The Love Letter (71 page)

‘No!’ She shook her head so violently that red Medusa curls whipped Legs across the face. ‘You don’t understand! I thought it was just Gordon she was targeting, and he’s protected by anonymity, at least for a little bit longer. I had no idea until this evening that you were a part of it.’ She took Legs’ hands in hers, which were shaking and clammy. ‘She’s here right now, and she’s determined to catch your attention.’

‘Well, that yellow turban is certainly a show-stopper.’

Kizzy didn’t appear to be listening as she rattled on. ‘It’s my fault for encouraging her. The book is brilliant; she read it to me. I know it has something truly magical about it. But now you’ve taken an interest, it’s become dangerous.’

Legs hardly thought a slim volume of feminist criticism about paintings of squares and circles worthy of the fear staring at her from Kizzy’s eyes right now.

‘She’ll stop at nothing,’ she breathed. ‘She knows all about the
coast here, the cliff caves and this house, where to hide and where to run. She’s been here in secret many times this past year, watching me as I walk and compose and sing. I never knew. She’s always one step ahead. She’s like a wild animal.’

Legs was amazed at Yolande’s stealth; she’d never seen her without a twenty litre handbag, a technicolour pashmina and at least one mobile phone ringing non-stop.

‘She calls it a “paperchase of clues full of hidden meanings”,’ Kizzy went on. ‘I put everything in my poems, and she’s so clever that she sees straight through the metaphors. We’re just the same like that. She was the only one who guessed about Édith, who’s written in every line.’ Her green eyes were brimming. ‘But she hates Édith almost as much as she hates Francis.’

At last, Legs thought she could guess what this was about. ‘I won’t betray you to your parents or anybody else, Kizzy, I promise. You two have every right to keep your relationship private. I adore Édith.’

She started to cry in true Kizzy fashion, with trails of snot and red, blotchy skin. ‘Édith will never forgive me if you get hurt. She loves having you in this family. She has no idea who’s really behind the letters and why. That’s why I have to put a stop to it, don’t you see? You mustn’t leave. You mustn’t leave!’

‘The letters?’ Legs froze, not liking the amount of bloodshot whites showing around Kizzy’s wet eyes right now. With a jolt like a lead bar in the back, she remembered Francis saying that Kizzy had wanted to talk about the letters.

‘They got terribly out of hand,’ she was wailing, ‘I know how frightening they must have been. I’m so sorry. There was really no harm meant; they were just supposed to set the mood.’

‘I’d call a death threat quite harmful.’ Legs started backing away. ‘For mood setting, I prefer scented candles and background music.’

‘But you asked for it! They were written with love and attention.’

Legs gaped at her, deciding that Kizzy was a very serious threat right now. If she was behind the letters, as seemed increasingly likely, then she had to get away from her, and fast.

She took a deft side-step, almost at the first stair tread. ‘Just let me get past, Kizzy, and I’ll be out of your hair for good.’

‘You can’t leave the house tonight!’ Kizzy lunged forwards, Titian tresses lashing Legs in the face and blinding her so there was no getting out of her hair, let alone up the stairs. Two small but vice-like hands gripped at her wrists. ‘My clairvoyant warned me this would happen. She turned the Death card in the tarot deck three times. I
will
stop you! It’s for your own good.’

Seeing nothing but red mist and red curls, Legs struck out her arms in a maddened star jump that was probably more Village People than martial arts, but succeeded in loosening Kizzy’s grip long enough for the red hair sea to part and her route past the manic mermaid to present itself.

Adrenalin coursed through her. Suddenly she felt like Julie Ocean on a mission. She knew exactly what to do to get away. Reaching up to her neck, she gripped the tight pearl choker and gave it a hard yank. A split second later, with satisfying hail-like thuds, five strings of liberated pearls were raining down around them.

‘Oh, your beautiful necklace!’ Kizzy dropped straight to her knees to start gathering them.

Pushing her way past, Legs scaled the stairs as fast as she could in the Moroccan pumps, which were now causing such cramps in her feet that she had to almost bunny hop up sideways. Halfway up the stairs she kicked them off and let the mousetraps of her curled toes spring out to sprint up the rest. Running the length of the landing, she searched around for the signet ring, but it was no longer there.

The door to Francis’s old bedroom was open in front of her. There were loose pages scattered across the bed. Stepping inside, she saw the ring sitting on top of one of the six crumpled sheets of
writing paper spread out there, the top page of a long, heartfelt letter. She recognised her own handwriting straight away.

Stifling a sob, she snatched up the pages and started to read.

My darling Francis, I have made such a huge mistake, I hardly know where to begin. You are the lost part of my soul. I love you with all my heart. To quote Donne
—

‘No!’ she shrieked. ‘Not Donne!’

It was worse than she’d thought.

Tears rising faster than floodwater on already saturated ground, she skimmed in horror through the sprawled pages, complete with her crossings out and mawkish prose. There were even asterisks and footnotes. And she suddenly realised what she was looking at. This wasn’t the letter that she had sent to Francis a year earlier. These were the notes she’d made, her first rough copy, ten times as sentimental, mawkish and tear-stained. And Byrne had just read it.

It had been in the trunk in her bedroom at the Ealing flat, she realised in shock, buried and forgotten beneath photos and diaries. The only person who could possibly have got access to it was Kizzy.

But that hardly mattered because Byrne had gone. He’d gone.

She could hear raised voices as footsteps rang out from the main stairs. Francis was calling out her name.

Slotting the ring back on her little finger and closing her fist tightly over it, she raced out onto the landing and through the baize door to the back stairs before anyone spotted her. She knew, however blind her hope, that she must make it to the beach at Eascombe Cove.

Still dressed in the coral ballerina shock-frock and turban, Legs stole down along the back stairs and through the Farcombe Hall
service passages, this time slotting her bare feet into a pair of plastic gardening clogs lying amid the piles of boots in the rear lobby. Through the glass pane of the courtyard door, she could see the contingent of smokers gathered beneath a coach-light on the cobbles just a few feet away, Kizzy amongst them, her hair gleaming in red corkscrews, like Medusa sporting corn snakes.

She turned silently to the cellars, hooking down the key to the sea passage from the little candle alcove beside the door, clutching it tightly in her palm to stop her shaking fingers from dropping it.

Tripping down the stairs in the dark, she made it across the uneven flagstones and fumbled with the padlock. The wind was whistling up through the passage like a giant’s mournful blows through a longhorn.

She’d only just managed to slot in the key when she heard voices behind her that made her dive into one of the narrow wine stores, leaving the key dangling.

The lights flashed on with a buzz of tungsten.

‘Come quickly, before anyone spots we’re gone …’ It was Poppy, obviously three parts cut.

‘What are we doing here?’ came Hector’s deep drawl, infused with several large cognacs.

‘Darling man, I have a very little something to show you which I think you will like. I believe it is quite my best work to date.’

Nose-to-nose with a row of dusty claret bottles, Legs held her breath in disbelief, waiting for the deafening bellow of outrage when he spotted the stone statue and its miniscule manhood.

Instead, she heard a lot of loving cooing noises, some slurping and ‘my darling!’

It was just as Byrne had said, she realised. Poppy had covered the grotesque with a fibreglass blob like all her other shapeless artworks, veiling her acerbic critique in gentle soft focus.

Amazed, but no less desperate to get away from the house, she edged back toward the passageway entrance, knowing it was out of the line of sight from Poppy’s studio.

But the key had gone, the padlock pushed fast shut again.

She stared at it, disbelief and terror mingling in her blood like ice and fire as she tried to tell herself that there was a perfectly logical explanation. But the only one she could come up with was that somebody else was in the cellar besides herself and the canoodling Protheroes, and she had no intention of hanging about long enough to find out who.

Poppy and Hector appeared to be enjoying a very passionate reunion in the studio beyond the boiler room.

‘Oh, my
big
honey bear.’

‘Oh honeybee, little honeybee. Drink my nectar.’

With the sea passage now locked, Legs had no choice but to head back up to the house. As she crept hurriedly towards the cellar stairs again, she was certain she saw a shadow crossing behind her out of the corner of her eye. She swung around, but there was nothing to see.

The slurping noises were increasing, joined by grunting now. ‘Oh my darling, don’t stop!’

‘What about our guests?’

‘Let’s make them go away.’

Legs started tip-toeing quickly up the stairs, her plastic clogs making sympathetic sucking noises to match those she was leaving behind.

‘How can we make them go?’ Poppy was asking plaintively. ‘They’ll be here for hours.’

‘Not if we kill the lights.’

‘We can’t. Francis will be straight down here.’

‘No he won’t. Look – the cellar door key. I’ve locked it from the inside.’

Legs stifled a terrified bleat as she heard him striding loftily to the fuse cupboard, size thirteen footsteps hollow on the flagstones. A moment later the lights went off.

‘Oh, Poppy.’

‘Oh, Hector.’

Legs started cautiously down the steps again, wringing her sweaty hands together. She heard a metallic clink and Byrne’s ring fell off again, skittling away in the darkness, and she closed her eyes in dismay. It was absolutely pitch dark. He ears were on elastic. Even though her heartbeat was becoming too thunderous to hear much, she distinctly made out light footsteps crossing the room in front of her.

She was now quite certain there was somebody else in the cellars alongside herself and the ageing lovers.

The door at the top of the stairs was rattled furiously: ‘What’s going on? Hey! Open up.’ It was Édith, her drawling voice torn between amusement and irritation. ‘It’s dark up here, you know.’

Legs let out a little sob of relief.

‘I warn you, we have a gun out here and we’ll blow out the bloody lock!’ Kizzy shouted, sounding frenzied.

The sound of a barrel cocking just above her head made Legs dive forwards, groping wildly for the wall, trying to picture the cellar’s layout in her mind and plot the best place to take cover. But as she did so, she suddenly she remembered that there was another way out. The big doors at the far end of the studio were simply bolted from the inside as far as she recalled. She started to sneak towards Poppy and Hector, who seemed oblivious to the guntoting on the other side of the cellar door,

‘Oh yes, darling …’

‘My big,
big
man …’

Legs was now so drenched in nervous sweat that her plastic shoes squelched as she made it past the boiler room and started to edge across the huge space. Here, a faint light filtered in through the high windows. She was almost at the doors, able to make out their big square bulk, the black smudges of the bolts.

Then, as she reached out towards them, she felt a cold, claw-fingered hand on her arm and a strange Gollum voice whispered ‘Ring’.

Looking round, she found her face full of familiar curls and
caught a glint of white-eyed zeal. Not stopping to think how Kizzy could be both here and at the top of the stairs behind a locked door simultaneously, she let out a scream that even threatened to pierce her own eardrums. Pure reflex made her lash back with her foot, plastic gardening shoe making contact with a shin. She heard a grunt of pain behind her as she threw herself at the doors and started pulling at the bolts.

Poppy was screaming now too, Hector bellowing. Above their heads, Francis joined in the fray yelling ever-louder for attention behind the cellar door.

As Legs slid the second of three bolts, the claw-like hand made a grab for her shoulder and a voice again gasped, ‘Ring!’

‘This is just too much!’ She jabbed an elbow back, feeling the fingers lose their grip, then pulled the final bolt and wretched the big sliding doors open just as a gun went off overhead. The wind almost knocked her back in as it hit her with a smack in the face. She ducked her head and slip-slapped her way out into it, plastic shoes making obscene raspberries as she tore away towards the cover of the rose garden, diving in and out of the thorny arms, dress ripping, towards the tall rhododendrons and the gap she knew from childhood, three trunks along. Ducking through the low arch, she reached the back driveway not far from the gatepost with the secret cut-through to the coast lane.