Chapter 36.

When Legs burst into Spywood Cottage carrying a tail-wagging basset hound, her mother was sitting naked at the table writing a letter on blue paper, a glass of white wine at her side despite the morning hour. Tears were streaming down her face.

'Legs! Darling!' She looked up in shock. 'I heard you were still bed-ridden. You look terrible.'

'I'm much better, thanks.' She averted her eyes from her mother's full frontal.

'What on earth are you doing with Fink?' Lucy made a hopeless attempt at false cheer, mopping her cheeks with the tablecloth, then squealed and held the cloth to her chin to preserve modesty as she spotted Byrne racing in after her daughter. 'Goodness! What drama here at Spywood. Hi, Jago. Is everything OK?'

'I could ask you the same.' He immediately took in the tear-streaked cheeks, the wine and the letter, which she was now sweeping beneath today's unread Guardian.

'You two do know each other?' Legs gasped, dropping Fink on a sofa and collapsing onto it with him for a moment, her lungs scorching again and the room spinning.

'We met on the beach when I was painting,' Lucy sniffed shakily. 'Glass of wine?'

'I'll make tea,' Legs took a few bolstering hot breaths ready to cross the room, but Jago held up his hand, already heading into the recessed kitchen to put on the kettle.

He seemed remarkably au fait with the cottage layout, Legs realised distractedly, but she was more concerned that her mother's nakedness, entirely visible from the back, was now inches from Byrne as he searched for teabags. Lucy was looking tearful again. 'It's j-just lovely to see you, darling. I've left so many unreturned messages on your mobile; I thought you'd stopped t-talking to me.'

'Of course not,' she said croakily. 'My phone's been locked in the car all week.'

'And I've been feeling too shame-faced to question it,' Lucy gasped. 'I was desperate to come and see you, but I was told I wasn't wanted.'

Without warning, a wave of empathy coursed through Legs with such force it swept her off the sofa like flotsam, and she launched herself across the room to give her mother a mammoth hug, wrapping her in the tablecloth as she went, complete with the Guardian, writing paper, spilled white wine and a small vase of wild musk mallows.

It was the best of all hugs tight-armed, tearful, laughing, loving, all wrapped up in a length of old William Morris-print cotton that had seen the family through a plethora of meals and crises. Legs wanted to stay there for ever despite the white wine dripping into her crotch and the musk mallows on her head.

When Byrne placed tea mugs on the bare scrubbed boards of the table beside them, mother and daughter broke apart, palms cupping each other's cheeks. Legs' eyes slid gratefully towards him, but he'd already melted out of range as her mother kept her face locked forwards, eyes brimming with emotion.

'I hoped I might finally get to see you at the big house this morning, but I was rather ambushed.'

'You've been to the hall?' Legs asked, trying not to cough.

'I knew Poppy intended to come and talk to me today and I was so worried about it I didn't sleep a wink last night,' she admitted shakily. 'So I thought I'd go myself and save her the fright of trying to get out of the front door.'

'Was it awful?'

'It was strangely civilised. I think she was so relieved not to have to leave the house that she welcomed me like an old friend, even though I was there to apologise for having an affair with her husband. And you know how gushing she is with everyone, even if she hates one's guts. She's terribly lonely. We had coffee on the terrace and compared notes on Hector. He really is a very difficult man. Poppy says he absolutely has it in for poor Jago.'

Again Legs tried to look for Byrne to catch his eye, but her mother still had her in a loving headlock.

'It's strange to learn so much about oneself from one's most headstrong child,' Lucy smiled sadly at Legs, pulling her closer so their noses touched. 'I thought you were utterly mad leaving Francis, when I had adored his older doppelganger all those years. Now I can see how wrong I was in imagining he would be an easy man to love.'

Legs eyes' crossed as she tried to fix her mother with a meaningful look. 'Actually I have escap-'

And you're together again!' Lucy finally let go of Legs' cheeks so she could clutch her daughter's hands in hers and kiss them jubilantly, making her burnt thumb throb. 'You are so brave. So brave and true. You and Francis have that spark of magic that endures and forgives errors of judgement. Like Poppy and Hector.' She sat back down with a troubled sigh.

Coughing hoarsely, Legs looked around for Byrne, but he'd vanished, leaving a large bowl of iced water on the scrubbed oak beside her. Fighting not to wail in frustration that he'd deserted her, she plunged her reddened thumb into the water where it practically sizzled before dropping its needles of pain away like a diffused magnet.

'You look so terribly pale.' Her mother was regarding her closely across the table, still wrapped in the William Morris cloth like a sarong. 'I wish I'd been allowed to see you.'

'Did Francis really say I didn't want you to come?' Eyes still scanning the room, she noticed that the front door was still open and realised Byrne must have slipped out again.

'He said no visitors,' Lucy sighed. 'I tried to get more out of him, but you know what the mobile reception is like here. At least I knew you'd be getting the best possible care. Francis seems over the moon you came back to him.'

'Francis isn't the reason I came back,' Legs laid claim to her tea, too drained and bereft to waste time going into detail. She hugged the warm mug in her free hand and breathed in its steam, wanting to spin out the pleasure, knowing Byrne had made it. He'd given her a car and made her a mug of tea. Both took on equal importance right now, her mismatched tokens of a mismatched love.

Then she heard a guttural snort and spotted Fink working his way forensically around the kitchen recess vacuuming up crumbs and she suddenly found herself beaming from ear to ear. If he'd left the dog, he had to be planning to return.

'I do love bassets,' Lucy followed her gaze. 'They remind me of your father. Fink and Jago stop to talk to me on the beach most days; I gather he's camping nearby. He came in here and fixed the trip switch once you know how antediluvian that board is with its awful fuse wires; only your father ever understood it because he grew up with one just like it. Jago turns out to be exactly the same. Hector is utterly impractical with such things.' Her face crumpled once more.

'Is it over between you two?'

She shrugged sadly, big bluebell eyes draped in shadowy lashes. 'Hector is terribly difficult to live with, you know. In concentration, he's far more contrary than I ever imagined, and so boorish. What starts out as a lively conversation inevitably becomes a lecture. He's just so hyper critical, and he is such a baby.'

'Sounds like Francis,' Legs sighed before succumbing to another coughing fit.

'He calls me "domestic" as an insult,' Lucy ranted on, 'but I like being domestic. "The practical aesthete", Dorian has always called me. I trained as a picture restorer after all. Art is a practical process. It requires hard work. God, I miss your father.'

'He misses you.'

Lucy said nothing, doubt etched on her face. She looked unspeakably tired, her sleepless night having ravaged her hollow cheeks and drawn the darkest of rings beneath her eyes. Legs reached her free hand across to take her mother's.

'So it's really, really over?' She tried to disguise the hope in her voice.

'Almost,' she offered uncertainly through the waves of high emotion. 'We're mature creatures; we don't "dump" each other like your generation it's more of an osmosis. Nobody gave us a date for summer's lease running short, although we knew it would end; certainly if you and Francis reunited.'

'Was that always the plan?'

She shook her head guiltily, squeezing Legs' hand tightly in hers. 'I only wish we were so noble. That was simply the excuse.'

Legs returned the pressure.

'But you are back together!' Lucy laughed tearfully. 'Francis says you've even taken your engagement ring back.'

Legs' eyes widened. 'The phone signal must have been remarkably good when he called to tell you that.'

'He came to the cottage in person not long after you left for London. Francis said you had his mother's ring and that you two were still very much in love. Hector told him you'd have to return to Farcombe to prove it, and now you have.'

She shook her head violently, coughs racking her chest again, 'That's not right. I simply didn't know what to do with it for the best. When a man gives you a ring it's like taking a part of his heart, isn't it?'

If she expected her mother to pick up on the unhappiness in her cough-ridden voice, she was mistaken, as Lucy's thoughts went straight to Dorian, lifting her hand to study her own trio of rings, engagement wedding and eternity. 'Your father will be so pleased! He just adores Francis. Having him as a son-in-law will make up for all this upset.'

There was a low, welcoming woof from the sofa, and Legs looked round to see Byrne standing in the doorway. If he'd heard any of the preceding conversation, his face gave nothing away. Crossing the room, he put the tailcoat on the table, no longer smouldering but smelling strongly of charred mothballs, wool and paper.

'I found the notebook.' He placed it carefully alongside the coat like forensic evidence, the red leather cover blistered around charred pages.

Still numb from her mother's proclamation, praying that Byrne hadn't heard it, Legs managed a nervous smile. Coughs ripped through her again.

'You are the very best of research assistants.' He didn't look very pleased about it, taking her hand which she'd been waving around for emphasis while talking to her mother and putting it back in the water.

Across the table, Lucy stood up with a great scraping of chair and scattering of more mallow as she tugged the tablecloth around her. 'If you'll excuse me, I'll just pop upstairs and get dressed.' She picked up her writing paper and pen. 'Maybe I'll have a little lie down first. I have something important to think over.' She tripped her way up, trailing a vase, two candlesticks and a rapidly unfolding G2.

Leg continued staring fixedly at Byrne, one hand in a bowl of water once again.

He stared back, waiting until Lucy had closed the bedroom door audibly upstairs. Then he held up the notebook. 'Hector laid a huge bet on my father to win the day he fell.'

'So I was right! He can't have been responsible for his accident?'

'Oh, Hector was still to blame,' he said bleakly. 'Why d'you think he put so much money on the horse?'

She looked at him questioningly.

'He had an insider tip.' He remained unblinking. 'It was my father who told him to back it in the first place.'

Legs hand flew to her mouth in surprise, splashing drops everywhere.

'Hector loved the races so much, he bought a couple of point-to-pointers on a neighbour's advice to keep with a local jockey who'd started training. That was Dad. It was over twenty years ago. The neighbour was Goblin Granny. They all partied together regularly.'

'So Hector knew Poppy before the accident?'

'The first spark of attraction dates back to those early days.' He reached out and took her hand, making her heart rev excitedly, but he was just steering it back to soak in its water bath again, his face set with anger. 'Hector plays a long game. Look at your mother.'

Legs glanced anxiously towards the stairs.

'Dad gave him regular tips,' he went on. 'There's nothing underhand in a jockey tipping, provided it's one of his own rides. And with Thelonious Monk, he knew the horse couldn't lose. What he didn't realise until too late was that the race was being targeted by a gambling ring, so the horse would be hampered to hell.'

'And he'd lose his whole career,' Legs breathed.

'Hector tried to help financially after the accident,' Byrne went on, his voice bitter, 'but I think that was just an excuse to keep Poppy in his sights. Dad hated him. He convinced himself that Hector had deliberately set him up for the fall. He had a girl who came in and cared for him another of Goblin Granny's recommendations full of conspiracy theories that played to his paranoia; her imagination was amazing. I can't remember her name.'

'Liz.'

'That's right Thin Lizzie.' He looked at her in surprise. 'Jesus, my research assistant strikes again.'

Legs bit her lip, realising that he had no idea that Liz Delamere was the reason she was so well informed, and that her daughter was tied up in the Protheroe dynasty too.

She opened her mouth to explain, then stopped herself because she wanted to hear more. Witnessing Byrne opening up was like watching the most extraordinary dawn breaking. She was hypnotised by the intensity of his face and his voice.

He picked charred leather from the notebook's cover: 'Dad used to play "Whisky in the Jar" to her; she had the patience to listen to him rant on for hours, which nobody else did, trying to make sense of his ramblings if you can call it sense. Between them, they created this scenario with Hector as the personification of evil. That suited me just fine at the time.' He looked up at her, and the rage in his eyes seemed to scorch right through the room, 'I wanted to hate him too. Thin Lizzie came and went, but Dad stuck to his story religiously. He knew Hector wanted his wife for himself. When Poppy took a job working for the festival, that plot twist had already been written in his suspicious mind many times over. Dad had his bags packed long before she left him.'

'Did his storyline include you coming back to Farcombe for revenge?' she asked before she could stop herself.

He looked away, evading the question, eyes focusing on her hand resting on the table between them. He reached out for it again, and she felt an electric charge course up it as he placed it back in the bowl. She half expected to see the water inside boil with the heat sparking off their linked fingers.

'Would you want revenge?' he turned the tables.

'Quite probably,' she said honestly. 'But I don't play the long game in anything, so I'd have tried to cut Hector's brakes with a pen knife aged ten. If that didn't work, I'd have written him a very long, very angry letter. It's pretty pathetic.'

'I've done one of those already.' He let out a gruff laugh. 'All six novels of it. Who do you think Rushlore is based on?'

Legs let out a gasp of delight which turned into a predictable chesty cough as she instantly recognised Hector as Ptolemy's gargantuan, waspish enemy who breathes poisonous wind, fire, sand and ice through the many fluted tentacles that rise from his neck and shoulders, has a weakness for country music and flirts outrageously with Purple at every opportunity.

Byrne relaxed briefly, that intense face watching hers, his trust burning loyalty deeper into her heart as he sank back in his chair. 'There was a big argument last week. I shouted a lot, mostly at Hector. Now Poppy wants me to come to her grand dinner and "all make friends". I hate formal gatherings; I can't stand the pretence.'

'But you're keeping up the biggest pretence of all,' she pointed out, her voice growing hoarser. 'You're Gordon Lapis.'

Trust destroyed, he glared at her as though she'd just shouted 'the butler did it!' at curtain up for The Mousetrap.

'When were you planning to break it to Poppy that you're the festival's star act?' she went on, rasping now. 'Or is revenge going to be your mother and Hector learning the truth about you at the same time as an audience of millions across the world?'

'I've never wanted publicity.'

'Pretty hard to avoid it now.'

He rubbed his face uneasily. 'I always planned to come back here to find my mother,' he admitted. 'I wanted to do it as soon as I got published, to show her how well I'd done; I thought it would make her love me. But in the end I couldn't do that to Dad. He was still so bitter, and terrified of losing me. And he was going through hell around that time trying to quit drinking. His liver's so shot to pieces; the doctors kept warning him that he'd be dead in a year if he didn't stop. My kids' fantasy book didn't seem important compared to his life. The advance was tiny; I had no idea it would be such a success. I asked to stay anonymous to protect my father, and then it seemed easier to keep it like that.

'Dad knew the truth, of course, and he was incredibly proud. Not long after that, he started turning his life around. He's stayed dry five years now; he's back training full-time and his horses are winning some decent races; he's even found love again. Last year, they got married and he finally gave me his blessing to come to England to see Poppy.'

'By which point Gordon Lapis was publishing's best kept secret,' she realised, her strained voice barely more than a whisper now.

He nodded, 'I never dreamed it would be such a success story: Ptolemy Finch is a huge global franchise, but of course it's all happened remotely. I just wrote the books and banked the cheques. I like it that way.'

'Didn't you resent getting no public credit?'

'Any publicity would inevitably rake up Dad's accident; I had to protect him. What he's achieved in the past few years is far more glorious than my writing career. He couldn't have done that in the shadow of Gordon Lapis. Nowadays, he's the one who is frustrated that he can't boast that Gordon is a part of the family, but I enjoy my life just the way it is; I love my family and friends, my freedom. I've never wanted that to change, although the money is grand.'

'But you've always wanted to contact Poppy again?'

'All my adult life. When I thought about coming to England, I'd get very keyed up about needing my mother to acknowledge my success, and getting one over on Hector. I was too twisted up with anger and hurt to know how to deal with it. I kept starting letters to her and not knowing what to say or how to explain. Then, out of the blue, she emailed me or rather she emailed Gordon.'

'Poppy sent Gordon Lapis fan mail?'

He nodded. 'She signed the message with her maiden name, but it came from the Farcombe email address so it was obvious who she was. Of course she had no idea it was me. She said reading Ptolemy Finch was her secret vice, and that she absolutely adored my books.'

'You must have felt so thrilled.'

'Not entirely. I didn't want Poppy to love Gordon; I wanted her to love me, her son. I really resented the fact she could write such gushing praise to Gordon but hadn't sent me a birthday card in fifteen years.'

Put like that, Legs could see his point. 'What did you do?'

'I telephoned her, but I was so tongue-tied that she heard my name wrong, calling me "Mr Goburn", and when I said that I was a voice from the past, she seemed to think I was a historian, so I bottled out and decided to email instead. At first, I just sent her a couple of lines apologising for the strange call. My private Gmail address doesn't have an automatic signature. She replied to 'Jay Goburn' straight away and was so charming, sending lots of details about the house and its history, that I couldn't bring myself to disillusion her.'

'So you corresponded as yet another alter ego?' Her strained, whispering voice had settled into a comfortable niche now, somewhere between inflating bagpipes and a snooker commentator.