The Last Letter from Your Lover

doesn’t even read the Nation. She might never know what you did. Melissa is looking for an excuse to elbow you out. You really don’t have a choice.
    And then Rory’s voice, sardonic: Are you kidding me?
    Her stomach tightens. She can’t remember the last time it wasn’t tied in knots. A thought occurs: surely if she can find out what happened to Anthony O’Hare, Jennifer will have to forgive her? She might be upset for a while, but surely, ultimately, she would see that Ellie had given her a gift? The answer has dropped into her lap. She’ll find him. If it takes her ten years, she’ll find out what happened to him. It’s the flimsiest of straws, but it makes her feel a little better.
    Five minutes away. Are you there? Jx
    Yes. Table on ground floor. Chilled glass waiting. Ex
    She lifts a hand unconsciously to her hair. She still hasn’t been able to work out why John hadn’t wanted to go straight to her flat. The old John always preferred to go directly there. It was as if he couldn’t speak to her properly, see her even, until he had got all that pent-up tension out of the way first. In the early months of their relationship, she had found it flattering, and later a little irritating. Now some small part of her wonders whether this restaurant meeting is to do with them finally going public. Everything seems to have changed so dramatically that it isn’t beyond the new John to want to make some kind of public declaration. She notices the expensively dressed people at the neighbouring tables and her toes curl at the thought.
    ‘What are you so fidgety about?’ Nicky had said that morning. ‘This means you’ve got what you wanted, doesn’t it?’
    ‘I know.’ She had rung her at seven, thanking God she still had friends who understood that a romantic emergency was a legitimate reason to call at such an hour. ‘It’s just . . .’
    ‘You’re not sure you want him any more.’
    ‘No!’ She had scowled at the phone. ‘Of course I want him! It’s just that everything’s changed so swiftly I haven’t had a chance to get my head around it.’
    ‘You’d better get your head around it. It’s entirely possible that he’s going to turn up to lunch with two suitcases and a couple of screaming kids in tow.’ For some reason this idea had amused Nicky hugely, and she had giggled until it had become a little annoying.
    Ellie had the feeling that Nicky still hadn’t forgiven her for ‘messing things up’, as she put it, with Rory. Rory had sounded nice, she said repeatedly. ‘Someone I’d be happy to go to the pub with.’ The subtext: Nicky would never want to go to the pub with John. She would never forgive him for being the kind of man who could cheat on his wife.
    She glances at her watch, then signals to the waiter for a second glass of wine. He’s now twenty minutes late. On any other occasion she would have been mutely furious, but she’s so nervous now that a small part of her wonders whether she might throw up at the mere sight of him. Yes, that’s always a good welcome. And then she glances up to find a woman standing at the other side of her table.
    Ellie’s first thought is that she’s a waitress, and then she wonders why she isn’t holding the glass of wine. Then she realises that not only is the woman wearing a navy coat, rather than a waitress’s uniform, but she is staring at her, a little too intently, like someone about to start singing to themselves on the bus.
    ‘Hello, Ellie.’
    Ellie blinks. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, after her mind has flicked through a mental Rolodex of recent contacts and turned up nothing. ‘Do we know each other?
    ‘Oh, I think so. I’m Jessica.’
    Jessica. Her mind is blank. Nicely cut hair. Good legs. Perhaps a little tired. Suntan. And then it explodes on to her consciousness. Jessica. Jess .
    The woman registers her shock. ‘Yes, I thought you might recognise my name. You probably didn’t want to put a face to it, did you? Didn’t want to think too much about me. I suppose John having a wife was a bit of an inconvenience to you.’
    Ellie can’t speak. She’s dimly aware of the other diners as they glance her way, having picked up on some strange vibration emanating from table fifteen.
    Jessica Armour is going through text messages on a familiar mobile phone. Her voice lifts a little as she reads them out: ‘“Feeling very wicked today. Get away. Don’t care how you do it, but get away. Will make it worth your