The Last Letter from Your Lover(55)
Author: Jojo Moyes

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.”