The Last Letter from Your Lover(104)
Author: Jojo Moyes

“She’d have made a good journalist.”

He looks briefly distracted, waves the waitress over, and orders another coffee. His thoughts are elsewhere. “Yes. Yes, I suppose she would.”

She sits and allows herself to examine the man opposite, a man who has haunted her dreams. His suntan doesn’t hide the mauve shadows under his eyes. She wonders absently what had happened the previous evening.

“Ellie, I think it would be a good idea if we lay low. Just for a couple of months.”

“No.”

“What?”

“That’s it, John.”

He’s not as surprised as she’d thought he’d be.

He considers her words before he replies. Then, “You want . . . are you saying you want to end this?”

“Well, let’s face it, we’re not some great love story, are we?” Despite herself, she’s dismayed at his failure to protest.

“I do care about you, Ellie.”

“But not enough. You’re not interested in me, in my life. In our lives. I don’t think you know anything about me.”

“I know everything I need to—”

“What was the name of my first pet?”

“What?”

“Alf. Alf was my hamster. Where did I grow up?”

“I don’t know why you’re asking me this.”

“What have you ever wanted from me, other than sex?”

He looks around. The builders at the table behind them have gone suspiciously quiet.

“Who was my first boyfriend? What’s my favorite food?”

“This is ridiculous.” He compresses his lips in an expression she has never seen before.

“No. You have no interest in me, apart from how quickly I can get my clothes off.”

“Is that what you think?”

“Have you ever cared about anything I’ve felt? What I’ve been through?”

His hands lift in exasperation. “Jesus Christ, Ellie, don’t paint yourself as some kind of victim here. Don’t act as if I’m some villainous seducer,” he says. “When did you ever talk to me about feelings? When did you ever tell me this wasn’t what you wanted? You made out you were some kind of modern woman. Sex on demand. Career first. You were”—he fumbles for the right word—“impenetrable.”

The word is strangely hurtful. “I was protecting myself.”

“And I’m supposed to know that by osmosis? How is that being truthful?” He appears genuinely shocked.

“I just wanted to be with you.”

“But you wanted more—a relationship.”

“Yes.”

He studies her, as if he’s seeing her for the first time. “You were hoping I’d leave my wife.”

“Of course I was. Eventually. I thought if I told you how I really felt, you’d—you’d leave me.”

Behind them, the builders begin to talk again. She can see from the surreptitious glances that they are the topic of conversation.

He runs a hand through his sandy hair. “Ellie,” he says, “I’m sorry. If I’d thought you couldn’t handle this, I would never have got into it in the first place.”

And there’s the truth of it. The thing she has hidden from herself for a whole year.

“That’s just it, isn’t it?” She gets up to go. The world has fallen in, and, weirdly, she’s stepping out of the rubble. Still upright. Unbloodied. “You and I,” she says. “It’s ironic, given what we do for a living, but we never actually told each other anything at all.”

She stands outside the café, feeling the cold air tighten her skin, the smells of the city in her nostrils, and pulls her mobile phone from her bag. She types a question, sends it, and without waiting for a reply, sets off across the road. She doesn’t look back.

Melissa passes her in the lobby, her heels clicking neatly on the polished marble. She’s talking to the executive editor but breaks off as she passes Ellie. She nods, hair bouncing around her shoulders. “I liked it.”

Ellie releases a breath she hadn’t known she was holding.

“Yes. I liked it a lot. Cover front, Sunday for Monday. More, please.” And then she’s in the lift, back in conversation, the doors closing behind her.

The library is empty. She pushes the swing door to find that only a few dusty shelves are left standing. No periodicals, no magazines, no battered volumes of Hansard. She listens to the ticking of the boiler pipes that run along the ceiling, then climbs over the counter, leaving her bag on the floor.

The first chamber, the one that had held almost a century’s worth of bound copies of the Nation, is entirely empty, aside from two cardboard boxes in the corner. It feels cavernous. Her feet echo on the tiled floor as she makes her way toward the center.

Cuttings Room A to M is empty, too, except for the shelving units. The windows, set six feet above the floor, send glittering dust motes swirling around her as she moves. Although there are no newspapers here now, the air is suffused with the biscuity smell of old paper. She thinks, fancifully, that she can almost hear the echoes of past stories hanging in the air, a hundred thousand voices, no longer heard. Lives moved, lost, twisted by fate. Hidden within files that may remain unseen for another hundred years. She wonders which other Anthonys and Jennifers are buried in those pages, their lives waiting to be swung by some accident or coincidence. A padded swivel chair in the corner is labeled “Digital Archive,” and she walks over to it, swinging it one way and then the other.

She is suddenly, ridiculously tired, as if the adrenaline that had fueled her for the last few hours has drained away. She sits down heavily in the warmth and the silence, and for the first time she can remember, Ellie is still. Everything inside her is still. She lets out a long breath.

She doesn’t know how long she has been asleep when she hears the door click.

Anthony O’Hare is holding up her bag. “Is this yours?”

She pushes herself upright, disoriented and a little giddy. For a moment she can’t work out where she is. “God. Sorry.” She rubs her face.

“You won’t find much here,” he says, handing it to her. He takes in her rumpled air, her sleep-shrunk eyes. “It’s all in the new building now. I’ve just come back to collect the last of the tea things. And that chair.”

“Yes . . . comfy. Too good to leave . . . Oh, God, what’s the time?”

“Quarter to eleven.”