The Love Letter (23 page)

He lent against the doorframe and turned back to her, almost flooring her with the intensity of his eyes. ‘We all drink to forget.’

She was still doing George: ‘Actually it takes just one drink to get me loaded – trouble is I can’t remember whether it’s the thirteenth or the fourteenth.’

‘Stop it,’ he snapped. ‘This isn’t you, Allegra.’

‘No, it’s your namesake, Byrne baby – Burn. He also said: sincerity is everything; if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.’

‘Shut up.’ He almost shouted it at her.

She fell silent, just as the band struck up with a cover of one of her favourite Alison Krauss tracks ‘New Favourite’. Oh the gentle, sultry truth in the words, sung with such soft sentiment, telling of betrayal and lost love. To her shame, tears started welling in her eyes.

In front of her, Byrne didn’t move.

A few members of the pub audience were dancing around them, knocking them closer together. Suddenly Byrne took her shoulder and wrist, none too softly, and manoeuvred her in a jolting, disunited dance back towards their quiet corner.

‘I think you should leave tonight,’ he told her in an urgent undertone.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’m far too drunk to drive.’

‘I’ll call you a taxi.’

She peered at him through the gloom in astonishment. Well, it certainly wasn’t an invitation to his room. His chiselled, intense face was grave, the big dark eyes burning with embers of high emotion.

‘Where would I go?’

‘Back to London.’ His hand tightened on her wrist.

‘That’s crazy. I can’t leave the situation here like this.’

‘That’s precisely what you should do. Don’t try to backtrack in life. It never works. You can’t change fate. Believe me, I know better than anybody.’

The ballad came to an end to more enthusiastic applause. Legs had to raise her voice to be heard: ‘How come?’

‘Because, dear Allegra, I too have tried to play God and failed.’ His eyes didn’t leave hers, his words clearly audible now the band had stopped playing and the volume in the room dropped to hushed chatter. ‘And now I am about to lose my life as a consequence.’

Legs had swilled an awful lot of cocktail, wine and caffeine that night, and wasn’t entirely sure she’d heard him right, but there was something about his fierce expression that told her asking him to repeat himself would not be wise.

I am about to lose my life as a consequence.
It echoed in her ears.
I am about to lose my life.

With sudden clarity, she realised why he took life too seriously. He hadn’t much of it left to live.

She felt faint with shock. Her tearful eyes went almost blind, a tsunami of hot, salty compassion flooding them. As his grip loosened at last on her wrist, she felt her hand slide instinctively into his palm and her fingers thread through his.

At that moment there was a shriek of feedback. Behind them, Guy had stepped on stage, looking grey and hungover in his chef’s whites as he muttered a malevolent request to the bearded singer. He started talking to the audience, something about an old friend who was always getting into trouble, making his loyal regulars and happy holidaymakers laugh.

Unable to take her eyes from Byrne’s, Legs didn’t hear a word, the blood rushing through her veins almost deafening her.

‘You’re not a Michelin judge at all, are you?’ she asked.

Byrne looked at her curiously.

‘Nonny thinks you are. She’d do anything to get Guy a star.’

He let go of her hand as though given an electric shock. ‘That’s why you joined me tonight?’

Seeing his angry indignity, she shook her head: ‘You invited me. I’m absolutely hopeless at the schmoozing anybody, as you saw. And you—’

‘They’re calling your name,’ he interrupted.

‘Allegra North!’ Guy was demanding into the mic, to a round
of whistles and applause. ‘Step forward and sing for your supper, baby.’

She let out a bleat of panic, gazing at Byrne, whose big blazing eyes blinked once, twice, and then he looked down so that all she could see was his lashes, no longer fanning the forest fire that was still torching her.

‘I want to stay and talk to you,’ she said.

‘Allegra!’ Guy was repeating. They’d start slow hand clapping in a minute.

‘Sing.’ Byrne stepped away.

She glanced fearfully at the stage, heart racing.

‘Sing for your supper, girl!’ Guy was beckoning her to the microphone with frantic hand gestures as the band struck up ‘Coat of Many Colours’.

She looked back to Byrne, but he had disappeared into the darkness at the back of the room.

Coffee catching in her throat, Legs shot a look of apology and fear at her heroic paella-cooking host and stepped forwards, accepting a steel-stringed Gibson from the bearded singer and slotting its strap around her neck. She ran her fingers along the strings to check that it was in tune. Then she sang:

Back through the years

I go wanderin’ once again

Back to the seasons of my youth …

She winced as the first lines came out, knowing that she had launched into the wrong key. She was flat as a bad karaoke crooner.

The crowded bar was already shifting awkwardly, a few catcalls and titters of laughter ringing out.

She abruptly shut up, face flaming.

The band behind her ground to an unsettled halt.

She couldn’t see Byrne anywhere. Guy in his chefs whites was now knocking back a Bloody Mary at the bar, looking vengeful.

‘Wrong song,’ she apologised brightly to her embarrassed audience, retuning the bass string and muttering over her shoulder, ‘Key of D. You’ll pick it up as I go along.’ She turned back to the mic, trying to stop her voice from shaking. ‘I want to dedicate this song to a friend, to say I’m sorry. I hope he’ll understand.

‘You can’t judge an apple by looking in the tree.’
Her voice rang out through the crowded bar as true, bright and smoky sweet as a flare over the cliffs.

The steel strings danced and hummed as she plucked and strummed the catchy old Bo Diddley number ‘You Can’t Judge a Book by its Cover’.

When she sang true, Legs could take the breath from a room. On she sang, through sweet verses that she had first learned with the Lookout gang over a decade earlier, jamming out to sea on an ancient Spanish guitar, maracas and a tambourine.

‘Can’t you see, oh you misjudge me.’
She repeated the chorus and then faltered as she heard a voice join hers onstage. Her fingers froze on the guitar strings, suddenly glued into stiff bunches.

‘Oh I look like a farmer, but I’m a lover,’
belted a bass harmony behind her.

Recognising the new band-member, a number of villagers in the audience began to whoop.

‘
You can’t judge a book by …’
Legs turned to look at Francis, and the words died in her throat. His blond hair was wet with sea spray and there was sand on his boots. He looked tired and drawn, but those blue eyes that smiled into hers were filled with affection. They hadn’t shared this stage for over three years, not since a stupid row when they’d performed a lock-in rendition of ‘Diamonds and Rust’ and she’d accused him of playing harmonica all over her lyrics. Musical like his father, able to play many instruments from piano to fiddle and pick up a tune by ear, Francis had always taken to the stage with easy-going confidence before that. Coming back tonight marked a sea change.

Behind them, the band was making an effort to keep going, but they’d lost the rhythm as the main guitar melody and both singers fell silent.

With sterling effort, Legs strummed out one final refrain, trying not to wince as she and her ex duetted like Sonny and Cher. The locals clearly loved it. What would Byrne think?

Her eyes scoured the bar, but he was nowhere to be seen. A flash of tossed red hair, however, made her heart plummet in trepidation as she saw Kizzy, predictably stunning in a midnight-blue silk tunic which fell off one shoulder to reveal the slender curve of her freckled collarbone, and spray-on white skinny jeans that showed off her fantastic legs. Aware of her own great tree trunks planted on top of feet of clay, Legs shuffled away from the mic and took a hasty bow, acknowledging first the band and then Francis with a clumsy sweep of the arm that inadvertently meant she clouted him across the head.

The room erupted into applause and cheers and whoops.

Recovering from his head blow, Francis stepped forwards to bestow another kiss on his ex-fiancées cheek, to yet more whoops. Talk of tonight’s performance would be all over the village tomorrow, possibly even outstripping the bearded organic farmer rock-star’s secret gig for Farcombe headline news.

Looking at Kizzy again, Legs was just in time to catch her wink at Francis before making a very theatrical flouncing exit, equally guaranteed to get tongues wagging.

Francis hastily steered Legs to the far end of the bar, which was dark and quiet. All the time her eyes raked the room for Byrne, but part of her knew that he had long gone.

‘I think that went rather well, don’t you?’ Francis looked very pleased with himself.

She turned to him furiously, adrenalin still chasing Rioja and coffee through her veins, ‘I can’t believe you pulled a stunt like that without warning me.’

‘Pure happenstance.’ He was high on adrenalin, tanned cheeks
streaked with damson. ‘Thought I’d pop in for a drink with Kizz, and there you were. Perfect opportunity.’

She eyed him with disbelief. ‘I wish I knew what gives between you two.’

‘Total understanding,’ he said breezily. ‘I must say, I’d forgotten we used to sing all that old Bo Diddly stuff. That was a blast.’ His eyes glittered into hers, that strange newfound affection, along with a nervous energy she remembered from his finals.

Pierced Tongue appeared with two Happy Ever Afters: ‘Compliments of the boss. He’s had to get back to the kitchens, but he says to tell you that song would have easily paid for your supper if the tab hadn’t already been settled. Biggest tip of the year, too.’

‘Settled by whom?’ Legs asked.

But PT was already answering a shout at the opposite end of the bar.

Francis picked up the glass and drained a third of the velvety but lethal Baileys, Kahlua and Amaretto concoction. ‘Wow, they know how to mix them. Why haven’t you replied to my texts, Legs?’ His blue gaze traced every angle on her face.

Aware that far more eyes in the Book Inn were on them than the band that had now regrouped to sing ‘I Will Always Love You’, she pushed her glass away and shifted awkwardly.

‘My phone’s dead. I haven’t got a charger with me. I’ll ask Nonny if she has one later.’

‘Are you coming to supper tomorrow?’ His hand covered hers, that beautiful young lion’s paw with its scuffed claws, playfully predatory yet capable of drawing real blood.

‘I haven’t decided.’ She pulled her hand away, but he gripped her fingers.

‘Everyone’s watching,’ she hissed, edging away.

‘I don’t care.’

‘That’s just because you want us to be seen together so that your father hears about it.’

‘It’s because I don’t bloody care. Just as I don’t care who sees
this.’ He planted a kiss straight on her lips, a sweet, angry breath of such longing that Legs’ automatic spring mechanism lifted her on her toes and she felt the stitching give way on her boys’ age-ten T-shirt. As the kiss stretched from intense to intimate to mating ritual, the band belted out their chorus,
‘Ieeeieeeiiiii will always love youuuueeeoooeooooo.
’

The stage manager had executed the perfect cue.

Legs pulled away first, faint with shame and desire.

‘Like the man just said … I will – always …’ He went quiet, taking a long breath before looking up at her, eyes as determined, blue and horny as a pillaging Viking’s. ‘Shall we go to bed?’ Even Francis the Viking was gentlemanly enough to ask, ever the most courteous of seducers.

Self-preservation was a rare visitor to Legs’ life, but tonight it clamped her in a strait-jacket embrace of exhaustion and sexual confusion. She was far too muddled and angst-ridden. And she had the perfect haven in which to recover.

‘I’m in Skit,’ she told him.

If there was one thing Francis was more terrified of than talking about his feelings, it was bats. Not that he betrayed his fear for a moment, as he nodded, breathed ‘tomorrow’ in her ear and then lent forward to land another kiss on her lips, this one an exquisitely light farewell that lingered just long enough for Legs’ untrustworthy reflex action to cause her lips to part and momentarily wish she hadn’t brought bats to his mind.

With his trademark polite nod, he turned and walked out.

Legs’ lips were on fire. The kiss might have been perfectly timed by a consummate pro, but there was no denying the passion. Nobody could kiss like that just for show, surely?

She abandoned her Happy Ever After untouched and headed up to Skit on legs like jelly. There, she sagged back on her dusty bed, singing hollowly to the ceiling:
‘Can’t you see, whoa you’ve misjudged me.’