The Last Letter from Your Lover

watching him. Two of the other secretaries were whispering to each other.
    The woman had paled. ‘Surely there must be some way of reaching him. He can’t have been gone long.’
    ‘He could be anywhere. It’s Congo. They don’t have telephones. He’ll telegraph when he gets a chance.’
    ‘Congo? But why on earth did he go so soon?’ Her voice had faded to a whisper.
    ‘Who knows?’ He looked at her pointedly. ‘Perhaps he wanted to get away.’ He was aware of Cheryl loitering, pretending to sort a pile of papers nearby.
    The woman seemed to have lost the power of thought. Her hand lifted to her face. He thought, for one awful moment, that she might be about to cry. If there was one thing worse than a child in a newsroom, it was a crying woman with a child in a newsroom.
    She took a deep breath, steadying herself. ‘If you speak to him, would you ask him to telephone me?’ She reached into her bag, from which she pulled out a paper folder, stuffed with documents, then several battered envelopes, she hesitated, and thrust them deep inside. ‘And give him these. He’ll know what it means.’ She scribbled a note, ripped it from her diary and pushed it under the flap. She placed the folder on the desk in front of him.
    ‘Sure.’
    She took hold of his arm. She was wearing a ring with a diamond the size of the ruddy Koh-i-noor. ‘You’ll 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.’
    Her face crumpled. ‘I’m sorry. Please just make sure he gets it. Please.’
    Don nodded.
    She waited, her eyes not leaving his face, perhaps trying to reassure herself that he had meant what he said. Then, with a final glance around the office, as if to check that O’Hare really wasn’t there, she took her daughter’s hand. ‘I’m so sorry to have bothered you.’
    Looking somehow smaller than she had when she’d walked in, she made her way slowly towards the doors, as if she had no idea where she was going. The few people gathered around the subs’ desk watched her leave.
    ‘Congo,’ said Cheryl, after a beat.
    ‘I need to get page four off stone.’ Don stared fixedly at the desk. ‘Let’s go with the dancing priest.’
    It was almost three weeks later that someone thought to clear the sub-editors’ desk. Among the old galley proofs and dark blue carbon sheets, there was a shabby folder.
    ‘Who’s B?’ Dora, the temporary secretary, opened it. ‘Is this something for Bentinck? Didn’t he leave two months ago?’
    Cheryl, who was arguing about travel expenses on the phone, shrugged without turning but cupped her hand over the mouthpiece. ‘If you can’t see who it belongs to, send it to the library. That’s where I put everything that doesn’t seem to belong to anyone. Then Don can’t yell at you.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Well, he can. But not for misfiling.’
    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

U n me finished
    Male to Female, via text message

16
    2003
    Tuesday. 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: