The Last Letter from Your Lover(98)
Author: Jojo Moyes

“Ah. Yes. Ellie Haworth. Hold on.” He has the voice of someone in his fifties. He sounds a little like John. She blocks this thought as she hears a hand placed across the receiver, his voice, muffled, and then he’s back. “Sorry. Yes. Deadlines. Look, thanks for calling me back…. I just wanted to check something. Where was it you said you worked? The Nation?”

“Yes.” Her mouth has gone dry. She begins to babble. “But I do want to assure you that his name is not necessarily going to get used in what I’m writing about. I just really want to find out what happened to him for a friend of his who—

“The Nation?”

“Yes.”

There’s a short silence.

“And you say you want to find out about my father?”

“Yes.” Her voice is draining away.

“And you’re a journalist?”

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t understand what you’re getting at. Yes, a journalist. Like you. Are you saying you’re uncomfortable giving any information to a rival newspaper? I’ve told you that—”

“My father is Anthony O’Hare.”

“Yes. That’s who I’m—”

The man at the other end of the line is laughing. “You’re not in the investigative unit, by any chance?”

“No.”

It takes him a moment to gather himself. “Miss Haworth, my father works for the Nation. Your newspaper. He has done for more than forty years.”

Ellie sits very still. She asks him to repeat what he has just said.

“I don’t understand,” she says, standing up at her desk. “I did a byline search. I did lots of searches. Nothing came up. Only your name at the Times.”

“That’s because he doesn’t write.”

“Then what does—”

“My father works in the library. He has done since . . . oh . . . 1964.”

Chapter 25

OCTOBER 1964

“And give him this. He’ll know what it means.” Jennifer Stirling scribbled a note, ripped it from her diary, and thrust it into the top of the folder. She placed it on the subeditor’s desk.

“Sure,” Don said.

She reached over to him, took hold of his arm. “You will make sure he gets it? It’s really important. Desperately important.”

“I understand. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get on. This is our busiest time of day. We’re all on deadlines here.” Don wanted her out of the office. He wanted the child out of the office.

Her face crumpled. “I’m sorry. Please just make sure he gets it. Please.”

God, he wished she’d just leave. He couldn’t look at her.

“I’m—I’m sorry to have bothered you.” She appeared suddenly self-conscious, as if she was aware of the spectacle she had created. She reached for her daughter’s hand and, almost reluctantly, walked away. The few people gathered around the sub’s desk watched her go in silence.

“Congo,” said Cheryl, after a beat.

“We need to get page four off stone.” Don stared fixedly at the desk. “Let’s go with the dancing priest.”

Cheryl was still sawing at him. “Why did you tell her he’d gone to Congo?”

“You want me to tell her the truth? That he drank himself into a bloody coma?”

Cheryl twisted the pen in her mouth, her eyes drifting across to the swinging office door. “But she looked so sad.”

“She should look bloody sad. She’s the one who’s caused him all the trouble.”

“But you can’t—”

Don’s voice exploded into the newsroom. “The last thing that boy needs is her stirring things up again. Do you understand? I’m doing him a favor.” He tore the note from the folder and hurled it into the bin.

Cheryl stuck her pen behind her ear, gave her boss a hard look, and sashayed back to her desk.

Don took a deep breath. “Right, can we get off O’Hare’s bloody love life and on with this bloody dancing-priest story? Someone? Shove some copy over sharpish or we’re going to be sending the paperboys out with a load of blank pages tomorrow.”

In the next bed a man was coughing. It went on and on, a polite, staccato tattoo, as if something was caught at the back of his throat. He did it even in his sleep. Anthony O’Hare let the sound recede to some distant recess of his consciousness, just like everything else. He knew the tricks now. How to make things disappear.

“You have a visitor, Mr. O’Hare.”

The sound of curtains being pulled back, light flooding in. Pretty Scottish nurse. Cool hands. Every word she said to him was spoken in the tone of someone about to bestow a gift. I’m just going to give you a little injection, Mr. O’Hare. Shall I get someone to help you to the lavatory, Mr. O’Hare? You have a visitor, Mr. O’Hare.

Visitor? For a moment hope floated, and then he heard Don’s voice through the curtains and remembered where he was.

“Don’t mind me, sweetheart.”

“I certainly won’t,” she said primly.

“Lie-in, is it?” A moon-sized ruddy face somewhere by his feet.

“Funny.” He spoke into his pillow, pushing himself upright. His whole body ached. He blinked. “I need to get out of here.”

His vision cleared. Don was standing at the end of his bed, arms folded, resting on his stomach. “You’re not going anywhere, sonny Jim.”

“I can’t stay here.” His voice seemed to come straight from his chest. It croaked and squeaked like a wooden wheel in a rut.

“You’re not well. They want to check your liver function before you go anywhere. You gave us all a fright.”

“What happened?” He could remember nothing.

Don hesitated, perhaps trying to judge how much to say. “You didn’t turn up at Marjorie Spackman’s office for the big meeting. When nobody had heard from you by six p.m. I got a bad feeling, left Michaels in charge, and shot over to your hotel. Found you on the floor, not too pretty. You looked worse than you do now, and that’s saying something.”

Flashback. The bar at the Regent. The wary eyes of the barman. Pain. Raised voices. An endless careening journey back to his room, clutching at walls, swaying upstairs. The sound of things crashing. Then nothing.

“I hurt all over.”

“So you should. God knows what they did to you. You looked like a pincushion when I saw you last night.”