The Last Letter From Your Lover, Page 28

  "That's about the size of it." Then he looks at her properly, and his expression changes. "What are you going to do to redeem yourself?"

  It's astonishingly hard to meet his eye. She's trying to work out how to answer when she hears her mobile phone. "Sorry," she mutters, scrabbling in her bag. She clicks open the little envelope symbol.

  Just wanted to say hi. Away hols tomorrow, will be in touch when I get back, take care Jx

  She's disappointed. "Say hi," after the whispered intimacies of the previous evening? The uninhibited coming together? He wants to "say hi"?

  She rereads the message. He never says much via the mobile phone, she knows that. He told her at the start it was too risky, in case his wife happened to pick it up before he could delete some incriminating message. And there's something sweet in "take care," isn't there? He's telling her he wants her to be okay. She wonders, even as she calms herself, at how far she stretches these messages, finding a whole hinterland in the sparse words he sends to her. She believes they're so connected to each other that it's fine, she understands what he really wants to say. But occasionally, like today, she doubts that there really is anything beyond the shorthand.

  How to reply? She can hardly say "Have a good holiday" when she wants him to have a terrible time, his wife to get food poisoning, his children to whine incessantly, and the weather to fail spectacularly, confining them all to a grumpy indoors. She wants him to sit there missing her, missing her, missing her . . .

  Take care yourself x

  When she looks up, Rory's eyes are fixed on the removals lorry outside, as if he's pretending not to be interested in what's going on beside him.

  "Sorry," she says, tucking her phone back into her bag. "Work thing." Aware, even as she says it, why she's not telling him the truth. He could be a friend, is already a friend: why would she not tell him about John?

  "Why do you think nobody writes love letters like these anymore?" she says instead, pulling one from her bag. "I mean, yes, there are texts and e-mails and things, but nobody sends them in language like this, do they? Nobody spells it out anymore like our unknown lover did."

  The removal lorry has pulled away. The front of the newspaper building is blank and empty, its entrance a dark maw under the sodium lights, its remaining staff deep inside, making last-minute changes to the front page.

  "Perhaps they do," he says, and his face has lost that brief softness. "Or perhaps, if you're a man, it's impossible to know what you're meant to say."

  The gym at Swiss Cottage is no longer near either of their homes, has equipment that is regularly out of order and a receptionist so bolshy that they wonder whether she's been planted there by some opposition, but neither she nor Nicky can be bothered to go through the interminable process of ending their membership and finding somewhere new. It has become their weekly meeting place. After a few desultory laps up and down the small pool, they sit in the hot tub or the sauna for forty minutes to talk, having convinced themselves that these things are "good for the skin."

  Nicky arrives late: she's preparing for a conference in South Africa and has been held up. Neither friend will pass comment on the other's lateness: it's accepted that this happens, that any inconvenience caused by one's career is beyond reproach. Besides, Ellie has never quite understood what Nicky does.

  "Will it be hot out there?" She adjusts her towel on the hot bench of the sauna as Nicky wipes her eyes.

  "I think so. Not sure how much time I'll get to enjoy it, though. New boss is a workaholic. I was hoping to take a week's holiday afterward, but she says she can't spare me."

  "What's she like?"

  "Oh, she's all right, not knitting herself a pair of testicles or anything. But she really does put in the hours, and can't see why the rest of us shouldn't do the same."

  "I don't know anyone who gets a proper lunch break now."

  "Apart from you hacks. I thought it was all boozy lunches with contacts."

  "Hah. Not with my boss on my tail." She tells the story of her morning meeting, and Nicky's eyes screw up in sympathy.

  "You want to be careful," she says. "She sounds like she's got you in her sights. Is this feature coming okay? Will that get her off your back?"

  "I don't know if it'll come to anything. And I feel weird about using some of this stuff." She rubs her foot. "The letters are lovely. And really intense. If someone had written me a letter like that, I wouldn't want it put into the public domain."

  She hears Rory's voice as she says this, and discovers she's no longer sure what she thinks. She'd been unprepared for how much he disliked the idea of the letters being published. She's used to the idea that everyone on the Nation shares a mind-set. The paper first. Old school.

  "I'd want to blow it up and put it on a billboard. I don't know anyone who gets love letters anymore," Nicky says. "My sister did, when her fiance moved to Hong Kong back in the nineties, at least two a week." She snorts. "Mind you, most of them were about how much he missed her bum."

  They break off from laughing as another woman enters the sauna. They exchange polite smiles, and the woman takes a place on the highest shelf, carefully spreading her towel beneath her.

  Ellie smooths her hair off her face. "I've been thinking about what you said. On my birthday." She lowers her voice. "About John's wife."

  "Ah."

  "I know you're right, Nicky, but it's not like I know her. She's not like a real person. So why should I care what happens to her?"

  "Interesting logic."

  "Okay. She has the one thing I really, really want, the one thing that would make me happy. And she can't be that much in love with him, can she, and pay so little attention to what he needs and wants? I mean, if they were that happy, he wouldn't be with me, would he?"

  Nicky shakes her head. "Dunno. When my sister had her kid, she couldn't see straight for six months."

  "His youngest is almost two." She feels, rather than hears, Nicky's shrug of derision.

  "You know, Ellie," Nicky says, lying back on the bench and putting her hands behind her head. "Morally, I wouldn't care either way, but you don't seem happy."

  That defensive clench. "I am happy."

  Nicky raises an eyebrow.

  "Okay. I'm happier and unhappier than I've ever been with anyone else, if that makes sense."

  Unlike her two best friends, Ellie has never lived with a man. Until she was thirty she had assigned marriageandchildren--it was always one word--to the folder of things she would do later in life, long after she had established her career, along with drinking sensibly and taking out a pension. She didn't want to end up like some girls from her school, exhausted and pushing prams in their mid-twenties, financially dependent on husbands they seemed to despise.

  Her last boyfriend had complained that he had spent most of their relationship following her while she ran from place to place "barking into a mobile phone." He had been even more pissed off that she'd found this funny. But since she'd turned thirty, it had become a little less amusing. When she visited her parents in Derbyshire, they made conspicuous efforts not to mention boyfriends, so much so that it had become just another form of pressure. She's good at being on her own, she tells them and other people. And it was the truth, until she met John.

  "Is he married, love?" the woman asks, through the steam.

  Ellie and Nicky exchange a subtle glance.

  "Yes," Ellie says.

  "If it makes you feel any better, I fell in love with a married man, and we've been married four years next Tuesday."

  "Congratulations," they say in tandem, Ellie conscious that it seems an odd word to use in the circumstances.

  "Happy as anything, we are. Of course his daughter won't talk to him anymore, but it's fine. We're happy."

  "How long did it take him to leave his wife?" Ellie asks, sitting up.

  The woman is pushing her hair into a ponytail. She has no boobs, Ellie thinks, and he still left his wife for her.

  "Twelve years," she says. "I
t meant we couldn't have children, but like I said, it was worth it. We're very happy."

  "I'm glad for you," says Ellie, as the woman climbs down. The glass door opens, letting in a burp of cold air as she leaves, and then it's the two of them, sitting in the hot, darkened cabin.

  There's a short silence.

  "Twelve years," says Nicky, rubbing her face with her towel. "Twelve years, an alienated daughter, and no kids. Well, I bet that makes you feel loads better."

  Two days later the phone rings. It's a quarter past nine, and she's at her desk, standing up to answer it so that her boss can see she's there and working. What time does Melissa come to work? She seems to be first in and last out in Features, yet her hair and makeup are always immaculate, her outfits carefully coordinated. Ellie suspects there's probably a personal trainer at six a.m., a blow-dry at some exclusive salon an hour afterward. Does Melissa have a home life? Someone once mentioned a young daughter, but Ellie finds that hard to believe.

  "Features," she says, staring absently into the glass office. Melissa is on the phone, walking up and down, one hand stroking her hair.

  "Do I have the right number for Ellie Haworth?" A cut-glass voice, a relic from a previous age.

  "Yup. This is she."

  "Ah. I believe you sent me a letter. My name is Jennifer Stirling."

  Chapter 20

  She walks briskly, head down against the driving rain, cursing herself for not thinking far enough ahead to bring an umbrella. Taxis follow in the slipstream of steamy-windowed buses, sending sprays of water in graceful arcs over the curb. She is in St. John's Wood on a wet Saturday afternoon, trying not to think of white sands in Barbados, of a broad freckled hand rubbing sun cream into a woman's back. It is an image that pops into her head with punishing frequency, and has done for the six days John has been gone. The foul weather feels like some cosmic joke at her expense.

  The mansion block rises in a gray slab from a wide, tree-lined pavement. She trips up the stone steps, presses the buzzer for Number 8, and waits, hopping impatiently from one soaked foot to the other.

  "Hello?" The voice is clear. She thanks God that Jennifer Stirling suggested today: the thought of negotiating a whole Saturday without work, without her friends, who all seem to be busy, was terrifying.

  That freckled hand again.

  "It's Ellie Haworth. About your letters."

  "Ah. Come in. I'm on the fourth floor. You may have to wait a while for the lift. It's terribly slow."

  It's the kind of building she rarely goes into, in an area she hardly knows; her friends live in new-built flats with tiny rooms and underground parking, or maisonettes squashed like layer cakes into Victorian terraced houses. This block speaks of old money, imperviousness to fashion. It makes her think of the word dowager--John might use it--and smile.

  The hallway is lined with dark turquoise carpet, a color from another age. The brass rail that leads up the four marble steps bears the deep patina of frequent polishing. She thinks, briefly, of the communal area in her own block, with its piles of neglected mail and carelessly left bicycles.

  The lift makes its stately way up the four floors, creaking and trundling, and she steps out onto a tiled corridor.

  "Hello?" Ellie sees the open door.

  Afterward she's not sure what she had pictured: some stooped old lady with twinkling eyes and perhaps a nice shawl amid a house full of small china animals. Jennifer Stirling is not that woman. In her late sixties she might be, but her figure is lean and still upright; only her silver hair, cut into a side-swept bob, hints at her true age. She's wearing a dark blue cashmere sweater and a belted wool jacket over a pair of well-cut trousers that are more Dries van Noten than Marks & Spencer. An emerald green scarf is tied round her neck.

  "Miss Haworth?"

  She senses that the woman has watched her, perhaps assessing her, before using her name.

  "Yes." Ellie sticks out her hand. "Ellie, please."

  The woman's face relaxes a little. Whatever test there was, she seems to have passed it--for now, at least. "Do come in. Have you come far?"

  Ellie follows her into the apartment. Again, she finds her expectations defied. No animal knickknacks here. The room is huge, light, and sparsely furnished. The pale wood floors sport a couple of large Persian rugs, and two damask-clad chesterfields face each other across a glass coffee table. The only other pieces of furniture are eclectic and exquisite: a chair that she suspects is expensive, modern, and Danish, and a small antique table, inlaid with walnut. Photographs of family, small children.

  "What a beautiful flat," says Ellie, who has never particularly cared about interior decorating but suddenly knows how she wants to live.

  "It is nice, isn't it? I bought it in . . . 'sixty-eight, I think. It was rather a shabby old block then, but I thought it would be a nice place for my daughter to grow up, since she had to live in a city. You can see Regent's Park from that window. Can I take your coat? Would you like some coffee? You look terribly wet."

  Ellie sits while Jennifer Stirling disappears into the kitchen. On the walls, which are the palest shade of cream, there are several large pieces of modern art. Ellie eyes Jennifer Stirling as she reenters the room, and realizes that she's not surprised that she could have inspired such passion in the unknown letter writer.

  The photographs on the table include one of a ridiculously beautiful young woman, posed as if for a Cecil Beaton portrait; then, perhaps a few years later, she's peering down at a newborn child, her expression wearing the exhaustion, awe, and elation seemingly common to all new mothers--her hair, even though she has just given birth, is perfectly set.

  "It's very kind of you to go to all this trouble. I have to say, your letter was intriguing." A cup of coffee is placed in front of her, and Jennifer Stirling sits opposite, stirring hers with a tiny silver spoon, a red-enamel coffee bean at the end. Jesus, thinks Ellie. Her waist is smaller than mine.

  "I'm curious to know what this correspondence is. I don't think I've thrown anything out accidentally for years. I tend to shred everything. And that PO box was . . . well, I thought it was private."

  "Well, it wasn't actually me who found it. A friend of mine has been sorting out the archive at the Nation newspaper and came across a file."

  Jennifer Stirling's demeanor changes.

  "And in it were these."

  Ellie reaches into her bag and carefully pulls out the plastic folder with the three love letters. She watches Mrs. Stirling's face as she takes them. "I would have sent them to you," she continues, "but . . ."

  Jennifer Stirling is holding the letters reverently in both hands.

  "I wasn't sure . . . what--well, whether you would even want to see them."

  Jennifer says nothing. Suddenly ill at ease, Ellie takes a sip from her cup. She doesn't know how long she sits there, drinking her coffee, but she keeps her eyes averted, she isn't sure why.

  "Oh, I do want them."

  When she looks up, something has happened to Jennifer's expression. She isn't tearful, exactly, but her eyes have the pinched look of someone beset by intense emotion. "You've read them, I take it."

  Ellie finds she's blushing. "Sorry. They were in a file of something completely unrelated. I didn't know I'd end up finding their owner. I thought they were beautiful," she adds awkwardly.

  "Yes, they are, aren't they? Well, Ellie Haworth, not many things surprise me at my age, but you have succeeded today."

  "Aren't you going to read them?"

  "I don't have to. I know what they say."

  Ellie learned a long time ago that the most important skill in journalism is knowing when to say nothing. But now she's becoming increasingly uncomfortable as she watches an old woman who has in some way disappeared from the room. "I'm sorry," she says carefully, when the silence becomes oppressive, "if I've upset you. I wasn't sure what to do, given that I didn't know what your--"

  "--situation was," Jennifer says. She smiles, and Ellie thinks again what a lovely face s
he has. "That was very diplomatic of you. But these can cause no embarrassment. My husband died many years ago. It's one of the things they never tell you about being old." She gives a wry smile. "That the men die off so much sooner."

  For a while they listen to the rain, the hissing brakes of the buses outside.

  "Well," Mrs. Stirling says, "tell me something, Ellie. What made you go to such effort to return these letters to me?"

  Ellie ponders whether or not to mention the feature. Her instincts tell her not to.

  "Because I've never read anything like them?"

  Jennifer Stirling is watching her closely.

  "And . . . I also have a lover," she says, not sure why she says this.

  "A 'lover'?"

  "He's . . . married."

  "Ah. So these letters spoke to you."

  "Yes. The whole story did. It's the thing about wanting something you can't have. And that thing of never being able to say what you really feel." She's looking down now, speaking to her lap. "The man I'm involved with, John . . . I don't really know what he thinks. We don't talk about what's happening between us."

  "I don't suppose he's unusual in that," Mrs. Stirling remarks.

  "But your lover did. 'B.' did."

  "Yes." Again, she's lost in another time. "He told me everything. It's an astonishing thing to receive a letter like that. To know you're loved so completely. He was always terribly good with words."

  The rain becomes briefly torrential and thunders against the windows, people shouting below in the street.

  "I've been mildly obsessed by your love affair, if that doesn't sound too strange. I desperately wanted the two of you to reunite. I have to ask, did you . . . did you ever get back together?"

  The modern parlance seems wrong, inappropriate, and Ellie feels suddenly self-conscious. There's something graceless in what she was asking, she thinks. She has pushed it too far.

  Just as Ellie is about to apologize, and make to leave, Jennifer speaks: "Would you like another cup of coffee, Ellie?" she says. "I don't suppose there's much point in your leaving while the rain is like this."

  Jennifer Stirling sits on the silk-covered sofa, her coffee cooling on her lap, and tells the story of a young wife in the south of France, of a husband who, in her words, was probably no worse than any others of the age. A man very much of his time, in whom expressiveness had become a sign of weakness, unbecoming. And she tells a story of his opposite, an opinionated, passionate, damaged man, who unsettled her from the first night she met him at a moonlit dinner party.