The Last Letter from Your Lover

The folder landed on the trolley destined for the archive, with the old editions of the newspaper, Who’s Who, and Hansard, in the bowels of the building.

It would not reappear for almost forty years.

Part 3

Chapter 16

SEPTEMBER 2003

Ellie Haworth emerges from the underground station and half walks, half runs along the street, dodging pedestrians, blind to the gaudy shop windows offering unmissable autumn bargains, deaf to the cacophonous queue of traffic, her gaze still on the little screen of her mobile phone. She clashes elbows with a suited man who tuts loudly, sidestepping around her, and she mutters an apology without looking up.

She comes to a brief halt outside the pub, stands still for a moment, and then punches a number into the phone.

“I’m just about to go into a meeting,” Nicky says.

“Very quickly. ‘Later.’ With an x. What on earth does that mean?” She has to shout to be heard over the engine of an idling bus.

“What?”

“I mean at the end of a text message. ‘Later x.’ Does it mean someone is going to call later today? This week? Never?”

Bob, who runs the little coffee wagon opposite her office building, is packing up, ready to move on to his next pitch at the shopping mall. She has overslept, having lain awake until the small hours, and now realizes with a sick lurch that this means she is even later than she had feared. But the thought of going into conference without a coffee is too much. She taps him on the shoulder, her phone still pressed to her ear, and arranges her face into an expression she might call “hopeful.”

Bob spins around, and registers that it is Ellie. When he realizes what she wants, he taps his watch.

“What did he say?” says Nicky.

“ ‘Later.’ With an x.”

She mouths a please to Bob. She wedges her phone in the crook of her neck and lifts both hands in a gesture of prayer.

“ ‘Later x’ ?” echoes Nicky.

Shaking his head resignedly, Bob pulls the cover off his coffee machine and with an ostentatious air of martyrdom begins to make her an Americano, just as she likes it.

“Nicky?”

“Oh, Lord. I don’t know what it means. It could mean anything. ‘Later’ when he remembers who you are. ‘Later’ when his wife lets him out of the cellar.”

“Funny.”

“Well, it’s meaningless. It’s one of those things men say so that they’re not committed to anything.”

“But he’s—”

“I don’t know, Ellie. You know him better than I do. Look, I’m really sorry, but I’ve got to go. They’re waiting for me. I’ll call you tonight, okay?”

“Do you think a big X means more than a little x?” Ellie begins, but the phone has gone dead.

She stares at it for a moment, then shoves the phone into her pocket, grabs the coffee, hands a fistful of change to Bob, and with a hurried “Thank you thank you Bob you’re a lifesaver,” turns and runs across the road toward her office.

It has never even occurred to her to tell Nicky the rest of the message. Sorry couldn’t make it last night. Things tricky at home. Later x.

The Nation is being packed up, box by box, for transfer to its new glass-fronted home on a gleaming, reclaimed quay to the east of the City. The office, week by week, has been thinning: where once there were towers of press releases, files, and archived cuttings, now empty desks, unexpected shiny lengths of laminated surface, are exposed to the harsh glare of the strip lighting. Souvenirs of past stories have been unearthed, like prizes from an archaeologist’s dig, flags from royal jubilees, dented metal helmets from distant wars, and framed certificates for long-forgotten awards. Banks of cables lie exposed; carpet tiles have been dislodged and great holes opened in the ceilings, prompting histrionic visits from health and safety experts and endless visitors with clipboards. Advertising, Classified, and Sport have already moved to Compass Quay. The Saturday magazine, Business, and Personal Finance are preparing to transfer in the next weeks. Features, Ellie Haworth’s department, will follow along with News, moving in a carefully choreographed sleight of hand so that while Saturday’s newspaper will emanate from the old Turner Street offices, Monday’s will spring, as if by magic, from the new address.

The building, home to the newspaper for almost a hundred years, is no longer fit-for-purpose, in that unlovely phrase. According to the management, it does not reflect the dynamic, streamlined nature of modern newsgathering. It has too many places to hide, the hacks observe bad-temperedly as they are prised from their positions, like limpets clinging stubbornly to a holed hull.

“We should celebrate it,” says Melissa, head of Features, from the editor’s almost-cleared office. She’s wearing a wine-colored silk dress. On Ellie, this would have looked like her grandmother’s nightie; on Melissa it looks like what it is—defiantly high fashion.

“The move?” Ellie is glancing at her mobile phone, set to silent, beside her. Around her, the other feature writers are silent, notepads on knees.

“Yes. I was talking to one of the librarians the other evening. He says there are lots of old files that haven’t been looked at in years. I want something on the women’s pages from fifty years ago. How attitudes have changed, fashions, women’s preoccupations. Case studies, side by side, then and now.” Melissa opens a file and pulls out several photocopied A3 sheets. She speaks with the easy confidence of someone accustomed to being listened to. “For instance, from our problem pages: ‘What on earth can I do to get my wife to dress more smartly and to make herself more attractive? My income is £1,500 a year, and I am beginning to make my way in a sales organization. I am very often getting invitations from customers, but in recent weeks I have had to dodge them because my wife, frankly, looks a mess.’ ”

There is a low chuckle around the room.

“ ‘I have tried to put it to her in a gentle way, and she says that she doesn’t care about fashions or jewelry or makeup. Frankly she doesn’t look like the wife of a successful man, which is what I want her to be.’ ”

John had once told Ellie that, after the children, his wife had lost interest in her appearance. He had changed the subject almost as soon as he had introduced it, and never referred to it again, as if he felt what he had said was even more of a betrayal than sleeping with another woman. Ellie had resented that hint of gentlemanly loyalty even while a bit of her admired him for it.

But it had stuck in her imagination. She had pictured his wife: slatternly in a stained nightdress, clutching a baby and haranguing him for some supposed deficit.

She wanted to tell him she would never be like that with him.

“One could put the questions to a modern advice columnist.” Rupert, the Saturday editor, leans forward to peer at the other photocopied pages.

“I’m not sure you’d need to. Listen to the response: ‘It may never have occurred to your wife that she is meant to be part of your shop window. She may, insofar as she thinks about these things at all, tell herself that she’s married, secure, happy, so why should she bother?’”

“Ah,” says Rupert. “‘The deep, deep peace of the double bed.’”

“‘I have seen this happen remarkably quickly to girls who fall in love just as much as to women who potter about in the cozy wrap of an old marriage. One moment they’re smart as new paint, battling heroically with their waistlines, seams straight, anxiously dabbed with perfume. Some man says, “I love you,” and the next moment that shining girl is, as near as makes no difference, a slattern. A happy slattern.’ ”

The room fills briefly with polite, appreciative laughter.

“What’s your choice, girls? Battle heroically with your waistline, or become a happy slattern?”

“I think I saw a film of that name not long ago,” says Rupert. His smile fades when he realizes the laughter has died.

“There’s a lot we can do with this stuff.” Melissa gestures toward the folder. “Ellie, can you dig around a bit this afternoon? See what else you might find. We’re looking at forty, fifty years ago. A hundred will be too alienating. The editor’s keen for us to highlight the move in a way that will bring readers along with us.”

“You want me to go through the archive?”

“Is that a problem?”

Not if you like sitting in dark cellars full of mildewing paper policed by dysfunctional men with Stalinist mindsets, who apparently haven’t seen daylight for thirty years. “Not at all,” she says brightly. “I’m sure I’ll find something.”

“Get a couple of interns to help you, if you like. I’ve heard there’s a couple lurking in the fashion cupboard.”

Ellie doesn’t register the malevolent satisfaction crossing her editor’s features at the thought of sending the latest batch of Anna Wintour wannabes deep into the bowels of the newspaper. She’s busy thinking, Bugger. No mobile reception underground.

“By the way, Ellie, where were you this morning?”

“What?”

“This morning. I wanted you to rewrite that piece about children and bereavement. Yes? Nobody seemed to know where you were.”

“I was out doing an interview.”

“Who with?”

A body-language expert, Ellie thinks, would have identified correctly that Melissa’s blank smile was more of a snarl.

“Lawyer. Whistleblower. I was hoping to work something up on sexism in chambers.” It’s out almost before she knows what she’s saying.

“Sexism in the City. Hardly sounds groundbreaking. Make sure you’re at your desk at the right time tomorrow. Speculative interviews on your own time. Yes?”

“Right.”

“Good. I want a double-page spread for the first Compass Quay edition. Something along the lines of plus ça change.” She is scribbling in her leather-backed notebook. “Preoccupations, ads, problems . . . Bring me a few pages later this afternoon, and we’ll see what you’ve got.”

“Will do.” Ellie’s smile is the brightest and most workmanlike in the whole room as she follows the others out of the office.

Spent today in modern-day equivalent of purgatory, she types, pausing to take a sip of her wine. Newspaper archive office. You want to be grateful you only make stuff up.

He has messaged her from his hotmail account. He calls himself Penpusher; a joke between the two of them. She curls her feet under her on the chair and waits, willing the machine to signal his response.

You’re a cultural heathen. I love archives, the screen responds. Remind me to take you to the British Newspaper Library for our next hot date.

The only human librarian has given me a great wedge of loose papers. Not the most exciting bedtime reading.

Afraid this sounds sarcastic, she follows it with a smiley face, then curses as she remembers he once wrote an essay for the Literary Review on how the smiley face represented all that was wrong with modern communication.

That was an ironic smiley face, she adds, and stuffs her fist into her mouth.

Hold on. Phone. The screen stills.

Phone. His wife? He was in a hotel room in Dublin. It overlooked the water, he had told her. You would love it. What was she meant to say to that? Then bring me next time? Too demanding. I’m sure I would? Sounded almost sarcastic. Yes, she had replied, finally, and let out a long, unheard sigh.

It’s all her own fault, her friends tell her. Unusually for her, Ellie Haworth can’t disagree.

She had met him at a book festival in Suffolk, sent to interview this thriller writer who had made a fortune after he had given up on moreliterary offerings. His name is John Armor, his hero, Dan Hobson, an almost cartoonish amalgam of old-fashioned masculine traits. She had interviewed him over lunch, expecting a rather chippy defense of the genre, perhaps a few moans about the publishing industry—she always found writers rather wearying to interview. She had expected someone paunchy, middle-aged, puddingy after years of being deskbound. But the tall, tanned man who rose to shake her hand had been lean and freckly, resembling a weathered South African farmer. He was funny, charming, self-deprecating, and attentive. He had turned the interview on her, asking her questions about herself, then told her his theories on the origin of language and how he believed communication was morphing into something dangerously flaccid and ugly.