The Last Letter from Your Lover

will.
    Your
    B
    ‘Jenny,’ he says.
    She doesn’t reply.
    ‘She didn’t go,’ he says.
    ‘Yup. You were right.’
    He opens his mouth as if to speak, but perhaps something in her expression changes his mind.
    She lets out a breath. ‘I don’t know why,’ she says, ‘but that’s made me feel a bit sad.’
    ‘But you have your answer. And you have a clue to the name, if you really want to write this feature.’
    ‘Jenny,’ she muses. ‘It’s not a lot to go on.’
    ‘But it’s the second letter that was found in files about asbestos so perhaps she had some link to it. It might be worth going through the two files. Just to see if there’s anything else.’
    ‘You’re right.’ She takes the file from him, carefully replaces the letter in the plastic folder and puts it all in her bag. ‘Thanks,’ she says. ‘Really. I know you’re busy at the moment and I appreciate it.’
    He studies her in the way someone might scan a file, searching for information. When John looks at her, she thinks, it’s always with a kind of tender apology, for who they are, for what they have become. ‘You really do look sad.’
    ‘Aw . . . just a sucker for a happy ending.’ She forces a smile. ‘I guess I just thought when you found something that it might show it all ended well.’
    ‘Don’t take it personally,’ he says, touching her arm.
    ‘Oh, I couldn’t care less, really,’ she says brusquely, ‘but it’d fit the feature much better if we could end on a high note. Melissa might not even want me to write the thing if it doesn’t end well.’ She brushes a lock of hair from her face. ‘You know what she’s like – “Let’s keep it upbeat . . . readers get enough misery from the news pages.”’
    ‘I feel like I rained on your birthday,’ he says, as they make their way across the pub. He has to stoop and shout it into her ear.
    ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she shouts back. ‘It’s a pretty apt finish to the day I’ve had.’
    ‘Come out with us,’ Rory says, stopping her with a hand on her elbow. ‘We’re going ice-skating. Someone’s pulled out so we have a spare ticket.’
    ‘Ice-skating?’
    ‘It’s a laugh.’
    ‘I’m thirty-two years old! I can’t go ice-skating!’
    It’s his turn to look incredulous. ‘Oh . . . Well, then.’ He nods understandingly. ‘We can’t have you toppling off your zimmer frame.’
    ‘I thought ice-skating was for children. Teenagers.’
    ‘Then you’re a very unimaginative person, Miss Haworth. Finish your drink and come with us. Have a bit of fun. Unless you really can’t get out of what you’d planned.’
    She feels for her phone, tucked into her bag, tempted to turn it on again. But she doesn’t want to read John’s inevitable apology. Doesn’t want the rest of this evening coloured by his absence, his words, the ache for him.
    ‘If I break my leg,’ she says, ‘you’re contractually obliged to drive me in and out of work for six weeks.’
    ‘Might be interesting as I don’t own a car. Will you settle for a piggy-back?’
    He’s not her type. He’s sarcastic, a bit chippy, probably several years younger than she is. She suspects he earns significantly less than she does, and probably still shares a flat. It’s possible he doesn’t even drive. But he’s the best offer she’s likely to get at a quarter to seven on her thirty-second birthday, and Ellie has decided that pragmatism is an underrated virtue. ‘And if my fingers get sliced off by someone’s random skate you have to sit at my desk and type for me.’
    ‘You only need one finger for that. Or a nose. God, you hacks are a bunch of prima donnas,’ he says. ‘Right, everyone. Drink up. The tickets say we’ve got to be there for half past.’
    As Ellie walks back from the Tube some time later, she realises the pain in her sides is not from the skating – although she hasn’t fallen over so often since she was learning to walk – but because she has laughed pretty solidly for almost two hours. Skating was comic, and exhilarating, and she had realised as she took her first successful baby steps on to the ice that she rarely experienced the pleasure of losing herself in simple physical activity.
    Rory had been good at it; most of his friends were. ‘We come here every winter,’ he said, gesturing at the temporary rink, floodlit and surrounded by office buildings. ‘They put it up in November and we probably come every fortnight. It’s easier if