'It's Francis who sold it,' Legs muttered. 'He'd do anything to save Farcombe.'

'Whereas his father would still gamble it away on a whim,' Lucy sighed, patting her daughter's arm. 'He was always sending me into William Hill in Bude with a roll of fifties.'

'Do his bets still all have musical names?'

'How did you know that?'

Legs told her about discovering Hector's old system, the winnings going to charity. Then she found herself confessing that she had worked it all out in a frantic attempt to persuade Byrne his father hadn't fallen victim to Hector's cruelty, but rather his legendary and over-effusive philanthropy. 'Of course, Hector stealing Poppy away from Brooke is rather harder to forgive.'

'How he could have a son as upstanding and trustworthy as Francis still amazes me,' Lucy eyed her closely.

'Yes, Francis lays down the law while his father lays bets and wives.'

'Poor darling Legs,' Lucy gripped her daughter's hand on her shoulder. 'There was me thinking that you were so lucky to have the son all these years when I was denied the father, but the sins of both have been waged against us. You don't want to marry Francis at all, do you?'

'No.' She hung her head.

Lucy squeezed her hand, 'We all love Francis, of course, and he's family to us, but you're both young. You'll both find-'

'Don't say it. It's already happened.' Legs tipped her head against her mother's shoulder and watched lightning flashing like a distant rave party over the horizon.

'Jago,' Lucy sighed, 'the man with barbed wire round his soul.'

She nodded, breathing in her mother's familiar scent. 'I've lost my heart to somebody who thinks love is a weapon of mass destruction.'

'I guessed as much when I saw you together. Such a clever man,' Lucy sighed again. 'Do you want to talk about it?' She was trying very hard not to slur her words, but it was obvious she was struggling to keep focus.

'Not particularly,' she apologised. 'I think only a bath can take my tears right now.'

'Your father always says that you carry more guilt in your shoulders than the rest of the Norths put together, including your God-fearing sister and all the Catholics on my mother's side. He used to call you our Madonna child, do you remember?'

'That's because I sang "Like a Virgin" into my hairbrush in front of the mirror, Mum.'

'Was it?'

They stood up, arm in arm, and went inside. Ros had been putting the finishing touches to a bath brimming with Hector's muscle soak bubble bath. She'd even lit a few candles, and placed a freshly brewed mug of tea between the taps.

While Lucy reeled cheerfully back to the newly opened brandy bottle, Legs stifled a yawn and lent on the door frame as she watched her sister pulling clean towels from the laundry cupboard. 'This is such heaven. Thank you.'

'It's not every day we get you back from the dead,' Ros said chirpily, testing the temperature in the bath.

It only now occurred to Legs that her sister must have set out from London long before her clifftop drama began. 'What are you doing in Devon?'

'I came on here after dropping Nico with his father,' she said then lowered her voice to a whisper. 'I think Dad's about to stage a walkout with Vegan Megan from the antiques shop. I went in there yesterday and she was giving him ... head ...' a clap of thunder overhead blotted out all noise '... in full public view.'

Legs stepped hurriedly into the bathroom and pulled the door closed, whispering: 'Did you say "head"?'

'That's right. Indian.'

'Indian head? Is that a Kama Sutra thing?'

'Massage, Legs. Indian head massage,' she hissed it as though it was the Kew equivalent of soliciting on a street corner.

'Oh that's all right then,' Legs said with relief. 'Vegan Megan is totally not Dad's type. The only pulses she sets racing are mung beans.' She stared at Ros as something ground-breaking occurred to her. 'Did you just say you actually went to Inkpot Farm?'

Ros straightened her neat bob in front of the mirror over the basin. 'Of course not. We met Nico's father at Taunton Services. He was late, of course.'

'It's so great you're doing some of the driving.' She yawned tiredly, knowing Will and Daisy would be hugely gratified; they desperately needed Ros to be more practical and onside.

But Ros looked pained by the compliment. 'It's just this once. I wanted to come here and say goodbye to the old place before I lose it.' She gazed around the bathroom tearfully, at the bowing whitewashed beams, the cracked old enamel, broken tiles and rusted taps. Then her eyes alighted on her sister. 'You look terrible, Legs. Are you feeling cold? Clammy? Difficulty breathing? Let me look at your pupils.'

'I'm fine.' She pulled off the tattered coral dress, exhaustion overwhelming her.

Ros eyed her with concern. 'Why are you wearing men's underpants?'

'I'm toying with the idea of a sex change.'

'I really have never understood your sense of humour. That letter you wrote to Francis had some very odd jokes in it. I was in two minds about sending it frankly, but I'm terribly pleased I did. It's made all the difference, hasn't it?'

Legs gaped at her. 'You sent it?'

With a saintly smile, Ros turned to the door. 'I discovered it when I was cleaning your flat after that dog stayed the night. The letter was spread out on your bed, along with my wedding dress which you bought from eBay. That is just so sweet.'

Legs closed her eyes. She'd blamed Kizzy for falsely framing her, but it had been a team effort all along; working independently, one had dug out the misleading clues, the other had packaged them up and labelled them as evidence.

'I would have given the Ditchley dress to you had I known, Legs,' Ros went on. 'I always said you should wear it to marry Francis. The least I could do was help fate along with a first class stamp. You scrub up for his return he'll be back any minute.' She blew her a kiss as she slipped out of the door, immensely proud of her act of big-sisterly kindness.

Legs plunged into her bath as eagerly as Ophelia seeking oblivion.

It was such heaven to wash her hair at last that for a brief moment Legs almost forgot her woes, water lifting every follicle, threading its warm fingers through the loosening tangles and caressing her scalp like Vegan Megan's Indian head massage. She lay for a long time in the bath, letting the water go cold and running more hot in, listening to the candles guttering and the storm circling around the headland. Spywood's little, flickering bathroom felt safe, this deep enamel tub she'd once shared with her sister and later shared many times with Francis, those summers that they had spent nights here alone, crammed together in the hot bubbles, legs hanging over the side of the bath, lust and laughter keeping the water hot.

She topped up again with a scalding jet from the hot tap and sank back more miserably, dreading the conversation to come.

To add to her turmoil, she could hear Francis returning now and talking loudly to Ros outside the door, obviously about to come in and see her.

'Nobody there apart from Imee,' he was complaining. 'The police have all gone home. Kizzy's taken Liz Delamere back to her wardened flat. edith's buggered off too, and Dad's had to take Poppy to hospital she's still quite convinced Liz wanted to kill her, and that she mistook Legs for her because she was wearing Poppy's turban and dress. She's suffering the most ghastly panic attack, although Dad seemed quite cheerful about it when we spoke on the phone, saying that at least he was getting the old girl out of the house for once. Is Legs in here?'

Splashing water everywhere, she managed to clamber out of the bath and wrap herself in a towel just as he came in.

'Darling, don't get up on my account,' he joked. 'You look much better.' He'd put on a jumper and was wearing old jeans now. He looked so incredibly handsome and cheerful, she wanted to cry.

'I just need to um ...' She rushed past him into the main cottage room, towel trailing and hair dripping. 'Mum, can I borrow something to wear?'

Having had another schooner of brandy, Lucy was flying high on nervous energy and alcohol. 'Of course! Anything!'

Legs started up the stars, Francis predictably on her tail.

Suddenly Lucy let out a scream, remembering that the questionable, pilfered Lucian Freud nude was lying on the bed. 'Francis! Wait! Tell me how everything is at the hall?'

He hovered politely but reluctantly. 'I've just told you that.'

'Tell me again!'

Legs dived into the bedroom and borrowed a bright blue kaftan which made her look like a floating portaloo, but was at least cool and clean. She carefully put the tiny hairy Mary oil painting in a spare pillowcase from the wardrobe and folded it up tightly before hiding it behind a beam at the top of the stairs.

'Well tonight will certainly give you some material for your wedding speech, Francis,' Ros was laughing happily at something he'd just recounted.

Halfway down the stairs, Legs swayed in horror, and then caught her mother's tormented, sympathetic eyes over Francis's head.

Already reaching for Legs' hand to help her down with customary gallantry, he smirked back over his shoulder at Ros. 'I shall be far too busy complimenting my wife's beautiful maid of honour to recount such horrors.'

'As well as thanking me for getting you two back together in the first place,' Ros simpered.

'How do you mean?' asked Francis.

'"More than kisses, letters mingle souls",' she quoted warmly. 'Let's just say I Donne right.'

Francis beamed back at his future sister-in-law. They'd always basked in mutual admiration.

Legs felt the room closing in. 'I have to get some fresh air.' She headed towards the door.

'It's about to pour down out there,' Francis pointed out, once more in control and exerting his authority, 'You've almost fallen to your death tonight, darling, best not risk catching your death now.'

Laughing at his witty turn of phrase, Ros backed him up. 'Yes Legs, don't be selfish. You have wet hair.'

'At least wear a hat,' Lucy hiccupped from the table.

Cramming a floppy straw hat on her head, which was the only one she could find, Legs dipped her feet into her mother's flower patterned wellies by the door and extracted the walking socks before stepping into their rubbery depths again. Then she turned to look at Francis over her shoulder. 'Come with me.'

'I haven't got an overcoat.'

She wrenched open the door just as thunder rolled directly overhead. A huge gust of wind blew her hat straight off, spinning it back into the house where it hit Francis on the nose. 'Neither have I.'

'Legs, this is ridiculous.' Picking up the hat, he turned up his shirt collars and hurried after her.

Chapter 45.

Amazingly, the storm held off its big, wet machine gun attack. It blasted them with wind and thunder, lit up the sky with flashes rather than forks, made the sea spit and roar beyond the cliffs and the trees creak and shudder, throwing twigs everywhere. But it stayed dry, as did Legs' tears.

She marched purposefully through the swirling, eddying leaves to the Tree of Secrets where she kicked off her wellies and climbed up to settle on one of its twin arms, waiting for Francis to haul himself up into the trunk's crook in front of her. He was still carrying the straw hat, she noticed, which he settled on his lap like a shield, hands protectively on top, as though she was planning to attack his groin. In a way, she was.

Wearing just an oversized kaftan and a sad smile, she tried to soften the blow: 'You are a wonderful man, Francis. I care for you very deeply, but I don't want to marry you.'

'I haven't asked you to,' he snapped back.

'Then we're agreed?'

'Absolutely.'

Legs almost wept with relief. That had been so much easier than she imagined. Overwhelmed by a wave of sadness and affection, she reached forward to take his hands in hers. But then he started to kiss each one of her fingers and she realised she might not have got her point across yet.

'We need to take it much more slowly than that,' he went on. 'Get the festival out of the way, have a holiday, spend time together. You need to build up your strength again. I thought a safari in Africa, or if you prefer the beach maybe the Maldives ... or Pembrokeshire?' he offered the last option with added gusto, eager to push the budget option.

'No Francis.' She prised her fingers away. 'You don't understand. I don't want us to get back together at all.'

He looked up at the branches swaying and rustling madly overhead, 'That's not what you said in the letter.'

'It was written a year ago.' She hung her head. 'I originally sent it the week we broke up, but that copy obviously got lost in the post-traumatic stress.'

What he said next almost made her fall out of the tree in shock. 'I got your first letter.'

She stared at him for a long time. 'Why didn't you reply then?'

'It was very overwritten. The original was much more real and raw. It felt as though it had been written for me, not for yourself.'

'Thank you for the literary criticism. Maybe you should add a foreword and footnotes?'

He glanced up again as more lightning flashed through the sky. 'You always dumb down too much, Legs.'

'I wrote that letter from my dumb heart which was bleeding. Entirely self-inflicted, I know. Only an academic would differentiate between the version I sent and the first draft.'

'Actually they're almost entirely different,' Francis started to lecture, but stopped himself when he saw her murderous expression. He flashed a nervous smile. 'Perhaps I knew it was past tense even when I read it. All those references to last year's Summer Exhibition were a giveaway (wasn't it X Factor in the first version?). But then the day I got it, you drove here like the clappers and collapsed in my arms and ... here we are.'

'Here we are,' she echoed hollowly. 'I got your reply.'

'I never intended it to land in your hands!'

'Touche.'

'What did you think?'

'I've heard it all before, Francis.'

A spirit of stagnant indignation reigned, undercut with wistful regret. They sat in silence in the Tree of Secrets for many minutes, listening to the circling thunder. Legs felt swords of emotion push and pulling at her sides. Still offshore, the storm turned and began retreating towards Wales, taking its heavy rain-clouds with it, saving its force for more worthy star-crossed lovers.

But then Francis let out a furious bellow, rallying to his own indignant cause.

'I can't believe you're doing this to me again!' he suddenly exploded, the tree shaking as he shifted upright, looming in its hollow. 'You carry my heart with you, Legs. Are you trying to set it loose or cut it out a string at a time? Either way it bloody well hurts. I wish you'd never come back here.'

She hid her face behind her arms. 'I'm so sorry!'