The Love Letter (44 page)

‘Just melting.’ She fanned herself faster. It was a sweltering day. The air conditioning in the office was on the blink. She wished she hadn’t worn the dress, which was having an effect on Conrad that she found she no longer desired.

‘My splash pool is wonderfully cool,’ he promised, then called the meeting to a halt by asking her to book their usual table at Chez Bruce that evening, after which he promised a very long, very thorough seduction.

Legs smiled weakly, the feeling of dread mounting.

‘Meanwhile, I want you to go through the
Cuthbert the Cat
contract queries with Olga and Eric,’ he smiled wickedly. ‘That should leave you plenty of time to be on hand to help me get up to speed with the Gordon projects.’

Legs groaned. Olga Jones, creator of the world-famous Cuthbert books, was a lovely German illustrator and cat-enthusiast married to retired accountant Eric, who’d now made it his full-time hobby to manage his wife’s business affairs from home. As the most pedantic man in England, he was monstrously time-consuming to deal with. In recent years, he’d at least embraced email which had cut down on the three-hour phone conversations, but he was no less nit-picking. Olga, who trusted him implicitly, would not do a thing without his say-so and the new contract, which should have been signed months ago, was still being amended almost daily. This week, Eric had read a book on intellectual copyright. The result was a barrage of messages.

While Legs worked her way through the first of Eric’s most recent twenty emails, Conrad began tackling Gordon and the agency’s interests leading up to next week’s launch of
Ptolemy Finch and the Raven’s Curse
followed by the Farcombe appearance.

A new Gordon launch was always huge, involving so much global communication and massive secrecy that it was exhausting to orchestrate. Protecting copyright was paramount. No printed
copies could be allowed out of the warehouses until the last moment, and all those were guarded by hired-in security teams. The midnight bookshop launches, synchronised to GMT and held simultaneously across the globe, were a military offensive. The ebook would be released a week later.

But artwork for the exclusive collector’s edition had been rushed back to the illustrator when it was spotted that Ptolemy looked like he had a hard-on from certain angles. Meanwhile Gordon was laying down more codicils about Farcombe, mostly about increasing security and limiting the media, the detail of which curiously seemed to revolve around protecting the Protheroe family.

‘That’s so generous of him.’ Legs was moved by his forethought as the tiny, family-run festival faced a tidal wave of his fans, most sane but a few certifiable.

‘It’s bloody inconvenient of him!’ Conrad raged. ‘I’ve got far too much on my plate already!’

He consequently spent all morning thrusting his head out of his office door and bellowing ‘Legs!’ as he demanded that she both brief him and run errands, Frau Whiplash meets whipping boy with no coffee or loo breaks. The more hectic the task, the more apoplectic he grew, taking it out on her first and others second. By the time he set off for a client lunch, he’d argued with almost everyone on Team GL, including Gordon.

‘The man is maddening!’ he raged. ‘He’s refusing all interviews, and insists his first appearance can’t be televised, which buggers up the Farcombe sponsorship with EuroArts TV. He’s just called me a “media pimp”.’

‘He’s Gordon Lapis,’ Legs said soothingly. ‘He calls the shots and the names, remember.’

Conrad and his BlackBerry stormed off to hail a taxi on Piccadilly.

Legs returned to her Eric Jones emails. In the time it had taken her to reply to his first ten, he’d sent fifteen more. She wished she could get IT to block his emails like they’d done with Delia Meare.

Feeling guilty about Delia, who she now saw as Gordon’s protégée, she wrote her an old-fashioned letter, a very rare event in Fellows Howlett’s offices these days. In it she explained that she was personally very excited by her writing, which was boundary-breaking in this ultra-cynical era when so many readers were impervious to shock. She went on to say that Delia’s enthusiastic submission approach was to her credit; tenacious and original material could help make an agent live and feel the book. But she then gently advised that the same follow-up might not work for Conrad. Satisfied that she’d got her point across and spread some cheer, she threw it in the pile for the afternoon post and sagged back at her desk, wiped out by the humidity.

Throughout the afternoon, she got hotter and hotter. Her head was pounding again. By five-thirty, she was pouring with sweat, the yellow dress now glued to her skin.

Conrad kept forwarding Team GL messages from his BlackBerry for her to deal with, telling her to pretend to be him. He wasn’t returning to the office after lunch, he explained; he’d see her later at the restaurant for a ‘debrief’.

Working through the messages, Legs wasn’t sure she could face being debriefed by Conrad twice in one week. She was trying not to resent the fact that he was probably at his club or the gym right now, avoiding the Gordon issue while indulging in what he would call ‘networking’ and she would call ‘skiving’.

Legs needed to go home and shower before heading across the river with her overnight bag. The thought of a huge meal and a sexual marathon with Conrad exhausted her. She knew she had to address her doubts, and even though she felt too drained to know where to start, she was determined to tackle the situation with maturity and in privacy before another day dawned.

But when Legs got back to Ealing, Ros was out of the upper entrance like a shot. ‘There’s someone been waiting here to see you since five,’ she hissed. ‘You really must explain to your friends that
I can’t abide dogs in the house.’ For a strange, illogical moment Legs imagined Byrne and Fink the basset calling by. But Ros quickly shattered the illusion. ‘She’s in the garden looking suicidal. You must get rid of her soon; I have my embroidery ladies coming at six-thirty.’

Thinking longingly of her shower, Legs headed through the side gate.

Sitting on Nico’s old swing was what she first took to be a teenage girl. Dressed in baggy shorts, her hair scraped back beneath a green cotton bandana and thin freckled legs dangling down to scuffed trainers, she cut a pathetically frail figure.

Then Legs spotted a terrier in a matching bandana cocking a wonky leg on her sister’s begonias and realised its owner was Kizzy de la Mere.

As soon as Kizzy saw Legs, she burst into tears.

‘I’m so sorry to come unannounced, but I have to talk to you!’ she sobbed.

Legs could see her sister glaring at them through the kitchen windows.

Feeling like a large sweaty banana in her yellow dress, she led the waif-like Kizzy to the bench behind the apple tree, out of sight of the house. It was a relief to know she was alive, at least, and hadn’t swum out to sea the night she disappeared, or been bumped off in a dastardly Protheroe conspiracy. She tried not to look at her watch too obviously.

‘I’ve been going demented with worry,’ Kizzy wailed. ‘Francis won’t s-speak to me or tell me what’s g-going on.’

‘How did you find me?’

‘My friend Gabs w-works at the Book Inn. She looked up your address on the computer.’

Tongue Piercing was a spy, Legs realised. No wonder she’d been shuffling around with a dishcloth every time Nonny or Guy asked Legs about Francis.

As they sat down side by side on a wall, Legs could guess that
Kizzy was here as a part of a campaign to try to win Francis back. She’d heard the word ‘ambitious’ in connection with Kizzy too often to trust her motives. Yet she felt curiously calm. Sitting in her sister’s back garden after a day from hell at work, Francis and their lost love seemed worlds apart, an abstract shape she had yet to fit back into the geometry of her life.

Kizzy did seem genuinely upset. ‘I came up to London yesterday.’ She gulped the words out. ‘I’m staying in my parents’ flat. I j-just need to know if you and Francis are b-back t-together?’

‘Not really. Not at all, in fact.’

Cue more sobs, no doubt relief joining high grade self pity. Legs braced herself for an onslaught of tearful begging and pleading as Kizzy demanded that Legs step aside so that she could have Francis back.

But to her surprise, the redhead sobbed, snorted and spluttered: ‘Francis will only ever love you!’

Legs wasn’t sure she’d heard her right, but Kizzy was making too much noise to interrupt. She was a very pretty girl, but not an attractive crier. Within seconds, snot was trailing from her nostrils like stalactites and her face as puffy as Byrne sucking on a peanut.

‘He would d-do anything to have you back.’ She looked up at Legs, green eyes like wet frogs’ backs. ‘He thinks I’m Poppy’s pawn, and now that Jamie’s turned up, and you’re back, I’ll never see the Protheroes again!’ She started to howl.

‘Of course that’s not true,’ Legs said reassuringly.

‘But it is!’ Kizzy howled. ‘I knew from the start that Francis would never love me. How can I hope to compete with you? You are Isolde to his Tristan.’

‘Not the happiest long-term relationship,’ Legs pointed out in an undertone before looking at her levelly. ‘Do
you
love
him?’

‘I love them all!’ she wailed. ‘Poppy has been like a guardian angel to me, and she was s-so enthusiastic when Francis took a romantic interest, encouraging us to spend time together, and then inviting me to live in the house.’

‘That wasn’t Francis’s idea?’

‘No! We had separate rooms. I adore the way he’s so old-fashioned. He just wanted to talk about poetry and farming. He’s very simple to please, isn’t he?’

Legs smiled weakly.

Kizzy hung her head miserably. ‘It was obvious that if you returned, there’d be no future for us, and I accepted that. I just wanted to be a part of the family, to be close to them all. But now it’s over, I realise I’ve sacrificed my greatest love …’ She dissolved into sobs again.

Legs dug wearily through her bag for a tissue. There was no mistaking how heartfelt her tears were. But when Kizzy snorted and dribbled out the story of her short love affair with Francis, it wasn’t quite as she’d expected.

‘We only really had a few dinner dates before Poppy latched onto it and made a big fuss. You are his first and only love, Legs. He’s been so wounded by what happened between you. He has this sort of twisted defence shield around him, like a suit of armour that had caved in and stabbed him in the heart, you know?’

Fitting that she looked like Guinevere, Legs thought sadly, trying not to steal another glance at her watch. This was a conversation she really didn’t want to have.

‘He used to joke that Poppy must have created me in her studio at Farcombe, I was so perfect for him.’

‘But you must have met him before, surely?’

‘A few times – I met you, too.’

Legs looked at her disbelievingly.

‘I was just a geeky kid; thick glasses, plaits, teeth in braces. You two were so glamorous – the Brad and Angelina of my world.’

Legs smiled nervously, grateful at least that she’d moved on from Tristan and Isolde whose forever lust had been so tragically thwarted by other lovers.

‘I idolised you both, but I’m not surprised you didn’t even register me. Nobody did. I was away at school most of the time, with
camps and self-improvement courses in the holidays. Yolande is very hot on education. It was the same at university.’

‘Doesn’t sound much of a childhood.’ Legs batted away midges.

‘Oh, I’m incredibly lucky.’ She smiled a wobbly smile that turned into more tears, ‘It could have been so different if Poppy hadn’t saved me. She desperately wanted me to marry Francis and I’ve let her down.’ She howled and hiccupped again.

‘You can’t force people in and out of love,’ Legs breathed, hearing Byrne’s voice in her head. She jumped as a police siren wailed through the Ealing streets nearby.

‘I’ve missed that noise,’ Kizzy sighed tearfully. ‘I adore London’s sounds, don’t you? They’re my lullaby.’

Legs looked across at her in surprise. ‘I thought you loved Farcombe?’

‘I know it’s a magical place, and I’ve enjoyed living there.’ She looked up at a droning jumbo jet climbing away from Heathrow, ‘but I’ve always felt at home in London. I’m happier in a big city. I envy your life here – this lovely family house, your friends, your amazing job.’

‘My job’s pretty crap right now,’ Legs thought about Gordon firing her and Conrad’s stress.

‘I interviewed for it too.’

Legs almost fell off the wall. ‘You applied to be Conrad Knight’s assistant?’

Kizzy nodded, mopping her damp green eyes on her sleeves. ‘I wanted it more than anything; I read profiles of every Fellows Howlett author, researched the deals, found out everything I could about the agency. Conrad told me it was in the bag, then you were next in the room after me and blew him away.’

‘I did not blow him to get my job!’

‘I was talking metaphorically.’

‘Oh.’ She rubbed her sweaty forehead.

‘That was when Poppy offered me part-time work at the festival. It was like a lovely holiday, getting to know the Protheroes,
hanging out with Édith and Jax and the Book Inn crowd. It was supposed to just be temporary, but then Francis came back from London heartbroken, and my part-time work somehow became full-time, and then Hector started misbehaving and …’ She was gripped by sobbing again.