The Last Letter From Your Lover (30 page)

“Yes,” she says, and flips through the folder on her lap to hide her flush. “Yes . . . Well, I thought it might be fun to lift the old pages directly. There was an advice columnist, so I thought we could compare and contrast then with now.”

“Yes,” says Melissa. “That’s what I asked you to do last week. You were going to show me what you’d found.”

“Oh. Sorry. The pages are still in the archive. The librarians are a bit paranoid about making sure they know where everything is, what with the move,” she stutters.

“Why didn’t you take photocopies?”

“I—”

“Ellie, you’re cutting this a bit fine. I thought you’d have a handle on it days ago.” Melissa’s voice is icy. The others in the room look down, not wanting to witness the inevitable decapitation. “Would you like me to give the task to someone else? One of the work-experience girls, perhaps?”

She can see, Ellie thinks, that for months this job has just been a shadow on the radar of my day. She knows my mind’s elsewhere—in a rumpled hotel bed, or an unseen family house, conducting a constant parallel conversation with a man who isn’t there. Melissa’s eyes are on the ceiling.

Ellie realizes, with sudden clarity, the precariousness of her position.

“I, uh, have something better,” she says suddenly. “I thought you’d like this more.” The envelope is nestling among the papers, and she thrusts it at her boss. “I was trying to get a few leads on it.”

Melissa reads the short letter, and frowns. “Do we know who this is?”

“Not yet, but I’m working on it. I thought it would be a great feature if I could find out what happened to them. Whether they ended up together.”

Melissa was nodding. “Yes. It sounds extramarital. Scandal in the sixties, eh? We could use it as a peg for how morality has changed. How close are you to finding them?”

“I’ve got feelers out.”

“Find out what happened, whether they were ostracized.”

“If they stayed married, it’s possible they won’t want the publicity,” Rupert observes. “Such things were a much bigger deal back then.”

“Offer them anonymity if you have to,” Melissa says, “but ideally we’d like pictures—from the period of the letter, at least. That should make it harder for them to be identified.”

“I haven’t found them yet.” The tightening of her skin tells Ellie this is a bad idea.

“But you will. Get one of the news journos to help if you need to. They’re good at investigative stuff. And, yes, I’d like that for next week. But first get those problem pages sorted out. I want examples I can lay out on a double-page spread by the end of the day. Okay? We’ll meet again tomorrow, same time.” She is already striding toward the door, her perfectly groomed hair bouncing like a shampoo advert.

“It’s Mrs. Spelling Bee.”

She finds him sitting in the canteen. He unplugs his earphones as she sits opposite. He’s reading a guidebook to South America. An empty plate tells of lunch already eaten.

“Rory, I’m in such trouble.”

“Spelled
antidisestablishmentarianism
with four
t
’s?”

“I let my mouth run away with me in front of Melissa Buckingham, and now I have to flesh out the Love Story to End All Love Stories for the features pages.”

“You told her about the letter?”

“I got caught out. I needed to give her something. The way she was looking at me, I thought I was about to be transferred to Obits.”

“Well, that’s going to be interesting.”

“I know. And before that, I’ve got to go through every problem page in the 1960 editions and find their moral equivalent in the modern day.”

“That’s straightforward, isn’t it?”

“But it’s time-consuming, and I’ve got loads of other things I’m meant to be doing. Even without finding out what happened to our mystery lovers.” She smiled hopefully. “I don’t suppose there’s anything you could do to help me?”

“Sorry. Stacked up myself. I’ll dig out the 1960 newspaper files for you when I go back downstairs.”

“That’s your job,” she protests.

He grins. “Yup. And writing and researching is yours.”

“It’s my birthday.”

“Then happy birthday.”

“Oh, you’re all heart.”

“And you’re too used to getting your own way.” He smiles at her, and she watches him gather up his book and MP3 player. He salutes as he heads toward the door.

You have no idea, she thinks, as it swings shut behind him, just how wrong you are.

I am 25 and I have quite a good job but not a good enough job to do all the things I would like to do—to have a house and a car and a wife.

“Because obviously you acquire one of those along with the house and the car,” Ellie mutters at the faded newsprint. Or perhaps after a washing machine. Maybe that should take priority.

I have noticed that many of my friends have got married and their standard of living has dropped considerably. I have been going fairly regularly with a girl for three years and I would very much like to marry her. I have asked her to wait three years until we can get married and live in rather better circumstances, but she says she is not going to wait for me.

Three years, Ellie muses. I don’t blame her. You’re hardly giving her the impression that yours is a great passion, are you?

Either we get married this year or she won’t marry me at all. I think this is an unreasonable attitude since I have pointed out to her that she will have a rather lower standard of living. Do you think that there is any other argument that I can add to the ones I have made already?

“No, pal,” she says aloud, as she slides another old sheet of newspaper under the lid of the photocopier. “I think you’ve made yourself quite clear.”

She returns to her desk, sits down, and pulls the crumpled, handwritten letter from her folder.

My dearest and only love . . . If you don’t come, I’ll know that whatever we might feel for each other, it isn’t quite enough. I won’t blame you, my darling. I know the past weeks have put an intolerable strain on you, and I feel the weight of that keenly. I hate the thought that I could cause you any unhappiness.

She rereads the words again and again. They hold passion, force, even after so many years. Why would you suffer the priggish “I have pointed out to her that she will have a rather lower standard of living” when you could have “Know that you hold my heart, my hopes, in your hands”? She wishes the unknown girlfriend of the first correspondent a lucky escape.

Ellie makes a desultory check for new e-mail, then mobile-phone messages. She chews the end of a pencil. She picks up the photocopied problem page and puts it down again.

Then she clicks open a new message on her computer screen and, before she can think too hard about it, she types:

The one present I really want for my birthday is to know what

I mean to you.
I need
for us to have an honest conversation, and for me to be able to say what I feel. I need to know whether we have any kind of future together.

She adds:

I love you, John. I love you more than I have ever loved anyone in my whole life, and this is starting to drive me crazy.

Her eyes have filled with tears. Her hand moves to send. The department shrinks around her. She is dimly aware of Caroline, the health editor, chatting on the phone at the next desk, of the window cleaner on his teetering cradle outside the window, of the news editor having an argument with one of his reporters somewhere on the other side of the office, the missing carpet tile at her feet. She sees nothing but the winking cursor, her words, her future, laid bare on the screen in front of her.

I love you more than I have ever loved anyone in my whole life.

If I do this now, she thinks, it will be decided for me. It will be my way of taking control. And if it isn’t the answer I want, at least it’s an answer.

Her forefinger rests gently on send.

And I will never touch that face, kiss those lips, feel those hands on me again. I will never hear the way he says “Ellie Haworth,” as if the words themselves are precious.

The phone on her desk rings.

She jumps, glances at it, as if she’d forgotten where she is, then wipes her eyes with her hand. She straightens, then picks it up. “Hello.”

“Hey, birthday girl,” says Rory, “get yourself down to the cells at chucking-out time. I might just have something for you. And bring me a coffee while you’re at it. That’s the charge for my labors.”

She puts down the receiver, turns back to her computer, and presses delete.

“So, what did you find?” She hands a cup of coffee over the counter, and he takes it. There’s a fine sprinkling of dust in his hair, and she fights the urge to ruffle it off, as one would with a child. He has already felt patronized by her once; she doesn’t want to risk offending him a second time.

“Any sugar?”

“No,” she says. “I didn’t think you took it.”

“I don’t.” He leans forward over the countertop. “Look—boss is lurking. I need to be discreet. What time are you finishing?”

“Whenever,” she says. “I’m pretty much through.”

He rubs his hair. The dust forms an apologetic cloud around him. “I feel like that character in
Peanuts
. Which was it?”

She shook her head.

“Pig Pen. The one with the dirt floating around him . . . We’re shifting boxes that haven’t been touched in decades. I can’t really believe we’re ever going to need parliamentary minutes from 1932, whatever he says. Still. The Black Horse? Half an hour?”

“The pub?”

“Yes.”

“I sort of might have plans . . .” She wants to ask,
Can’t you just give me what you’ve found?
But even she can see how ungrateful that will sound.

“It’ll only take ten minutes. I’ve got to meet some friends afterward, anyway. But it’s cool. It can wait till tomorrow if you’d prefer.”

She thinks about her mobile phone, mute and recriminating in her back pocket. What’s her alternative? Rushing home and waiting for John to call there? Another evening spent sitting in front of the television, knowing that the world is revolving somewhere without her? “Oh—what the hell. A quick drink would be great.”

“Half a shandy. Live dangerously.”

“Shandy! Huh! I’ll see you in there.”

He grins. “I’ll be the one clutching a file marked ‘Top Secret.’ ”

“Oh, yes? I’ll be the one shouting, ‘Buy me a proper drink, cheapo. It’s my birthday.’ ”

“No red carnation in your buttonhole? Just so I can identify you?”

“No means of identification. That way it’s easier for me to escape if I don’t like the look of you.”

He nods approvingly. “Sensible.”

“And you’re not even going to give me a clue as to what you’ve found?”

“Some birthday surprise that would be!” With that he’s gone, back through the double doors and into the bowels of the newspaper.

The ladies’ is empty. She washes her hands, noting that now the building’s days are numbered, the company is no longer bothering to refresh the soap dispenser or the tampon machine. Next week, she suspects, they’ll have to start bringing in emergency loo roll.