The Last Letter From Your Lover, Page 32

  Wake up. Pick up the phone.

  By now she's standing in the queue. Nicky picks up on the third ring.

  "Ellie?"

  "Oh, God, Nicky. I've done something awful." She lowers her voice, shielding it from the family that has walked in behind her. The father is silent, the mother trying to shepherd two small children to a table. Their pale, shadowed faces speak of a night of lost sleep.

  "Hang on. I'm at the gym. Let me take this outside."

  The gym? At nine o'clock on a Sunday morning? She hears Nicky's voice against the traffic of some distant street. "Awful as in what? Murder? Rape of a minor? You didn't call up thingy's wife and tell her you were his mistress?"

  "I slept with that bloke from work."

  A brief pause. She looks up to find the barista staring at her, eyebrows raised. She places her hand over her phone. "Oh. Two tall Americanos, please, one with milk, and croissants. Two--no, three."

  "Library Man?"

  "Yes. He turned up last night and I was drunk and feeling really crap and he read out one of those love letters and . . . I don't know . . ."

  "So?"

  "So I slept with someone else!"

  "Was it awful?"

  Rory's eyes, crinkled with amusement. His head bent over her breasts. Kisses. Endless, endless kisses.

  "No. It was . . . quite good. Really good."

  "And your problem is?"

  "I'm meant to be sleeping with John."

  The barista girl is exchanging looks with Exhausted Father. She realizes they are both silently agog. "Six pounds sixty-three," the girl says, with a small smile.

  She reaches into her pocket for change and finds herself holding out last night's knickers. Exhausted Father coughs--or it might have been a splutter of laughter. She apologizes, her face burning, hands over the money, and moves to the end of the counter, waiting for her coffee with her head down.

  "Nicky . . ."

  "Oh, for God's sake, Ellie. You've been sleeping with a married man who is almost definitely still sleeping with his wife. He makes you no promises, hardly takes you anywhere, isn't planning on leaving her--"

  "You don't know that."

  "I do know that. I'm sorry, sweetie, but I'd put my too-small expensively mortgaged house on it. And if you're telling me you've just had great sex with a nice bloke who's single and likes you and seems to want to spend time with you, I'm not going to start begging for Prozac. Okay?"

  "Okay," she says quietly.

  "Now, go back to your flat, wake him up and have mad hot monkey sex with him, then meet me and Corinne tomorrow morning at the cafe and tell us everything."

  She smiles. How nice to celebrate being with someone, instead of having perpetually to justify them.

  She thinks of Rory lying in her bed. Rory of the very long eyelashes and soft kisses. Would it be so very bad to spend the morning with him? She picks up the coffee and walks back to her flat, surprised by how quickly her legs are working.

  "Don't move!" she calls, as she comes up the stairs, kicking off her shoes. "I'm bringing you breakfast in bed." She dumps the coffee on the floor outside the bathroom and dives in, wipes the mascara from under her eyes and splashes her face with cold water, then spritzes herself with perfume. As an afterthought she flips the lid off the toothpaste and bites off a pea-sized lump, swilling it around her mouth.

  "This is so you can no longer think of me as a heartless, selfish abuser of men. And also so you owe me coffee at work. I will, of course, return to my heartless, self-centerd self tomorrow."

  She leaves the bathroom, stoops to pick up the coffee, and, smiling, steps into her bedroom. The bed is empty, the duvet turned back. He can't be in the bathroom--she's just been in there. "Rory?" she says, into the silence.

  "Here."

  His voice comes from the living room. She pads down the hall. "You were meant to stay in bed," she admonishes him. "It's hardly breakfast in bed if you--"

  He's standing in the center of the room, pulling on his jacket. He's dressed, shoes on, hair no longer sticking up.

  She stops in the doorway. He doesn't look at her.

  "What are you doing?" She holds out the coffee. "I thought we were going to have breakfast."

  "Yes. Well, I think I'd better go."

  She feels something cold creeping across her. Something's wrong here.

  "Why?" she says, trying to smile. "I've hardly been gone fifteen minutes. Do you really have an appointment at twenty past nine on a Sunday morning?"

  He stares at his feet, apparently checking in his pockets for his keys. He finds them and turns them over in his hand. When he finally looks up at her, his face is blank. "You had a phone call when you were out. He left a message. I didn't mean to eavesdrop, but it's pretty hard not to in a small flat."

  Ellie feels something cold and hard settle in the pit of her stomach. "Rory, I--"

  He holds up a hand. "I told you once I didn't do complicated. That would--um--include sleeping with someone who's sleeping with someone else." He steps past her, ignoring the coffee she's holding. "I'll see you around, Ellie."

  She hears his footsteps fading down the stairs. He doesn't slam the door, but there's an uncomfortable air of finality in the way it closes. She feels numb. She places the coffee carefully on the table, and then, after a minute, steps over to the answering machine and presses play.

  John's voice, low and mellifluous, fills the room. "Ellie, I can't talk for long. Just wanted to check you're okay. Not sure what you meant last night. I miss you, too. I miss us. But look . . . please don't text. It's . . ." A short sigh. "Look. I'll message you as soon as we . . . as soon as I get home." The sound of the receiver clicking down.

  Ellie lets his words reverberate in the silent flat, then sinks onto the sofa and remains perfectly still, while the coffee grows cold beside her.

  Chapter 23

  FAO: Phillip O'Hare, [email protected]

  From: Ellie Haworth, [email protected]

  Excuse me for contacting you like this, but I'm hoping that as a fellow journalist you will understand. I am trying to trace an Anthony O'Hare who I guess would be the same age as your father, and in a Times column of last May you happened to mention that you had a father of the same name.

  This Anthony O'Hare would have spent some time in London during the early 1960s, and a lot of time abroad, especially in central Africa, where he may have died. I know very little about him other than he had a son with the same name as you.

  If you are he, or know what became of him, would you please e-mail me? There is a mutual acquaintance who knew him many years ago and would dearly like to find out what became of him. I appreciate this is a long shot, as it is not an uncommon name, but I need all the help I can get.

  All best

  Ellie Haworth

  The new building is set in a part of the city Ellie has not seen since it was a random collection of shabby warehouses, strung together with unlovely takeaway shops she would have starved rather than eaten from. Everything that was in that square mile has been razed, swept away, the congested streets replaced with vast, immaculately clad squares, metal bollards, the odd gleaming office block, many still bearing the scaffold cauls of their nascence.

  They are there for an organized tour to familiarize themselves with their new desks and the new computers and telephone systems before Monday's final move. Ellie follows the Features party through the various departments while the young man with the clipboard and a badge marked "Transfer Coordinator" tells them about production areas, information hubs, and lavatories. As each new space is explained to them, Ellie watches the varying responses of her team, the excitement of some of the younger ones, who like the sleek, modernistic lines of the office. Melissa, who has clearly been there several times before, interjects occasionally with information she feels the man has left out.

  "There's nowhere to hide!" jokes Rupert as he surveys the vast, clutter-free space. She can hear the ring of truth in it. Melissa's of
fice, on the southeastern corner, is entirely glass, and overlooks the whole Features "hub." Nobody else in the department has their own office, a decision that has apparently rankled several of her colleagues.

  "And this is where you'll be sitting." All the writers are on one desk, a huge oval shape, the center spewing wires that lead umbilically to a series of flat-screen computer monitors.

  "Who's where?" says one of the columnists. Melissa consults her list. "I've been working on this. Some of it's still fluid. But Rupert, you're here. Arianna, there. Tim, by the chair, there. Edwina--" She points at a space. It reminds Ellie of netball at school; the relief when one was picked from the throng and allotted to one team or the other. Except nearly all of the seats are taken, and she is still standing.

  "Um . . . Melissa?" she ventures. "Where am I supposed to be sitting?"

  Melissa glances at another desk. "A few people will have to hotdesk. It doesn't make sense for everyone to be allocated a workstation full-time." She doesn't look at Ellie as she speaks.

  Ellie feels her toes clenching in her shoes. "Are you saying I don't get my own desk area?"

  "No, I'm saying some people will share a workstation."

  "But I'm in every day. I don't understand how that will work." She should take Melissa to one side, ask her in private why Arianna, who has been there barely a month, should get a desk over her. She should expel the slight anguish from her voice. She should shut up. "I don't understand why I'm the only feature writer not to--"

  "As I said, Ellie, things are very fluid still. There will always be a seat for you to work from. Right. Let's go on to News. They'll be moving, of course, on the same day that we do . . ." And the conversation is closed. Ellie sees that her stock has fallen far lower than even she had thought. She catches Arianna's eye, sees the new girl look away quickly, and pretends to check her phone for more nonexistent messages.

  The library is no longer belowground. The new "information resource center" is two floors up, set in an atrium around a collection of oversize and suspiciously exotic potted plants. There is an island in the middle, behind which she recognizes the grumpy chief librarian, who is talking quietly with a much younger man. She stares at the shelves, which are neatly divided into digital and hard-copy areas. All the signage in the new offices is in lower case, which she suspects has given the chief subeditor an ulcer. It couldn't be more different from the dusty confines of the old archive, with its musty newspaper smell and blind corners, and she feels suddenly nostalgic.

  She's not entirely sure why she has come here, except that she feels a magnetic pull to Rory, perhaps to find out if she's at least partly forgiven, or to talk to him about Melissa's desk decision. He is, she realizes, one of the few people she can discuss this with. The librarian spots her.

  "Sorry," she says, holding up a hand. "Just looking around."

  "If you want Rory," he says, "he's at the old building." His voice is not unfriendly.

  "Thank you," she says, trying to convey something of an apology. It seems important not to alienate anybody else. "It looks great. You've . . . done an amazing job."

  "Nearly finished," he says, and smiles. He looks younger when he smiles, less careworn. In his face she can see something she has never noticed before: relief, but also kindness. How wrong you can get people, she thinks.

  "Can I help you with anything?"

  "No, I--"

  He smiles again. "Like I said, he's at the old building."

  "Thank you. I'll--I'll leave you to it. I can see you're busy." She walks to a table, picks up a photocopied guide to using the library, and, folding it carefully, puts it into her bag as she leaves.

  She sits at her soon-to-be-defunct desk all afternoon, typing Anthony O'Hare's name repeatedly into a search engine. She has done this numerous times, and each time is astonished by the sheer number of Anthony O'Hares that exist, or have existed, in the world. There are teenage Anthony O'Hares on networking sites, long-dead Anthony O'Hares buried in Pennsylvanian graveyards, their lives pored over by amateur genealogists. One is a physicist working in South Africa, another a self-published writer of fantasy fiction, a third the victim of an attack in a pub in Swansea. She pores over each man, checking age and identity, just in case.

  Her phone chimes, which tells her of a message. She sees John's name and, confusingly, feels fleeting disappointment that it isn't Rory.

  "Meeting."

  Melissa's secretary is standing at her desk.

  Sorry couldn't talk much other night. Just wanted you to know

  I am missing you. Can't wait to see you. Jx

  "Yes. Sorry," she says. The secretary is still beside her. "Sorry. Just coming."

  She reads it again, picking apart each sentence, just to make sure that, for once, she's not pitching a mountain of unspoken meaning onto a molehill. But there it is: Just wanted you to know I am missing you.

  She gathers up her papers and, cheeks aflame, enters the office, just in front of Rupert. It's important not to be the last in. She doesn't want to be the only writer without a seat in Melissa's office as well as outside it.

  She sits in silence while the following days' features are dissected, their progress considered. The humiliations of that morning have receded. Even Arianna's having bagged an interview with a notoriously reclusive actress doesn't faze her. Her mind hums with the words that have fallen unexpectedly into her lap: Just wanted you to know I am missing you.

  What does this mean? She hardly dares hope that what she has wished for may have come true. The suntanned wife in a bikini has effectively vanished. The phantom freckled hand with its massaging fingers is now replaced by knuckles, whitened with frustration. She now pictures John and his wife arguing their way through a holiday they have privately billed as a last-ditch attempt to save their marriage. She sees him exhausted, furious, secretly pleased to get her message even as he has to warn her against sending another.

  Don't get your hopes up, she warns herself. This might be a little fillip. Everyone's sick of their partner by the end of a holiday. Perhaps he just wants to ensure he still has her loyalty. But even as she counsels herself, she knows which version she wants to believe.

  "And Ellie? The love-letters story?"

  Oh, Christ.

  She shuffles the papers on her lap, adopts a confident tone. "Well, I've got a lot more information. I met the woman. There's definitely enough for a story."

  "Good." Melissa's eyebrows lift elegantly, as if Ellie's surprised her.

  "But"--Ellie swallows--"I'm not sure how much we should use. It does seem . . . a bit sensitive."

  "Are they both alive?"

  "No. He's dead. Or she believes he is."

  "Then change the woman's name. I don't see the problem. You're using letters that she'd presumably forgotten."

  "Oh, I don't think she had." Ellie tries to pick her words carefully. "In fact, she seems to remember an awful lot about them. I was thinking it would be better if I used them as a peg to examine the language of love. You know, how love letters have changed over the years."

  "Without including the actual letters."

  "Yes." As she answers, Ellie feels hugely relieved. She doesn't want Jennifer's letters made public. She sees her now, perched on her sofa, her face alive as she tells the story she has kept to herself for decades. She doesn't want to add to her sense of loss. "I mean, maybe I could find some other examples."

  "By Tuesday."

  "Well, there must be books, compilations . . ."

  "You want us to publish already published material?"

  The room has fallen silent around them. It is as if she and Melissa Buckingham exist in a toxic bubble. She is conscious that nothing she does will satisfy this woman anymore.

  "You've been working on this for the time it takes most writers to knock out three two-thousand-word features." Melissa taps the end of her pen on her desk. "Just write the piece, Ellie." Her voice is icily weary. "Just write it up, keep it anonymous, and your contact will prob
ably never know whose letters you're discussing. And I'm assuming, given the sheer amount of time you've now spent on this, that it's going to be something extraordinary."

  Her smile, bestowed on the rest of the room, is glittering. "Right. Let's move on. I haven't had a list from Health. Has anyone got one?"

  She sees him as she's leaving the building. He shares a joke with Ronald, the security guard, treads lightly down the steps, and walks away. It's raining, and he carries a small backpack, his head down against the cold.

  "Hey." She jogs until she's beside him.

  He glances at her. "Hey," he says neutrally. He's headed for the Tube station and doesn't slow his pace as he reaches the steps down into it.

  "I wondered . . . do you fancy a quick drink?"

  "I'm busy."

  "Where are you off to?" She has to lift her voice to be heard against the thunderous noise of feet, the Victorian acoustics of the underground system.

  "The new building."

  They're surrounded by commuters. Her feet are almost lifting off the ground as she's borne down the stairs among the sea of people. "Wow. That must be some overtime."

  "No. Just helping the boss with a few final things so that he doesn't wear himself out completely."

  "I saw him today."

  When Rory doesn't reply, she adds, "He was nice to me."

  "Yeah. Well. He's a nice man."

  She manages to walk alongside him until they reach the ticket barrier. He steps to one side to allow others to pass through.

  "Silly, really," she says. "You pass people every day without having a clue--"

  "Look, Ellie, what do you want?"

  She bites her lip. Around them the commuters separate like water, earphones on, some tutting audibly at the human obstacles in their path. She rubs at her hair, which is now damp. "I just wanted to say I'm sorry. About the other morning."

  "It's cool."

  "No, it's not. But it's . . . Look, what happened, it's nothing to do with you, and I really like you. It's just this is something that--"

  "You know what? I'm not interested. It's fine, Ellie. Let's leave it at that." He goes through the ticket barrier. She follows. She caught a glimpse of his expression before he turned, and it was horrible. She feels horrible.