The Last Letter from Your Lover(19)
Author: Jojo Moyes

“My husband,” Jennifer said eventually, “has gone to Africa. He left this morning.”

“Then I’d be delighted if you’d let me buy you and Mrs. Moncrieff lunch.” He looked at his watch.

“Obviously rather a late lunch now.”

“Not me, darling. Francis wants me to look at a yacht this afternoon. I’ve told him a man can but dream.”

“We’ll give you a lift back to town, Mr. O’Hare,” Jennifer said, nodding toward the tiny rear seat. “I don’t want to be responsible for the Nation’s most honorable correspondent getting sunstroke, as well as alcohol poisoning.”

She waited while Yvonne climbed out and tilted the seat forward for Anthony to climb in, then rummaged in the glove compartment. “Here,” she said, throwing a handkerchief at him. “And you do know you were walking in completely the wrong direction? We live over there.” She pointed toward a distant, tree-lined hill. Her mouth twitched at the corners, just enough for him to think he might be forgiven, and the two women burst into laughter. Deeply relieved, Anthony O’Hare rammed his hat onto his head, and they were off, speeding down the narrow road back toward the town.

The car became stuck in traffic almost as soon as they had dropped Yvonne at Hôtel St. Georges. “Behave yourselves now,” the older woman had said as she waved them good-bye. She spoke, he noted, with the cheerful insouciance of one who knows the alternative to be out of the question.

Once it was just the two of them, the mood had altered. Jennifer Stirling had grown silent, seemingly preoccupied by the road ahead in a way that she hadn’t been twenty minutes earlier. He glanced surreptitiously at her lightly tanned arms, her profile, as she gazed ahead at the long line of taillights. He wondered, briefly, if she was angrier with him than she had been prepared to let on.

“So how long will your husband be in Africa?” he said, to break the silence.

“A week probably. He rarely stays longer.” She peered over the side of her door briefly, apparently to gauge what was causing the holdup.

“Quite a journey for such a short stay.”

“You’d know, Mr. O’Hare.”

“Me?”

She raised an eyebrow. “You know everything about Africa. You said so last night.”

“ ‘Everything’?”

“You knew that most of the men who do business out there are crooks.”

“I said that?”

“To M. Lafayette.”

Anthony sank a little lower in his seat. “Mrs. Stirling—,” he began.

“Oh, don’t worry. Laurence didn’t hear you. Francis did, but he only does a little business out there, so he didn’t take it too personally.”

The cars began to move.

“Let me buy you lunch,” he said. “Please. I’d like the chance to show you, even if only for half an hour, that I’m not a complete ass.”

“You think you can change my mind so swiftly?” That smile again.

“I’m game if you are. You show me where we should go.”

The waiter brought her a tall glass of lemonade. She took a sip, then sat back in her chair and surveyed the seafront.

“Lovely view,” he said.

“Yes,” she conceded.

Her hair fell from her head like paint from a pot, in a sheet of silky blond ripples that ended just above her shoulders. Not his normal type. He liked less conventionally pretty women, those with a hint of something darker, whose charms were less obvious to the eye. “Aren’t you drinking?”

He looked at his glass. “I’m not really meant to.”

“Wife’s orders?”

“Ex-wife,” he corrected. “And no, doctor’s.”

“So you really did find last night unbearable.”

He shrugged. “I don’t spend much time in society.”

“An accidental tourist.”

“I admit it. I find armed conflict a less daunting prospect.”

Her smile, when it came this time, was slow and mischievous. “So you’re William Boot,” she said. “Out of your depth in the war zone of Riviera society.”

“Boot . . .” At the mention of Evelyn Waugh’s hapless fictional character, he found himself smiling properly for the first time that day. “I suppose you could legitimately have said much worse.”

A woman entered the restaurant, clutching a button-eyed dog to her vast bosom. She walked through the tables with a kind of weary determination, as if she could allow herself to focus on nothing but where she was headed. When she sat down at an empty table, a few seats away from them, it was with a little sigh of relief. She placed the dog on the floor, where it stood, its tail clamped between its legs, trembling.

“So, Mrs. Stirling—”

“Jennifer.”

“Jennifer. Tell me about yourself,” he said, leaning forward over the table.

“You’re meant to be telling me. Showing me, in fact.”

“What?”

“That you’re not a complete ass. I do believe you gave yourself half an hour.”

“Ah. How long have I got left?”

She checked her watch. “About nine minutes.”

“And how am I doing so far?”

“You can’t possibly expect me to give anything away quite so soon.”

They were silent then, he because, uncharacteristically, he didn’t know what to say, she perhaps regretting her choice of words. Anthony O’Hare thought of the last woman he had been involved with, the wife of his dentist, a redhead with skin so translucent he was reluctant to look too hard in case he saw what lay beneath it. She had been flattened by her husband’s long-term indifference to her. Anthony had half suspected that her receptiveness to his advances had been as much an act of revenge as anything else.

“What do you do with your days, Jennifer?”

“I’m afraid to tell you.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“I do so little of any worth that I’m afraid you’d be terribly disapproving.” The way in which she said this told him she was not afraid at all.

“You run two houses.”

“I don’t. There’s a part-time staff. And in London Mrs. Cordoza is much cleverer than I am at housekeeping.”

“So what do you do?”

“I host cocktail parties, dinners. I make things beautiful. I look decorative.”

“You’re very good at that.”