The Last Letter from Your Lover

confined to work, advertisements for generic Viagra, and one from her mother detailing the dog’s further recovery from its hip replacement. Ellie sits cross-legged on the sofa, sipping her third glass of red wine and rereading the letters she had photocopied before returning them. It is four hours since she left Jennifer Stirling’s apartment, but her mind is still humming. She sees the unknown Boot, reckless and heartbroken, in Congo at a time when white Europeans were being slain. ‘I read the reports of the murders, of a whole hotel of victims in Stanleyville,’ Jennifer had said, ‘and I cried with fear.’ She pictures her walking to the post office week after week on a vain quest for a letter that never arrives. A tear plops on to her sleeve and she sniffs as she wipes it away.
    Theirs, she thinks, was a love affair that meant something. He was a man who cracked himself open in front of the woman he loved; he sought to understand her and tried to protect her, even from herself. When he couldn’t have her, he removed himself to the other side of the world and, quite likely, sacrificed himself. And she mourned him for forty years. What did Ellie have? Great sex, perhaps once every ten days, and a host of noncommittal emails. She is thirty-two years old, her career is sliding into the buffers, her friends know she is on an emotional hiding to nothing, and every day it is getting harder to convince herself that this is a life she would have chosen.
    It’s a quarter past nine. She knows she shouldn’t drink any more, but she feels angry, mournful, nihilistic. She pours another glass, cries, and rereads the last letter again. Like Jennifer, she now feels she knows these words by heart. They have an awful resonance.
    Being without you – thousands of miles from you – offers no relief at all. The fact that I am no longer tormented by your proximity, or presented with daily evidence of my inability to have the one thing I truly want, has not healed me. It has made things worse. My future feels like a bleak, empty road.
    She is half in love with this man herself. She pictures John, hears him saying the words, and alcohol makes the two blur into each other. How does one lift one’s own life out of the mundane and into something epic? Surely one should be brave enough to love? She pulls her mobile phone from her bag, something dark and bold creeping under her skin. She flips it open and sends a text, her fingers clumsy on the keys:
    Please call. Just once. Need to hear from you. X
    She presses ‘send’, already knowing what a colossal error she has made. He’ll be furious. Or he won’t respond. She’s not sure which is worse. Ellie’s head sinks into her hands and she weeps for the unknown Boot, for Jennifer, for chances missed and a life wasted. She cries for herself, because nobody will ever love her like he loved Jennifer, and because she suspects that she is spoiling what might have been a perfectly good, if ordinary, life. She cries because she is drunk and in her flat and there are few advantages to living on your own except being able to sob uninhibitedly at will.
    She starts when she hears the door buzzer, lifting her head and remaining immobile until it sounds again. For a brief, insane moment, she wonders if it’s John, in response to her message. Suddenly galvanised, she rushes to the hall mirror, wiping frantically at the red blotches on her face, and picks up the entryphone. ‘Hello?’
    ‘Okay, smartypants. How do you spell “uninvited random caller”?’
    She blinks. ‘Rory.’
    ‘Nope, that’s not it.’
    She bites her lip and leans against the wall. There is a brief silence.
    ‘Are you busy? I was just passing.’ He sounds merry, exuberant. ‘Okay . . . I was on the right Tube line.’
    ‘Come up.’ She hangs up the phone and splashes her face with cold water, trying not to feel disappointed when it so obviously couldn’t have been John.
    She hears him taking the steps two at a time, then pushing at the door she has left ajar.
    ‘I’ve come to drag you out for a drink. Oh!’ He’s eyeing the empty wine bottle, and then, for a fraction longer, her face. ‘Ah. Too late.’
    She manages an unconvincing smile. ‘Not been a great evening.’
    ‘Ah.’
    ‘It’s fine if you want to go.’ He’s wearing a grey scarf. It looks like cashmere. She has never owned a cashmere jumper. How has she reached the age of thirty-two and never owned a cashmere jumper? ‘Actually