by Fiona Walker
Including embracing the heir to the estate, Legs thought murderously, appalled by how painfully jealous she felt. Biting her tongue was impossible, although she redirected her anger onto Poppy.
‘Talk about Cupid and Psyche,’ she fumed. ‘Your stepmother’s so bloody manipulative!’
Hearing his old ally give a familiar war cry, Francis let his guard slip for a moment: ‘Godchildren rank higher than stepchildren around here,’ he agreed bitterly.
‘It’s so bloody corrupt, I hate it,’ she huffed in support.
Francis was quick to recover. ‘Actually, Kizzy does know her stuff; she has a double first from Goldsmiths, and worked at Tate Modern for two years, plus jobs in picture research and publishing.’
‘Easily bored, is she?’ Legs sniped.
‘She’s a clever girl,’ he said carefully. ‘She’s made some positive changes.’
‘By putting her own work centre stage?’
‘It’s very good. The Observer called her “a Stevie Smith for the Ecstasy generation”.’
‘Not raving, but drowning,’ Legs sneered, which he pointedly ignored, conciliatory face back in place. She wanted to rage some more, but forced herself to stay practical. ‘What makes you think Kizzy is going to recommend Gordon’s big stunt to the Farcombe committee when you’re proposing you and I stage a romantic reconciliation right under her nose?’
‘Trust me, she’ll be on side.’
She shook her head in confusion, standing up abruptly and wandering towards the clifftop arch, hugging herself. ‘She must love you very much if she’d be prepared to do that.’
He followed her, ‘But are you prepared to do it?’ The question was so heavily loaded she stepped back, almost tripping. He caught her arm, searching her face for an answer.
She found she couldn’t speak, the lump in her throat stealing away her voice.
‘Please agree, Legs,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m only asking you to make believe, not make love.’
‘And will we all live happily ever after?’
A nervous smile touched his mouth. ‘Either that or we’ll wake up and realise it’s just been a terrible dream.’
Looking at his handsome, earnest face, Legs knew with absolute certainty that there was something he wasn’t telling her.
But before she could reply, they heard a high-pitched doggy yelp from the cliffs outside and Francis let out a wail of consternation, ‘Byron’s gone over! Hell! Kizzy will never forgive me if I lose him,’ he wailed, belting out onto the precipice.
‘Unforgivable to let the dog run off, but she’ll forgive you pretending to get back together with the ex,’ Legs muttered before going in pursuit.
The lame little terrier must have been stalking seagulls and lost his footing, as he was now scrabbling to keep a grip on the lip of the cliff, eyes boggling. Francis scrambled after him, sending down a shower of small rocks and scree.
‘Be careful!’ Legs gasped, realising how close to falling he was.
‘Come here, you little rat,’ he growled, edging along a rocky outcrop. But before he could reach the terrier, Byron let out an alarmed yap and disappeared over the cliff completely.
‘No!’ Legs wailed as Francis launched after him, now dangling over the edge so that all she could see were his legs and the soles of his desert boots. ‘Have you caught him?’
‘He’s fallen onto a ledge,’ he called back, voice straining with effort. ‘I can’t … quite … reach him.’ The legs disappeared even more, the toes of his desert boots providing the only security clamping him to the cliff.
Legs jumped forward to grab his ankles, which were hairy and sinewy. He had odd socks on, she noticed, amazed to feel a great groundswell of tenderness bursting out of her. She wanted to lay her cheek against those strong calves and kiss their dusting of blond hairs. But now was not the time, as bigger stones fell and more of the cliff edge crumbled away beneath Francis’s stretching torso. She could see the foam leaping like greedy tongues as the waves lashed the rocks far below.
Byron had stopped barking and was whimpering now, genuinely terrified.
‘Come here!’ Francis demanded in frustration.
‘Have you tried calling him rather than shouting at him?’ Legs suggested.
‘Don’t be ridiculous! Come here you little bastard!’
He sounded just like his father. Legs took her right hand from his ankle.
‘What are you doing?’ he squawked.
‘Searching for chocolate.’ Legs rifled her pockets for a trusty corner of Green & Black’s, softened in the heat beneath its foil.
‘Now is not the time for a snack, Legs,’ he snapped.
Ignoring him, she crept forwards and stretched her arm alongside his, which meant practically lying on top of him as they dangled off the cliff together. ‘Let’s try bribing him with this. And before you say anything, I know chocolate is bad for dogs, but I’m fresh out of Bonios.’
She could just make out the tip of Byron’s nose as he cowered in a small hollow beneath their rocky platform.
‘Here, little fellow – you’ll be OK,’ she soothed. ‘Come on, little Ron. Come and have some choc.’
The nose twitched, sniffed and craned forwards.
In a flash, Francis’s long fingers hooked their way beneath his neckerchief, took a handful of neck scruff and hauled him to safety. The chocolate tumbled into the sea below as dog and rescuers rolled away from the edge to safety, laughing and barking with overjoyed relief.
‘Thank goodness for that,’ Francis exclaimed, looking at Legs over his shoulder with an expression that almost made her fall off the cliff herself. His glittering blue eyes matched the bright patches of sky behind him. He was her teenage crush once more. ‘What a tragedy to die before I could tell you how great it is to see you.’
Legs felt her breath catch.
There was something giddily familiar about lying side by side on the heathery grass staring up at the sky and listening to the waves behind them. As if by habit, both Francis and Legs turned their faces to one another, so close that their noses were almost touching.
Even though he was still clutching an overexcited dog, Francis stretched forwards and kissed her, long lashes lowered over his blue eyes.
It was just the briefest of gestures, as modest as a Disney prince leaning down into the casket to touch his lips against Sleeping Beauty’s rosebud mouth, but Legs felt as though the cliff had crumbled and given way after all as her body spun around on its axis and her head lightened to thin air.
‘Wow.’ Francis pulled away. ‘This is going to be very, very complicated, isn’t it?’
Gazing up at him, realising that his eyes were in fact more pure cobalt than the sky, Legs knew she had come home.
In simpatico, Francis cupped a hand on her cheek. ‘Where are you staying?’
She couldn’t answer, not really caring while she was lying beneath him like this. Staying here in the heather six inches from the precipice sounded good to her right now.
His thumb traced the bone of her jaw. ‘You can’t possibly stay at Spywood. Come to the hall.’
At last, Legs felt the reassuring blade of guilt against her throat as she twisted her face away from his fingers. ‘Will Kizzy be there?’
‘Of course she will; she lives there.’
His no-nonsense answer made her roll deftly away from beneath him and kneel up, straightening her clothes and rubbing her flushed face, horrified at what she’d just let happen and how Conrad would react if he knew. ‘I have other plans. We can talk again later. I have to be somewhere.’ She made a show of looking at her watch, realising too late that she had left it on the edge of the sink in the Ealing basement flat, along with her favourite earrings. She stared blankly at the blue veins running from palm to inner arm for a moment, amazed to find that she could actually see the pulse beating there, a little pressure pad jittering up and down horribly fast.
Francis laughed affectionately. ‘You always forget to wear your watch.�
�� He reached out for her wrist, but she snatched it away.
‘I live for the moment, remember? You always said that was the ultimate example of bad timekeeping. Let’s text. You always said that was the ultimate example of …’
He took the cue, ‘Bad haiku.’
Nodding, she scrambled upright and fled, realising that being one year removed from the thirteen years they’d been a couple was barely enough to stop the love and regret inside melting and boiling to reach flashpoint.
Francis was right; this was going to be very complicated.
Chapter 7
Making progress? Two identical messages awaited Legs on the iPhone, one from Conrad, the other from Gordon’s PA Kelly.
The urge to type ‘First Base’ with hyperbolic honesty was hard to resist. To give herself time to think, she called through to the Book Inn, but the voice at the other end of the line – not one of the regular team of staff she recognised – informed her that it was fully occupied all weekend.
‘Tell Guy it’s Legs North.’ She knew he and Nonny would fit her in, even if it meant bunking up in one of the attics.
‘He’s in the kitchens,’ informed the voice fearfully. ‘Can you call back?’
Wearily, Legs rang off. She had no intention of staying in the hall with Francis, and even less desire to stay at Spywood with the aged, naked adulterers. If she went for a walk along the Eascombe under-cliff to the harbour she could clear her head and pop in on Guy and Nonny at the Book Inn for a drink; they would find her a bed for the night.
As she walked she called Conrad, who was with his kids and clearly didn’t want to speak for long. ‘Easier to text when they’re here for weekends,’ he muttered as teenage voices moaned in the background that he was always on the phone and that they had pressed ‘live pause’. ‘How are you getting on?’
‘Well, Francis definitely wants Gordon on the festival bill …’ she decided to start off positively.
‘That’s great – tell me the details later.’
‘But it’s not that straightfor—’ She realised he’d already rung off.
Furious, she stomped down the cliff path and started along the shingle beach, wobbly on her feet until she reached the under-cliff and perched on the ledge, punching a thumb at her little screen to address Gordon’s PA.
Progress fine.
A reply flew back before she’d pocketed the phone. Please elaborate so I can report more fully to Gordon.
It’s rather complicated.
He will require a full debrief.
She huffed, thinking that it was none of Kelly’s business, let alone Gordon’s. As long as she got him on the programme, surely the details were irrelevant?
She called Daisy, desperate to confide in someone, but the phone rang on unanswered.
All will be fine, she typed to Kelly. Trying to get Gordon star billing at Farcombe, and looks v hopeful. Will update anon.
The large A-sign outside the Book Inn announced that it was closed for a private function that night.
Holidaymakers were out in force along the seafront wearing the curious uniform of the British coastal visitor: pastel-coloured anoraks, patterned wellies and crumpled cotton shorts.
Legs sat on one of the benches overlooking the harbour and thought about Francis, uncertain whether he’d changed or whether she just saw him differently after a year apart. He seemed more mature and self-assured and distinctly sexier. Her innards squeezed deliciously as another aftershock from their kiss fizzed through her. She quashed the sensation and focused hard on a seagull dive-bombing an abandoned wrapper.
Her phone was chiming with yet another email, this time from Gordon himself.
With whom are you negotiating? Are you still unarmed and driving a red car? I hope this is being handled discreetly. GL.
Legs glared at the seagull, irritated that he wanted such forensic detail, although the joke made her smile, despite herself. She could never entirely tell whether Gordon’s offbeat humour was quirky wit or just madness, but she loved its rare appearances.
I have a close personal contact within the Protheroe family, she assured him.
I abhor nepotism. He popped up on live messaging now, no longer making her smile.
She sighed even more irritably, wondering whether he really wanted to appear at the festival at all. But much as she longed to call his bluff, she knew it wasn’t worth the risk.
If you would prefer to make contact yourself, it can be arranged.
That will not be necessary yet. I have heard the family can be extremely difficult to approach; I simply want assurance that this is being handled with the utmost caution and tact.
Tact! She fumed. Tact! The benevolent Hector Protheroe is currently shacked up with my mother in a clifftop love nest, and I’m about to upset the family applecart yet further by inventing a romance with his son to break up this sorry union, which may also result in breaking my own heart, but will almost certainly get you top billing at the festival.
However, all she angrily typed was: The Protheroe family has always tempted fate and they can make dangerous bedfellows. Rest assured, I am taking every precaution possible, including parking the red car in gear with the handbrake on. I am also nothing if not actful. Too late she realised that she had omitted the first ‘t’ in ‘tact’. It seemed fitting, given that she was asking to act the performance of her life. What the hell. And armless, she added.
Do you take nothing seriously? Gordon stormed back.
Biting her lip, Legs tapped at her screen as persistently as the seagull in front of her pecking its beak at the wrapper until she’d written more supplicating apologies and promises of utter professionalism than every politician ever accused of sleaze or expenses fiddling, footballer accused of match fixing and newspaper editor accused of phone-tapping combined. Satisfied, she pressed send. That should appease the irascible bugger.
He seemed slightly placated, replying a few moments later: I don’t doubt your professionalism, Allegra, although Conrad’s is another matter. Is your close personal contact Francis Protheroe?
He was a clever bugger as well as a capricious one, she realised, typing: Yes.
And he is the ex you said you could never work alongside? His memory was far too good, as were his quick-fire Googling skills. Good looking guy.
He clearly already had a picture of Francis in front of him, no doubt one of the many dashing shots that had accompanied gushing pieces in the Mail and Telegraph; she’d done the internet searches herself enough times to know how easy they were to find. And if one looked hard enough – as Gordon no doubt had – it was even possible to link her name with Francis’s. Thus Gordon had rumbled Conrad’s shabby tactics already.
Francis is highly professional, and already right behind you coming here, she assured him, eager to set his mind at rest. But he’d already signed out of their chat, no doubt to blast out a furious email to Conrad berating him for sending his silly, wisecracking assistant to do the job of a professional negotiator and agent.
The seagull had tired of the wrapper and flown off, a silhouette crossing the golden glow of the lowering sun. In the harbour, the masts clanked and jingled, and beyond the sea wall, waves on the shingle hissed and frothed like writhing serpents.
Walking into the glare of the sun with her head lowered, Legs trailed back up the cliff path to the jinxed red car and sat behind the wheel, willing herself to drive to Bude where there might be a B&B with vacancies even in high summer.
Yet she couldn’t face driving away from her clifftop, such a familiar corner of her childhood. It was as though she and the Honda were held tightly there by magnets.
It took almost an hour of wrestling with her conscience before she called her father, still not knowing whether she could bring herself to tell him what was going on, yet desperate to check that he was all right. But as soon as she told Dorian that she was in Farcombe he pre-empted any clumsy attempt to declare the affair and claimed in his charming, vague manner to be well aware of
the situation, thank you, and dealing with it in his own way. Hot-headed and highly emotional, Legs had never been able to penetrate Dorian’s quiet, formal starchiness for all their unconditional love. He was a man who might weep through Madame Butterfly on Radio 3, and yet clammed up totally if asked about his feelings.
‘Your mother will come back in her own good time’ was all he would say.
No matter how much she huffed, puffed, barracked and demanded that he come to North Devon in person, he refused to engage. The only moment in which she heard his voice sharpen from its customary soft, gentlemanly clip was when she mentioned her sister.
‘No need to involve Ros,’ he snapped. ‘She simply will not understand all this.’
‘And I do, I suppose?’
‘You’re the guilty one, Allegra’
‘I’m what?’ she bleated.
‘You always feel guilty about things and get personally involved, but you are equally quick to forgive; Ros is very moral and black and white, as you know. This would hurt her very deeply. She takes after your mother on that front. They’re both martyrs to their cause.’
‘Mata Hari in Mum’s case,’ she grumbled.
Only after the call ended did it occur to Legs that her father had let something slip, given her a rare personal insight. It seemed strange that he aligned Ros and Lucy so closely; Legs had always been the Mummy’s girl, after all. She felt curiously orphaned by the drama, her entire halcyon childhood cast in doubt. She longed more than anything to speak with Daisy, but there was still no answer, nor did Conrad reply to texts. The only persistent contact on her phone was Gordon, blithering on in a long email about red cars and stalkers. He obviously had writer’s block again, hadn’t managed to contact Conrad and seemed to have been on the laudanum.
Conrad has no right to ask you to do this, he raged. As if the scheming Protheroes were not enough to contend with, he knows that Ptolemy Finch fans are extremely clever, especially the cranky ones. My real identity might remain one of the literary world’s greatest kept secrets – for now – but an obsessive few have long made it their business to know all about Gordon Lapis’s editor, publicist and marketing team at the publishers, and even my literary agent and assistant. They have names, photographs, phone numbers, home addresses. Access to Google and a clever mind makes for easy detective work. You are highly conspicuous, Allegra, especially in a red car.