by Fiona Walker
‘Let’s not think about it.’ He swallowed uncomfortably. ‘We have a party to enjoy. Your friend Daisy seems to have invited half the village. She’s even asked Poppy, I gather.’
‘Poppy refuses to go to any parties except her own.’
Byrne gave her a shrewd smile. ‘You might be surprised. She was looking through her turban collection when I popped in on the way here.’
‘Oh God, how can we possibly make tomorrow work?’ She was gripped by sudden nerves.
‘It has to.’ He let the bags and boxes fall from his arms as he wrapped her in a tight hug and kissed her thoroughly. ‘It just has to.’
Chapter 55
As the barbecue sizzled and a bonfire roared in Spycove’s clifftop garden, the sun set over the sea with such a splendid blaze of reds and oranges that the coastline seemed to be in flames, the rocks red as hot lava, the woods glowing like a forest fire and the sea itself a shimmering sheet of molten tin.
Legs sat beside Nico toasting fat marshmallows on the bonfire, watching Byrne talk to Will with great animation as they shared an adjacent log swigging wine from plastic cups, both men laughing uproariously as they flew through subjects like two running partners passing fast-moving landscapes at the same speed, able to keep perfect pace. Suddenly, she was reminded of her father and Nigel Foulkes.
‘We used to do this as kids,’ she told Nico, lifting her sizzling marshmallow to blow on it, ‘me, your mum and Daisy.’
‘You were all really close, weren’t you?’
She nodded, glancing past the flames to where she could see her sister looking out to sea, talking quietly to another guest whose blond hair was cast brightest copper red in the setting sun. ‘And Francis.’
He and Hector had rolled in about half an hour ago blootered from the pub, like a pair of naughty schoolboys on the rampage. Taking a detour on the way home, they’d clearly decided to gatecrash the Spycove barbecue, reeling around in an unruly fashion demanding to meet Gordon Lapis, and driving Daisy demented as she tried to stop them stumbling into the bonfire or off the cliff. It was no-nonsense Ros who’d taken charge of them both, helping Daisy to furnish them with piles of food and soft drinks to soak up and dilute the alcohol from a day in the pub, then posting Hector and his bassoon on a log with two chaperones to keep him busy while she took Francis to one side to listen to him reeling off reams of poetic quotes and ranting about his heartbreak.
Now, standing on the sunset-soaked decking alongside Francis, Ros had nothing but sympathy for her sister’s spurned first love. ‘My heart has been so badly broken, too.’
She shot her ex-husband’s fireside log a martyred look over her shoulder and edged closer to Francis, who was woozily pronouncing that Will was a louse for abandoning her, an intellectual sell-out and a buffoon for becoming a house husband. Ros couldn’t agree more. He launched into Milton again, staring out to sea, as noble as the Cristo Redentor overlooking Rio de Janeiro’s harbour. Admiring his profile and remembering how much she’d secretly adored him as a girl, Ros was soon finishing the quotes that Francis was too drunk to recall.
Meanwhile, Hector played a lot of bum notes and showed no signs of sobering up, his loud voice still slurred as he tilted between his two companions like a wild-blown dinghy between sturdy boardwalks. ‘The young have no sense of dignity,’ he was saying now. ‘Look at us. All friends. All forgiven. All forgotten.’
Dorian North gave him the benefit of his charming, diffident smile and topped up Hector’s drink with his own home-made Dandelion and Burdock which nobody in the North family would ever drink because it led to vile wind and turned your pee green. On Hector’s far side, Lucy smiled dreamily, sketch pad on her knee as she captured moments from the evening in soft pencil and charcoal.
‘The young have no sense of what it means to be a part of our generation.’ Hector was trending youth as a theme. ‘We found free love in the seventies, got rich in the eighties, paid the price for both in the nineties, got naughty again in the noughties and now we’re like teenagers once more, swapping truths round a campfire and occasionally kissing each other after lights out.’
‘You certainly haven’t lost your boyish outlook,’ Dorian said with measured cool, handing Hector an undercooked chicken drumstick then watching with satisfaction as he ripped into it between drafts of burdock.
‘We’ve known each other how many years now?’ Hector threw his chicken bone into the fire and accepted another, along with a top-up of green pee juice. ‘Twenty? Thirty? All water under the bridge for us, isn’t it?’
‘Indeed,’ agreed Dorian and reached for a bowl of red eyed chillies he’d picked up from Will and Daisy’s prep table which he now offered to Hector. ‘Sun dried tomato?’
‘Marvellous.’ He scooped up a handful and shovelled them in his mouth, chilli seeds flying out as he talked. ‘You’re a good man, Dorian. Only wish old Poppy were so forgiving,’ he sighed. ‘She’s been behaving mighty oddly this week. Mighty oddly. Think she might be having a fling herself. Gosh, those tomatoes are punchy.’ Blowing out through his lips, he drained his glass.
‘It might help if you paid her a few compliments,’ Lucy murmured, looking lovingly across at her husband. On her lap was a magnificent depiction of his profile, drawn in the style of a Greek god.
‘You must make her realise how much you love her,’ Dorian agreed, gazing adoringly back as he topped up the now-gasping Hector’s glass with more wind-inducing Dandelion and Burdock.
‘Appreciate your differences.’ Lucy patted his back as he started to splutter.
Now Dorian handed him a handkerchief to mop the tears running down his face. ‘Embrace what you share.’
‘Forgive.’ Lucy looked gratefully at her husband who winked back and offered her a chilli.
‘Forgive what?’ Hector lamented, eyes streaming. ‘Poppy is a bloody saint for putting up with my escapades. I could hardly blame her for wanting a fling. But I will kill the cussed cad if she is!’
On cue there was loud, whining putter as Poppy appeared at the wheel of Édith’s bright green Beetle, her stepdaughter white-faced in the passenger’s seat. Travelling at high speed, they slid to a halt just beyond Spycove’s gates with the aid of a forsythia bush. Poppy cut the engine, patted the steering wheel and laughed delightedly. She was dressed in bright purple harem pants and a scarlet bat-winged top, her neat bob accessorised with a small sequinned pink disk from which colourful plumage sprouted. Legs recognised it straight away; she owned an identical one herself.
When Édith opened the bonnet of the car, it was crammed full of her stepmother’s turbans.
‘I am going to burn these tonight!’ Poppy announced rapturously to the crowd around her. ‘From now on, I am embracing the fascinator!’
Hector had leaped up and reeled to her side, bassoon aloft, mouth aflame with chilli after-blast. ‘My darling you look as beautiful as I have ever known you. I love you!’
Poppy looked thrilled. ‘I know that, you silly oaf. Now play me a tune. I have been reborn; tonight is my baptism of fire!’
Hector lifted his bassoon to his foaming lips and then lowered it again, eyes tortured. ‘Are you having a bloody fling?’ he thundered, mopping his weeping eyes on his broad shoulders.
‘No!’ She selected a red velvet toque that was pure Lillie Langtry and hurled it towards the flames.
‘Good!’
As she lobbed more turbans onto the flames, he accompanied her by playing the solo from the Firebird suite.
On a nearby log, Lucy and Dorian moved together, sliding their arms around one another as they watched the bright headgear flying past them at speed.
‘Well she’s certainly having a bit of a fling tonight,’ Lucy pointed out cheerfully.
‘I’d forgotten how much they shout,’ Dorian sighed. ‘I suppose it comes from sharing such a big house. No wonder poor Francis has no volume control.’ He cocked his head in the direction of the decking where poetry being recited very loudly to a rapt audience of
one.
Lucy regarded Francis and her elder daughter thoughtfully. ‘I haven’t seen Ros looking this happy in a long time, have you?’
On an adjacent log to his maternal grandparents, Nico was devouring his fifth marshmallow and telling his aunt how excited he was to be seeing Gordon Lapis tomorrow. ‘I think he’ll be really dark and mysterious, like Edward Cullen. Am I right, Legs? Legs? Hellooo!’ He waved his marshmallow toasting stick in front of her face, making her jump.
‘Sorry.’ She dragged her eyes away from watching a familiar redhead who had emerged from the back of Édith’s car to help with the turban-tossing.
‘Does Gordon look like Edward Cullen?’
‘Yes, he does a bit,’ looking around her, she realised that Byrne was missing from the fireside. She searched the garden for him with her eyes but he wasn’t there.
‘Bet you fancy him.’
‘I do a bit.’
‘I am never falling in love. It’s for gross old people.’
‘Ptolemy and Purple fall in love,’ she pointed out, lifting up to stare over the fire. No Byrne.
‘He’ll suffer,’ Nico predicted.
‘I think he does somewhat.’ Legs craned round to scan the parked cars.
‘Don’t tell me what happens. I’m so near the end. Purple is so cool sticking up for Ptolemy like that.’
‘Told you. It happens to the best of us. Love.’ She was raking back and forth across the garden with her eyes now, panic rising.
‘I can’t believe you’ve still not got me a signed book,’ Nico said in a small voice. Then, seeing his aunt’s anxious expression, he smiled and made light of it. ‘I’m sure he’s really busy.’
‘I’ll get you a signed book,’ she promised vaguely.
‘Tonight?’
‘I can try. I don’t have a copy with me, but I can—’
‘Wait there!’ He leaped up and raced into the house.
Within a minute, the hardback of Raven’s Curse crashed down on her lap like a breezeblock. The bookmark was still poking out about three quarters of the way through, she noticed.
Nico thrust a pen at her, ‘It’s Dad’s best “novelist” fountain pen – Daisy bought it for him. Please don’t lose it.’
‘I’ll put it in my tent for safekeeping,’ she laughed, standing up. ‘And I’ll get Gordon to sign the book later, I promise.’
‘Is he staying nearby?’
Legs hugged the book to her chest and stared at the fire for a moment, its flames turning extraordinary colours as they guzzled up the beads and sequins on Poppy’s turban collection. ‘He’s very close,’ she breathed.
As she trailed towards her tent, eyes still looking everywhere for Byrne, she spotted Kizzy and Édith walking arm in arm to the viewing platform over the cove to look out at the sky which had turned richest violet shot through with orange now the sun had dropped behind the horizon.
Then she heard a dog bark in the woods. Still clutching the book, she ran between the trees, twisting, ducking and jumping to avoid trunks, branches and undergrowth.
He was perching on the lover’s seat branches of the Tree of Secrets, carving something into the bark. Hearing a twig snap under one of her feet, he looked down.
‘You found me,’ he laughed. ‘It was going to be a surprise, but it’s almost done now. Come on up.’ He reached down his hand.
Leaving the book by the trunk’s base, she climbed to settle on the other lover’s branch arm and read the initials he’d carved in a big, wonky heart.
‘AN, JB, JL, PF, GL.’ She smiled as she counted them up, squinting to read the last two which weren’t quite finished. ‘JJ and JO?’
‘Jimmy Jimee and Julie Ocean,’
‘Of course,’ she laughed. ‘There are certainly a lot of us in this relationship.’
‘The more identities, the bigger the heart.’ He tapped his graffiti with his knife before stooping to finish it off with a few final deft cuts.
‘Everybody should change their name at least once in life,’ she agreed, tilting her head to watch. ‘You have a lot more alter egos than me.’
‘You are going to change your name very soon,’ he reminded her.
She looked across at him apprehensively, and he turned to kiss her firmly on the mouth. ‘At the altar, when you marry me and my many egos.’
‘Allegra Byrne-Kelly-Finch-Jimee-Lapis would be hell to fit on a debit card,’ she joked nervously.
‘Not Lapis,’ he shook his head. ‘He’s not the marrying kind.’
‘Who says?’
‘I’m still in control of him, remember?’ he said, then smiled apologetically. ‘At least I am tonight.’
‘I want to marry Gordon too,’ Legs insisted. Using the fingers of her right hand to encircle the heavy gold band still trapped on her left ring finger, she gave an almighty tug and let out a cry of surprise as the signet ring came loose straight away and slipped into her palm, like Excalibur released from the rock.
‘What are you doing?’ Byrne laughed as she slipped the ring onto his little finger.
‘Marrying Gordon before it’s too late.’ She stretched across to kiss him. ‘Congratulations. You just kissed the bride.’
‘He’ll run away with another woman,’ he warned her before kissing her again, so long and hard she almost fell out of the tree.
‘For one night with Gordon, I think it’s worth that risk,’ she said breathlessly.
Byrne admired the ring, peering at its monogram again in the near darkness. ‘P’.
‘It’s silent,’ Legs reminded him, ‘P as in …’
They both stared at each other in the darkness for a very long time, saying nothing. Then they laughed, stretching forwards until their lips connected and they kissed for as long as their breath and the branches under them could hold out. It was a very long time.
‘Passion,’ Legs laughed when they finally broke apart. ‘P as in passion. Not very silent in our case.’
He flicked open his knife to carve a P inside the wonky bark heart. ‘This is my first love letter.’
She admired it through the shadows.
‘And P’s for Poppy of course.’
‘That’s a P for Passion killer,’ she grumbled. Suddenly remembering Nico’s book in the undergrowth, she scrabbled down from the tree to pick it up and got the pen from her pockets before flicking to the title page. ‘You can add your graffiti tag to this. Can you dedicate it to Nico?’
As he jumped down alongside her, she clutched the heavy book to her chest for a moment in dawning realisation. ‘This might be the last Gordon Lapis book you ever sign.’
His voice was shot through with pure relief as he reached out for it. ‘Such a shame Gordon’s chronic arthritis will mean that he can never inscribe another novel after this,’ he sighed, resting the book in the crook of one arm and leaning back against the tree to write the inscription, dark eyes wide in the fading light.
When he closed the book with a slam and handed it to her, that big, blazing hearth gaze locked onto hers. ‘It’s not too late to change your mind, you know.’
‘About what?’
‘I told you I’d give you plenty of chances to run away. But this might be your last one.’
‘I’m not going anywhere.’
He cupped her face in his hands. ‘I love you.’
‘Grime poo.’ She stared back in the darkness, knowing those bright eyes would light the way wherever they went.
She leaned into him, loving his lips on hers, the way kissing him always made the air around her go mountaintop thin. Then, as their kisses grew more urgent and excited, she found herself flying along a thrilling zig-zag black run ski-slope on the side of that mountain, her body coursed through with adrenalin, powerless to stop the momentum pulling her ever-faster towards the delicious blue lake of nudity and plunging pleasure that she knew lay at the bottom.
Still clutched in her arms, Gordon Lapis’s huge hardback was jabbing her hard in the ribs now. Byrne reached out to take it
and cast it to one side, but Legs clung on tight, knowing Nico would never forgive her for throwing his precious book around in the undergrowth.
‘Just hold that thought!’ She pressed a final kiss to his mouth. ‘Wait there one minute!’ She turned to race back to the garden with the book, almost crashing into Poppy who was picking her way carefully in the opposite direction with a huge floodlight in one hand and a small trinket box in the other. ‘There you both are! I’ve been looking for Jamie everywhere.’ Pointing her light blindingly in his face, she stepped towards him. ‘It’s about the you know what. I found it when I was clearing out my turban drawers. I told you I still had it.’
‘What’s the “you know what”?’ Legs asked.
‘Nothing you need to worry about,’ Byrne reassured her, putting an arm on her back and steering her away from the tree. ‘Slight change of plan tomorrow, that’s all. You go and make a boy very happy. We’ll be back out in a minute.’ He leaned across to kiss her on the cheek, whispering, ‘We’ll take up where we just left off later.’
As Legs reluctantly trailed away, she distinctly heard Poppy say in a stage whisper, ‘Are you sure about this, Jamie? What if Legs lets us down? Look at what she did to Francis.’
‘She won’t let me down,’ he insisted darkly.
Nico was absolutely ecstatic to receive his book back, freshly signed by Gordon Lapis.
‘Is he in the woods?’ he whispered in amazement, having marked his aunt’s movements closely since entrusting her with his precious possession.
‘Gordon has a very good chauffeur,’ she said vaguely. ‘He can be somewhere at the drop of a hat when he needs to be.’
Nico was far too wise to be fobbed off with that sort of nonsense, but he was too busy reading the personal inscription to protest. ‘Oh wow, oh wow oh wow oh wow. I so love you, Legs! This is just the Best. Thing. Ever.’
‘What’s he written?’
‘To dear Nico. May Ptolemy Finch and Purple inspire you to live for the moment as they have me. You will never regret it. Welcome to my family. Your very good friend and kinsman, Gordon Lapis.’ He read it, his voice shaking. Then he smiled and whooped. ‘P.s. Your aunt’s really hot.’