The Love Letter (86 page)

‘Where are we going?’

‘Sea Legs.’ He dropped a kiss on her bare stomach.

By lunchtime, they were on a ferry headed for Holyhead. On deck, beneath an angry grey sky, they leaned on the rails and looked out at the rumpled, creased sea.

‘What’s the plan?’ Legs asked.

Byrne’s fingers threaded between hers. ‘I’m taking your advice.’

She smiled with delight, gratified that he trusted her. ‘So where are we going?’

‘The West Country.’

She felt immediately queasy, her two breakfasts repeating on her. ‘If one’s on the run, isn’t it rather counter-intuitive to run directly to the place where one’s wanted most?’

He looked out to sea for a long time, wind blowing the hair back off his face, revealing its intricate contours and angles, and deep furrows in his brow. ‘You were quite right when you said we can’t keep running.’

‘I didn’t mean “let’s go to Devon”.’

‘We’re not going there right now.’

‘Well that’s a relief,’ she said. ‘At least I have a few hours before getting arrested for taking possession of a picture of …’ She glanced around, aware of the number of people close by.

‘Yes, what was the picture you stole
of
?’

‘A front bottom,’ she whispered prudishly. ‘And I didn’t steal it. I mistakenly drove away with it in my car, which incidentally is the
unluckiest car I’ve ever had. I’ve had a speeding penalty, three parking tickets, been clamped and almost driven into a quarry since getting it, and now it’s been impounded. I loved my old red Honda.’

He put his arms around her, laughing, ‘I’ll buy you it back as a wedding present.’

‘I’ll pin up its photo in my prison cell,’ she grumbled.

Still laughing, he kissed her, hands on her face, his lips so familiar against hers now that she struggled to know or care where one pair started and another ended.

‘Aw, isn’t that romantic. Just like
Titanic
!’
a voice exclaimed in broad Irish brogue.

‘We haven’t hit an iceberg yet,’ Byrne whispered when they came up for air.

‘It’s only a matter of time,’ Legs muttered, watching over his shoulder as the lighthouse at the end of the Holyhead harbour wall grew ever-closer, like the last pawn on a chessboard as the endgame approached checkmate.

When Byrne stopped to refuel at a service station on the M5 – the not-quite-red Bentley Continental now attracting huge amounts of attention everywhere they went – Legs took a loo break and saw the front cover of the
Express,
stopping dead with total horror. Her face was on it.

FARCOMBE INTRIGUE LINKED TO SPURNED LOVER; DEATH THREATS AND ART THEFT. COULD PTOLEMY FINCH SAVE THE DAY?

Buying a copy along with a pair of cheap dark glasses and a baseball cap, she slunk back to the car.

Byrne was unimpressed. ‘The festival team are going after maximum publicity for Gordon. They’re working with Conrad and Piers Fox now, remember. Nothing will be sacred.’

The article left readers in no doubt that Ptolemy’s creator would be unveiled in two days’ time. Speculation about his identity had gone mad; the prime suspects were under siege. Stephen Fry was
being door-stepped, and Salman Rushdie was threatening to go into hiding again. Investigative journalists and paparazzi were beside themselves trying to get to the truth first.

‘Gordon can’t leave it any longer to reveal his face,’ Byrne said darkly. ‘Any day now, they’ll find him for themselves and make up their own truths.’

‘Catching him on the run with an international art crook won’t do a lot for his reputation as a children’s author,’ Legs joked flatly. ‘It’s OK. Drop me at the nearest moor. I’ll take the tent and take my chances.’

‘Let’s try to enjoy tonight.’ He indicated to join the Bridgewater slip road. She noticed his knuckles were white against the black leather of the steering wheel.

‘Where are we staying?’

‘Watchet.’

‘I was only asking.’

To her surprise he laughed, the tension seeming to drop away from him. ‘We’re going to Watchet marina. A friend has a yacht there at our disposal.’

‘Generous friend.’

‘I met him travelling. He’s lives in Costa Rica now, so the boat’s never used. He hasn’t got around to sailing it over there yet.’

Legs had sudden visions of her and Byrne hoisting mainsails and tacking between North Somerset and the Pacific Rim.

‘So when you say that we must stop running,’ she asked carefully, ‘does that mean you want to start floating instead?’

He took a long time to answer, pulling a pair of dark glasses from the glove-box and putting them on as a low sun burst through the clouds at last. Now Legs couldn’t even read his expression as he again said: ‘Let’s enjoy tonight.’

With the car’s roof down, Fink propped his paws up on the rear door trim so that he could catch the slipstream and sniff the air, ears turned inside out. It was a very balmy afternoon to breathe, thick with the scent of harvest and autumn approaching, a bonfire
tang in the air and hedgerows crammed with ripening blackberries and sloes.

Letting herself daydream idly, Legs found the idea of life aboard a sailing boat increasingly erotic, imagining herself in a bikini, deeply tanned with sun-bleached hair standing at the prow of a glossy white cruiser with Byrne, mahogany-skinned and superhero-chested at her side, surrounded by turquoise sea.

By the time they reached the marina, her fantasy had got thoroughly out of hand. As the Continental’s soft-top closed back over them, she was out of her seat and kissing Byrne before he’d even pulled up the handbrake, which wasn’t wise so close to the quayside, but she didn’t much care right now, just as it didn’t bother her that the Bentley attracted immediate attention as usual, and two faces were soon peering in at them while conducting a loud discussion as to whether it was Simon Cowell in there being molested by a blonde nympho.

‘Simon likes dusky beauties,’ one of the onlookers pointed out. ‘I think that’s a footballer. Doesn’t John Terry have a GT?’

‘Jesus!’ Byrne laughed, pulling away from her lips. ‘I’m definitely selling the car. Fink might approve of dogging, but it’s not my thing.’

‘Boats are much more private,’ Legs couldn’t wait to get aboard. ‘There’s only sea-life to watch us once we’re in open water.’

‘And Fink.’

‘He’ll be far too busy dog-fishing,’ Legs pointed out, throwing open her door. ‘Let’s go straight below deck and get naked.’

‘You can make a start on that while I tell the harbour master we’re here.’ Smiling up politely at their audience, he got out too before turning back to Legs. ‘I expect you ship-shape and Bristol fashion by my return.’

‘I’ll be waiting, bristols flashing.’ She blew him a kiss over the top of the car.

‘She’s the big cruising yacht called
Chastity.
She should be unlocked by now,’ Byrne told her then loped off to the marina office, Fink at his heels.

Still admiring the Bentley, the two onlookers crossed their arms in front of their chests, one of them breathing: ‘Did he just say
Chastity?
You know what they say about her.’

‘Owned by
drug smugglers,’
the other confirmed in a nervous whisper.

‘I’ve already seen someone go on board today. They must be planning a run.’

Chastity
was not exactly the glossy-white Cannes harbour dream Legs had envisaged while making her steamy seduction plans in the car, but she had a vintage sex appeal nonetheless. She was the forty foot grande dame of the marina, bobbing at the far end of a pontoon, with peeling powder blue paint and faded woodwork. Legs raced on board.

Clanking below deck, she started to undress hurriedly, ripping off borrowed clothes, eager for the fantasy to keep distracting her from reality. She knew Byrne felt exactly the same way. Sex was the easiest, happiest place to escape to right now, along with crazy daydreams of setting sail. Down to her underwear, she shook out her hair and ran her hands up the back of her hot neck to scoop it up from her shoulders and roll the tension from her spine.

‘Hello Allegra,’ a figure walked through from the main berth. ‘You’ve put on weight.’ It was Poppy.

‘What are you doing here?’ Legs yelped in alarm, hands still on her head as though being held at gunpoint.

‘I could ask you the same thing.’ She squinted short-sightedly at her. ‘Is that a tattoo on your neck? Who on earth is “Graham”?’

‘I got a taxi here,’ Poppy was shaking with nerves. ‘I had to wear my eye mask throughout the journey. I’ve had two Valium.’

She’d commandeered the only dry, upholstered bench in
Chastity’s
main deck, which she was stretched out upon like a patient on a psychiatrist’s couch with a snoring Fink squeezed in alongside her.

Legs and Byrne were sharing the lid of a damp storage chest.

Byrne had been livid to find his mother on board waiting for them, but Legs had to admire her guts. Poppy hadn’t left Farcombe in over five years as far as she was aware, apart from one brief recent visit to a hospital under Hector’s escort.

For once she wasn’t wearing her turban and smock, her deep red hair liberated in a surprisingly neat bob, her narrow frame layered in a long blue cashmere cardigan, matching polo neck and slim white jeans. She looked unexpectedly stylish and normal, but equally unstable as she fished a hipflask out of a cavernous handbag and helped herself to a large tot, watching with huge, turbulent dark eyes as Byrne paced around the confined space like Odysseus waiting for the tide to turn, clearly longing to set sail.

‘You could have suggested somewhere closer to Farcombe to meet, Jamie,’ she complained. ‘This is decidedly Ancient Mariner.’

Chastity
was a salty, seafaring vessel with few home comforts. Outside, masts were clanking, waves lapping and gulls calling.

‘We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow morning.’ He shot Legs an apologetic look. She returned an anxious smile, biting back a repost that she hadn’t been expecting Poppy at all. She only hoped he wasn’t planning on taking his mother with them to Costa Rica.

‘I
knew
I had to get here as soon as I received your call,’ Poppy’s smoky voice almost as low as her son’s.

‘We must talk,’ he sighed. ‘I guess tonight’s as good as tomorrow. Let’s get it over with.’

Suddenly Legs realised what Byrne had meant when he said he was taking her advice; he was going to tell his mother the truth about Gordon Lapis after all. She wanted to whoop, cheer and kiss him all over, but suspected audience participation would probably
be unwelcome at this precise moment, as would any desire to kiss him repeatedly.

‘I might go for a run,’ she said tactfully, eager to give them some privacy.

‘No, stay!’ Byrne reached out for her hand.

As ever, Poppy approached any frank and open discussion with the defensive tactic of a dramatic monologue, employing her deepest and throatiest emotional tenor: ‘I only found out that Brooke was Kizzy’s father when Mummy died – Goblin Granny as the family knew her. I’d guessed at it, of course, but I had no proof. Mummy never told another soul, but she did write it all in her diaries, in code. I started to read them when I was clearing her house. They were easy to decipher. That’s also when I learned that Liz and I have the same father.’

Byrne let out a cry of surprise. ‘Liz Delamere is your sister?’

‘Yes. Isn’t it ghastly? Mummy was Liz’s godmother, just as I am Kizzy’s. How many notes we could have compared! Can you imagine being godmother to one’s husband’s illegitimate offspring? It’s a wonder the fonts didn’t boil. Of course Liz was a total force of nature from the start. It’s amazing she survived to adulthood, frankly, although hardly surprising that she was promiscuous. She’s very like our mutual father, so over-dramatic and impetuous, and a terrible parent like him. She had no interest in poor little Kizzy until recently.

‘When those death-threats started arriving at Farcombe, I guessed it was her,’ she said in a shaky tenor. ‘I thought she was going to try to kill me for interfering in Kizzy’s life, but it turns out she was just trying to impress you, Legs. God knows why. Nobody can have told her you’d lost your job at the literary agency; we’d have been spared a great deal of upset if they had. Darling Kizzy never tells her anything, but one can hardly blame her, and it was far too late by the time she realised what was going on. Liz is utterly wilful when she gets going, as we all bore witness that night. She’s lucky she wasn’t arrested, frankly. But she wrote me a very
charming letter afterwards; we’re going to meet for lunch. I think she has a rather fanciful idea of appearing at the festival to read from some book she’s written. Trying to prove she’s one of us, no doubt.’

Legs cleared her throat and glanced at Byrne, but his face was a mask.

‘Didn’t you ever think Kizzy had a right to know who her father was?’ he asked.

Poppy looked surprised. ‘I never saw what possible use he could be to her unless she wanted to learn to ride. The Hawkes have given her every love and care a child could want. Brooke can only hurt her.’

Legs watched Byrne in alarm, certain he was going to explode, but to her surprise he shook his head with a rueful smile, sitting beside Poppy and taking her hand tenderly in his. ‘She deserves to get to know her father. It might even straighten her out a bit.’