The Love Letter (54 page)

The giggles were digging in; her coughing was ferocious.

‘What’s the matter, darling?’ Francis looked up and saw the tears on her cheeks, his face suddenly contrite, thinking she was sobbing her heart out. ‘Oh, Legs my poor darling. I’m a brute. Do you want some more water?’

She shook her head, unable to speak or look at him.

Closing the book, he tucked her up in bed, kissed her wet cheek and returned to his chair to read in silence. She could hear the pages turn while she shuddered and convulsed beneath the covers, coughing between giggling spasms, imagining the camp Craggy Island voice still twittering on in his head. At last her laughter subsided and, to her dismay, she found panic and fear still lying beneath the silliness like sharp rocks beneath a high tide, just waiting to rip the heart from her hull.

Sleep was her refuge. The high emotion had already exhausted her. She couldn’t believe it possible to feel this tired. Dosing fitfully, she dreamed that she was sitting on a chamberpot on the main stage at Farcombe Festival while Francis and Kizzy duetted ‘Islands in the Stream’ accompanied by Hector on the bassoon.

For hours Legs’ butterfly-light sleep was punctuated by the pages turning on Francis’s book like wings slowly unfolding, the dreams and thoughts alternating in her mind. Her memory was scatter-gunned all over her head by the infection, and her short term memory had been shot to bits more than the rest, but gradually she was starting to piece together more fragments, although not necessarily in the right order.

Her first real breakthrough that night was that it suddenly seemed terribly important to tell Francis that she had seen Kizzy.

‘She came to see me in London,’ she ranted in the early hours. ‘She’s alive! Isn’t that great?’

‘Calm down, darling,’ Francis leaped up, assuming she was delirious again.

‘She told me how you two tried to make a go of it. She seems so perfect for you. Much better suited than me. It’s so sad. So sad. It’s a sad, sad situation.’

‘Shh.’ He hugged her. ‘I don’t need to hear this.’

But on and on she blustered, coughing and spluttering, desperate to get her point across, although she really only succeeded in repeating Elton John lyrics and saying how pretty and
clever Kizzy was. Somewhere in the midst of her pitch – probably when she thought about Conrad lusting after the ravishing redhead, if the truth was to be told – she began to cry. Soon she was saying one word for every two nose blows, eight hiccups, ten coughs and twenty shudders, still struggling to get her point across. No longer listening, Francis gave her a slug of something in a tiny cup that tasted salty. Whatever it was knocked her out for hours.

She opened her eyes the next morning to see Gopi reading a book with a familiar-looking cover.

Her head was still so soupy with sleepiness it took her almost a full minute to register what it was.

‘It’s out!’ She heaved herself up onto one elbow, then sank back down pathetically as it gave way beneath her.

‘What is out?’ Gopi looked up in alarm, casting a professional eye across her patient as though anticipating a ruptured hernia.

‘Ptolemy Finch and the Raven’s Curse.’
She wriggled up the pillows, trying not to cough.

‘My husband queued all night in Newton Abbot to purchase a copy,’ Gopi informed her, already a third if the way through the book’s six hundred pages. ‘It is quite marvellous. The writer is so clever.’ She set it down and went about checking her charge’s vital signs, making her drink lots of fluids and take her antibiotics.

Because Gopi hardly ever spoke, Legs had assumed her English wasn’t very good. Now she felt ashamed, guessing that, as patients went, she’d been far too ill and deranged to want to strike up a conversation with. She was determined to make amends. She was equally determined to get her hands on that book. Suddenly her year-old letter paled into insignificance. It was lightweight tinder compared to this incendiary device to speed her recovery.

But Gopi was far too engrossed in Ptolemy’s latest adventure to be drawn on any subject for long. Yes, the book was very
good thank you. The Protheroe family seemed very nice from what little she had see of them, yes; and housekeeper Imee was a lovely woman who had made her feel most welcome. Nothing major had happened in the world, no. The weather had been fine since the terrible storms a week earlier. The Royal scandal was still being talked about. Gordon Lapis’s identity was still a hot topic.

‘My money is on Salman Rushdie,’ she said, eagerly turning a page.

Legs coughed so much at this that she thought her lungs were going to turn inside out, and Gopi gave her a draught of Galcodine, telling her she was talking too much.

Letting the nurse read on undisturbed, she sagged back and studied the book’s jacket again. It was the collector’s edition. Ptolemy Finch’s ambiguous trouser bulge had been cleverly disguised by the illustrator adding in his sword Lenore, she noticed groggily, the linctus making her drowsy. The author’s gold embossed name swam in front of her eyes – the letters that made up Gordon Lapis rearranging themselves into Prodigal Son before darkness descended.

Although Legs still felt hellish, she was no longer sleeping for great tracts of time. She napped for just a few minutes before her mind was alert and clanking again, trying to add up dates and memories. The Gordon Lapis launch had already happened. That means I must have been in bed for over a week, she realised in shock.

She started to piece together recent events in the right order at last. Kissing Francis on the clifftop. Kissing Francis in the Book Inn. Kissing Francis behind one of Poppy’s sculptures. She and Francis had done a lot of kissing, she realised in alarm. No wonder she’d given him the wrong impression, letter or no letter. And – oh hell – her mother and Hector were no doubt still shacked up at Spywood Cottage, nakedly discussing their favourite opera
productions and indulging in aphrodisiacs. In Kew, her father would have let all those ready meals pass their sell by date as he pretended he was fine, wasting away in denial in front of BBC Four. Was Ros looking after him at all? Legs wondered. Had she discovered the doggy pee patches on her seagrass in the basement flat yet? Was she still stressing about the rent now that her tenant was jobless?

She closed her eyes, remembering that she had attacked Conrad – or rather the ceiling above him – with an umbrella in the boardroom. There might be charges pressed.

But all the time that her head was racing with a kaleidoscope of recent memories, one face eclipsed the rest, a face she had only seen a few times in her life but which had now stamped itself and its deep, compelling voice in her consciousness so strongly that it was the one she’d been reaching out to touch and hear in her sleep all week. Byrne.

Jago Byrne was Gordon Lapis, the Prodigal Son. She had kissed him too.

Legs was suddenly maddened by the need to know where he was. Sitting up in bed like Linda Blair in
The Exorcist,
only just stopping her head from spinning, she quizzed Gopi frantically. ‘There’s a man staying in the house – a dark-haired man. Have you seen him? He has a long-eared dog with a sad face.’

‘I know of no such man.’ She eyed her warily. Francis paid her very well, and she had strict instructions to say nothing, although she felt bad that the girl was sweet, and had been very ill indeed. ‘I may have seen the dog.’

‘Is he OK?’

‘He has a wet nose and wags his tail. I think that is an indication of health and happiness in such species. I have not seen the man.’

Easily defeated in her weakened state, Legs slumped back into bed and stared out of the window at the scudding clouds.

She heard another page turn followed by an intake of breath.

‘Is it exciting?’ she asked.

‘It is very exciting, yes, but I do not like what he is doing with young Ptolemy.’

‘Tolly’s immortal,’ Legs reminded her. ‘He’ll be fine.’

To her frustration Gopi said no more until it was time for her next dose of drugs.

‘Who’s it dedicated to?’ she demanded after she had knocked back her pills, tinctures and the usual gallons of water.

Gopi checked, ‘A woman called Ann.’

‘May I see?’

Jealously, Gopi handed the book across, marking it with her dark eyes. Legs felt its weight in her hands like a newborn baby that she longed to nurture. Turning the pages made her weightless with the butterflies of anticipation.

For Ann O’Nymity

‘A lover, you think?’ Gopi asked, already pulling the novel back into her care.

‘An old friend,’ Legs watched it disappear into a big handbag as Gopi prepared to clock off her shift. ‘Can you ask Imee a couple of things for me?’ she asked urgently.

‘Of course.’

‘Can you ask her where the basset hound is sleeping? Also does she know where my iPhone is?’

That evening, when Francis produced a fat, dog-eared collection of the Romantic poets, Legs closed her eyes and feigned sleep, shamed by a desire to ask him if he had any meaty crime thrillers in the house.

‘Sleep tight,’ Francis kissed her forehead.

Suddenly her eyes snapped open as another memory was triggered so sharply it seemed to pinch at her skin.

‘Sleep tight,’ she whispered and scrunched her eyes shut again, Byrne’s presence blazing so vividly in her consciousness that her head seemed floodlit inside.

*

Gopi was back the following morning,
Raven’s Curse
just thirty pages from its end. As soon as she’d made sure Legs was alive and well and had tucked her in tightly to ensure she couldn’t kick up a fuss, she opened its covers.

Pinned to the mattress, Legs eyed her hopefully. ‘What did Imee say?’

Gopi didn’t look up from the novel. ‘My friend says that there was a very terrible argument with guns and the man with the long, sad dog with silly ears has left,’ she reported distractedly, already reading.

‘Where is he now, the man with the silly ears and sad dog? I mean the sad man and his silly …’ She struggled to sit up. ‘Where is Byrne?’

‘I didn’t ask.’ She waved a vague hand. ‘I will try to find out at lunchtime.’

But by lunchtime the normally mild-mannered nurse was far too furious to care to play detective. ‘Gordon Lapis is a horrible man!
Ghar ka bhedi lanka dhaye
!’
She threw the book down on the floor, where Legs eyed it like a loose rugby ball on the pitch, ripe for the taking. If only she wasn’t trapped in bed by Gopi’s overtightened sheets and her own frailty.

‘What does that mean?’ she demanded hoarsely as Gopi picked up the capacious handbag.

‘It is a Hindi saying: “A person who betrays his own can bring down Lanka”. It means that an insider can bring down a great city.’

‘What’s Gordon done?’

‘You do not want to know, Allegra. He is a cruel man. Many will hate him now, trust me.’ She stooped to scoop up the book. Legs marked it eagerly with her eyes, convinced that it held essential secrets about its creator, Jago Byrne the prodigal son, and why he had chosen to unmask himself at Farcombe.

‘Can I borrow it?’

‘Certainly. But my husband will read it next, then my sister’s
nephew, two aunts and several of my cousins. They will all hate it. After that, you may borrow it.’

‘Has Byrne left Farcombe?’ Legs asked Francis when he popped in for lunch, bringing her freshly squeezed orange juice.

His smile was giveaway edgy. ‘Legs, darling, I really couldn’t care less.’

‘Are he and Poppy still not speaking?’

‘Au contraire.’
He sat down on the bed. ‘He’s most definitely on her Christmas card list.’

‘What happened during that argument with Hector?’ she demanded, clear-headed now. ‘Gopi said something about guns?’

‘I had no idea Gopi was stoking you up like this; she and Imee are far too close. Legs, darling, you mustn’t worry yourself with family gossip. You’re only just turning the corner.’

But she was like a dog with a bone, fitting given she was starving hungry suddenly. ‘When I was in London, you told me your father had threatened to kill him.’

‘Did I? I forget.’

‘What did Byrne say to him to make him so angry? Did he talk about Brooke Kelly’s accident, or about race fixing? Did he threaten revenge?’

‘Why would he do that?’ Francis looked baffled. ‘As far as I’m aware they were arguing about Poppy and the estate. I only saw the very end of it. What’s all this nonsense about revenge?’

Legs fell silent, aware that she was in danger of giving too much away as her head raced, remembering Byrne’s terrible childhood, the bleakness of Nevermore, his mother abandoning him with a drunken father who was convinced that his career had deliberately been ruined by the man who had stolen her away.

‘It sounded like such a terrible argument, I thought there might be more trouble brewing,’ she said feebly.

‘Well he’s left the house, so let’s not worry about it,’ he said conclusively. ‘Now drink your juice.

Legs did as she was told, already overcome with weariness again. No sooner had she felt her fighting spirit course back through her veins than she felt it gallop off again

‘I want to phone my family,’ she sighed disconsolately.