The Last Letter from Your Lover

didn’t call up thingy’s wife and tell her you were his mistress?’
    ‘I slept with that bloke from work.’
    A brief pause. She looks up to find the barista staring at her, eyebrows raised. She places her hand over her phone. ‘Oh. Two tall Americanos, please, one with milk, and croissants. Two – no, three.’
    ‘Library Man?’
    ‘Yes. He turned up last night and I was drunk and feeling really crap and he read out one of those love letters and . . . I don’t know . . .’
    ‘So?’
    ‘So I slept with someone else!’
    ‘Was it awful?’
    Rory’s eyes, crinkled with amusement. His head bent over her breasts. Kisses. Endless, endless kisses.
    ‘No. It was . . . quite good. Really good.’
    ‘And your problem is?’
    ‘I’m meant to be sleeping with John.’
    The barista girl is exchanging looks with Exhausted Father. She realises they are both silently agog.
    ‘Six pounds sixty-three,’ the girl says, with a small smile.
    She reaches into her pocket for change and finds herself holding out last night’s knickers. Exhausted Father coughs – or it might have been a splutter of laughter. She apologises, her face burning, hands over the money and moves to the end of the counter, waiting for her coffee with her head down.
    ‘Nicky . . .’
    ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Ellie. You’ve been sleeping with a married man who is almost definitely still sleeping with his wife. He makes you no promises, hardly takes you anywhere, isn’t planning on leaving her—’
    ‘You don’t know that.’
    ‘I do know that. I’m sorry, sweetie, but I’d put my horrid too-small expensively mortgaged house on it. And if you’re telling me you’ve just had great sex with a nice bloke who’s single and likes you and seems to want to spend time with you, I’m not going to start begging for Prozac. Okay?’
    ‘Okay,’ she says quietly.
    ‘Now, go back to your flat, wake him up and have mad hot monkey sex with him, then meet me and Corinne tomorrow morning at the café and tell us everything.’
    She smiles. How nice to celebrate being with someone, instead of having perpetually to justify them.
    She thinks of Rory lying in her bed. Rory of the very long eyelashes and soft kisses. Would it be so very bad to spend the morning with him? She picks up the coffee and walks back to her flat, surprised by how quickly her legs are working.
    ‘Don’t move!’ she calls, as she comes up the stairs, kicking off her shoes. ‘I’m bringing you breakfast in bed.’ She dumps the coffee on the floor outside the bathroom and dives in, wipes the mascara from under her eyes and splashes her face with cold water, then spritzes herself with perfume. As an afterthought she flips the lid off the toothpaste and bites off a pea-sized lump, swilling it around her mouth.
    ‘This is so you can no longer think of me as a heartless, selfish abuser of men. And also so you owe me coffee at work. I will, of course, return to my heartless, self-centred self tomorrow.’
    She leaves the bathroom, stoops to pick up the coffee and, smiling, steps into her bedroom. The bed is empty, the duvet turned back. He can’t be in the bathroom – she’s just been in there. ‘Rory?’ she says, into the silence.
    ‘Here.’
    His voice comes from the living room. She pads down the hall. ‘You were meant to stay in bed,’ she admonishes him. ‘It’s hardly breakfast in bed if you—’
    He’s standing in the centre of the room, pulling on his jacket. He’s dressed, shoes on, hair no longer sticking up.
    She stops in the doorway. He doesn’t look at her.
    ‘What are you doing?’ She holds out the coffee. ‘I thought we were going to have breakfast.’
    ‘Yes. Well, I think I’d better go.’
    She feels something cold creeping across her. Something’s wrong here.
    ‘Why?’ she says, trying to smile. ‘I’ve hardly been gone fifteen minutes. Do you really have an appointment at twenty past nine on a Sunday morning?’
    He stares at his feet, apparently checking in his pockets for his keys. He finds them and turns them over in his hand. When he finally looks up at her his face is blank. ‘You had a phone call when you were out. He left a message. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but it’s pretty hard not to in a small flat.’
    Ellie feels something cold and hard settle in the pit of her stomach. ‘Rory, I—’
    He holds up a hand. ‘I told you once I didn’t do complicated. That would – um – include sleeping with someone