The Last Letter from Your Lover

too, which is rather a treat for me. I do miss having her around.’
    Ellie feels a ridiculous thrill of pleasure at being compared with the Calvin Klein woman in the photograph. She tries not to think about why she’s there. ‘As long as I’m not bothering you . . .’
    ‘Not at all. As long as you’re not horribly bored by the ramblings of an old woman. I was going for a walk on Primrose Hill. Care to join me?’ They walk, talk a little about the area, the places each has lived, Ellie’s shoes, which Mrs Stirling professes to admire. ‘My feet are awful,’ she says. ‘When I was your age we used to cram them into high heels every day. Your generation must be so much more comfortable.’
    ‘Yes, but my generation never looked like you did.’ She’s thinking of the picture of Jennifer as a new mother, the makeup and perfect hair.
    ‘Oh, we didn’t really have a choice. It was a terrible tyranny. Laurence – my husband – wouldn’t have let me have my picture taken unless I was shipshape.’ She seems lighter today, less bowed by the dredging of memories. She walks briskly, like someone much younger, and occasionally Ellie has to jog a little to keep up. ‘I’ll tell you something. A few weeks ago I went to the station to get a newspaper, and a girl was standing there in what were plainly her pyjama bottoms and those enormous sheepskin boots. What do you call them?’
    ‘Uggs.’
    Jennifer’s voice is merry. ‘That’s it. Atrocious-looking things. And I watched her buy a pint of milk, her hair standing up at the back, and I was so horribly envious of her freedom. I stood there staring at her like an absolute madwoman.’ She laughs at the memory. ‘Danushka, who runs the kiosk, asked me what on earth the poor girl had done to me . . . I suppose, looking back, it was a terribly hemmed-in existence.’
    ‘Can I ask you something?’
    Jennifer’s mouth lifts slightly at the corners. ‘I suspect you’re going to.’
    ‘Do you ever feel bad about what happened? Having an affair, I mean.’
    ‘Are you asking if I regret hurting my husband?’
    ‘I suppose so.’
    ‘And is this . . . curiosity? Or absolution?’
    ‘I don’t know. Probably both.’ Ellie chews a fingernail. ‘I think my . . . John . . . may be about to leave his wife.’
    There is a short silence. They are at the gates of Primrose Hill and Jennifer stops there. ‘Children?’
    Ellie does not look up. ‘Yes.’
    ‘That’s a great responsibility.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘And you’re a little frightened.’
    Ellie finds the words she hasn’t been able to say to anyone else. ‘I’d like to be sure I’m doing the right thing. That it’s going to be worth all the pain I’m about to cause.’
    What is it about this woman that makes it impossible to keep back any truth? She feels Jennifer’s eyes on her, and wants, indeed, to be absolved. She remembers Boot’s words: You make me want to be a better man. She wants to be a better person. She doesn’t want to be walking here with half her mind wondering which bits of this conversation she’s likely to plunder and publish in a newspaper.
    Years of listening to other people’s problems seem to have given Jennifer an air of wise neutrality. When she speaks, finally, Ellie senses she has chosen her words carefully. ‘I’m sure you’ll work it out between you. You just need to talk honestly. Painfully honestly. And you may not always get the answers you want. That was the thing I was reminded of when I reread Anthony’s letters after you left last week. There were no games. I never met anyone – before or afterwards – that I could be quite so honest with.’
    She sighs, beckons Ellie through the gates. They begin to walk up the path that will lead them to the top of the hill. ‘But there is no absolution for people like us, Ellie. You may well find that guilt plays a much larger part in your future life than you would like. They say passion burns for a reason, and when it comes to affairs, it’s not only the protagonists who are hurt. For my part, I do still feel guilty for the pain I caused Laurence . . . I justified it to myself at the time, but I can see that what happened . . . hurt all of us. But . . . the person I have always felt most badly about is Anthony.’
    ‘You were going to tell me the rest of the story.’
    Jennifer’s smile is fading. ‘Well, Ellie, it’s not a happy ending.’ She tells of an abortive trip to Africa, a