The Love Letter (91 page)

‘Good!’

As she lobbed more turbans onto the flames, he accompanied her by playing the solo from the Firebird suite.

On a nearby log, Lucy and Dorian moved together, sliding their arms around one another as they watched the bright headgear flying past them at speed.

‘Well she’s certainly having a bit of a fling tonight,’ Lucy pointed out cheerfully.

‘I’d forgotten how much they shout,’ Dorian sighed. ‘I suppose it comes from sharing such a big house. No wonder poor Francis has no volume control.’ He cocked his head in the direction of the decking where poetry being recited very loudly to a rapt audience of one.

Lucy regarded Francis and her elder daughter thoughtfully. ‘I haven’t seen Ros looking this happy in a long time, have you?’

On an adjacent log to his maternal grandparents, Nico was devouring his fifth marshmallow and telling his aunt how excited he was to be seeing Gordon Lapis tomorrow. ‘I think he’ll be really dark and mysterious, like Edward Cullen. Am I right, Legs? Legs? Hellooo!’ He waved his marshmallow toasting stick in front of her face, making her jump.

‘Sorry.’ She dragged her eyes away from watching a familiar redhead who had emerged from the back of Édith’s car to help with the turban-tossing.

‘Does Gordon look like Edward Cullen?’

‘Yes, he does a bit,’ looking around her, she realised that Byrne was missing from the fireside. She searched the garden for him with her eyes but he wasn’t there.

‘Bet you fancy him.’

‘I do a bit.’

‘I am never falling in love. It’s for gross old people.’

‘Ptolemy and Purple fall in love,’ she pointed out, lifting up to stare over the fire. No Byrne.

‘He’ll suffer,’ Nico predicted.

‘I think he does somewhat.’ Legs craned round to scan the parked cars.

‘Don’t tell me what happens. I’m so near the end. Purple is so cool sticking up for Ptolemy like that.’

‘Told you. It happens to the best of us. Love.’ She was raking back and forth across the garden with her eyes now, panic rising.

‘I can’t believe you’ve still not got me a signed book,’ Nico said in a small voice. Then, seeing his aunt’s anxious expression, he smiled and made light of it. ‘I’m sure he’s really busy.’

‘I’ll get you a signed book,’ she promised vaguely.

‘Tonight?’

‘I can try. I don’t have a copy with me, but I can—’

‘Wait there!’ He leaped up and raced into the house.

Within a minute, the hardback of
Raven’s Curse
crashed down on her lap like a breezeblock. The bookmark was still poking out about three quarters of the way through, she noticed.

Nico thrust a pen at her, ‘It’s Dad’s best “novelist” fountain pen – Daisy bought it for him. Please don’t lose it.’

‘I’ll put it in my tent for safekeeping,’ she laughed, standing up. ‘And I’ll get Gordon to sign the book later, I promise.’

‘Is he staying nearby?’

Legs hugged the book to her chest and stared at the fire for a moment, its flames turning extraordinary colours as they guzzled up the beads and sequins on Poppy’s turban collection. ‘He’s very close,’ she breathed.

As she trailed towards her tent, eyes still looking everywhere for Byrne, she spotted Kizzy and Édith walking arm in arm to the viewing platform over the cove to look out at the sky which had turned richest violet shot through with orange now the sun had dropped behind the horizon.

Then she heard a dog bark in the woods. Still clutching the book, she ran between the trees, twisting, ducking and jumping to avoid trunks, branches and undergrowth.

He was perching on the lover’s seat branches of the Tree of Secrets, carving something into the bark. Hearing a twig snap under one of her feet, he looked down.

‘You found me,’ he laughed. ‘It was going to be a surprise, but it’s almost done now. Come on up.’ He reached down his hand.

Leaving the book by the trunk’s base, she climbed to settle on the other lover’s branch arm and read the initials he’d carved in a big, wonky heart.

‘AN, JB, JL, PF, GL.’ She smiled as she counted them up, squinting to read the last two which weren’t quite finished. ‘JJ and JO?’

‘Jimmy Jimee and Julie Ocean,’

‘Of course,’ she laughed. ‘There are certainly a lot of us in this relationship.’

‘The more identities, the bigger the heart.’ He tapped his graffiti with his knife before stooping to finish it off with a few final deft cuts.

‘Everybody should change their name at least once in life,’ she agreed, tilting her head to watch. ‘You have a lot more alter egos than me.’

‘You are going to change your name very soon,’ he reminded her.

She looked across at him apprehensively, and he turned to kiss her firmly on the mouth. ‘At the altar, when you marry me and my many egos.’

‘Allegra Byrne-Kelly-Finch-Jimee-Lapis would be hell to fit on a debit card,’ she joked nervously.

‘Not Lapis,’ he shook his head. ‘He’s not the marrying kind.’

‘Who says?’

‘I’m still in control of him, remember?’ he said, then smiled apologetically. ‘At least I am tonight.’

‘I want to marry Gordon too,’ Legs insisted. Using the fingers of her right hand to encircle the heavy gold band still trapped on her left ring finger, she gave an almighty tug and let out a cry of surprise as the signet ring came loose straight away and slipped into her palm, like Excalibur released from the rock.

‘What are you doing?’ Byrne laughed as she slipped the ring onto his little finger.

‘Marrying Gordon before it’s too late.’ She stretched across to kiss him. ‘Congratulations. You just kissed the bride.’

‘He’ll run away with another woman,’ he warned her before kissing her again, so long and hard she almost fell out of the tree.

‘For one night with Gordon, I think it’s worth that risk,’ she said breathlessly.

Byrne admired the ring, peering at its monogram again in the near darkness. ‘P’.

‘It’s silent,’ Legs reminded him, ‘P as in …’

They both stared at each other in the darkness for a very long time, saying nothing. Then they laughed, stretching forwards until their lips connected and they kissed for as long as their breath and the branches under them could hold out. It was a very long time.

‘Passion,’ Legs laughed when they finally broke apart. ‘P as in passion. Not very silent in our case.’

He flicked open his knife to carve a P inside the wonky bark heart. ‘This is my first love letter.’

She admired it through the shadows.

‘And P’s for Poppy of course.’

‘That’s a P for Passion killer,’ she grumbled. Suddenly remembering Nico’s book in the undergrowth, she scrabbled down from the tree to pick it up and got the pen from her pockets before flicking to the title page. ‘You can add your graffiti tag to this. Can you dedicate it to Nico?’

As he jumped down alongside her, she clutched the heavy book to her chest for a moment in dawning realisation. ‘This might be the last Gordon Lapis book you ever sign.’

His voice was shot through with pure relief as he reached out for it. ‘Such a shame Gordon’s chronic arthritis will mean that he can never inscribe another novel after this,’ he sighed, resting the book in the crook of one arm and leaning back against the tree to write the inscription, dark eyes wide in the fading light.

When he closed the book with a slam and handed it to her, that big, blazing hearth gaze locked onto hers. ‘It’s not too late to change your mind, you know.’

‘About what?’

‘I told you I’d give you plenty of chances to run away. But this might be your last one.’

‘I’m not going anywhere.’

He cupped her face in his hands. ‘I love you.’

‘Grime poo.’ She stared back in the darkness, knowing those bright eyes would light the way wherever they went.

She leaned into him, loving his lips on hers, the way kissing him always made the air around her go mountaintop thin. Then, as their kisses grew more urgent and excited, she found herself flying along a thrilling zig-zag black run ski-slope on the side of that mountain, her body coursed through with adrenalin, powerless to stop the momentum pulling her ever-faster towards the delicious blue lake of nudity and plunging pleasure that she knew lay at the bottom.

Still clutched in her arms, Gordon Lapis’s huge hardback was jabbing her hard in the ribs now. Byrne reached out to take it and cast it to one side, but Legs clung on tight, knowing Nico would never forgive her for throwing his precious book around in the undergrowth.

‘Just hold that thought!’ She pressed a final kiss to his mouth. ‘Wait there
one
minute!’ She turned to race back to the garden with the book, almost crashing into Poppy who was picking her way carefully in the opposite direction with a huge floodlight in one
hand and a small trinket box in the other. ‘There you both are! I’ve been looking for Jamie everywhere.’ Pointing her light blindingly in his face, she stepped towards him. ‘It’s about the
you know what.
I found it when I was clearing out my turban drawers. I told you I still had it.’

‘What’s the “you know what”?’ Legs asked.

‘Nothing you need to worry about,’ Byrne reassured her, putting an arm on her back and steering her away from the tree. ‘Slight change of plan tomorrow, that’s all. You go and make a boy very happy. We’ll be back out in a minute.’ He leaned across to kiss her on the cheek, whispering, ‘We’ll take up where we just left off later.’

As Legs reluctantly trailed away, she distinctly heard Poppy say in a stage whisper, ‘Are you sure about this, Jamie? What if Legs lets us down? Look at what she did to Francis.’

‘She won’t let me down,’ he insisted darkly.

Nico was absolutely ecstatic to receive his book back, freshly signed by Gordon Lapis.

‘Is he in the
woods?’
he whispered in amazement, having marked his aunt’s movements closely since entrusting her with his precious possession.

‘Gordon has a very good chauffeur,’ she said vaguely. ‘He can be somewhere at the drop of a hat when he needs to be.’

Nico was far too wise to be fobbed off with that sort of nonsense, but he was too busy reading the personal inscription to protest. ‘Oh wow, oh wow oh wow oh wow. I so love you, Legs! This is just the Best. Thing. Ever.’

‘What’s he written?’

‘
To dear Nico. May Ptolemy Finch and Purple inspire you to live for the moment as they have me. You will never regret it. Welcome to my family. Your very good friend and kinsman, Gordon Lapis.’
He read it, his voice shaking. Then he smiled and whooped.
‘P.s. Your aunt’s really hot.’

Legs blushed crimson, pressing cool fingers to her hot cheeks. ‘He never said that!’

‘You’re right.’ Nico stretched up to kiss her. ‘I made that bit up. Thanks, Legs. You’re the best!’

When Byrne rejoined Legs at the fireside, he found her perched between Kizzy and Édith, three exquisite Witches of Eastwick faces illuminated by flames.

‘I know we share a father,’ Kizzy looked up at him tearfully, her green eyes like rusting copper verdigris in the firelight. Her elbows rested on skinny knees, her chin resting on entwined fingers with knuckles as white as chalk. ‘I
promise
I’ll not make a big thing of it. I know you think I’m a bit over the top, but I really won’t do anything to embarrass you. You can trust me. You see, Poppy already told me about Brooke last week and Liz told me about it again last night. Now Legs has told me for a third time, only this time I actually know you know too, which is a real relief. I’m not sure I’d be very good at handling this on my own.’

‘Me neither.’ He stayed very still.

‘And I haven’t made a big fuss at all.’

‘Me neither.’

‘But I’d quite like to. At some point. When we’re both ready.’

‘Me too.’

There was an awkward pause. Catching each other’s eyes over Kizzy’s head, Legs and Édith took control of the situation. Slotting an arm each beneath Kizzy’s elbows, they stood up as one, lifting her along with them until she was standing directly in front of Byrne.

They needed no greater cue than that, as they drew together into a warm, tight hug, pulling their lovers in with them.

On the far side of the crackling fire, Hector serenaded them all with ‘Stranger on the Shore’. Beyond that, a sonorous voice could just be made out reciting ‘At The Word Farewell’.

‘Oh God, my brother’s moved onto Thomas Hardy,’ Édith
snarled quietly. ‘Sorry Legs, but the sooner he gets a new girlfriend the better.’

Hearing her own sister’s soft descant echoing the verse, Legs decided he was making a pretty good start.

Bursting apart from their impromptu rugby scrum of new sibling love and old sibling rivalry, the foursome settled back beside the fire and shared out the last of a bottle of rosé and a tube of Pringles.

‘This has been the most amazing year of my life,’ Kizzy laughed, curling up to Édith. ‘Nothing would surprise me any more. If Gordon Lapis steps up on stage tomorrow and turns out to be that basset hound, I’ll hardly bat an eye.’