The Last Letter from Your Lover(22)
Author: Jojo Moyes

“And why do these women sleep with you?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps because they’re unhappy.”

“And you make them happy.”

“For a little while, I suppose.”

“Doesn’t that make you a gigolo?” That smile again, playing at the corners of her mouth.

“No, just someone who likes to make love to married women.”

This time the silence seemed to enter his bones. He would have broken it if he’d had the slightest idea what to say.

“I’m not going to make love to you, Mr. O’Hare.”

He played the words over twice in his head before he could be sure of what she’d said. He took another sip of his drink, recovering. “That’s fine.”

“Really?”

“No”—he forced a smile—“it’s not. But it’ll have to be.”

“I’m not unhappy enough to sleep with you.”

God, when she looked at him, it was if she could see everything. He wasn’t sure he liked it.

“I’ve never even kissed another man since I got married. Not one.”

“That’s admirable.”

“You don’t believe it.”

“Yes, I do. It’s rare.”

“Now you do think I’m terribly dull.” She stood up and walked around the edge of the yacht, turning toward him when she got to the bridge. “Do your married women fall in love with you?”

“A little.”

“Are they sad when you leave them?”

“How do you know they don’t leave me?”

She waited.

“As to whether they fall in love,” he added eventually, “I don’t generally speak to them afterward.”

“You ignore them?”

“No. I’m often abroad. I tend not to spend much time in one place. And, besides, they have their husbands, their lives . . . I don’t believe any of them ever intended to leave their husbands. I was just . . . a diversion.”

“Did you love any of them?”

“No.”

“Did you love your wife?”

“I thought so. Now I’m not sure.”

“Have you ever loved anyone?”

“My son.”

“How old is he?”

“Eight. You’d make a good journalist.”

“You really can’t bear it that I do nothing useful, can you?” She burst out laughing.

“I think you may be wasted in the life you’re in.”

“Is that so? And what would you have me do instead?” She came a few steps closer to him. He could see the moon reflecting light on her pale skin, the blue shadow in the hollow of her neck. She took another step, and her voice lowered, even though nobody was near. “What was it you said to me, Anthony? ‘Don’t try to fix me.’ ”

“Why should I? You’ve told me you’re not unhappy.” His breath had caught at the back of his throat. She was so close now, her eyes searching his. He felt drunk, his senses heightened, as if every part of her was ruthlessly imprinting itself on his consciousness. He breathed in her scent, something floral, Oriental.

“I think,” she said slowly, “that everything you have said to me tonight is what you would say to any of your married women.”

“You’re wrong,” he said. But he knew she was entirely correct. It was all he could do not to crush that mouth, bury it under his own. He didn’t think he had ever been more aroused in his life.

“I think,” she said, “that you and I could make each other terribly unhappy.”

And as she spoke, something deep inside him keeled over a little, as if in defeat. “I think,” he said slowly, “that I’d like that very much.”

Chapter 6

DECEMBER 1960

The women were tapping again. She could just see them from her bedroom window: one dark, one with unfeasibly red hair, seated at the window of the first-floor flat on the corner. When any man walked past, they would tap at the glass, waving and smiling if he was unwise enough to look up.

They infuriated Laurence. There had been a High Court case earlier that year in which the judge had warned such women against doing this. Laurence said that their soliciting, low-key as it might be, was lowering the tone of the area. He couldn’t understand why if they were breaking the law, no one did a damn thing about it.

Jennifer didn’t mind them. To her, they seemed imprisoned behind the glass. Once she had even waved to them, but they had stared blankly at her, and she had hurried on.

That aside, her days had fallen into a new routine. She would rise when Laurence did, make him coffee and toast, and fetch the newspaper from the hallway while he shaved and dressed. Often she was up before him, fixing her hair and makeup so that while she moved around the kitchen in her dressing gown, she appeared pleasing and put-together for those few occasions when he looked up from his newspaper. It was somehow easier to start the day without him sighing in irritation.

He would leave the table, allow her to help him with his overcoat, and usually some time after eight, his driver would knock discreetly at the front door. She would wave until the car disappeared around the corner.

Some ten minutes later she would greet Mrs. Cordoza, and as the older woman made them a pot of tea, perhaps remarking on the cold, she would run through the list of things she had prepared that detailed what might need doing that day. On top of the usual tasks, the vacuuming, dusting, and washing, there was often a little sewing: a button might have fallen off Laurence’s shirt cuff, or some shoes needed cleaning. Mrs. Cordoza might be required to sort through the linen cupboard, checking and refolding what was within, or to polish the canteen of silver, sitting at the kitchen table, which would be spread with newspaper while she completed the task, listening to the wireless.

Jennifer, meanwhile, would bathe and dress. She might pop next door for coffee with Yvonne, take her mother for a light lunch, or hail a taxi and go into the center of town to do a little Christmas shopping. She made sure she had always returned by early afternoon. It was at that point that she usually found some other task for Mrs. Cordoza: a bus trip to buy curtain material; a search for a particular type of fish that Laurence had said he might like. Once, she gave the housekeeper an afternoon off—anything to grant herself an hour or two alone in the house, buy time to search for more letters.

In the two weeks that had passed since she’d discovered the first, she had found two more. They, too, were addressed to a post-office box, but were clearly for her. The same handwriting, the same passionate, direct way of speaking. The words seemed to echo some sound deep within. They described events that, while she couldn’t remember them, held a deep resonance, like the vibrations of a huge bell long after it had stopped ringing.