The Last Letter from Your Lover

a better version of yourself is the most astonishing gift. Even if we are not together, to know that, for you, I am that man is a source of sustenance to me.
    She has closed her eyes to listen to Rory’s voice, softly reciting the words. She imagines how Jennifer must have felt to be loved, adored, wanted.
    I’m not sure how I earned the right. I don’t feel entirely confident of it even now. But even the chance to think upon your beautiful face, your smile, and know that some part of it might belong to me is probably the single greatest thing that has happened to me in my life.
    The words have stopped. She opens her eyes to find Rory’s a few inches away. ‘For a smart woman,’ he says, ‘you’re remarkably dim.’ He reaches out a hand, wipes away a tear with his thumb.
    ‘You don’t know . . .’ she begins. ‘You don’t understand . . .’
    ‘I think I know enough.’ Before she can speak again, he kisses her. She stalls for just a moment, and that freckled hand is there again, tormenting her. Why should I feel loyalty to someone who’s probably having wild holiday sex right at this very minute?
    And then Rory’s mouth is on hers, his hands cradling her face, and she’s kissing him back, her mind determinedly blank, her body simply grateful for the arms that enfold her, his lips upon hers. Blank it all out , she begs him silently. Rewrite this page. She shifts, feeling vague surprise that for all her desperate longing, she can want this man very much. And then she’s unable to think of anything at all.
    She wakes up gazing at two sets of dark eyelashes. What very dark eyelashes, she thinks, in the few seconds before consciousness properly seeps in, John’s are a caramel colour. He has one white lash, towards the outer edge of his left eye, which she is pretty sure no one but her has ever noticed.
    Birds are singing. A car is revving insistently outside. There is an arm across her naked hip. It’s surprisingly heavy, and when she shifts, a hand tightens momentarily on her bottom, as if reflexively unwilling to let her go. She stares at the eyelashes, remembering the events of the previous evening. She and Rory on the floor in front of her sofa. Him fetching the duvet when she noticed she was cold. His hair, rich and soft in her hands, his body, surprisingly broad, above hers, her bed, his head, disappearing under the duvet. She feels a vague thrill of knowledge and cannot yet quite determine how she feels about this.
    John.
    A text message.
    Coffee, she thinks, grasping for safety. Coffee and croissants. She eases herself out of his hold, her eyes still fixed on his sleeping face. She lifts his arm, lays it gently on the sheet. He wakes and she freezes. She sees her own confusion momentarily mirrored in his eyes.
    ‘Hey,’ he says, his voice hoarse with lack of sleep. What time had they finally slept? Four? Five? She remembers them giggling because it was growing light outside. He rubs his face, shifts heavily on to one elbow. His hair is sticking up at one side, his chin shadowed and rough. ‘What time is it?’
    ‘Almost nine. I’m going to nip out for some proper coffee.’ She backs to the door, conscious of her nakedness in the too bright morning.
    ‘You sure?’ he calls, as she disappears. ‘You don’t want me to go?’
    ‘No, no.’ She’s hopping into the jeans she discovers outside the living-room door. ‘I’m fine.’
    ‘Black for me, please.’ She hears him sink back against the pillows, muttering something about his head.
    Her knickers are half under the DVD player. She picks them up hastily, stuffs them into a pocket. She hauls a T-shirt over her head, wraps herself in her jacket and, without pausing to see what she looks like, heads down the stairs. She walks briskly towards the local coffee shop, already dialling a number into her mobile phone.
    Wake up. Pick up the phone.
    By now she’s standing in the queue. Nicky picks up on the third ring.
    ‘Ellie?’
    ‘Oh, God, Nicky. I’ve done something awful.’ She lowers her voice, shielding it from the family who have walked in behind her. The father is silent, the mother trying to shepherd two small children to a table. Their pale, shadowed faces speak of a night of lost sleep.
    ‘Hang on. I’m at the gym. Let me take this outside.’
    The gym? At nine o’clock on a Sunday morning? She hears Nicky’s voice against the traffic of some distant street. ‘Awful as in what? Murder? Rape of a minor? You