by Fiona Walker
At that moment, Julie Ocean stepped back into the Book Inn and started speaking to Legs via hidden wire in urgent tones.
‘So she’s not lived there long?’ Legs relayed the voice in her head.
Nonny shook her head. ‘She only moved in a fortnight ago, didn’t you know? She rented a room with Justin and Jon before that, the couple in the converted chapel. They say she’s very odd. She eats raw fish at least three times a week.’
‘Nothing odd about that. I love sushi. It was my sister’s wedding diet,’ said Legs, as Julie Ocean then demanded: ‘C’mon, Nonny, nobody round here seriously believes she’s a mermaid.’
Nonny fixed her with a wise look. ‘This is Farcombe; there are people in this village who still leave bowls of milk out for the pixies.’
Pierced Tongue was taking a long time to wipe the bar-top nearby. Nonny shooed her away to check on the chips order before whispering: ‘She’s been seen swimming naked on the full moon spring tide, and she sits on the shelf rock at Fargoe headland singing some nights.’
‘Sea shanties?’
‘No, Kate Bush hits.’
‘Does she ever sing in here?’ Legs asked jealously, suddenly wondering if she duetted with Francis. ‘Don’t Give Up’ perhaps?
But Nonny was shaking her head and laughing. ‘She’s got a voice like a foghorn. Quite handy for keeping boats off the rocks, I imagine.’
‘Does she have a deep singing voice?’ Legs asked ‘Manly, would you say?’
‘Not particularly.’ Nonny gave her a curious look. ‘Although that Scottish accent is definitely phoney. The regulars call her “the furrener” and think her poetry is the Devil’s work, although it’s actually quite good. You know she’s been called a Stevie Smith for the—’
‘Ecstasy generation. Yes, I had heard. Why do the locals mistrust her so much?’
‘They like to have someone to blame for storms, shipwrecks and poor broadband coverage. It used to be Poppy Protheroe, but she hasn’t been out of the house for years which doesn’t give them much to gossip about. Kizzy’s her natural successor.’
‘But Poppy’s only child was a son.’
‘There’s blood between them, trust me,’ Nonny said darkly. ‘They can smell it round here.’
‘Ealing’s much the same,’ Legs joked to hide her mounting concern. ‘I blame knife crime.’
‘Kizzy was very sweet when she first arrived, all scruffy plaits and bicycle clips like Pippi Longstocking, but as soon as she got into that festival mindset, she affected this avant-garde persona, dressing like a man and trying to set up a “literary salon” in the bar here with Édith.’
‘And she dressed like a man, you say?’ Legs jumped on the clue, Julie Ocean still breathing down the wire at her.
‘Briefly, but I think it was a fashion thing. Édith who was working the androgynous look at the time and Kizzy followed suit – literally – like a schoolgirl copying the cool sixth-formers. Then she had a huge row with her parents – that’s when she moved out of their house and into the chapel and started with the moonlit swimming and singing.’
‘Do you know what the row was about?’
‘No idea, but that’s when the Black Widow of Bideford rumours started up. Then, before we knew it, she was dressing in short skirts and flirting with Francis.’
Legs narrowed her eyes.
‘Funny thing is, nobody really saw the Kizzy and Francis thing coming,’ Nonny went on. ‘He was always in here drowning his sorrows. So was his father. But they used to avoid the poetry nights like mad. Kizzy had her own little clique like Jacinta and Ingrid from the festival office, Carl from the bookshop, and of course Édith and Jax when they were here.’
‘There was no instant spark?’
She shook her head. ‘None. Their paths must have crossed dozens of times in here, but I never saw them speak. Francis just sat at the bar staring into a wine glass, talking about you. He’s not a flirt like his father; he falls in love for life, like a swan.’
Legs’ guilty heart squeezed on cue, despite Julie Ocean tutting sardonically down the wire that real men lamented lost love over vodka at the very least, rare malt at best, and certainly not house white.
She kept remembering Francis saying of Kizzy, we all have confidences we choose not to share. She has hers and I have mine.
‘The villagers are very protective of Francis,’ Nonny was saying. ‘He can be a pompous git at times, but we all trust his integrity. Nobody around here believes Kizzy will make him happy. Some even think she’ll spell the end of the Protheroe family.’
‘How do you mean?’ Legs gulped, already imagining grisly predictions of bloodbaths at the hall.
But Nonny giggled naughtily. ‘Nobody would call those hips childbearing. Guy says she’ll need a “gestational carrier” to mix the Black Widow’s genes with Protheroe blood.’
‘Sounds like one of his cocktail recipes,’ Legs smiled weakly.
A bowl of chips was plonked beside her. The aioli fumes were so garlicky they almost blew her off her barstool.
Nonny glanced at her watch and stood up. ‘I must get back.’
‘No!’ Legs protested, barely started on witness cross-examination. She had to know more about the circumstances of Francis and Kizzy getting together.
But Nonny was already kissing her farewell. ‘Good luck tonight. Have another cocktail on the house, and rest assured everyone here will be really happy when you and Francis are together again. We are so relieved to have you back. You’re saving his life.’ She handed over the phone and blew more kisses before heading back to her office.
‘No pressure then,’ Legs breathed to herself, noticing that Tongue Piercing had already lined up a fresh Once Upon a Time alongside the chips. She felt ungrateful asking for tea and biscuits now, so thanked her and took a sip before coughing so much her eyes streamed. It was almost neat brandy. At least it counteracted the taste of garlic.
She switched on her phone and checked her messages.
There were tens of texts from friends not realising that she was out of London, wondering what she was up to over the weekend. Francis had texted no less than a dozen times, clearly panicking that she wouldn’t be there that evening.
Scrolling down the screen, she saw voicemail notifications from him, Ros, Daisy and Conrad.
Then she spotted an email from Gordon sent late the previous night, marked with a red exclamation mark, with the simple subject line ‘You & me’. The first line leaped out at her: As one who has sold their soul, dear Allegra, I urge you to lock up your red car and walk away from it and from this situation …
She opened it and baulked as she realised it was several screens long.
Do not underestimate the past. It fashions our lives, and we wear what parts of it that still suit us, forgetting the way we really looked and that so much recollection is the Emperor’s New Clothes. To reveal the truth is to undress in public.
Legs had been thinking a lot that evening about the dress she had worn to that May Ball. Now she reread the paragraph, anxious that the message between the lines was that she no longer suited crochet and would look stupidly naked.
But Gordon could see far beyond glad rags;
Some of us even take the devils we know as bedfellows so we can shrug off our memories with the lights out. You wear your devil-may-care attitude like a mask, dear Allegra. Please don’t cover your pretty face.
Her eyes ran back and forwards along the lines, wondering at his insight … we take the devils we know as bedfellows … The poignancy of his words astounded her, and their personalised kindness. How she’d misjudged Gordon Lapis, the clever and neurotic recluse. Of course anybody capable of creating Ptolemy Finch had to have a caring side. She felt suddenly unworthy of the Curmudgeonly One’s time and care.
Leaving the email half read because it was making her cry, Legs quickly scrolled back to her sent folder and confirmed her worst suspicions: before her phone battery had conked out on the night she’d slept in her
car, she had sent the message she’d intended for Conrad to his client instead, or rather to Gordon’s PA, who had clearly forwarded it straight on. She’d never trust Kelly again. Her own words mortified her: If you want your star to appear here, then I must get into bed with them all. This is hell. Please rescue me. xxx
Taking a huge slug of Once Upon a Time followed by several garlicky chips to take the taste away, she dared herself to return to his reply once more.
My cloak of anonymity is that of a coward not a superhero, Allegra, his message continued, I have never wished to reveal my true face. It is of no great merit, and it is haunted by the past; its biography of lines carry no punches, each one a tributary to self indulgence. But you have given me laughter lines of late, and for that I am unspeakably grateful as I prepare to smile for the cameras.
At that moment, the dog walker in the corner stood up and passed behind her, placing the newspaper on the pile lying beside her on the bar top. Folded back out of order, it flopped open across the phone in her palm.
Ptolemy Finch Creator to be Unveiled! shouted a headline, alongside a still from one of the movies starring the now super-famous child actor Con O’Mara who played the title role.
She snatched up her phone again and pressed the speed dial.
‘Taking the kids back,’ Conrad answered stiffly on the car’s Bluetooth. ‘Keep it short.’
‘You bastard!’
There was a tittering from the back seat at the other end. Conrad barked for silence. ‘What?’
‘It’s all over the Sundays that Gordon will be at Farcombe Festival in person.’
‘Couldn’t ask for better publicity, huh? We were too late for the first editions, but everybody’s running it now, and it’s been on every news bulletin today.’
‘But it hasn’t been formally confirmed by the committee yet!’
‘They’d look bloody fools to back out now.’
‘What does Gordon think about it being leaked to the press?’
‘It was his idea.’
Legs took a few moments to absorb this, head spinning. He must have told Conrad what to do straight after sending his email to her, an email she’d failed to respond to or acknowledge. She had let him down so badly. Barracking Conrad would achieve nothing; this was as much her fault as it was his.
Then she stiffened as she realised she could hear a woman’s voice on the line too, demanding: ‘Is that her?’
There was a lot of muffling and clunking, then Conrad said ‘must go’ and cut the call.
Fuming, Legs read the rest of Gordon’s message, feeling ashamed: There is a sting in my tale, trust me, he carried on. Far better to choose my own stage on which to uncloak than to find myself taken by surprise and forcibly stripped of my anonymity. I am grateful for your help thus far, but I insist that I take it from here; Julie Ocean is off the case. Take your leave of Farcombe,Allegra. There is no need to get in bed with anybody. Sleep tight. Your friend, GL.
Oh poor Gordon. This was torture for him. A tear ran down her nose and splashed on the screen.
In a daze, she drained her Happy Ever After and comfort-ate the rest of the chips before burping so toxically she could almost see the rum and garlic fumes lingering around her. At least it backed off Pierced Tongue, who was doing her bar-wiping thing again.
Retreating to a quiet corner, she rang Francis. The joy in his voice when he took her call was in such direct contrast to Conrad that she felt another wave of loving nostalgia.
‘We’re all waiting around for this Jay Goburn chap. I hope he’s the big philanthropist Poppy promises. I also secretly hope he’s gay. They’ve been exchanging adoring emails for months, and the last thing we need is another love affair starting up among the oldies. Please tell me you’re coming to supper?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘You must, Legs!’ He took a deep, measured breath that told her he was about to recite something.
‘OK, I’ll come,’ she quickly intervened, more determined than ever to cut through the verse to the plain truth. It was time to find out what they really meant to each other. Julie Ocean might be off the case, but Allegra North was still on a mission.
‘You darling girl.’
She folded the edges of the newspaper in front of her, surprised by the punch of guilt that now hit her for ignoring Gordon’s advice. ‘How did the committee meeting go?’
‘We scraped through by one vote. The old guard were up in arms about Lapis, as you can imagine, especially given today’s headlines. There was lots of chuntering about selling out. Then bloody Édith rolled up at the last minute and abstained, telling Kizzy to abstain too. I could have killed them both, but Poppy was marvellous, kept her cool and convinced Kizzy to change her vote.’
‘I thought Kizzy was behind Gordon coming?’ Legs baulked, realising now how much this must be hurting her. She wondered whether to tell Francis that she’d spotted her outside the solicitors’ offices in Farcombe, but decided against it, knowing it sounded paranoid.
‘She’s behaving very erratically today. It didn’t help that Édith had a shouting match with my father across the committee table as soon as she arrived, saying that she would kill anyone who treated her like he’s treating Poppy. Then Dad started barracking her about Jax, who it turned out was just outside the door. It all got rather personal. In the end, Poppy threw a glass of water over them both to shut them up, but missed and it went over Kizzy. You know how short-sighted she is.’
‘So Poppy and Hector seem no closer to a rapprochement?’
‘Not remotely. Poppy’s still threatening to cancel the festival if my father doesn’t come home; I think she’s waiting on tonight to make her final decision. She wants order seen to be restored.’
Legs closed her eyes and breathed slowly, almost asphyxiating herself with garlic, before she ventured, ‘I am not going to fake anything, Francis.’
There was a long pause. She felt the brandy drumming in her veins, holding up emotional flashcards that she didn’t dare read out loud. I’m not sure I love Conrad; was it ever more than lust? I so loved what we had, Francis, but was it ever more than teenage dreams?
‘No faking. This is do or die,’ Francis agreed in a voice of such immediacy and intimacy that she hugged the phone to her ear, remembering the hours they had racked up on mobile bills as students, endlessly pushing their top-up cards into cashpoints to buy enough credit time to say goodbye.
Yet now she rang off as fast as a bankrupt with a cheery ‘I’ll see you later!’, unsettled by the way nostalgia kept warping her thoughts. She was also worried by his ‘do or die’ line, which didn’t sound like Francis at all. She tried to remember what it came from and was almost sure it was Robert Burns, part of a bloodthirsty, patriotic anthem about slaying tyrants and usurpers. Francis, who had never been beyond Edinburgh, was no Scottish Nationalist. The only Scot she knew of in Farcombe right now was Kizzy. Images of Kizzy the man flashed before her eyes, a diminutive, sinewy kilted redhead in blue face-paint waving a skean dhu about.
It made her shudder. She needed Julie Ocean onside, with Jimmy as backup. Instead she now just had a crocheted dress, transparent underwear and a promise to Francis to keep. Do or die.
She picked up the newspaper again and checked her horoscope, which was lousy, predicting conflicts, bad decisions and even disaster.
Legs trailed upstairs to Skit.
Instead of boosting her confidence, the Once upon a Times had made her feel sluggish and drained. She lay down on her bed for a moment to gather her thoughts, trying to distract herself with a manuscript she had brought in from the car. It was the crime thriller Gordon Lapis had forwarded onto her, written by his fan, Delia Meare.
The prose style was all over the place, with no punctuation to speak of. There were two spelling errors and a split infinitive in the first paragraph, followed by two grisly murders in less than a page. Usually this would lead to Legs casting it aside without another thought. Her rule of thumb was that if there were
more than three grammatical errors before the first murder, Conrad wouldn’t look at it twice. But there was something absolutely compelling about the way this one was written, however ludicrous, that she read on.
Both victims were redheads, both disembowelled, their bodies left in shopping trolleys on piers. Legs wondered vaguely how one got a stiff in a trolley up a pier undetected.
It was, she decided, a very promising start. There was an idiosyncratic wit to it she couldn’t help liking. She let out a garlic burp and turned to page two, on which yet another redhead died, this time left in a DIY store trolley on a harbour wall. The writer’s style was absolutely gripping.
She was in danger of becoming seriously hooked when she flipped over page three and howled with frustration as she realised the author had committed the heinous sin of sending non-consecutive chapters. Action had suddenly skipped ahead ten chapters, and she found herself reading through a spine-chillingly grisly scene set in a meat fridge, with even less punctuation. No longer able to concentrate, she gathered together the pages, now feeling quite sick, although whether that was from too much brandy or murder overkill was hard to tell. Her eyelids were leaden and the muggy air weighed down on her chest like hot, wet towels.
She put the manuscript on her bedside table. Seconds later she was asleep.
She awoke to the sound of her phone ringing ‘Teenage Kicks’. She checked the time and realised, to her horror, that it was just a few minutes before she was due at the hall.
‘Please tell me you’re coming,’ Francis whispered breathlessly. ‘All hell’s broken loose here. I need you.’
‘I’m coming,’ she reassured him. Scattering The Girl Who Checked Out far and wide, she scrambled from the bed, heart bursting with pride and gratitude that he could still trust her.
Chapter 15
With no time left to get ready, the crocheted dress went unaccessorised, and Legs barely graced her face with more than a dab of lipstick and mascara. In truth she looked a great deal better than she would have after yet more hours of pampering, she realised as she gave herself a quick glance in the mirror. Her hair was truly bedhead-ruffled and her cheeks pink, skin radiant now that it had calmed down from the previous evening, leaving a healthy sun-kissed glow. She belted out of the Book Inn barefoot during its busy Happy Ever After Hour, carrying her killer heels.