Quite forgetting that the Honda was still languishing in the main car park with an expired ticket, she headed hurriedly back to the Book Inn to spend the afternoon pampering. It wasn't until she passed a wall mirror on her way upstairs to Skit that she realised she still had the mad macaw fascinator pegged on her head.

Chapter 14.

Trying the crocheted dress on again in the privacy of her room, Legs realised that it had another major drawback apart from its great length. Her white underwear showed horribly. No matter how many Masai scarves she draped strategically over hips and shoulders, the bra and knickers glowed through like snowy mountain peaks. She guessed she should have stayed for Cici's exclusive lingerie after all. Knowing that Poppy kept Farcombe Hall's lighting as bright as a floodlit stadium day or night to enhance her weak eyesight, she would have to risk going without. She felt increasingly nervous.

The longer she spent tarting up, the more her confidence slipped, and she had allocated far too much time. By four o'clock her body was exfoliated, depilated and buffed, her hair was washed and finger-dried to bed head loveliness, and her make-up laid out ready to apply. If she slapped it on now, it would be sliding away by seven-thirty.

Julie Ocean had left the building; she was a glamorous go-getting action woman, not a vain literary agency assistant torn between real life and show-mance.

There was another storm brewing, the muggy air making her skin felt sticky and her throat dry.

Remembering her phone was still with Nonny, she realised gratefully that she could slip downstairs to fetch it and grab a cup of tea and a sugar fix. But Nonny, delighted at the excuse to take a break from deskwork, was eager to loosen up over a cocktail.

'You must join me,' she insisted, 'Guy tells me off if I drink during the day, but I'm allowed to join favourite guests.'

'My hangover's only just lifted,' protested Legs, who longed for a chocolate hit.

'Nonsense.' Nonny ordered two refreshing Once Upon a Times from Pierced Tongue as they propped themselves up on bar stools. 'Guy says you're eating at the hall tonight, so they'll all be out to take a piece out of you. You need inoculating.'

'What do you mean?' Legs said nervously.

'Hair of the dogs that bit you,' Nonny laughed, ordering chips and aioli which made Legs realise how hungry she was from skipping meals again. 'What are you going to wear? Please don't say the Arsenal strip.'

Legs told her about the great find in Shh, and confessed to her underwear crisis.

Remembering the request the previous night for tampons, Nonny nodded sympathetically and then held up her hand. 'I've got just the thing. Don't go away!' Two minutes later she returned with what looked like a ravel of sausage skin.

'Different type of arse strip,' she giggled. 'Transparent g-string. It's never been worn, I promise. They were all the rage in my heyday. Feels like wearing a clingfilm catapult, but you get used to it and men have no idea it's there unless you let them get a very close look.'

The bar was quiet. There was just one family having a cream tea and a dog-walker behind a newspaper in one corner.

Nonny was dying for the latest gossip, hanging on to the modesty pouch and Legs' iPhone like a bribe while she quizzed her. 'Is it true you and Francis are back together?'

'Who said that?'

'It's all over the village. Kizzy must be livid. She's only just got her foot through the hall's door.'

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 edith.'

'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. edith 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 edith 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 edith 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 edith 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?'