The Last Letter From Your Lover (22 page)

“A crash?” He knelt beside her. “Jennifer, the last time I saw you was at a club, not in a car.”

She was shaking her head, apparently uncomprehending.

“I wrote you a letter—”

“Yes.”

“—asking you to come away with me.”

She nodded.

“And I was waiting at the station. You didn’t turn up. I thought you’d decided against it. Then I received your letter, forwarded on to me, in which you made the point, repeatedly, that you were married.”

He could say it so calmly, as if it had held no more importance than if he had been waiting for an old friend. As if her absence had not skewed his life, his happiness, for four years.

“But I was coming to you.”

They stared at each other.

Her face fell back into her hands, and her shoulders shook. He stood up, glancing behind her at the lit ballroom, and laid a hand on her shoulder. She flinched as though she’d been burned. He was conscious of the outline of her back through her dress, and his breath stalled in his throat. He couldn’t think clearly. He could barely think at all.

“All this time”—she looked at him, tears in her eyes—“all this time . . . and you were alive.”

“I assumed . . . you just didn’t want to come with me.”

“Look!” She pulled up her sleeve, showing the jagged, raised silver line that scored her arm. “I had no memory. For months. I still remember little of that time. He told me you’d died. He told me—”

“But didn’t you see my name in the newspaper? I have pieces in it almost daily.”

“I don’t read newspapers. Not anymore. Why would I?”

The full ramifications of what she had said were beginning to sink in, and Anthony was feeling a little unsteady on his feet. She turned to the French windows, now half obscured by steam, then wiped her eyes with her fingers. He offered her his handkerchief, and she took it tentatively, as if she was still afraid to make contact with his skin.

“I can’t stay out here,” she said, when she had recovered her composure. Mascara had left a black smear under her eye, and he resisted the urge to wipe it away. “He’ll be wondering where I am.” There were new lines of strain around her eyes; the dewiness of her skin had been supplanted by something tighter. The girlishness had gone, replaced by subtle new knowledge. He couldn’t stop staring at her. “How can I reach you?” he asked.

“You can’t.” She shook her head a little, as if she was trying to clear it.

“I’m staying at the Regent,” he said. “Ring me tomorrow.” He reached into his pocket, scribbled on a business card.

She took it and gazed at it, as if imprinting the details on her memory.

“Here we are.” Douglas had appeared between them. He held out a glass of water. “Your husband is talking to some people just inside the door. I can fetch him, if you like.”

“No—no, I’ll be fine.” She took a sip from the glass. “Thank you so much. I have to go, Anthony.”

The way she had said his name. Anthony. He realized he was smiling. She was there, inches from him. She had loved him, grieved for him. She had tried to come to him that night. It was as if the misery of four years had been wiped away.

“Do you two know each other, then?”

Anthony heard, as if from a distance, Douglas talking, saw him motioning toward the doors. Jennifer sipped the water, her eyes not leaving his face. He knew that in the coming hours he would curse whichever gods had thought it amusing to send their lives careering away from each other, and grieve for the time they had lost. But for now he could only feel a welling joy that the thing he had thought lost forever had been returned to him.

It was time for her to go. She stood up, smoothed her hair. “Do I look . . . all right?”

“You look—”

“You look wonderful, Mrs. Stirling. As always.” Douglas opened the door.

Such a small smile, heartbreaking in what it told Anthony. As she passed him, she reached out a slim hand and touched his arm just above the elbow. And then she walked into the crowded ballroom.

Douglas raised an eyebrow as the door closed behind her. “Don’t tell me,” he said. “Not another of your conquests? You old dog. You always did get what you wanted.”

Anthony’s eyes were still on the door. “No,” he said quietly. “I didn’t.”

Jennifer was silent during the short drive back to the house. Laurence had offered a lift to a business colleague she didn’t know, which meant she could sit quietly while the men talked.

“Of course, Pip Marchant was up to his old tricks, all his capital tied up in one project.”

“He’s a hostage to fortune. His father was the same.”

“I expect if you go far enough back in that family tree you’ll find the South Sea Bubble.”

“I think you’ll find several! All filled with hot air.”

The interior of the big black car was thick with cigar smoke. Laurence was garrulous, opinionated, in the way he often was when surrounded by businessmen or marinated in whiskey. She barely heard him, swamped by this new knowledge. She stared out at the still streets as the car glided along, seeing not the beauty of her surroundings, the occasional person dawdling on their way home, but Anthony’s face. His brown eyes, when they had fixed on hers, his face a little more lined, but perhaps more handsome, more at ease. She could still feel the warmth of his hand on her back.

How can I reach you?

Alive, these past four years. Living, breathing, sipping cups of coffee and typing. Alive. She could have written to him, spoken to him. Gone to him.

She swallowed, trying to contain the tumultuous emotion that threatened to rise within her. There would be a time to deal with everything that must have led to this, to her being here, now, in this car with a man who no longer thought it necessary even to acknowledge her presence. Now was not it. Her blood fizzed within her.
Alive
, it sang.

The car pulled up on Upper Wimpole Street. Eric climbed out of the driver’s seat and opened the passenger door. The businessman climbed out, puffing at his cigar. “Much obliged, Larry. You at the club this week? I’ll buy you dinner.”

“I’ll look forward to it.” The man made his way heavily toward his front door, which opened, as if someone had been waiting for his arrival. Laurence watched his colleague disappear, then turned back to the front. “Home, please, Eric.” He shifted in his seat.

She felt his eyes on her. “You’re very quiet.” He always made it sound disapproving.

“Am I? I didn’t think I had anything to add to your conversation.”

“Yes. Well. Not a bad evening, all in all.” He settled back, nodding to himself.

“No,” she said quietly. “Not a bad evening at all.”

Chapter 14

Your hotel, midday. J.

Anthony stared at the letter, with its single line of text.

“Delivered by hand this morning.” Cheryl stood in front of him, a pencil between her index and middle fingers. Her short, astonishingly blond hair was so thick that he wondered briefly if she was wearing a wig. “I wasn’t sure whether to phone you, but Don said you’d be coming in.”

“Yes. Thank you.” He folded the note carefully and put it into his pocket.

“Cute.”

“Who—me?”

“Your new girlfriend.”

“Very funny.”

“I mean it. I thought she looked far too classy for you, though.” She sat on the edge of his desk, gazing up at him through impossibly blackened eyelashes.

“She is far too classy for me. And she’s not my girlfriend.”

“Oh, yes, I forgot. You have one of those in New York. This one’s married, right?”

“She’s an old friend.”

“Hah! I have old friends like that. Are you whisking her off to Africa with you?”

“I don’t know that I’m going to Africa.” He leaned back in his chair, linked his fingers behind his head. “And you’re extremely nosy.”

“This is a newspaper, in case you hadn’t noticed. Nosiness is our business.”

He had barely slept, his senses hypersensitive to everything around him. He had given up trying at three and instead sat in the hotel bar, nursing cups of coffee, going over their conversation, trying to make sense of what had been said. He had fought the urge, in the small hours, to take a taxi to the square and sit outside her house for the pleasure of knowing that she was inside, a matter of feet away.

I was coming to you.

Cheryl was still watching him. He tapped his fingers on the desk. “Yes,” he said. “Well. In my opinion, everyone’s far too interested in everyone else’s affairs.”

“So it is an affair. You know the subs desk’s opened a book on it.”

“Cheryl . . .”

“Well, there’s not much copy going through at this time of the morning. And what’s in the letter? Where are you meeting her? Anywhere nice? Does she pay for everything, given that she’s plainly loaded?”

“Good God!”

“Well, she can’t be very practiced at affairs, then. Tell her that the next time she leaves a love note, she should take her wedding ring off first.”

Anthony sighed. “You, young lady, are wasted as a secretary.”

She lowered her voice to a whisper: “If you tell me her name, I’ll split the sweepstake with you. There’s a tidy sum.”

“Send me to Africa, for God’s sake. The Congolese Army Interrogation Unit is nothing compared to you.”

She laughed throatily and went back to her typewriter.

He unfolded the note. The mere sight of that looped script transported him back to France, to notes pushed under his door in an idyllic week a million years ago. Some part of him had known she would contact him. He jumped when he realized Don had come in.

“Tony. The editor wants a word. Upstairs.”

“Now?”

“No. Three weeks on Tuesday. Yes, now. He wants to talk to you about your future. And, no, you’re not for the chop, sadly. I think he’s trying to suss out whether or not to send you back to Africa.” Don poked his shoulder. “Hello? Cloth Ears? You need to look like you know what you’re doing.”

Anthony barely heard him. It was a quarter past eleven already. The editor was not a man who liked to do anything in a hurry, and it was entirely possible he would be with him for a good hour. He turned to Cheryl as he stood. “Blondie, do me a favor. Ring my hotel. Tell them a Jennifer Stirling is due to meet me at twelve, and ask someone to tell her I’ll be late but not to leave. I’ll be there. She mustn’t leave.”

Cheryl’s smile was laced with satisfaction. “Mrs. Jennifer Stirling?”

“As I said, she’s an old friend.”

Don was wearing yesterday’s shirt, Anthony noted. He was always wearing yesterday’s shirt. He was also shaking his head. “Jesus. That Stirling woman again? How much of an appetite for trouble have you got?”

“She’s just a friend.”

“And I’m Twiggy. Come on. Come and explain to the Great White Chief why you should be allowed to sacrifice yourself to the Simba rebels.”

She was still there, he was relieved to see. It was more than half an hour after their supposed meeting time. She was seated at a small table in the extravagantly frothy salon, where the plaster moldings resembled the icing on an overadorned Christmas cake and most of the other tables were occupied by elderly widows exclaiming in shocked, hushed tones at the wickedness of the modern world.

“I ordered tea,” she said, as he sat down opposite her, apologizing for the fifth time. “I hope you don’t mind.”

Her hair was down. She wore a black sweater and tailored fawn trousers. She was thinner than she had been. He supposed it was the fashion.

He attempted to regulate his breathing. He had pictured this moment so many times, sweeping her into his arms, their passionate reunion. Now he felt vaguely wrong-footed by her self-possession, the formality of the surroundings.

A waitress arrived, pushing a trolley from which she took a teapot, milk jug, some precision-cut sandwiches on white bread, cups, saucers, and plates. He realized he could probably fit four of the sandwiches into his mouth at once.

“Thank you.”

“You don’t . . . take sugar.” She frowned, as if she was trying to remember.

“No.”

They sipped their tea. Several times he opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. He kept stealing glances at her, noting tiny details. The familiar shape of her nails. Her wrists. The way she periodically lifted herself from her waist, as if some distant voice was telling her to sit up straight.

“Yesterday was such a shock,” she said finally, placing her cup on the saucer. “I . . . must apologize for how I behaved. You must have thought I was very odd.”

“Perfectly understandable. Not every day you see someone risen from the dead.”

A small smile. “Quite.”

Their eyes met and slid away. She leaned forward and poured more tea. “Where do you live now?”

“I’ve been in New York.”

“All this time?”

“There wasn’t really a reason to come back.”

Another heavy silence, which she broke: “You look well. Very well.”

She was right. It was impossible to live in the heart of Manhattan and stay scruffy. He had returned to England this year with a wardrobe of good suits and a host of new habits: hot shaves, shoe polishing, teetotalism. “You look lovely, Jennifer.”

“Thank you. Are you in England for long?”

“Probably not. I may be going overseas again.” He watched her face to see what effect this news might have on her. But she merely reached for the milk. “No,” he said, lifting a hand. “Thank you.”

Her hand stilled, as if she was disappointed in herself for having forgotten.

“What does the newspaper have in mind for you?” She put a sandwich on a plate and placed it in front of him.

“They’d like me to stay here, but I want to return to Africa. Things have become very complicated in Congo.”

“Isn’t it very dangerous there?”

“That’s not the point.”

“You want to be in the thick of it.”

“Yes. It’s an important story. Plus I have a horror of being deskbound. These last few years have been”—he tried to think of an expression he could use safely:
These years in New York kept me sane? Allowed me to exist away from you? Stopped me throwing myself on a grenade in a foreign field?
—“useful,” he said finally, “in that the editor probably needed to see me in a different light. But I’m keen to move on now. Back to what I do best.”

“And there are no safer places you could satisfy that need?”

“Do I look like someone who wants to shuffle paper clips or do the filing?”

She smiled a little. “And what about your son?”

“I’ve barely seen him. His mother would prefer me to stay away.” He took a sip of his tea. “A posting to Congo wouldn’t make a huge amount of difference when we largely communicate by letter.”

“That must be very hard.”

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

A string quartet had started up in the corner. She looked behind her briefly, which gave him a moment to gaze at her unhindered, that profile, the small tilt to her upper lip. Something in him constricted, and he knew with a painful pang that he would never again love anyone as he loved Jennifer Stirling. Four years had not freed him, and another ten were unlikely to do so. When she turned back to him, he was aware that he couldn’t speak or he would reveal everything, spill out his guts like someone mortally wounded.

“Did you like New York?” she asked.

“It was probably better for me than staying here.”

“Where did you live?”

“Manhattan. Do you know New York?”

“Not enough to have any real idea of where you’re talking about,” she admitted. “And did you . . . are you remarried?”

“No.”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

“I’ve been dating someone.”

“An American?”

“Yes.”

“Is she married?”

“No. Funnily enough.”

Her expression didn’t flicker. “Is it serious?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

She allowed herself to smile. “You haven’t changed.”

“Neither have you.”

“I have,” she said quietly.

He wanted to touch her. He wanted to knock all the crockery off the damned table, reach across, and take hold of her. He felt furious suddenly, hampered by this ridiculous place, its formality. She had been odd the previous evening, but at least the tumultuous emotions had been genuine. “And you? Has life been good?” he said, when he saw she wasn’t going to speak.

She sipped her tea. She seemed almost lethargic. “Has life been good?” She pondered the question. “Good and bad. I’m sure I’m no different from anyone else.”

“And you still spend time on the Riviera?”

“Not if I can help it.”

He wanted to ask:
Because of me?
She didn’t seem to want to volunteer anything. Where was the wit? The passion? That simmering sense she had held within her of something threatening to erupt out of her, whether unexpected laughter or a flurry of kisses? She seemed flattened, buried under glacial good manners.

In the corner, the string quartet paused between movements. Frustration rose in Anthony. “Jennifer, why did you invite me here?”

She looked tired, he realized, but also feverish, her cheekbones lit by points of high color.

“I’m sorry,” he continued, “but I don’t want a sandwich. I don’t want to sit in this place listening to ruddy string music. If I’ve earned anything through being apparently dead for the last four years, it must be the right not to have to sit through tea and polite conversation.”

“I . . . just wanted to see you.”

“You know, when I saw you across the room yesterday, I was still so angry with you. All this time I’d assumed you chose him—a lifestyle—over me. I’ve rehearsed arguments with you in my head, berated you for not replying to my last letters—”

“Please don’t.” She held up a hand, cutting him off.

“And then I see you, and you tell me you were trying to come with me. And I’m having to rethink everything I believed about the last four years—everything I thought was true.”

“Let’s not talk about it, Anthony, what might have been . . .” She placed her hands on the table in front of her, like someone laying down cards. “I . . . just can’t.”

They sat opposite each other, the immaculately dressed woman and the tense man. The thought, brief and darkly humorous, occurred to him that to onlookers they appeared miserable enough to be married.

“Tell me something,” he said. “Why are you so loyal to him? Why have you stayed with someone who so clearly cannot make you happy?”

She lifted her eyes to his. “Because I was so disloyal, I suppose.”

“Do you think he’d be loyal to you?”

She held his gaze for a moment, then glanced at her watch. “I need to leave.”

He winced. “I’m sorry. I won’t say another thing. I just need to know—”

“It’s not you. Really. I do need to be somewhere.”

He caught himself. “Of course. I’m sorry. I’m the one who was late. I’m sorry to have wasted your time.” He couldn’t help the anger in his voice. He cursed his editor for losing him that precious half hour, cursed himself for what he already knew were wasted opportunities—and for allowing himself to come close to something that still had the power to burn him.

She stood up to leave, and a waiter appeared to help her with her coat. There would always be someone to help her, he thought absently. She was that kind of woman. He was immobilized, stuck at the table.

Had he misread her? Had he misremembered the intensity of their brief time together? He was saddened by the idea that this was it. Was it worse to have the memory of something perfect sullied, replaced by something inexplicable and disappointing?

The waiter held her coat by the shoulders. She put her arms into the sleeves, one at a time, her head dipped.

“That’s it?”

“I’m sorry, Anthony. I really do have to go.”

He stood up. “We’re not going to talk about anything? After all this? Did you even
think
of me?”