by Fiona Walker
One line winged back. Don’t come here. GL
Gordon Lapis. She stared at his name in the Sender box for a long time. Gordon Lapis.
She’d always assumed he was old because he was so wise and opinionated, but so was Byrne, and he was her own generation. That dry wit was so distinctive, the sense of fair play and the brusque charm unique to them both for one reason; they were the same person. Jago Byrne was Gordon Lapis.
Grabbing a pen, she wrote out the letters G-O-R-D-O-N-L-A-P-I-S in a big circle and then started rearranging them.
Prodigal Son.
None of those clever, obsessive Ptolemy Finch fans had ever spotted it, she realised with a gasp.
No wonder Gordon had been so insistent that he had to make his first public appearance at Farcombe. He was going to show Poppy what a success her son had made of his life. Would he bask in the schadenfreude of the moment?
But even as she thought it, Legs knew it didn’t ring true of Byrne, who was so intense and private, and had only agreed to the Reveal at all under the greatest duress. She knew she should have protected him, instead she’d paved his way to hell. She closed her eyes and groaned as she remembered drunkenly boasting about Gordon’s forthcoming apparence that first night she and Byrne shared a table in the Book Inn. He’d been so rude about the books, calling them formulaic – and she had flirted so shamelessly. Then her eyes snapped open as she remembered him telling her, ‘I am about to lose my life.’
He’d grown up believing that Hector had crippled his father. Now he was back, was he planning to get even? She heard his words in her head again, that deep Irish burr: ‘When I was a little boy, I thought he was the Devil’.
She felt clammy with fear despite the cloying heat of the day. How far was he prepared to go to take revenge for Brooke’s accident, she wondered. She had to stop him.
I know who you are, she emailed again with shaking fingers. And I know why you are about to lose your life, Byrne. I am so sorry. It’s all my fault. I’ll make it better.
Two words came back. Stay away.
Queuing up behind it, Conrad had sent a curt message from his BlackBerry. Your ten minutes are up and my ten inches are up for tender.
With a sob, she ran towards the boardroom knowing that the only thing she was going to tender was her resignation, from both her job and her love affair.
Another storm was breaking outside. Rain was lashing the glass roof as she crossed the gallery around the big office block’s atrium. Somebody had left a wet golfing umbrella puffed out to dry on the rails. It was printed with Gordon Lapis’s first four covers. She grabbed it like Ptolemy plucking up his faithful sword, Lenore.
It didn’t help that Conrad was already ready for action, leaning back on the chair at the far end of the board table, flies lowered to release his expectant hard on.
‘Have you been singing in the rain?’ He took in the umbrella with surprise.
‘I’m having a Mary Poppins moment.’ She lifted her chin.
‘How thrilling.’ He was tapping his gold fountain pen on the sleek, polished beech of the board table. ‘Now slip under here. I have something to pop in you.’
Realising he wanted her to approach him on hands and knees beneath the table, Legs let out a soft laugh and instead, she climbed on board it.
Conrad looked both alarmed and highly excited as she clanked towards him, scattering notepads and corporate goodies that had been laid out for a big foreign publisher the agency were hosting later.
She stopped a metre short of him and looked up. The false ceiling was made up of opaque illuminated panels. She tried one with the sharp end of her brolly and it shattered beautifully.
‘What are you doing?’ Conrad yelped, leaping up from his chair.
‘Breaking through the glass ceiling,’ she laughed, shattering some more panels.
He made a dash for the door.
‘You might want to do up your flies first,’ she called after him.
Chapter 30
‘You were lucky not to get arrested,’ Ros said disapprovingly later. ‘They’ll probably have you for breach of contract. And how are you going to pay your rent?’
‘You were lucky not to get arrested,’ Daisy said when she called Legs not long afterwards, having heard the story from Will, who had heard it from Nico. Legend now had it that she had scaled the Fellows Howlett atrium roof and smashed her way through that too.
‘You were lucky not to get arrested,’ said her father when she dropped in to see him at the Kew house that evening. ‘And it doesn’t do to be unemployed at your age. You can come and work with me at the shop if you like.’
‘What are the wages like?’
‘Don’t talk nonsense. I can only offer Saturdays to start with, but there are digestives at tea break. I can purchase groceries myself you know,’ he chided gently as he watched her stacking his fridge with Waitrose ready meals, half-moon spectacles propped in his thinning grey hair, one side of his collar up, and kind grey eyes amused.
‘Yes, but you forget, Dad. You’re already looking too thin.’
‘You sound like your mother.’
Legs cast him a long, watchful look, waiting for more.
He stared her down. ‘I’m not going to talk about it.’
‘You sound like Mum.’ Emotion caught in her throat.
He looked stubbornly away.
She wondered briefly whether his glamorous lady shop assistants were rallying around to help; Vegan Megan was probably lovingly baking him lentil loaf each day, while Scented Rose tended his garden and Clever Heather lured him out to the theatre to take his mind off things.
Holding up her hands in despair, she turned away to fetch the last of the Waitrose bags to the fridge.
‘Have you got flu? You look unwell.’ He observed her clumsy movements and the pallor of her face.
‘Just a summer cold.’ She made light of it. Her headache still wouldn’t budge despite dosing herself up with painkillers all day, and she was increasingly short of breath, but she didn’t want her father to go in search of the home medical journal to start diagnosing life-threatening ailments, one of his favourite occupations. ‘I’m fine. Tired and jobless, that’s all.’
‘So are you going to start work with me on Saturday?’ he persisted.
‘I’m going straight back to Devon.’ When she turned back towards him, his face had brightened with delight.
‘Have you got a message for Mum?’ she asked hopefully.
‘No. But you can tell Francis I’m looking forward to visiting the British Museum together again soon.’
‘Dad, I’m not with Francis any more.’
‘Oh.’ He looked incredibly sad. For years, he’d assumed his role as father-in-law was a fait accompli. ‘Please think about this very carefully, Legs. Didn’t you say that he’s just given you a car?’
‘You gave me a car when I was eighteen. Does that mean I have to work in the shop for ever?’
He screwed up one eye. ‘Your logic is not entirely linear, although I do get the thrust of your point.’
Legs laughed, ignoring the razorblades of pain in her throat. She loved his erudite predictability, the sayings and phrases he had repeated so often through her life that they were now familiar motifs. Friends had often teased her that in Francis she’d chosen a man just like her father.
She had intended to drill him about her mother again that evening, to probe into his feelings, demand a reaction other than this gentle, resigned apathy. She’d even dared herself to ask him about his own infidelities. But she felt too wiped out, and had already lost heart. He seemed so fragile for all his customary clever bravura. It would be like interrogating an old teddy bear with Guantanamo Bay torture techniques. Instead, she bunged a Waitrose meal for two in the oven, made a pot of tea and settled beside him in one of the sagging conservatory sofas.
‘Do you have a copy of “The Raven” you could read to me?’
‘Since when have you been interested in Edgar Allen
Poe?’
‘Just a passing fancy,’ she reassured him.
He chuckled, heaving himself up to search the bookcase in the hall, calling back over his shoulder. ‘It’s rather long.’
‘I’ve got all night.’ She curled into the sofa arm, fighting tiredness, her chest on fire. She really did feel ill now she came to think about it. ‘Can I sleep in my old bedroom?’
‘You’ll have to make up the bed.’ Reading glasses on the end of his nose now, releasing the unkempt grey coronet of hair to spring up like wild grass around his pink pond of a bald patch, Dorian brought in a battered volume of poetry from the hall.
Then he settled back to recite the Poe classic in which a raven traps the soul of a heartbroken man beneath his shadow with the incessant cry of ‘nevermore’ in answer to every question about his lost love Lenore. To her shame, Legs drifted in and out of sleep.
‘I think on balance I’m more of a T. S. Eliot fan,’ she admitted sleepily afterwards.
‘Me too,’ he chuckled, closing the book and kissing her on the forehead, ‘You’re very hot, Legs.’
‘It’s the weather,’ she assured him. ‘And a guilty conscience.’
‘Nonsense. You’re right to get away from that Knight chap. Francis will take care of you. When do you go to Devon?’
‘Tomorrow,’ she said wearily, feeling too ragged to explain that she wasn’t driving there to see Francis, although she knew she owed him an explanation and an unmitigated apology. She seemed to have nothing but apologies to make at the moment.
Dorian was ecstatic at the prospect of having order restored – his beloved future son-in-law back in the fold, and then surely his own wife Lucy to follow. He genuinely envied Legs her first love.
Now he was plundering the shelves for T. S. Eliot.
‘This is your mother’s favourite.’ He settled back beside her and began to read ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’.
She listened with her burning chest full of fireworks. It was a poem of exquisite compassion; the outpourings of an ageing, timid man whose love was as deep as any; the summary of her father.
He’s so like Francis, Legs realised in renewed amazement as she listened to Dorian’s beautiful voice bring the words to life. He tells the biggest emotional truths through high art and third party tricks. He never rants or rages. It was no wonder Francis had become a surrogate son to him.
Afterwards she hugged him as tightly as she ever had.
‘You’re very, very hot.’ He held her anxiously.
‘My generation take “hot” as a compliment.’ She kissed him goodnight. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Francis is a good man,’ he said with quiet purpose.
‘I know.’ She pressed her burning face to his neck for a moment. ‘I know.’
Later that night, she lay in her old bed, staring up at the ceiling where a few luminous sticker stars still clung on for dear life. Her life was spinning on its axis. She kept going hot and cold, and her raging headache was worse than ever. Her chest was an inferno.
The phone on her bedside table lit up. Gordon Lapis was online.
Sleep tight, Heavenly Pony.
Sleep tight, Byrne.
He didn’t tell her to stay away this time. That was all the cue she needed.
Chapter 31
Legs drove to the North Devon coast with what felt like a bonfire blazing in her lungs, a thunderstorm on her tail and the new car’s unfamiliar sat nav on her case.
‘In one hundred yards, turn right. Turn right!’
‘Exit roundabout!’
It was like driving with her sister Ros map-reading. Her head screamed with pain. All the time the windscreen wipers swish-swish-swished sheets of rain in front of her. The deluge was relentless. She had to blink continually to stay focused.
‘Turn sharply right!’
Doing as she was told, she almost collided with oncoming traffic several times before finding herself turning into private driveways and industrial estates because she’d misinterpreted the directions. At least the sat nav didn’t complain of car sickness.
But as they diverted far from familiar roads to navigate the labyrinth of lanes deep within the Devon countryside, she was grateful for the bossy female voice. She would never have found the route to Nevermore any other way. The narrow lanes here were so overgrown that her bumpers snarled up with grass and high, banked verges flipped both her wing mirrors back like a hawk’s folded wings as she dived down the steepest of hills into a hidden valley.
Black clouds overhead had brought a false dusk. Rain was coming down in sheets now, so loud on the roof she could barely hear the voice announce ‘You have arrived at your destination, on right.’
Legs swung into a gateway overgrown with elder, the battered wrought-iron gate swinging off its hinges as though the last person to arrive had rammed straight through it. On closer inspection, there was thick ivy growing around the rusty hinges and the grass was several inches high beneath it, making it impossible to open further. Beyond it, the long driveway that stretched away between rain-lashed chestnut trees was so pot-holed, it was as though a meteor shower had landed there. She abandoned the car and shrugged on her raincoat, head lowered against the deluge as she splashed her way along the final hundred yards. Lightning crackled directly overhead as the storm threw its most ferocious temper tantrum yet. It felt like walking through a waterfall.
The farm was in a terrible state, the outbuildings little more than ruins, its cottage utterly desolate. Clearly unoccupied for a very long time, the windows were boarded up and half its roof slates missing. A threadbare tarpaulin whipped and cracked like a war-torn flag from one chimney where it had ripped loose from its ties. Through the gaping hole it had once covered, beyond the ribs of rotten wooden trusses, Legs could see what had once been a child’s bedroom with peeling teddy bear wallpaper. It was the sort of place that would cause even the most ardent of doer-uppers to refuse to get out of the car on a first viewing. No wonder Poppy had longed to escape, she realised as she looked around in horror.
Yet even as she recoiled from the storm’s whip-lashes and gunfire, she could see that there was a curious lost beauty surrounding her. It had been Byrne’s home once. Its connection with him enfolded her like a safety cage. Abandoned in its lush acres, it remained alive, its heart beating fiercely against the ravages of angry skies.
‘Byrne?’ she called out hopelessly, but the hammering rain drowned out her words.
Forked lightning was crackling through the black clouds overhead, angrily seeking somewhere to discharge its force. Exposed to every element in the middle of a desolate farmyard, Legs was suddenly gripped by panic as she imagined herself struck by a bolt and frying on the spot. She hadn’t told anybody she was coming here. A deafening crack of thunder made her dive for cover, and she crouched in the shelter of an old stable, shaking with cold and fear, waiting for the worst of the storm to pass. Each breath felt as though it was ripping the lining from her lungs.
As she huddled against a wood-lined wall, looking out at the lightning slashing its way into the old orchard beside the farmyard like a god stabbing his trident down in search of apples, she tried to imagine what demons must have possessed Brooke Kelly to keep his young wife and son here after his accident left him wheelchair-bound. His rages against Hector Protheroe must have ripped through the crumbling farmstead like the storm surrounding her now. It was hardly surprising Byrne had run wild as a boy, disappearing from home for hours on end, living a daydream world in which his closest allies were horses. He’d grown up to create an immortal fictional hero who took on the forces of evil and avenged wrong-doings. Was that how Byrne saw himself, too?
A headcollar was still hanging on a peg, its stiff leather layered with dirt, dust and mould. She scraped her thumbnail along its blackened brass name-plaque and read Finch.
*
How Legs made it to the Book Inn she would never know, but the satellite navigator said ‘recalculating’ at least a dozen times,
and ‘if possible make a U-turn’ at least twice. The twisting back lanes that fell sharply downhill through the estate to Farcombe harbour made her feel faint with vertigo. Almost flattening a memorial bench, she parked illegally on the sea front, scattering several seagulls.
The wind nearly took her head off when she stepped out of the car, but at least she’d finally shaken off the storm, leaving it inland. Despite the ferocious wind, sea-spray over the harbour walls and the red flag flying on the beach, there were blue patches in the sky.
Almost too bedraggled to be recognisable, she stumbled into the pub. Her face was grey beneath the wet rats’ tails of hair; her clothes were plastered to her body and she was coated with dust and straw.
Pierced Tongue was lolling behind the bar reading the Daily Star. She took one look at Legs and disappeared like smoke through the staff only door. Legs could hear hushed voices with the words ‘hippy’ and ‘stalker’ being hissed in a lisping undertone.
Coming through from her office, Nonny rushed forwards in alarm.
‘Darling Legs! What happened to you? Gabs thought it was another Ptolemy Finch crank coming in. You poor duck. Come and sit down. Have a Dark and Stormy to warm you up.’
Legs shook her head, teeth chattering, ‘I’ve had enough of storms for one day, thanks. Is Byrne here?’
Nonny shook her head. ‘He checked out on Wednesday. He’s staying up at the hall, I think. Darling, you look really poorly. We’re fully booked, but you can have a lie down in our quarters if you like?’
Thanking her but shaking her head, Legs reeled back outside and performed a perilous three point turn on the harbour front before rattling up to the main house, now driving so badly that she dented one wing of the silver car swinging into the gates.
Just turning off the engine felt like a major victory. She was boiling hot, her skin clammy and her muscles aching. Her hands were shaking so much she couldn’t take the keys out of the ignition. She thought she might black out.