The Love Letter (6 page)

‘But they’ve already said no, haven’t they?’

‘Emphatically,’ he sighed. ‘However, Gordon won’t let it drop. I even spoke with the new festival director personally last night, some old bag called Hawkes.’

‘Yolande,’ Legs groaned in recognition. Yolande Hawkes had been known as Bird of Prey when working in the Square Mile because she made grown men fall to their knees and beg for mercy. She had now turned from hedge funds to high culture with the belief that a brutal pruning of all but the purest art forms was required.

‘Any luck?’ she ventured, although she already knew the answer.

‘Turned down flat.’ He looked predictably offended. ‘She refuses a face-to-face meeting. She won’t even put it to the committee; saying the list is closed.’

‘It is mixed arts,’ Legs pointed out fairly. ‘They can only have what, eight or nine writers appearing each year, most of those poets. It’s predominantly music and visual art.’

‘No doubt Gordon’s deliberately suggested it as a venue because he’s convinced we’ll never get him a slot,’ Conrad said, draining his glass and straightening up to fix her with that intense, green-eyed stare that always had such a seductive effect on her, her bra practically undid itself. ‘But we have a secret weapon, of course. You know Farcombe very well indeed.’

She nodded carefully. ‘Hector and Poppy Protheroe are old friends of the family.’

‘Think you can swing it?’

Legs stared at him wide-eyed. ‘Hector is Francis’s father.’

‘Exactly! You two were together for years. You must be practically like a daughter to the Protheroes. You speak their language. Talk to them, Legs. Make them see what a huge benefit this could be for them. The event will be a sell out; the television coverage alone will be priceless.’

Legs thought about Hector, six foot four of white-haired patronage and idiosyncrasy. He would love crowds flocking to his beautiful coastal retreat; he’d play his bassoon to the long queues of Ptolemy Finch fans like a busker and chat up all the prettier women. Hector was unbothered by the festival’s content apart from the music, which he selected himself. But his wife Poppy was different. Legs doubted she would allow Gordon across the threshold unless he’d paid for his own ticket.

Then Legs thought about Francis, remembered his handsome, fallen-angel face just before he’d turned to leave their shared flat a year ago, the hurt and betrayal that pinched every muscle tight and drained his normally golden skin of colour. It had been the first time she had seen him cry since he was fourteen. And she had wept too; she sometimes still did. The sense of guilt never left, and it could still render her breathless with regret when caught unawares.

Returning Conrad’s challenging look, Legs shook her head. ‘I won’t do it. It’s not worth trying.’

‘C’mon, where’s the fighting spirit I love?’ he goaded.

‘I’m done with fighting,’ she said wearily, thinking of all the rows, the tears and recriminations of the previous summer. ‘And I wouldn’t be welcome. Francis is living at Farcombe again now; he manages the farming side.’ She looked away, alarmed that her eyes were already itchy with impending tears. Despite his academic bent, Francis had always loved the stock-rearing and land
management of Farcombe, largely because it was an element in which Hector and Poppy had no interest whatsoever and didn’t interfere; it also suited his solitary nature to spend swathes of time alone on the land there, quoting Eliot and Joyce at the flock. He liked to joke that he put the culture into agriculture, which was quite witty for Francis, she remembered fondly.

‘At least call him,’ Conrad urged.

‘He won’t want to speak to me.’ The familiar Francis had long gone in her mind, replaced with one part ogre whipped up by self-justification, two parts lost soul conjured by her guilt and one part dashing blond playboy as depicted by the media who had latched onto the heir to the Protheroe fortunes in recent months, branding this son of famous, maverick businessman Hector an ‘eligible bachelor’.

‘Go down there for the weekend,’ Conrad was suggesting.

‘Are you
kidding
?’

‘Your family still have their holiday cottage, don’t they? Take a long break next weekend and see how the land lies.’

The thought of Spywood Cottage brought a pang of familiar yearning, the desire to revisit it never far from the surface. But Legs knew that to go there again would cause ten times the pain stored in the photograph albums that she kept hidden in the ottoman at the foot of her bed, and which contained more than half a lifetime of shared memories sealed in their plastic pages.

‘My mother’s there; she spends all summer painting.’

All the more reason to visit.’

‘We’re not that sort of family – she likes to …’ She drew back her lips in a pensive smile. ‘It’s complicated.’

It was never going to be easy to casually mention the fact her mother, for all her apparent middle-class, middle-aged conservatism, liked to be naked. Lucy North wasn’t a conventional naturist and shunned shared nudity; a group ping-pong game in a seaside camp was her idea of hell. Yet she adored her solitary painting holidays in Devon, liberated from the constraints of
clothes in the tiny hideaway cottage and its secluded clifftop garden. At one time, the Norths would have all gathered at Spywood for August, but since Legs’ break-up with Francis, Ros had used her and Nico’s church commitments and Dorian his shop as the excuses that freed Lucy to enjoy her unfettered water-colour breaks. These days, the family felt increasingly awkward about intruding.

‘I’ll never understand the English,’ Conrad laughed, always at his most South African when he was Brit-bashing. ‘You have these little bolt-holes just a couple of hours away, and you never use them.’

‘Farcombe is Francis’s family home.’

‘We’re not living in a feudal society any more!’

‘Actually, Farcombe still basically is. The estate owns most of the village.’

Tucking her knees beneath her chin, Legs crammed a scone into her mouth and then found her eyes watering as she struggled to eat it whole, cheeks bulging and crumbs flying.

This conversation was starting to really annoy her. Aside from the fact that he’d procured cucumber sandwiches on a sundrenched blanket, Conrad was being about as romantic as he would be on a Monday morning desk briefing over a Starbucks skinny latte, and just as ruthless.

‘I want you to get Gordon onto the Farcombe Festival bill, whatever it takes.’

It took a great deal of effort to swallow the scone as she coughed and spluttered, ‘Are you seriously asking me to try to build bridges with my ex for Gordon’s sake?’

‘Why not? Look at Madeleine and me. We’re professional about our friendship now. We’ve moved on.’

‘You might have moved on. She still wants you back as the head of the family.’

‘Rubbish.’ He rolled over onto his back. ‘We’re co-parents, and have business interests in common. We have to be adult about things.’

‘Francis and I have no children or business interests in common.’ She could cringe when she remembered their youthful dreams of setting up in publishing together, of raising a huge, clever family at Farcombe.

‘
This
is business, Legs. You hold the key to releasing Gordon in a controlled environment, and keeping Ptolemy Finch as a national treasure. And you have Gordon’s trust now, which gives you a very rare power indeed; don’t abuse it.’

There was a long pause while Legs angrily demolished the rest of the truffle chocolate brownies, still barely able to believe that he would ask her to do this. Gordon Lapis was an exasperating sod, she reflected; he controlled them all with his big money wizardry. Having his trust felt more like a curse than a gift as it increasingly impinged upon her personal space. Yet his books were so magical, he was already engraved into her imaginative world. She only wished she shared Ptolemy Finch’s ability to see into the future.

‘What if Francis still has feelings?’ she asked quietly.

Conrad selected a miniature pink-iced cupcake with strawberries arranged prettily on the top. ‘And you?’

‘I’m with
you.’
It was all too easy to say. They shared the present tense for all its occasional tension; Legs lived for the moment; Conrad, with his immediacy and drive, made every moment count. Although her feelings for Francis remained painfully complicated, she survived by keeping the two entirely separate.

Now Conrad was smiling wolfishly into her eyes, reminding her how sexy and carefree his road was through the deep dark woods.

‘Good girl.’ He held out the cake. ‘As long as that’s understood, we can trust one another. Now eat this up. I’m taking you shopping. You need a weekend wardrobe. Send Gordon an email telling him we’re trying a new approach.’

Quashing visions of Julie Ocean going deep undercover at the behest of her love-interest Superintendent, she did as she was told,
sending the message as instructed and adding,
Conrad attends the same Tai Chi class as myself in Hyde Park, hence we were able to discuss this today,
in a vague attempt at protecting her personal life.

He replied as they were packing up the last of their picnic:
Golden cock stands on one leg; white stork spreads wings. Draw bow to shoot tiger. GL

‘What’s that all about?’ Conrad read it over her shoulder in alarm.

‘I think they’re Tai Chi moves.’

He laughed, drawing her close and looking into her face in that way that once again made her bra feel set to ping open spontaneously. ‘Good girl. He likes you. He needs his daily Leg-Up.’

‘His PA keeps telling me off for distracting him.’

‘Kelly.’ His eyes sparkled. ‘Protects Gordon’s interests with admirable ferocity, don’t you find? We need a forthright character like that on the team.’

Professional and personal jealousy prickled at her temples. ‘Must be a saint to put up with a boss like him,’ she said begrudgingly, having admired Kelly’s clucky pragmatism, but still feeling that an attention-seeking, solitary genius like Gordon would thrive with more understanding, like Ptolemy, who had evolved from quarrelsome introvert to brave boy warrior through five books with the support of his amazing, intuitive sidekick Purple.

Conrad started to kiss cake crumbs from her lips. ‘And you should know all about putting up with a bastard of a boss.’ He still had the ability to melt her pelvis to softest putty and tie her intestines in knots.

The breeze had dropped, making the heat of the sun glow on her skin along with the sexual charge that now coursed through her, and she felt as though she was wearing a bodysuit spun from caressing fingers and electric kisses.

Soon Legs no longer cared about the impish, white-haired sorcerer and his reclusive creator. By the time Conrad found the biscuit fragments lodged by her collarbone, she had vanquished
thoughts of Ptolemy Finch, Gordon Lapis and even Francis from her mind.

Sneaking into the basement flat past Ros with several bulging Browns bags wasn’t easy, especially as her sister had spotted that the wedding dress was missing and clearly suspected it was in the bags, possibly in several sections, like a dismembered corpse.

‘There’ve been three bids on it on eBay already,’ she reported from the balcony. ‘Is it still in your flat?’

‘Yes! I’ll bring it up later.’

‘Coming for supper?’

‘Sure! Just got to – er – check emails and stuff first. Make some calls. Have a bath.’ Fetch your wedding dress out of the garden shed, she added with silent trepidation.

Safely locked behind her front door, she hurried to turn on her laptop, and groaned as she saw that bidding for the dress had already reached several hundred pounds. Did people have no taste?

Gordon had left yet more research queries in her inbox about Julie Ocean’s character:
Do you add salt to food? What do you watch on television? What are your secret vices? How would you react to being held hostage?

Legs sent cursory replies:
No salt, reality rubbish, buying wedding dresses on eBay, I’d crack bad jokes for a week and then crack up.
Then she turned her focus to rescuing the Ditchley dress.

There was no door directly linking the basement flat to the garden because its level was so much lower. Like an SAS commando, Legs unlocked the security grille and silently rolled it back before wriggling out through her bathroom window into the rosebed and shuffling around the garden out of sight until she reached the shed. Just a few feet away, Ros’s kitchen windows were wide open, wafts of frying onions and garlic accompanied by the soothing sound of vespers on Radio 3.

The dress already smelled of weedkiller and compost. Even in
the dim light of the shed window, Legs could see that the hem was grubby and tattered from her run around Ealing, and the bodice lace ripped, with several pearl-encrusted embroidery flowers now missing. The secateurs had left the stays cut to tufty shreds. She swallowed guiltily and carefully bore it back across the garden like an army medic carrying a wounded soldier back from a battlefield.

It was tricky conveying a farthingale, hooped petticoats and several acres of silk back to her basement undetected, especially when the dress kept catching on the rose bushes or trailing through the beds.

At last she fed it all through the window and clambered in with it.