Free The Love Letter by Fiona Walker

to Farcombe now. Francis wants to meet up.’
    ‘Ah.’ Daisy checked that Nico was happily occupied preparing his den for renewed occupation and laced her arm through Legs’, steering her towards the house.
    ‘Is that it?’ Legs snorted in disbelief. ‘Just “ah”?’
    Daisy shrugged, squinting up at the farm’s pretty thatched dormers and then tutting as she spotted the peeling paintwork. ‘I guessed it was only a matter of time.’
    ‘Before what?’ She longed for the answer to be ‘before you two made friends again’, but Daisy was infuriatingly pragmatic, as always.
    ‘Before you paid the cottage a visit; Spywood is your comfort blanket.’
    Legs huffed and followed her inside. She was gasping for some of the freshly brewed coffee she could smell, but Daisy pointed out that it was just a teaspoon full of grinds in the percolator acting as an air freshener for the buyers.
    ‘Will thought it up – quite brilliant for atmosphere, but totally undrinkable, and we’re down to just a few beans now. We only have herb tea, I’m afraid, although I might have some decaff my sister-in-law left here somewhere.’
    ‘It’s OK, I’ll pass.’ Legs tried not to foam at the mouth as she inhaled the smell of the buyer-baiting pretend coffee, ‘there’ll be plenty at Spywood; Mum always leaves the cupboards fully loaded for guests.’
    Daisy was observing her beadily now, clever brown eyes blinking through her overlong fringe like a wise collie watching a stray sheep and weighing up whether to stay lying low or start rounding her up. ‘Isn’t your mother staying in Farcombe all summer?’
    Legs shrugged, helping herself to an apple from a bowl. ‘I’ve tried to call, but you know what reception’s like there; anyway, Ros thinks she’s back in London this week.’
    Daisy’s eyebrows disappeared up beyond her fringe.
    ‘What’s that look for?’ Legs laughed nervously.
    ‘You don’t want Lucy knowing you’re going to meet up with Francis, do you?’
    ‘Nonsense. We just don’t chat that often – we’re not like you and your mum.’
    Daisy and her mother spoke almost daily, whereas in the past year Legs had drifted ever further apart from her parents, who had adored Francis completely and found the broken engagement difficult to reconcile. The normally sanguine Lucy in particular hadreacted to the split with near hysteria – fervid agitation followed by the cold shoulder of disapproval which distanced mother and daughter to this day.
    Daisy was still watching her face closely, those clever eyes infused with affection. ‘You should talk to her, Legs. Find out why she’s holed herself up in Spywood all summer painting.’
    ‘We both know she likes to kick off her shoes – and everything else – when she paints.’ Legs looked away awkwardly. ‘Why, has your mum said something?’
    ‘They’ve hardly seen each other this year as far as I know. Mum’s not been to Spycove for months. It still feels like it’s a part of Dad somehow. There’s so much history there for all of us. You must feel that. It’s a part of us.’
    The North and Foulkes families had been close for over three decades, ever since Lucy North and Babs Foulkes, both heavily pregnant, had met dog-walking on Richmond Common on a sweltering June day and had shared a breather on a bench together.
    The two pregnant wives instantly struck it off. While their mutually irreverent sense of humour brought shared delight, for the husbands it was also bromance at first sight, Dorian North’s charm and humour providing the perfect foil for Nigel Foulkes’s ambition and drive. The two became the closest of allies; Dorian the charming Kew antiques dealer whose reupholstered Georgian chairs graced the most fashionable west London drawing rooms, and Nigel, an art dealer known as the ‘City Canvasser’ because of his reputation for selling outlandishly expensive paintings to bankers with deep wallets and no taste. The new fathers shared a love