The Last Letter from Your Lover(7)
Author: Jojo Moyes

There were eight around the table, her husband and Francis at either end. Yvonne, Dominic, who was quite high up in the Horse Guards, and Jennifer sat along the window side, with Violet, Bill, and Anne, Dominic’s wife, opposite. Anne was a cheerful sort, guffawing at the men’s jokes with a benign twinkle in her eye that spoke of a woman comfortable in her skin.

Jennifer found herself watching them as they ate, analyzing and examining with forensic detail the things they said to each other, seeking out the clues to their past life. Bill, she noted, rarely looked at his wife, let alone addressed her. Violet seemed oblivious to this, and Jennifer wondered whether she was unaware of his indifference or just stoic in hiding her embarrassment.

Yvonne, for all her joking complaints about Francis, watched him constantly. She delivered her jokes at his expense while directing at him a smile of challenge. This is how they are together, Jennifer thought. She won’t show him how much he means to her.

“I wish I’d put my money in refrigerators,” Francis was saying. “The newspaper said this morning that there should be a million of the things sold in Britain this year. A million! Five years ago that was . . . a hundred and seventy thousand.”

“In America it must be ten times that. I hear people exchange them every couple of years.” Violet speared a piece of fish. “And they’re huge—double the size of ours. Can you imagine?”

“Everything in America is bigger. Or so they love to tell us.”

“Including the egos, judging by the ones I’ve come up against.” Dominic’s voice lifted. “You have not met an insufferable know-all until you’ve met a Yank general.”

Anne was laughing. “Poor old Dom was a bit put out when one tried to tell him how to drive his own car.”

“ ‘Say, your quarters are pretty small. These vehicles are pretty small. Your rations are pretty small . . .’ ” Dominic mimicked. “They should have seen what it was like with rationing. Of course, they have no idea—”

“Dom thought he’d have some fun with him and borrowed my mother’s Morris Minor. Picked him up in it. You should have seen his face.”

“ ‘Standard issue over here, chum,’ I told him. ‘For visiting dignitaries we use the Vauxhall Velox. Gives you that extra three inches of leg room.’ He virtually had to fold himself in two to fit inside.”

“I was howling with laughter,” said Anne. “I don’t know how Dom didn’t end up in the most awful trouble.”

“How’s business, Larry? I hear you’re off to Africa again in a week or so.”

Jennifer watched her husband settle back in his seat.

“Good. Very good, in fact. I’ve just signed a deal with a certain motor company to manufacture brake linings.” He placed his knife and fork together on his plate.

“What exactly is it you do? I’m never quite sure what this newfangled mineral you’re using is.”

“Don’t pretend to be interested, Violet,” Bill said, from the other side of the table. “Violet’s rarely interested in anything that isn’t pink or blue or starts a sentence with ‘Mama.’ ”

“Perhaps, Bill, darling, that simply means there isn’t enough stimulation for her at home,” Yvonne parried, and the men whistled exuberantly.

Laurence Stirling had turned toward Violet. “It’s not actually a new mineral at all,” he was saying. “It’s been around since the days of the Romans. Did you study the Romans at school?”

“I certainly did. I can’t remember anything about them now, of course.” Her laugh was shrill.

Laurence’s voice dropped, and the table hushed, the better to hear him. “Well, Pliny the Elder wrote about how he had seen a piece of cloth thrown into a banqueting-hall fire and brought out again minutes later without a scrap of damage. Some people thought it was witchcraft, but he knew this was something extraordinary.” He pulled a pen from his pocket, leaned forward, and scribbled on his damask napkin. He pushed it round for her to see better. “The name chrysotile, the most common form, is derived from the Greek words chrysos, which means ‘gold,’ and tilos, ‘fiber.’ Even then they knew it had terrific value. All I do—my company, I mean—is mine it and mold it into a variety of uses.”

“You put out fires.”

“Yes.” He looked thoughtfully at his hands. “Or I make sure they don’t start in the first place.” In the brief silence that followed, an atmosphere fell over the table. He glanced at Jennifer, then away.

“So where’s the big money, old chap? Not flameproof tablecloths.”

“Car parts.” He sat back in his chair, and the room seemed to relax with him. “They say that within ten years most households in Britain will have a car. That’s an awful lot of brake linings. And we’re in talks with the railways and the airlines. But the uses of white asbestos are pretty limitless. We’ve branched out into guttering, farm buildings, sheeting, insulation. Soon it’ll be everywhere.”

“The wonder mineral indeed.”

He was at ease as he discussed his business with his friends in a way that he had not been when the two of them were alone, Jennifer thought. It must have been strange for him, too, to have her so badly injured, and even now not quite herself. She thought of Yvonne’s description of her that afternoon: gorgeous, poised, minxy. Was he missing that woman? Perhaps conscious that she was watching him, he turned his head and caught her eye. She smiled, and after a moment, he smiled back.

“I saw that. C’mon, Larry. You’re not allowed to moon at your wife.” Bill began to refill their glasses.

“He certainly is allowed to moon at his wife,” Francis protested, “after everything that happened to her. How are you feeling now, Jenny? You look wonderful.”

“I’m fine. Thank you.”

“I should think she’s doing terribly well holding a dinner party not—what?—not a week after getting out of hospital.”

“If Jenny wasn’t giving a dinner party I should think there was something terribly wrong—and not just with her but the whole damned world.” Bill took a long swig of his wine.

“Awful business. It’s lovely to see you looking like your old self.”

“We were terribly worried. I hope you got my flowers,” Anne put in.

Dominic laid his napkin on the table. “Do you remember anything about the accident itself, Jenny?”