His no-nonsense answer made her roll deftly away from beneath him and kneel up, straightening her clothes and rubbing her flushed face, horrified at what she'd just let happen and how Conrad would react if he knew. 'I have other plans. We can talk again later. I have to be somewhere.' She made a show of looking at her watch, realising too late that she had left it on the edge of the sink in the Ealing basement flat, along with her favourite earrings. She stared blankly at the blue veins running from palm to inner arm for a moment, amazed to find that she could actually see the pulse beating there, a little pressure pad jittering up and down horribly fast.

Francis laughed affectionately. 'You always forget to wear your watch.' He reached out for her wrist, but she snatched it away.

'I live for the moment, remember? You always said that was the ultimate example of bad timekeeping. Let's text. You always said that was the ultimate example of ...'

He took the cue, 'Bad haiku.'

Nodding, she scrambled upright and fled, realising that being one year removed from the thirteen years they'd been a couple was barely enough to stop the love and regret inside melting and boiling to reach flashpoint.

Francis was right; this was going to be very complicated.

Chapter 7.

Making progress? Two identical messages awaited Legs on the iPhone, one from Conrad, the other from Gordon's PA Kelly.

The urge to type 'First Base' with hyperbolic honesty was hard to resist. To give herself time to think, she called through to the Book Inn, but the voice at the other end of the line not one of the regular team of staff she recognised informed her that it was fully occupied all weekend.

'Tell Guy it's Legs North.' She knew he and Nonny would fit her in, even if it meant bunking up in one of the attics.

'He's in the kitchens,' informed the voice fearfully. 'Can you call back?'

Wearily, Legs rang off. She had no intention of staying in the hall with Francis, and even less desire to stay at Spywood with the aged, naked adulterers. If she went for a walk along the Eascombe under-cliff to the harbour she could clear her head and pop in on Guy and Nonny at the Book Inn for a drink; they would find her a bed for the night.

As she walked she called Conrad, who was with his kids and clearly didn't want to speak for long. 'Easier to text when they're here for weekends,' he muttered as teenage voices moaned in the background that he was always on the phone and that they had pressed 'live pause'. 'How are you getting on?'

'Well, Francis definitely wants Gordon on the festival bill ...' she decided to start off positively.

'That's great tell me the details later.'

'But it's not that straightfor-' She realised he'd already rung off.

Furious, she stomped down the cliff path and started along the shingle beach, wobbly on her feet until she reached the under-cliff and perched on the ledge, punching a thumb at her little screen to address Gordon's PA.

Progress fine.

A reply flew back before she'd pocketed the phone. Please elaborate so I can report more fully to Gordon.

It's rather complicated.

He will require a full debrief.

She huffed, thinking that it was none of Kelly's business, let alone Gordon's. As long as she got him on the programme, surely the details were irrelevant?

She called Daisy, desperate to confide in someone, but the phone rang on unanswered.

All will be fine, she typed to Kelly. Trying to get Gordon star billing at Farcombe, and looks v hopeful. Will update anon.

The large A-sign outside the Book Inn announced that it was closed for a private function that night.

Holidaymakers were out in force along the seafront wearing the curious uniform of the British coastal visitor: pastel-coloured anoraks, patterned wellies and crumpled cotton shorts.

Legs sat on one of the benches overlooking the harbour and thought about Francis, uncertain whether he'd changed or whether she just saw him differently after a year apart. He seemed more mature and self-assured and distinctly sexier. Her innards squeezed deliciously as another aftershock from their kiss fizzed through her. She quashed the sensation and focused hard on a seagull dive-bombing an abandoned wrapper.

Her phone was chiming with yet another email, this time from Gordon himself.

With whom are you negotiating? Are you still unarmed and driving a red car? I hope this is being handled discreetly. GL.

Legs glared at the seagull, irritated that he wanted such forensic detail, although the joke made her smile, despite herself. She could never entirely tell whether Gordon's offbeat humour was quirky wit or just madness, but she loved its rare appearances.

I have a close personal contact within the Protheroe family, she assured him.

I abhor nepotism. He popped up on live messaging now, no longer making her smile.

She sighed even more irritably, wondering whether he really wanted to appear at the festival at all. But much as she longed to call his bluff, she knew it wasn't worth the risk.

If you would prefer to make contact yourself, it can be arranged.

That will not be necessary yet. I have heard the family can be extremely difficult to approach; I simply want assurance that this is being handled with the utmost caution and tact.

Tact! She fumed. Tact! The benevolent Hector Protheroe is currently shacked up with my mother in a clifftop love nest, and I'm about to upset the family applecart yet further by inventing a romance with his son to break up this sorry union, which may also result in breaking my own heart, but will almost certainly get you top billing at the festival.

However, all she angrily typed was: The Protheroe family has always tempted fate and they can make dangerous bedfellows. Rest assured, I am taking every precaution possible, including parking the red car in gear with the handbrake on. I am also nothing if not actful. Too late she realised that she had omitted the first 't' in 'tact'. It seemed fitting, given that she was asking to act the performance of her life. What the hell. And armless, she added.

Do you take nothing seriously? Gordon stormed back.

Biting her lip, Legs tapped at her screen as persistently as the seagull in front of her pecking its beak at the wrapper until she'd written more supplicating apologies and promises of utter professionalism than every politician ever accused of sleaze or expenses fiddling, footballer accused of match fixing and newspaper editor accused of phone-tapping combined. Satisfied, she pressed send. That should appease the irascible bugger.

He seemed slightly placated, replying a few moments later: I don't doubt your professionalism, Allegra, although Conrad's is another matter. Is your close personal contact Francis Protheroe?

He was a clever bugger as well as a capricious one, she realised, typing: Yes.

And he is the ex you said you could never work alongside? His memory was far too good, as were his quick-fire Googling skills. Good looking guy.

He clearly already had a picture of Francis in front of him, no doubt one of the many dashing shots that had accompanied gushing pieces in the Mail and Telegraph; she'd done the internet searches herself enough times to know how easy they were to find. And if one looked hard enough as Gordon no doubt had it was even possible to link her name with Francis's. Thus Gordon had rumbled Conrad's shabby tactics already.

Francis is highly professional, and already right behind you coming here, she assured him, eager to set his mind at rest. But he'd already signed out of their chat, no doubt to blast out a furious email to Conrad berating him for sending his silly, wisecracking assistant to do the job of a professional negotiator and agent.

The seagull had tired of the wrapper and flown off, a silhouette crossing the golden glow of the lowering sun. In the harbour, the masts clanked and jingled, and beyond the sea wall, waves on the shingle hissed and frothed like writhing serpents.

Walking into the glare of the sun with her head lowered, Legs trailed back up the cliff path to the jinxed red car and sat behind the wheel, willing herself to drive to Bude where there might be a B&B with vacancies even in high summer.

Yet she couldn't face driving away from her clifftop, such a familiar corner of her childhood. It was as though she and the Honda were held tightly there by magnets.

It took almost an hour of wrestling with her conscience before she called her father, still not knowing whether she could bring herself to tell him what was going on, yet desperate to check that he was all right. But as soon as she told Dorian that she was in Farcombe he pre-empted any clumsy attempt to declare the affair and claimed in his charming, vague manner to be well aware of the situation, thank you, and dealing with it in his own way. Hot-headed and highly emotional, Legs had never been able to penetrate Dorian's quiet, formal starchiness for all their unconditional love. He was a man who might weep through Madame Butterfly on Radio 3, and yet clammed up totally if asked about his feelings.

'Your mother will come back in her own good time' was all he would say.

No matter how much she huffed, puffed, barracked and demanded that he come to North Devon in person, he refused to engage. The only moment in which she heard his voice sharpen from its customary soft, gentlemanly clip was when she mentioned her sister.

'No need to involve Ros,' he snapped. 'She simply will not understand all this.'

'And I do, I suppose?'

'You're the guilty one, Allegra'

'I'm what?' she bleated.

'You always feel guilty about things and get personally involved, but you are equally quick to forgive; Ros is very moral and black and white, as you know. This would hurt her very deeply. She takes after your mother on that front. They're both martyrs to their cause.'

'Mata Hari in Mum's case,' she grumbled.

Only after the call ended did it occur to Legs that her father had let something slip, given her a rare personal insight. It seemed strange that he aligned Ros and Lucy so closely; Legs had always been the Mummy's girl, after all. She felt curiously orphaned by the drama, her entire halcyon childhood cast in doubt. She longed more than anything to speak with Daisy, but there was still no answer, nor did Conrad reply to texts. The only persistent contact on her phone was Gordon, blithering on in a long email about red cars and stalkers. He obviously had writer's block again, hadn't managed to contact Conrad and seemed to have been on the laudanum.

Conrad has no right to ask you to do this, he raged. As if the scheming Protheroes were not enough to contend with, he knows that Ptolemy Finch fans are extremely clever, especially the cranky ones. My real identity might remain one of the literary world's greatest kept secrets for now but an obsessive few have long made it their business to know all about Gordon Lapis's editor, publicist and marketing team at the publishers, and even my literary agent and assistant. They have names, photographs, phone numbers, home addresses. Access to Google and a clever mind makes for easy detective work. You are highly conspicuous, Allegra, especially in a red car.

She ignored him, deciding to be out of signal or battery as far as he was concerned. His paranoia was too much for her right now. Even poor Kelly had dropped another line 'strictly off the record' to explain that Gordon was behaving very strangely and so it would help to know the exact situation between Legs and the Protheroe family.

Her stomach let out a loud rumble. She hadn't eaten since lunchtime and it was now after nine, the last streaks of light being pulled from the sky. Yet suddenly she was too weary to face driving for food or even a bed. She was still magnetically glued to the clifftop in the car, and feeling increasingly like a kittiwake sitting on a clutch of eggs. Parked amid the gorse bushes on the headland, she was far from any public road, and tucked safely away from sight of Gull Cross and the Spywood and Spycove track. The woods and cliffs around her held no fear; she'd camped out here often enough as a girl. She clambered into the back of the Honda and curled up into a tight ball, using her weekend bag as a pillow, momentarily surprised that her duffel bag felt smaller than expected, but too tired to really care. The sound of the sea lulled her to sleep almost immediately, cocooned in her familiar old red car.

Chapter 8.

Waking to a spectacular dawn stabbing blades of sunlight through the spiked arms of gorse, Legs unfolded her stiff, cramped body and groped her way out onto the dewy grass. She was ravenously hungry. The clock on her phone told her it was five-thirty. Francis had texted at midnight: Kizzy onside, as promised. Come for lunch. F She groaned, hunger still gnawing at her stomach lining, but her belly was now so acid with apprehension that she knew indigestion would chase every mouthful of breakfast. She went for a run instead, pulling on her trainers from the boot of the car and pounding the heartbeat from her ears with her feet, racing her churning thoughts along Farcombe estate's private roads, making sure she kept out of sight of the main house. Cooling off afterwards, she waded through the shingle of Eascombe Cove at high tide, not caring that her trainers got soaked. Seaweed tied itself around her ankles before slithering away as she let out high kicks which sent up salty showers that splashed refreshingly against equally salty sweat on her skin.

She should take a shower before going to the big house for lunch, she realised. Then again, staying dirty might be no bad thing. She had decided she must put Francis off. The more repulsive he found her, the more vindicated he would feel and the less tempted to enact this bizarre farce and risk damaging either his new love, or her old, battered heart. She owed it to him and Kizzy to be in a bedraggled, salt-crusted state. It was only fair. She would, however, line up the mother of all hot baths afterwards.

Back at the car, she picked up her phone to ring Guy at the Book Inn, but it wasn't yet seven. The sun was resting its chin on the top of the woods now, burning away the sea mist and dew. A fallow deer from the small Farcombe herd wandered out from the bracken and eyed her warily, tail flicking.

A chirrup from her phone sent it straight back into the undergrowth. It was Francis: Did you get my message about lunch? Will you be there? We must discuss the plan. F She felt the drying sweat turn icy cold against her skin, yet a hot little flame leapt in her heart and groin. Her fingers shook as she read other messages.

Kelly had emailed again late the previous night, begging her to respond: Gordon is in a complete state. I'm so sorry to put pressure on, but I could really use your help. He is pretty paranoid (please never tell him I said that he tells me an overactive imagination is a part of the job spec). He seems to think there's an unfair compromise taking place.

Conrad had sent a very dry Sleep well?

Daisy, alerted to the missed calls, apologised by text for juggling wailing babies and work until too late to respond in voice and asked: Whassup? Don't tell me I poisoned you at lunch yesterday? Only saw the sell by date on the Brie afterwards. Sorry! You have Nico's bag, BTW; take care of Beekey. Seen Francis yet? Xx Yelping, Legs looked at the small duffel bag she had thus far believed to contain her Browns weekend wardrobe, artfully rolled to avoid creases, along with her make-up, wash-things and phone charger. Instead, it was topped by a much-washed fluffy parrot, beneath which languished several pairs of very small Y-fronts and socks, a pair of Dr Who pyjamas and lots of practical separates suited to a ten-year-old boy, all neatly starched and folded by Ros, some items of which Legs recognised from the garden washing line that she had already pilfered once.

With a wail, she kicked the car door to vent her anger, making it swing backwards like a starting gate before it dropped down on its rusty hinges with an ominous clank. When Legs pushed it closed again, it hung down like a broken wing and she found it would no longer shut or lock, however much she lifted and heaved. Perhaps Gordon was right; her car was hexed. She sensed fate was trying to tell her something.

'Behave like a child, dress like a child?' she suggested out loud.

Determined to stay in control, she sat on the bonnet to pull off her wet trainers and socks, then composed her very grown up and responsible replies, firstly to Francis: Yes to lunch. Am on a sardine, citrus and boiled pulse diet. Gives one terribly bad breath, but the movements are worth it. Need to talk; not sure plan such a good idea. Pax. x Off it flew, followed by her response to Kelly: Gordon is lucky to have you. Please don't worry. I will not compromise him in any way. Compromising myself goes with the territory, but you'll know all about that. He will get what he wants and is assured of my total discretion. You are an utter pro. We both are.

Then she addressed Conrad: I slept in the car, which is red. According to Gordon that's a bad thing. But frankly it's better than sleeping under the same roof as my mother and her secret lover of more than ten years, or my ex-fiance and his nest of red-headed festival vipers. If you want your star to appear here, then I must get into bed with them all. This is hell. Please rescue me. L xxx That should get his attention, she thought murderously, dashing a final reply to Daisy, unable to hold back from total honesty with the one whose opinion she trusted most: Don't know what to think or do. Still feel in love, like the past year hasn't happened. Am I mad? Is it guilt? Mum and Hector shacked up together hardly registers compared to this, but know it's all wrong. Help! I blame the Brie and Beekey.

Satisfied, she lay back on the bonnet and soaked in the sun, feeling the salt crystallise on her skin.

It was only when replies started coming back that she began to panic.

Daisy, no doubt texting as she spooned breakfast into toddlers, apologised for the poisoned lunch, and said she was unaware of the sardine diet: sounds delicious, but I have strange cravings. Are you sure you're not pregnant? Call me any time x Legs chewed a nail anxiously, realising that she must have sent the message intended for Francis to her friend by mistake; she hoped it was just an isolated error but then Conrad replied applauding her professionalism: Utter pros, unutterable prose: we can read between the lines. Keep up the good work. ILY. He had clearly been sent the message she thought she'd sent to Kelly.

Eyebrows and heartbeat shooting up, she read Francis's text: Darling Legs, your honesty is deeply touching. Not sure we have Brie, but fatted calf and amnesty await. F. (P.s.What is Beekey?) Just as an email from Kelly pinged through and she read the first line, Gordon will know about this. You must not prostitute yourself for-, her phone battery ran out of charge.

She let out a wail. She must have sent every message to the wrong recipient.

Breathless with worry, Legs pulled everything out of the car, but the charger wasn't there. It was in the weekend bag that Nico now had at Inkpot Farm; a poor substitute for Beekey. She slumped down in defeat, realising she couldn't even double-check exactly which message had gone to whom. But it was pretty obvious she'd screwed up big time.

For that moment, she didn't care what was going on between her parents. She needed her mother, and caffeine not necessarily in that order.

The front door to Spywood Cottage was unlocked and bassoon music hooted from the main bedroom, where its inhabitants were clearly still tucked up together in the long summer morning sleep-in.

Legs fell gratefully upon the kettle and made herself a sweet, milky coffee as strong as methadone.

There were fresh croissants in the breadbin, but she still felt too sick to eat. Instead, abandoning any noble intentions to stay off-puttingly filthy, she nipped into the downstairs bathroom and sat in the bath, cranking up the ancient hand-held shower mixer to a lukewarm splutter its maximum output as she knew from long experience and washed away the layers of cold sweat, sea salt and shame.

Lucy and Hector were both in the kitchen when she reappeared. Neither betrayed any surprise to find her there. Both were respectably dressed in faded summer linens, sitting at opposite ends of the table, sharing breakfast like two old friends after an early dog walk.

But while Lucy couldn't meet her younger daughter's eyes, Hector's gaze was challenging as bright blue as his only son's, and with ten times the confidence.

'Your mother and I are very much in love.'

Legs choked on her coffee, dragging wet tendrils of hair from her watering eyes as she blinked at him. Honest anger was always her first defence. 'Don't you think it might have been wise to talk to your children about this before moving in together?'

'Perhaps,' he nodded, 'but I believe in spontaneity in all things, from music to love.' He reached across and took Lucy's hand in his, a giant lobster claw enfolding a soft anemone.

'You had secret lunches for over a decade,' Legs flashed. 'That's hardly spontaneous!'

'I would never have stood in the way of Francis's happiness,' he retaliated with characteristic sharpness, hippy turned harpy, 'but then you blew it. Life is too short for second chances, and a decade is a long time to wait for true love. That's why he is now with pretty young Kizzy, and your mother and I can declare our feelings openly at last.' He stretched across and kissed mute, blushing Lucy full on the lips.

Legs burst into tears, an uncomfortable night's sleep and too much exercise mixing toxically with coffee and the display of tenderness.

Still her mother wouldn't look at her.

'Hector, would you give us ten minutes alone?' Lucy managed to mutter.