Legs’ throat and wrists and draping silk and cashmere shawls over her shoulders until she resembled a Masai wife about to perform a ceremonial dance.

To Legs’ horror, Cici then appeared with something which looked like an electrocuted macaw held aloft like a sacrificial offering before plonking it down on her head.

‘A fascinator!’ she announced, cramming in kirby grips that almost took Legs’ scalp off.

Cici’s black spider eyelashes did several high kicks as she stood back and admired her creation, still an early work in progress as far as she was concerned. She wiggled to the door to turn the sign to ‘closed’.

‘First we try lingerie, then I advice on hair and make-up, yes?’ She rubbed her hands together. ‘Cici haff exclusive time for pretty young client.’

‘Actually I have to be somewhere in ten minutes.’ Feet already throbbing to match her head, Legs bought everything she was wearing and escaped, furtively shooting across the cobbles from Shh to examine the door that she’d seen Byrne and his basset enter earlier. There was a discreet brass plaque outside engraved Marshall and Callow, Family Solicitors. The vertical blinds in the street level window were closed, a dusty fake orchid on the sill the only thing visible in the building.

Byrne would have to be a very important client to get a solicitors’ appointment on a Saturday, Legs realised, pressing her nose to the window.

Suddenly the vertical blind swished open and a hand reached over the sill to hawk up the sash a few inches. Legs pulled back just in time to stop her nose flying up with it. For a brief moment, she could see a desk through the slats, with a basset hound lying on the floor beside it who now raised his head and started barking at her. Then the blinds swished closed again.

Everyone in the room, meanwhile, had been afforded full sight of her gazing in. The basset hound was still barking his head off.

Quite forgetting that the Honda was still languishing in the main car park with an expired ticket, she headed hurriedly back to the Book Inn to spend the afternoon pampering. It wasn’t until she passed a wall mirror on her way upstairs to Skit that she realised she still had the mad macaw fascinator pegged on her head.

Trying the crocheted dress on again in the privacy of her room, Legs realised that it had another major drawback apart from its great length. Her white underwear showed horribly. No matter how many Masai scarves she draped strategically over hips and shoulders, the bra and knickers glowed through like snowy mountain peaks. She guessed she should have stayed for Cici’s exclusive lingerie after all. Knowing that Poppy kept Farcombe Hall’s lighting as bright as a floodlit stadium day or night to enhance her weak eyesight, she would have to risk going without. She felt increasingly nervous.

The longer she spent tarting up, the more her confidence slipped, and she had allocated far too much time. By four o’clock her body was exfoliated, depilated and buffed, her hair was washed and finger-dried to bed head loveliness, and her make-up laid out ready to apply. If she slapped it on now, it would be sliding away by seven-thirty.

Julie Ocean had left the building; she was a glamorous go-getting action woman, not a vain literary agency assistant torn between real life and show-mance.

There was another storm brewing, the muggy air making her skin felt sticky and her throat dry.

Remembering her phone was still with Nonny, she realised gratefully that she could slip downstairs to fetch it and grab a cup of tea and a sugar fix. But Nonny, delighted at the excuse to take a break from deskwork, was eager to loosen up over a cocktail.

‘You must join me,’ she insisted, ‘Guy tells me off if I drink during the day, but I’m allowed to join favourite guests.’

‘My hangover’s only just lifted,’ protested Legs, who longed for a chocolate hit.

‘Nonsense.’ Nonny ordered two refreshing Once Upon a Times from Pierced Tongue as they propped themselves up on
bar stools. ‘Guy says you’re eating at the hall tonight, so they’ll all be out to take a piece out of you. You need inoculating.’

‘What do you mean?’ Legs said nervously.

‘Hair of the dogs that bit you,’ Nonny laughed, ordering chips and aioli which made Legs realise how hungry she was from skipping meals again. ‘What are you going to wear? Please don’t say the Arsenal strip.’

Legs told her about the great find in Shh, and confessed to her underwear crisis.

Remembering the request the previous night for tampons, Nonny nodded sympathetically and then held up her hand. ‘I’ve got just the thing. Don’t go away!’ Two minutes later she returned with what looked like a ravel of sausage skin.

‘Different type of arse strip,’ she giggled. ‘Transparent g-string. It’s never been worn, I promise. They were all the rage in my heyday. Feels like wearing a clingfilm catapult, but you get used to it and men have no idea it’s there unless you let them get a
very
close look.’

The bar was quiet. There was just one family having a cream tea and a dog-walker behind a newspaper in one corner.

Nonny was dying for the latest gossip, hanging on to the modesty pouch and Legs’ iPhone like a bribe while she quizzed her. ‘Is it true you and Francis are back together?’

‘Who said that?’

‘It’s all over the village. Kizzy must be
livid.
She’s only just got her foot through the hall’s door.’

At that moment, Julie Ocean stepped back into the Book Inn and started speaking to Legs via hidden wire in urgent tones.

‘So she’s not lived there long?’ Legs relayed the voice in her head.

Nonny shook her head. ‘She only moved in a fortnight ago, didn’t you know? She rented a room with Justin and Jon before that, the couple in the converted chapel. They say she’s very odd. She eats raw fish at least three times a week.’

‘Nothing odd about that. I love sushi. It was my sister’s wedding diet,’ said Legs, as Julie Ocean then demanded: ‘C’mon, Nonny, nobody round here seriously believes she’s a mermaid.’

Nonny fixed her with a wise look. ‘This is Farcombe; there are people in this village who still leave bowls of milk out for the pixies.’

Pierced Tongue was taking a long time to wipe the bar-top nearby. Nonny shooed her away to check on the chips order before whispering: ‘She’s been seen swimming naked on the full moon spring tide, and she sits on the shelf rock at Fargoe headland singing some nights.’

‘Sea shanties?’

‘No, Kate Bush hits.’

‘Does she ever sing in here?’ Legs asked jealously, suddenly wondering if she duetted with Francis. ‘Don’t Give Up’ perhaps?