were we?’
Legs hid behind the door.
‘What are you doing here?’ she gasped.
She heard a creaking of floorboards as he stood up. ‘Waiting for Lucy. She popped to Bude for champagne.’
Legs was dumbfounded, trying to make sense of her mother playing hostess to a naked Hector Protheroe in the cottage. Was he a closet naturist, too?
‘Are you celebrating something?’
‘Every day is a celebration at the moment.’ Now wrapped in a jaunty, orchid-strewn silk kimono that was far too short, Hector and his bassoon joined her in the landing room, ducking beneath the low beams, his voice hushed with concern. ‘My dear, you do know, don’t you?’
‘Know what?’
His faded blue eyes softened amid their tanned creases, and he studied her shocked face thoughtfully before steering her downstairs where it was less cramped and he could straighten up to his full six foot four and make an announcement that left Legs’ jaw hanging yet lower.
‘I’ve left Poppy.’
Legs reeled back. So that was it. Her mother was providing sanctuary for Hector, who had finally left his troubled marriage of twenty years. There had been many occasions in the past when he’d threatened to do so, and his flirtations and affairs had been legend, but he’d never actually done the deed.
Her first thought was for Francis. As a young boy with a stepmother he loathed, this was news he could only have dreamed of. Now, in adulthood, he might feel differently. How was he taking it?
Only after she’d pondered this for a moment did a second thought strike her. Why was Hector naked, and why had he writtenI LOVE YOU on the door? He must have a mistress and be using Spywood to conduct his trysts. He was an incorrigible flirt, well known as a roué and a terror to barmaids at the Book Inn in Farcombe.
‘Lucy has been amazing,’ Hector was saying.
Legs gasped in ever-dawning shock. With typical naivety and kindness, her mother was obviously providing a refuge for the lovers, and even catering for them. No wonder Lucy had been away so long watercolouring. She’d always had a soft spot for Hector and run errands for him, forever at his beck and call, the swine.
‘That’s such an abuse of friendship!’ Legs squeaked.
Hector shook his head. ‘
Au contraire,
my dear Allegra,
recevoir sans donner fait tourner l’amitié.’
He smiled benignly at her baffled face. ‘Receiving without giving turns the friendship.’
‘That’s as might be, but there was still no need to bring my mother into all this!’
‘She rather came of her own free will.’
They were standing in the kitchen now, Hector’s bassoon still aloft, like a fertility symbol. Legs felt she should cast around for a phallic symbol of her own to even things up – the ornamental bedpan that hung from the wall, maybe, or one of the sausage-dog draft excluders? She could use a weapon if things got heated; Hector was hardly a threat in his flowery kimono, but his acid charm was such high grade uranium that he could flatten an ego with one barbed comment.
She’d never enjoyed an easy relationship with the man who lived up to his name by being something of a hectoring bully and vociferous critic. A controversial, anti-establishment figure and notorious gambler with a knack for making money, friends and headlines easily, Hector Protheroe had famously launched the
Commentator
magazine in the seventies when he was fresh out of Cambridge, later selling it for a fat profit which enabled him to open the Fitzroy Club in the eighties, one of the first of the swatheof private members’ clubs that cashed in on London’s glitterati clique. But the main source of Hector’s considerable income came from Smile Media, a company at the cutting edge of mobile telecommunications, of cable and satellite and later digital broadcasting and publishing. ‘Spread the Smile’ had been one of the biggest advertising campaigns of the nineties, a catchphrase familiar to every Brit. Smile phones were, for a
Legs hid behind the door.
‘What are you doing here?’ she gasped.
She heard a creaking of floorboards as he stood up. ‘Waiting for Lucy. She popped to Bude for champagne.’
Legs was dumbfounded, trying to make sense of her mother playing hostess to a naked Hector Protheroe in the cottage. Was he a closet naturist, too?
‘Are you celebrating something?’
‘Every day is a celebration at the moment.’ Now wrapped in a jaunty, orchid-strewn silk kimono that was far too short, Hector and his bassoon joined her in the landing room, ducking beneath the low beams, his voice hushed with concern. ‘My dear, you do know, don’t you?’
‘Know what?’
His faded blue eyes softened amid their tanned creases, and he studied her shocked face thoughtfully before steering her downstairs where it was less cramped and he could straighten up to his full six foot four and make an announcement that left Legs’ jaw hanging yet lower.
‘I’ve left Poppy.’
Legs reeled back. So that was it. Her mother was providing sanctuary for Hector, who had finally left his troubled marriage of twenty years. There had been many occasions in the past when he’d threatened to do so, and his flirtations and affairs had been legend, but he’d never actually done the deed.
Her first thought was for Francis. As a young boy with a stepmother he loathed, this was news he could only have dreamed of. Now, in adulthood, he might feel differently. How was he taking it?
Only after she’d pondered this for a moment did a second thought strike her. Why was Hector naked, and why had he writtenI LOVE YOU on the door? He must have a mistress and be using Spywood to conduct his trysts. He was an incorrigible flirt, well known as a roué and a terror to barmaids at the Book Inn in Farcombe.
‘Lucy has been amazing,’ Hector was saying.
Legs gasped in ever-dawning shock. With typical naivety and kindness, her mother was obviously providing a refuge for the lovers, and even catering for them. No wonder Lucy had been away so long watercolouring. She’d always had a soft spot for Hector and run errands for him, forever at his beck and call, the swine.
‘That’s such an abuse of friendship!’ Legs squeaked.
Hector shook his head. ‘
Au contraire,
my dear Allegra,
recevoir sans donner fait tourner l’amitié.’
He smiled benignly at her baffled face. ‘Receiving without giving turns the friendship.’
‘That’s as might be, but there was still no need to bring my mother into all this!’
‘She rather came of her own free will.’
They were standing in the kitchen now, Hector’s bassoon still aloft, like a fertility symbol. Legs felt she should cast around for a phallic symbol of her own to even things up – the ornamental bedpan that hung from the wall, maybe, or one of the sausage-dog draft excluders? She could use a weapon if things got heated; Hector was hardly a threat in his flowery kimono, but his acid charm was such high grade uranium that he could flatten an ego with one barbed comment.
She’d never enjoyed an easy relationship with the man who lived up to his name by being something of a hectoring bully and vociferous critic. A controversial, anti-establishment figure and notorious gambler with a knack for making money, friends and headlines easily, Hector Protheroe had famously launched the
Commentator
magazine in the seventies when he was fresh out of Cambridge, later selling it for a fat profit which enabled him to open the Fitzroy Club in the eighties, one of the first of the swatheof private members’ clubs that cashed in on London’s glitterati clique. But the main source of Hector’s considerable income came from Smile Media, a company at the cutting edge of mobile telecommunications, of cable and satellite and later digital broadcasting and publishing. ‘Spread the Smile’ had been one of the biggest advertising campaigns of the nineties, a catchphrase familiar to every Brit. Smile phones were, for a
Similar Books
