The Last Letter from Your Lover(67)
Author: Jojo Moyes

It soon becomes apparent why: a few theater reviews, a passenger list for a cruise ship, some menus from celebratory newspaper dinners. She flicks through them, glancing up occasionally at the television. There’s not much here that’ll excite Melissa.

Now she’s leafing through a battered file of what looks like medical records. All lung disease, she notes absently. Something to do with mining. She’s about to tip the whole lot into the bin when a pale blue corner catches her eye. She tugs at it with her index finger and thumb and pulls out a hand-addressed envelope. It’s been opened, and the letter inside is dated October 4, 1960.

My dearest and only love. I meant what I said. I have come to the conclusion that the only way forward is for one of us to make a bold decision.

I am not as strong as you. When I first met you, I thought you were a fragile little thing. Someone I had to protect. Now I realize I had us all wrong. You are the strong one, the one who can endure living with the possibility of a love like this, and the fact that we will never be allowed it.

I ask you not to judge me for my weakness. The only way I can endure is to be in a place where I will never see you, never be haunted by the possibility of seeing you with him. I need to be somewhere where sheer necessity forces you from my thoughts minute by minute, hour by hour. I cannot do that here.

I am going to take the job. I’ll be at Platform 4 Paddington at 7:15 on Monday evening, and there is nothing in the world that would make me happier than if you found the courage to come with me.

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.

I’ll be waiting on the platform from a quarter to seven. Know that you hold my heart, my hopes, in your hands.

Your

B.

Ellie reads it a second time, and finds her eyes welling inexplicably with tears. She can’t take her eyes off the large, looped handwriting; the immediacy of the words springs out to her more than forty years after they were written. She turns it over, checks the envelope for clues. It’s addressed to PO Box 13, London. It could be a man or a woman. What did you do, PO Box 13? she asks silently.

Then she gets up, replaces the letter carefully in the envelope, and walks over to her computer. She opens the mail file and presses refresh. Nothing since the message she had received at seven forty-five.

Got to go to a dinner, gorgeous. Sorry—behind already. Later x

Chapter 17

Tuesday lunch. Red Lion? Any good? John x

She waits for twenty minutes before he arrives, all cold air and apologies. A radio interview had gone on longer than he’d expected. He’d bumped into a sound engineer he’d known at university who wanted to catch up. It would have been rude to rush away.

But not rude to leave me sitting in a pub, she replies silently, but she doesn’t want to upset the mood, so she smiles.

“You look lovely,” he says, touching the side of her face. “Had your hair done?”

“No.”

“Ah. Just habitually lovely, then.” And, with one sentence, his lateness is forgotten.

He’s wearing a dark blue shirt and a khaki jacket; she had once teased him that it was a writer’s uniform. Understated, muted, expensive. It’s the outfit she imagines him in when she’s not with him. “How was Dublin?”

“Hurried. Harried.” He unwinds his scarf from his neck. “I have this new publicist, Ros, and she seems to think it her duty to pack something into every last fifteen-minute slot. She’d actually allocated me loo breaks.”

She laughs.

“Are you drinking?” He motions to a waiter, having spotted her empty glass.

“White wine.” She hadn’t been planning to have more: she’s trying to cut down, but now he’s here and her stomach has those knots that only alcohol can loosen.

He chats on about his trip, the books sold, the changes in the Dublin waterfront. She watches him as he talks. She’d read somewhere that you only truly saw what someone looked like in the first few minutes of meeting them, that after then it was only an impression, colored by what you thought of them. It gave her comfort on the mornings when she woke up puffy-faced after drinking too much, or with eyes pixellated from lack of sleep.

“Not working today, then?”

She hauls herself back into the conversation. “It’s my day off. I worked last Sunday, remember? But I’m going to pop into the office anyway.”

“What are you working on?”

“Oh, nothing very exciting. I found an interesting letter and wanted to have a root around in the archive in case there were more like it.”

“A letter?”

“Yes.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“Nothing to tell, really.” She shrugs. “It’s old. From 1960.” She doesn’t know why she’s being reticent, but she would feel strange showing him the raw emotion on the page. She’s afraid he might think she had some hidden reason for showing it to him.

“Ah. Strictures were so much firmer then. I love writing about that period. It’s so much more effective for creating tension.”

“Tension?”

“Between what we want and what we’re allowed.”

She looks at her hands. “Yup. I know all about that.”

“The pushing against boundaries . . . all those rigid codes of conduct.”

“Say that again.” Her eyes meet his.

“Don’t,” he murmurs, grinning. “Not in a restaurant. Bad girl.”

The power of words. She gets him every time.

She feels the pressure of his leg against hers. After this they will return to her flat, and she will have him to herself for at least an hour. It isn’t enough, it never is, but the thought of it, his body against hers, is already making her giddy.

“Do you . . . still want to eat?” she asks slowly.

“That depends . . .”

Their eyes linger on each other. For her there is nothing in the bar but him.

He shifts in his chair. “Oh, before I forget, I’m going to be away from the seventeenth.”

“Another tour?” His legs are enclosing hers under the table. She struggles to focus on what she’s saying. “Those publishers are keeping you busy.”

“No,” he says, his voice neutral. “Holiday.”

The briefest pause. And there it is. An actual pain, something like a punch, just under her ribs. Always the softest part of her.