Sealed with a Kiss: Exclusive Short Story

by Fiona Walker

Genres: General Fiction; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Digital download exclusive short story: a wonderfully warm comedy of mistaken identity from the incomparable Fiona Walker, ahead of her new novel The Love Letter. Allegra North's second thoughts about splitting with childhood sweetheart Francis need a first-class stamp. But with her unfinished letter to him still in her handbag, she can't find the right words to express her regrets. Invited to a big movie premiere through her work, she resolves to put all thoughts of her ex fiancé out of her mind; then she loses her handbag in the foyer. Francis meanwhile is determined to win Allegra back. Convinced that they should never have parted, he intends to declare his feelings in front of crowds of press and film fans that evening, unaware that his meticulous plans are about to be hijacked by his hired accomplice, a movie stuntman with a thirst for publicity . . . By the time the closing credits roll, the crowds will be baying for a kiss. Can a letter right wrongs, or do actions speak louder than words?

Release date: March 30, 2012

Publisher: Sphere

Print pages: 47

Sample

‘It’s our best-selling illusion dress,’ the department store assistant told Allegra, who was gaping in disbelief at the hourglass figure reflected in the mirror.

‘I was really looking for something a bit longer,’ she said, tugging uncertainly at the hem. Beneath the amazing eye-fooling torso came the reality of her solid tree trunks, after which she had gained her lifelong nickname, Allegra ‘Legs’ North. ‘Do you sell illusion tights too?’

The assistant pursed her lips and regarded her customer’s hefty undercarriage with professional cool. ‘Shadow tights and sky-high platform stilettos will give you legs like Elle Macpherson.’ Her eyes trailed up to Legs’ chest. ‘And why not try a padded push-up bra?’

Legs had run out of time to hunt around for anything else before her hair appointment, and she knew Conrad would love the dress. He’d given her the afternoon off work to treat herself to something show-stopping, and she longed to do him proud when they shared the red carpet that evening, their most high-profile event to date as a couple. After buying the dress she raced through the store to Lingerie for a boob-boosting bra and leg-slimming tights, trying not to gulp at the price tags. Drastically short on time and money now, she scoured the sales racks for the highest high heels they had in her size and bought them without trying them on.

At the salon, breathless from running, she collapsed into a chair with a clutch of the latest glossies in her arms and asked her stylist to turn her tangled dark blonde tresses into something worthy of a movie premiere.

‘Anything I’d have heard of?’

Fanning out the magazines on her lap, Legs pointed at the faces on the front of most of them – young heartthrob Hollywood actor Con O’Mara, who took the title role in the blockbusting Ptolemy Finch series, and his pouting British co-star Iris Devonshire, who played the boy soothsayer’s sidekick Purple. Both were currently on a stellar publicity campaign to promote the fourth movie, Ptolemy Finch and the Emerald Falcon. The world premiere was taking place in Leicester Square that evening. A-list stars had gathered in London, the world’s media were readying cameras and Dictaphones, crowd barriers were being slotted in place outside the theatre, all in anticipation of the biggest box-office release of the year. And Legs had a front-row seat.

‘No way! ’ The hairdresser was agog. ‘How d’you get a ticket to that?’

‘I work for the literary agency that handles Gordon Lapis.’ The real identity of Gordon Lapis, the author behind the Ptolemy Finch phenomenon, was one of the nation’s greatest mysteries.

‘Man, I am sooo jealous.’ Her stylist’s eyes stretched wide. ‘Ptolemy and Purple are just sooo sexy. We are going to make you look hot, girl!’ He signalled for his assistant to bring foils. ‘Is it true Lapis has made the production company cut the screen kiss?’

Legs beamed at him, happy to give out fragments of gossip while he dyed, glossed and snipped split ends. ‘There’s no kiss in the book, so there was a big argument when the director added one. Gordon has been adamant that it must go, but nobody at the agency knows which version has made the final edit. His legal eagles are handling all that.’

‘He must be worth millions. Bet he lives in a stately home, right?’

‘I’ve no idea. He’s a total recluse. My boss is the only person to have met him and he’s sworn to secrecy.’ She lifted a weekly gossip magazine and read the front cover, snorting with laughter at the shoutline: JEWEL THIEF TO TARGET WEST END PREMIERE.

Reading it over her shoulder, her stylist whistled. ‘Better leave the diamond choker at home, eh love.’

‘It’s all hype; they put out stories like this with each film release. It was Iris Devonshire’s mad stalker last time.’

Later that afternoon, in the privacy of the bedroom of her little basement flat, Allegra regarded her hair nervously in the mirror, wishing her gossip-hungry stylist hadn’t left the foils in so long before going mad with the straighteners. Her usual bed-head now looked as flat, rectangular and banded as a barcode. At least, she realised fretfully, it would match the stripes in her ‘illusion dress’, which she laid out on the bed while waiting for her bath to run.

She dug through her backpack to find her new lingerie to lay alongside it, but instead her fingers closed around the letter she’d been writing all week.

Dear Francis, it began, and tears sprang to her eyes the moment she started reading the passionate confessions of guilt and regret that followed.

Turning off the bath taps before pouring herself a glass of wine, she slotted her iPod into the dock to play Birdy and straightened out the much-thumbed pages of textured writing paper once again.

Her thirteen-year relationship with Francis Protheroe had broken up very bitterly just six weeks ago. The long romance that had started as youthful first love and seen them through to adulthood – half their lifetimes – was finally at an end. She still couldn’t quite believe it was over, or that she had been the architect of the betrayal which had broken it beyond repair. Having an affair with one’s boss was the oldest cliché in the publishing-industry book, and Legs had sped-read her way straight to it, falling for literary über-agent Conrad Knight hook, line and ‘cinq à sept’, as he called those precious after-work hours between five and seven when office. . .