The Last Letter from Your Lover

“I don’t know. As I said yesterday, there are still bits I can’t remember. If I hadn’t found your letters, I might never have remembered you. I might never have known—”

“But who told you I was dead?”

“Laurence. Don’t look like that. He’s not cruel. I think he really believed you were.” She waited a moment. “He knew there was . . . someone, you see. He read your last letter. After the accident he must have put two and two—”

“My last letter?”

“The one asking me to meet you at the station. I was carrying it when the car crashed.”

“I don’t understand—that wasn’t my last letter—”

“Oh, let’s not,” she interrupted. “Please . . . It’s too—”

“Then what?” She was watching him intently. “Jennifer, I—”

She stood up and stepped so close to him that even in the dim light he could see every tiny freckle on her face, each eyelash tapering into a black point sharp enough to pierce a man’s heart. She was with him and yet removed, as if she was coming to some decision.

“Boot,” she said softly, “are you angry with me? Still?”

Boot.

He swallowed. “How could I be?”

She lifted her hands and traced the shape of his face, her fingertips so light they barely touched him. “Did we do this?”

He stared at her.

“Before?” She blinked. “I don’t remember. I only know your words.”

“Yes.” His voice broke. “Yes, we did this.” He felt her cool fingers on his skin and remembered her scent.

“Anthony,” she murmured, and there was sweetness in the way she said his name, an unbearable tenderness that spoke of all the love and loss he, too, had felt.

Her body rested against his, and he heard the sigh that traveled through her, then felt her breath on his lips. The air stilled around them. Her lips were on his, and something broke open in his chest. He heard himself gasp, and realized, with horror, that his eyes had filled with tears. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, mortified. “I’m sorry. I don’t know . . . why . . .”

“I know,” she said. “I know.” She put her arms around his neck, kissing the tears that ran down his cheeks, murmuring to him. They clung together, elated, despairing, neither quite able to believe the turn of events. Time became a blur, the kisses more urgent, the tears drying. He pulled her sweater over her head, stood, almost helpless, as she undid the buttons of his shirt. And in a joyful wrench it was off him, his skin against hers, and they were on the bed, wrapped around each other, their bodies fierce, almost clumsy with urgency.

He kissed her, and knew he was trying to tell her the depth of how he felt. Even as he lost himself in her, felt her hair sweep across his face, his chest, her lips meet his skin, her fingers, he understood that there were people for whom one other was their missing part.

She was alive beneath him; she set him alight. He kissed the scar that ran up to her shoulder, ignored her flinching reluctance until she accepted what he was telling her: this silvered ridge was beautiful to him; it told him she had loved him. It told him she had wanted to come to him. He kissed it because there was no part of her that he didn’t want to make better, no part of her that he didn’t adore.

He watched desire grow in her as if it were a gift shared between them, the infinite variety of expressions that crossed her face, saw her unguarded, locked in some private struggle, and when she opened her eyes, he felt blessed.

When he came he wept again, because some part of him had always known, even though he had chosen not to believe it, that there must be something that could make you feel like this. And that to have it returned to him was more than he could have hoped for.

“I know you,” she murmured, her skin sticky against his, her tears wet on his neck. “I do know you.”

For a moment he couldn’t speak but stared up at the ceiling, feeling the air cool around them, her limbs pressed damply against his own. “Oh, Jenny,” he said. “Thank God.”

When her breathing had returned to normal, she raised herself on one elbow and looked down at him. Something in her had altered: her features had lifted, the strain had vanished from around her eyes. He enclosed her in his arms, pulling her to him so tightly that their bodies felt welded together. He felt himself hardening again, and she smiled.

“I want to say something,” he said, “but nothing seems . . . momentous enough.”

Her smile was glorious: satiated, loving, full of wry surprise. “I’ve never felt like that in my whole life,” she said.

They looked at each other.

“Have I?” she said.

He nodded. She gazed into the distance. “Then . . . thank you.”

He laughed, and she collapsed, giggling, onto his shoulder.

Four years had dissolved, become nothing. He saw, with a new clarity, the path of his life to come. He would stay in London. He would break things off with Eva, the girlfriend in New York. She was a sweet girl, breezy and cheerful, but he knew now that every woman he had dated over the past four years had been a pale imitation of the woman beside him. Jennifer would leave her husband. He would take care of her. They would not miss their chance a second time. He had a sudden vision of her with his son, the three of them on some family outing, and the future glowed with unforeseen promise.

His train of thought was broken by her kissing his chest, his shoulder, his neck, with intense concentration. “You do realize,” he said, rolling her over so that her legs were entwined with his, her mouth inches away, “that we’re going to have to do that again. Just to make sure you remember.”

She said nothing, just closed her eyes.

This time when he made love to her, he did so slowly. He spoke to her body with his own. He felt her inhibitions fall away, her heart beat against his own, the mirroring of that faint tattoo. He said her name a million times, for the sheer luxury of being able to do so. In whispers, he told her everything he had ever felt for her.

When she told him she loved him, it was with an intensity that stopped his breath. The rest of the world slowed and closed in, until it was just the two of them, a tangle of sheets and limbs, hair and soft cries.

“You are the most exquisite . . .” He watched her eyes open with shy recognition of where she had been. “I would do that with you a hundred times just for the sheer pleasure of watching your face.” She said nothing, and he felt greedy now. “Vicariously,” he said suddenly. “Remember?”

Afterward, he was not sure how long they had lain there together, as if each wished to absorb the other through their skin. He heard the sounds of the street, the occasional pad of feet up and down the corridor outside the room, a distant voice. He felt the rhythm of her breathing against his chest. He kissed the top of her head, let his fingers rest in her tangled hair. A perfect peace had descended on him, spreading to his very bones. I’m home, he thought. This is it.

She shifted in his arms. “Let’s order up something to drink,” he said, kissing her collarbone, her chin, the space where her jaw met her ear. “A celebration. Tea for me, champagne for you. What do you say?”

He saw it then, an unwelcome shadow, her thoughts transferring to somewhere outside the room.

“Oh,” she said, sitting upright. “What’s the time?”

He checked his watch. “Twenty past four. Why?”

“Oh, no! I’ve got to be downstairs at half past.” She was off the bed, stooping to pick up her clothes.

“Whoa! Why do you have to be downstairs?”

“Mrs. Cordoza.”

“Who?”

“My housekeeper’s meeting me. I’m meant to be shopping.”

“Be late for her. Is shopping really that important? Jennifer, we have to talk—work out what we’re going to do next. I’ve got to tell my editor I’m not going to Congo.”

She was pulling on her clothes inelegantly, as if nothing mattered but speed, brassiere, trousers, pullover. The body he had taken, made his own, disappeared from view.

“Jennifer?” He slid out of the bed, reached for his trousers, belted them around his waist. “You can’t just go.”

She had her back to him.

“We’ve got things to talk about, surely, how we’re going to sort it all out.”

“There’s nothing to sort out.” She opened her handbag, pulled out a brush, and attacked her hair with short, fierce strokes.

“I don’t understand.”

When she turned to him, her face had closed, as though a screen had been pulled across it.

“Anthony, I’m sorry, but we—we can’t meet again.”

“What?”

She pulled out a compact, began to wipe the smudged mascara from under her eyes.

“You can’t say that after what we’ve just done. You can’t just turn it all off. What the hell is going on?”

She was rigid. “You’ll be fine. You always are. Look, I—I have to go. I’m so sorry.”

She swept up her bag and coat. The door closed behind her with a decisive click.

Anthony was after her, wrenching it open. “Don’t do this, Jennifer! Don’t leave me again!” His voice echoed down the already empty corridor, bouncing off the blank doors of the other bedrooms. “This isn’t some kind of game! I’m not going to wait another four years for you!”

He was frozen with shock until, cursing, he collected himself and sprinted back into the room, wrestled into his shirt and shoes.

He grabbed his jacket and ran out into the corridor, his heart thudding. He tore down the stairs, two at a time, to the foyer. He saw the lift doors open, and there she was, her heels clicking briskly across the marble floor, composed, recovered, a million miles from where she’d been only minutes earlier. He was about to shout to her when he heard the cry: “Mummy!”

Jennifer went down, her arms already outstretched. A middle-aged woman was walking toward her, the child breaking free from her grasp. The little girl threw herself into Jennifer’s arms and was lifted up, her voice bubbling across the echoing concourse. “Are we going to Hamleys? Mrs. Cordoza said we were.”

“Yes, darling. We’ll go right now. I just have to sort something out with reception.”

She put the child down and took her hand. Perhaps it was the intensity of his gaze, but something made her look back as she walked to the desk. She saw him. Her eyes locked on his, and in them he caught a hint of apology—and guilt.

She looked away, scribbled something, then turned back to the receptionist, her handbag on the desk. A few words were exchanged, and she was away, walking out through the glass doors into the afternoon sunshine, the little girl chattering beside her.

The implication of what he had seen sank into Anthony, like feet into quicksand. He waited until she had disappeared, and then, like a man waking from a dream, shouldered on his jacket.

He was about to walk out when the concierge hurried up to him. “Mr. Boot? The lady asked me to give you this.” A note was thrust into his hand.

He unfolded the little piece of hotel writing paper.

Forgive me. I just had to know.

Chapter 15

Moira Parker walked up to the typing pool and switched off the transistor radio that had been balanced on a pile of telephone directories.

“Hey!” Annie Jessop protested. “I was listening to that.”

“It is not appropriate to have popular music blaring out in an office,” Moira said firmly. “Mr. Stirling doesn’t want to be distracted by such a racket. This is a place of work.” It was the fourth time that week.

“More like a funeral parlor. Oh, come on, Moira. Let’s have it on low. It helps the day go by.”

“Working hard helps the day go by.”