The Love Letter (63 page)

Reaching for the leather notebook, he flipped trough to select one of the least burned pages and started reading out the list of abbreviations running down the final column, the acronyms which Legs hadn’t understood, ‘ICA, BDRS – they’re all charities,’ he explained. ‘Mostly art funds. That’s where all his winnings went – about two million in total in this book alone.’

‘Hector gave his winnings to charity?’

Byrne closed the book angrily. ‘It’s pretty irresponsible to fund one’s charitable donations through gambling, perhaps, but that fits the character perfectly; it was his money to lose and he mostly made a profit after all. I guess that was a part of the thrill. His philanthropy is still a matter of record. He won’t be judged any differently if this fact is made public, in fact many will admire him all the more for that famous loveable roguishness. That he stole his
wife from another man and fucked up my childhood in the process is neither here nor there in the world at large, particularly all these years later. It’s just a romantic aside to a long, benevolent calling as a patron of the arts.’ His eyes flashed angrily. ‘I should thank you, Allegra. This has saved me.’ He held up the book. ‘If I try to publicly discredit Hector as planned, he’d have me laughed off the stage. And wouldn’t he just love to see me squirm?’

‘You’ve certainly stoked his anger,’ Legs thought about the threats she’d overheard in the study.

‘He knows I hate him. This makes no difference.’ He turned the book in his hands. ‘It wasn’t just a broken back Dad suffered; what Hector did to my father’s heart is just as bad.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

He looked around the little cottage, scene of a summer’s love-nesting. ‘You tell me. You must hate him too.’

‘Hector’s armour-plated; trying to fight fire with fire just means getting burned.’ She glared at the bassoon resting on its stand in the corner, coughing angrily. ‘You have to wait for him to trundle off and find a new target.’

He turned to her again, taking in the dusty velvet dress covered with twigs, the pale skin and wild hair. ‘Is that what you think I should do, Heavenly Pony? Lie low in the woods until he goes away?’

‘Obviously not,’ she said hotly, wondering if it would be petty to suggest they smash up the bassoon and quickly deciding it would. ‘But he’s had life his own way for a very long time, and now Poppy has a new hero just as he’s been caught behaving very badly indeed, he’s bound to be defensive. You already have the perfect comeuppance to hand. If I’d written all those amazing books and held claim over the world’s most famous pseudonym, I’d stand up and shout my real name to the rooftops. That was always the idea in coming here, after all, wasn’t it? Forget Hector. Let him join the congratulatory queue.’

Byrne was staring angrily at the bassoon now too. He stared at
it for so long, Legs half expected it to start leaping around the room batting the crockery on the draining board into orbit and playing refrains from ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’.

‘Even if it were as straightforward as you say.’ He rubbed his forehead with his fingertips. ‘I’m not sure Poppy could take it. I had no idea how fragile she was until now. I can’t stand back and watch her get hurt just to revel in schadenfreude.’

‘So tell her the truth beforehand.’

‘That won’t stop the media invasion,’ he pointed out. ‘Exposing her to public glare could damage her very deeply.’

‘But she’s always courted publicity; she’s the ultimate attention seeker.’

‘Good publicity, yes – the sort that means she doesn’t have to leave Farcombe. But this isn’t about hosting a jolly lunch for Brian Sewell then giving him a tour of the sculpture garden. This is the ugly, angry, resentful public exposure and invasion of privacy that comes with mass media popularity. You know as well as anyone the sort of attention Gordon attracts, the stalkers, begging letters and hate mail. As soon as this secret gets out, Poppy will be exposed to that alongside the feature pieces and photo shoots.’

It was starting to dawn on Legs that he’d hidden behind a pen name all these years to protect his father, only to find that when he had Brooke’s blessing to reveal the truth, his mother needed shielding just as much.

‘Maybe that’s what the threatening letters which have come to Farcombe are about.’

His eyes fixed on hers. ‘Who exactly were they addressed to?’

‘I’m not sure, but Poppy opened them first,’ she whispered. ‘There have been two, I think. I don’t know what they contain, but I’m guessing it’s something like the potty ones we used to get through the agency when I still handled your snail mail. Conrad got a temp in when it started arriving in sacks, so I have no idea what they write these days.’

‘Still much the same: mostly that they love Ptolemy; sometimes
that they love me; occasionally that they want to kill me. It goes with the territory. The more imaginative ones add diagrams and illustrations of how they’d go about it.’

‘What do they want to do to you?’ she asked in trepidation.

‘Pretty much the same as I did to Ptolemy in
Raven’s Curse,
I should think.’ He looked away. ‘If someone’s sending threats direct to Farcombe, it’s my fault. I’ve screwed up big time.’

Legs remembered Conrad saying that the novel would be highly controversial, and that Gopi and Poppy had both despaired in the final chapters. ‘Is it something to do with what happens at the end of the book?’ she asked quietly.

‘You mean you haven’t read it?’ He looked hurt, Gordon’s fragile ego flashing through the customary Byrne cool.

‘I haven’t quite finished.’

‘Where are you up to?’

‘The dedication.’

‘That’s a crushing blow for an author’s ego.’

‘Ghosts don’t read too fast,’ she joked feebly then jumped as a gunshot cracked in the woods nearby, water splashing everywhere.

Reaching out automatically to catch the rolling water bowl and return her hand to it, Byrne turned towards the noise. ‘If I hang around here together much longer, I might be able to test that theory.’

‘It’s just Hector shooting game,’ she reminded him, clinging onto his fingers underwater. ‘Poppy should really add a brace of pleasant to her sculpture for authenticity.’

His eyes watched the windows warily. Then he said, ‘Inside each and every one of Poppy’s abstract fibreglass sculptures are amazing caricatures like the one we saw in the cellars.’

‘You’re kidding?’

‘She calls them “the hidden truths”.’ He turned to her. ‘The smooth outer shell conceals the real grotesque within. It’s conceptual, but even the concept is kept secret.’

‘So they were really works of genius all along.’ She laughed in
amazement, thinking of the hundreds of blobs littered around Farcombe, each containing a detailed sculpture one could only guess at.

‘She says she wants their secrets to be discovered after her death because she doesn’t deserve the recognition in her lifetime. She’s so trapped by her own veils.’

‘Like mother like son,’ Legs sighed. ‘I want to break them all open like Easter Eggs straight away, don’t you?’

‘My offers to liberate them haven’t gone down too well so far.’ He looked out distractedly through a clematis-veiled window towards the woods, ‘Nor did sailing, horse-riding, local galleries or anything beyond Farcombe’s walls. Our biggest adventure was lunch in the village, and of course Hector gatecrashed that. I can’t stand her blind devotion to him. He’s her jailer, but she can’t see it.’

Another shot went off, much closer by, making them both jump this time. Across the room, Fink woke from a sonorous slumber and barked. Byrne pulled his hand free from the water bath, ever more alert.

‘Did Hector really threaten to kill you that day?’

‘He said he’d put a bullet in me if I did anything to upset Poppy again.’

No wonder he was now so jumpy around Hector’s gunfire, Legs mused. Then she gasped as she remembered: ‘Hector thinks you’re the one behind the death threats!’

On cue, a blast went off at such close range, shot showered down on the roof. Upstairs, Lucy screamed.

‘Jesus!’ He glanced towards the door, reaching to pick up the charred notebook and pocket it. ‘I told you I wasn’t safe to be around. I must go.’

‘Where will I find you again?’ She realised she had no idea where he was even sleeping. He was like the Farcombe hermit, she thought wildly. She had visions of him and Fink holed up in the Lookout.

‘You won’t; I’m not putting you in any more danger.’ He
reached out to lift her hand from the bowl of water, examining the wrinkled, burn-whitened skin of thumb before tracing each of her fingers with the tips of his until her hand felt newly baptised. ‘There’ll always be a sting in my tale, remember, however many times you try to rewrite it with a happy ending.’

‘Don’t go,’ she was punched back by the force of her own longing.

‘Goodbye, Heavenly Pony. Don’t meddle any more or you’ll get your fingers burned.’ He dropped his lips tenderly on the tip of her scalded thumb before turning to leave. The gunshots were moving away again now.

Legs covered her mouth, slumping back down on her chair in defeat, angry tears sprouting from nowhere. ‘Why couldn’t you just leave Ptolemy snogging Purple at the end of
Raven’s Curse
like everyone in the world wants?’ she shouted after him.

He slowed in his tracks, not turning round. ‘Who says I don’t?’

The sobs in her throat caught a crab of laughter. ‘Do you really? Is Purple a she or a he? Is it a good kiss?’

‘You must read the book to find out,’ he said with infuriating Gordon Lapis pedantry, stooping down to clip a lead on the sleeping Fink’s collar. But then he dropped it, the sleeping basset not even stirring. Turning, Byrne marched back to the table, stepped right onto it and sat down in it directly in front of her so their faces were level, his legs to either side of her.

Reaching his hands to her cheeks, he drew her into a kiss that broke their personal best one kiss record for unforgettableness, although Legs was pretty sure she blacked out completely this time as lust dragged all the oxygen from her brain so fast that her erogenous zones were the only things thinking for themselves.

At last, Byrne pulled away, whispering breathlessly: ‘It’s pretty much that sort of kiss.’

Legs found it was a long time before she could speak. ‘Please don’t tell me Purple wakes up and it’s all been a dream?’

Shaking his head, he let out his gruff, bittersweet laugh, but his
face was pinched with sorrow. ‘Don’t skip ahead. It’s a good book.’ He pulled away. ‘Now leave me alone to lose my life the way I see fit.’

‘You can’t mean that?’

His beautiful scroll of a mouth twisted into a half-smile. ‘I’ve already lost my heart and my head. What’s left hardly counts.’ Kissing her cheek, he whispered something into her ear which she didn’t quite understand.
‘Gráim thú.’

Dark eyes even more regretful, he blew her a kiss and slipped out through the door.

‘Wait! What did you just say to me?’ she called out, but the door was closed.

She slumped her hot face down on the table, chest burning. Exhaustion and emotional overload enveloped her along with a merciless coughing fit. She badly needed another Fisherman’s Friend. Her lost heart thundered. It was cannoning over the clifftops.

She tried to repeat what he’d whispered in her ear again, but whichever inflexion she gave, it still sounded like ‘Grime poo.’

A call came from overhead. ‘Legs, are you still down there?’

She trailed upstairs.

Still wearing the tablecloth, Lucy was stretched out on the bed, an eye-mask in place, along with her iPod now to drown out the gunshots.

She lifted the mask briefly to smile before dropping it back like a letterbox flap, talking over-loudly because she had opera in both ears. ‘Could you fetch me another glass of wine? I have a terrible headache!’

‘Wouldn’t a paracetamol be better?’

But Donizetti had taken over once more.

Tucked into the William Morris fabric were several pieces of scrunched up writing paper. She didn’t have to look very hard to see that every one was addressed to
My darling Dorian,
and invariably began,
How can you ever forgive my summer madness, my darling
man? What visions have I seen! Methought I was enamour’d of an ass.’
Feeling guilty of prying, she carefully retreated downstairs.

There was a knock on the door. Abandoning the bottle of wine on the table, Legs found Byrne leaning against the oak porch, draped in fronds of overgrown clematis and rambling rose, like a woodland god, his face in dappled shadow.

‘I forgot to give you this.’ He took her hand in his, placing a little parcel into her palm before enfolding it in her fingers and drawing them hurriedly up to his lips. Then he said it again: ‘Grime poo.’

As Legs opened her mouth to ask what he meant, a shot rang out, the closest yet, twelve-bore lead hitting the porch roof at such velocity its whole frame shook, throwing down great veins of oak splinters and thatch from above along with pellets of shot.

Legs screamed, her hand still gripped in Byrne’s as she ducked low and he shielded her with his body.

‘Keep
very
quiet,’ he breathed, covering her mouth to stop her screaming again.