The Love Letter (85 page)

The not-quite-red English car weaved its way from Laois to the Wicklow Mountains, its hood up, luxury interior filled with constant flirtation and laughter. Asleep on the back seat, Fink snored loudly, chin propped on a leather armrest.

Legs loved being a runaway, however irresponsible. She shivered with anticipation at the thought of a five star hotel, signing in as Mr and Mrs Prodygal-Sonne or suchlike, then playing with a four-poster and a marble bathroom all night.

But as dusk fell, Byrne pulled into a campsite on the banks of a lake glowing like molten copper.

Legs turned to him in surprise. ‘Do we have a tent?’

His face gave nothing away. ‘Know how to work one?’

‘Is this a test?’

He smiled, saying nothing.

Legs was torn between throwing the bagged tent she found in the Bentley’s boot straight at him or creating a framed canvas structure to screen sexual tension that was growing to intolerable levels between them. In the end, it was no contest.

Having camped since infancy, Legs erected the two man hiking dome in less than twenty minutes while Byrne cooked up a feast on a humble gas stove.

‘There’s more room in the car,’ she complained after laying out two ground mats and a double sleeping bag in the tiny dome. Then she sniffed the air indulgently. ‘That smells like campsite nectar.’

Byrne presented her with a plate of caramel-sweet, spicy sausages, baked beans and curling bronze toasted doorsteps with the reverence of a butler lifting silver cloche from a plate of Wagy steak. He was a master of fireside food.

‘If we’re going to live our lives on the run on the road, this is a great start.’ She speared up her bangers blissfully, caramel, pepper and smoke exploding on her taste buds.

‘I’m just an Irish tinker at heart.’

‘Perhaps we should scrap the Bentley and buy a camper van then?’

‘Irish tinkers like their big bling motors,’ he reminded her, feeding Fink a sausage.

For desserts, they took ripe pears, slabs of chocolate and instant campsite coffee to the banks of the lake, its expanse now silver and blue shot silk in the moonlight.

‘Where are we running to?’ Legs asked quietly, the heat of the coffee burning her lip and blowing steam up her nose, yet filling her with strength.

In the moonlight, Byrne’s flame-hot eyes flickered with steely light. ‘Each other.’

Legs nodded, watching a full moon climbing the oblique angle of the lake’s western mountain, like a silver ball being rolled uphill by a determined child.

‘That’s worth wearing out our soles.’ She shared her last corner of Maya Gold with him before savouring the exquisite aftertaste with that mind-blowing kiss. Still kissing, they dived hurriedly under cover to share intimacies behind canvas walls which kept them awake for many more hours.

‘I love all of you,’ she whispered into the crook of his arm in the early hours.

‘All of me?’

‘Jago Jamie Kelly Ptolemy Finch Gordon Lapis Byrne.’

‘Not Gordon.’

‘Why not? I knew him first.’

‘I wish to God he’d never existed.’

‘You wouldn’t be camping with me and a Bentley Continental if he hadn’t.’

He turned his back to her and pretended to sleep.

The following morning, they ran for miles through breathtaking mountainous countryside, although Legs’ breath was taken far
more by the kiss at the highest point than by any scenery around them. She was now so high on love that they could have jogged along the central carriageway of the M6 and she would have been just as happy.

Why was it, then, that she had an uncanny knack of saying exactly the wrong thing, always?

His phone, which had no reception in the campsite, was in his pocket and chiming with messages now, like a morning Angelus. One was from Poppy, ever more panic-stricken that her long-lost son had lost faith in her.

‘What does she say?’ Legs demanded, ignoring her own phone bleeping sociably from her bum bag.

‘She wants to meet up.’ He read the message, hollow cheeks leaping with muscles. ‘She’s even prepared to forsake Farcombe.’

‘She’s going to leave Hector?’ Legs gasped.

‘I sincerely doubt it.’ He looked at the message again. ‘By “forsake” I think we can read “cream tea with tranquillisers in the village”, or “car park at a Travel Inn” at bravest.’

Acutely aware that Gordon Lapis’s scheduled appearance at Farcombe Festival was now just days away, Legs couldn’t stop herself pushing the point. ‘If you meet up, you can tell her the truth about your writing career, surely?’

‘Why? We just keep running. Sooner or later Ptolemy Finch will be forgotten.’

‘You know that’s not true!’

‘I’m no liar!’ he exploded. ‘If I don’t tell the truth it’s because I write fiction. I killed Ptolemy. He’s currently dead, as thousands of readers are finding out on a daily basis. That’s not fact, granted. Based on his track record, rescue should be guaranteed; one takes it for granted. Author and reader have an unwritten agreement nestling cosily between the lines that good will eventually triumph, however slim the odds may appear at times. That’s fiction. I write it, I don’t live it.’

‘But isn’t life on the run just make-believe too?’

‘If you want to get real, Allegra, you can rewrite the script.’ He stood up and started pounding down the mountainside, only to double back to catch her in his arms as she stumbled blindly in his wake.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ He held her so securely she felt as though she was drowning in him, his lips tight to her throat. ‘I love you. Please don’t let’s stop running yet.’

When they returned to the banks of the lake, he took both their iPhones and hurled them into the water.

‘Isn’t that terribly environmentally unfriendly?’

‘Shit, you’re right!’ He stripped off his clothes and waded in to dive for them, dipping around like a dolphin.

Stripping off, Legs waded in too. Soon they were getting beyond friendly in their environment, the phones forgotten.

They drove to Dublin in the not-quite-red car, where Byrne had booked a suite in the Gresham once occupied by Taylor and Burton. There, they made love half-on, half-off the four poster bed, shared a deep bath, dressed in such a hurry that both their buttons were one out, and ran on foot to the Abbey Theatre to catch the last night of the sell-out, highly acclaimed production of
The Playboy of the Western World,
starring a Hollywood bad boy originally hailing from Ballymun.

‘How did you ever get tickets?’ she gasped as they claimed their balcony seats seconds before curtain up.

‘Like everyone else. I booked online as soon as they were released.’

‘But you can’t have known we were going to be here?’

‘I was going to bring Nan. She loves this guy playing Christy.’

It was an extraordinary performance, the actor proving he was far more than a brooding heartthrob with a well publicised drug problem and sex tape to his name. He could act. Legs was moved to tears by his reconciliation with his father at the end and his rejection by Pegeen, who she knew made the right choice even though
almost every woman in the audience would have taken the brooding Hollywood actor then and there.

‘I’m only sorry your grandmother didn’t see it,’ she said to Byrne as they emerged, hands still buzzing from clapping.

‘I’m not.’ He took her buzzing hand and held it to his lips to kiss it, making it buzz even more. ‘When she learns he didn’t even take his shirt off, she’ll not think it was worth coming. Do you want to eat?’

She shook her head. Being with him was doing bizarre things to her appetite, ravenous one moment, no appetite for days thereafter.

They walked back arm in arm, weaving through the trees in front of Clery & Co. like bending poles and kissing beneath each one.

In front of the statue of Joyce, Legs gave the great man a salute and silently apologised for the fact that she would never understand or appreciate him as much detective fiction, adding that she dearly hoped that Francis one day found a woman who could.

Byrne waited patiently, not entirely sold on the tribute, but respectful enough to let her worship as he leaned against Joyce’s walking stick.

‘What did you make of
Ulysses?’
she asked Byrne as they walked the last short stretch to the hotel.

‘Is this a test?’ he asked.

She shrugged. ‘Quicker than putting up a tent.’

‘Takes a lot longer to read
Ulysses
than to put up a tent.’ He took her arm in his.

‘I’m still unravelling the narrative groundsheet. Do you think I’m incredibly thick?’

‘Heavenly Pony, I haven’t even started sorting out the tent pegs. Who am I to judge?’

To their delight, they soon discovered a whole new bedroom to their suite in which to make love, along with a balcony overlooking the still whooping, revelling streets and the city skyline, and
then it was back to the deep bath to lather each other with every miniature soap product on offer.

The following morning, Legs slept very late and then luxuriated with breakfast in bed. She ordered enough for two, but Byrne, who had gone for a run, was missing for hours. In the end she shared his ration with Fink then got indigestion.

‘Did you get lost?’ she asked when he finally reappeared, heading straight into the shower.

‘I had to make some calls and send a few emails.’

She dangled off the bed so that she could see his reflection in the long mirror opposite the bathroom door, ‘Shouldn’t have thrown away your phone.’

He turned on the water, stopping the conversation. Legs admired him for a bit, belly squirming with lust, but her indigestion was giving her a stitch, so she got up to dress.

It seemed like an eternity since she’d had any of her own clothes for more than a few hours. She flipped through the selection Zina had kindly lent to her, a cornucopia of pastels. So far she’d worn the same baggy pink linen trousers each day, but they were now looking decidedly grubby, and the only alternatives – a little pale yellow dress or tight white pedalpushers – had been bought by somebody with great legs they liked to show off. She plumped for the dress as the lesser of two evils, knowing that to encase her thighs in white would be about as flattering as sporting voluminous bloomers stuffed with bubblewrap.

Pulling it over her head, she went to the mirror to check how much cellulite was on show, then did a double take. Somebody with very shapely legs was staring back at her from the mirror.

They couldn’t be her legs, she thought excitedly. Smoothly curved, hand-turned to perfect symmetry and creamy taut. No, they couldn’t be.

Behind her, Byrne stepped out of the shower and let out a long, appreciative wolf whistle.

Legs turned an amazed circle, wondering how that had
happened. She supposed that she hadn’t really looked at herself for longer than a few seconds in a full length mirror since before falling ill. She’d had plenty of opportunities to scrutinise her face, quite liking her cheekbones yet missing her rosy cheeked glow. And she could tell her stomach was a bit flatter and her waist a bit smaller – although right now she had a decidedly rounded belly from eating two breakfasts. But her thighs, which had always resisted every diet, exercise programme, expensive cream and undignified wrap in the world, were a revelation.

She struck a model pose, laughing in utter delight. She didn’t care if she only had slim legs for a few short weeks; she was far too greedy to keep them, after all. The fact that she had them at all, however fleetingly, was wondrous. She wanted to dance along O’Connell Street in her bare feet and her short dress like a sixties flower child performing the odd high kick. To know what it felt like to wear a miniskirt was heaven.

To know what it felt like to stand in front of a mirror with a naked lover starting to kiss her shoulders, lift up that miniskirt and part her slim legs was even more heavenly.

Byrne’s gaze met hers in the mirror and she shivered deliciously, her body absolutely rippling with desire. ‘You are the loveliest creature alive. My gorgeous Allegra.’

‘Your gorgeous Legs,’ she corrected, deciding it was time he used the name she knew best. Then, as he slid a hand beneath her buttock to lift one thigh, she smiled deliciously. ‘You’re stretching your Legs.’

Over her shoulder his smile creased his eyes as he slid inside her. ‘Pulling my Legs.’

Afterwards, ravenous, he ate all the food out of the minibar and the complimentary biscuits from the coffee tray.

‘We could order room service,’ she laughed, watching him indulgently from the bed, knowing that she would never tire of admiring his buttocks. ‘Or go out and get something round here?
Look at the shops?’ she hinted. She didn’t want to get all
Pretty Woman
on him, and would be happy to buy herself some new clothes, but her purse was still in her impounded car.

The trouble was, Byrne liked her most naked at the moment, so had no real interest in acquiring items to cover her up. The thought wouldn’t even occur to him.

He clambered on the bed beside her, shaking his head. ‘We’re checking out in a minute.’