The Last Letter from Your Lover

while.” Hmm, and here’s a good one. “Should be writing up interview with MP’s wife, but mind keeps drifting back to last Tues. Bad boy!” Oh, and my personal favourite. “Have been to Agent Provocateur. Photo attached . . .”’ When she looks at Ellie again her voice is shaking with barely suppressed rage. ‘It’s pretty hard to compete with that when you’re nursing two sick children and coping with the builders. But, yes, Tuesday the twelfth. I do remember that day. He brought me a bunch of flowers to apologise for being so late.’
    Ellie’s mouth has opened but no words come out. Her skin is prickling.
    ‘I went through his phone on holiday. I’d wondered who he was ringing from the bar, and then I found your message. “Please call. Just once. Need to hear from you. X”.’ She laughs mirthlessly. ‘How very touching. He thinks it’s been stolen.’
    Ellie wants to crawl under the table. She wants to shrink to nothing, to evaporate.
    ‘I’d like to hope you end up a miserable lonely woman. But, actually, I hope you have children one day, Ellie Haworth. Then you’ll know how it feels to be vulnerable. And to have to fight, to be constantly vigilant, just to make sure your children get to grow up with a father. Think about that the next time you’re purchasing see-through lingerie to entertain my husband, won’t you?’
    Jessica Armour walks away through the tables and out into the sunshine. There may have been a hush in the restaurant; it’s impossible for Ellie to tell over the ringing in her ears. Eventually, cheeks flaming, hands trembling, she motions to a waiter for the bill.
    As he approaches, she mutters something about having to leave unexpectedly. She isn’t sure what she’s saying: her voice no longer seems to belong to her. ‘The bill?’ she says.
    He gestures towards the door. His smile is sympathetic. ‘No need, madam. The lady paid for you.’
    Ellie walks back to the office, impervious to traffic, to jostling commuters on pavements, the rebuking eyes of the Big Issue sellers. She wants to be in her little flat with the door shut, but her precarious position at work means that’s impossible. She walks through the newspaper office, conscious of the eyes of other people, convinced deep down that everyone must see her shame, see what Jessica Armour saw, as if it were shot through her, like writing through a stick of rock.
    ‘You okay, Ellie? You’re awfully pale.’ Rupert leans round from behind his monitor. Someone has fixed an ‘incinerate’ sticker to the back of his screen.
    ‘Headache.’ Her voice sticks in the back of her throat.
    ‘Terri’s got pills – she has pills for everything, that girl,’ he muses, and disappears behind his monitor again.
    She sits at her desk and turns on her computer, scanning the emails. There it is.
    Have lost phone. Picking up new one lunchtime. Will email you new number. Jx
    She checks the time. It had arrived in her inbox while she was interviewing Jennifer Stirling. She closes her eyes, seeing again the image that has swum in front of her eyes for the past hour: Jessica Armour’s set jaw, the terrifying eyes, the way her hair moved around her face while she spoke, as if it was electrified by her anger, her hurt. Some tiny part of her had recognised that in different circumstances she would have liked the look of this woman, might have wanted to go for a drink with her. When she opens her eyes again, she doesn’t want to see John’s words, doesn’t want to see this version of herself reflected in them. It’s as if she’s woken from a particularly vivid dream, one that has lasted a year. She knows the extent of her mistake. She deletes his message.
    ‘Here.’ Rupert places a cup of tea on her desk. ‘Might make you feel better.’
    Rupert never makes anyone tea. The other feature writers have run books in the past on how long it will take him to head to the canteen, and he’s always been a racing certainty. She doesn’t know whether to be touched by this rare act of sympathy, or afraid of why he feels she’s in need of it.
    ‘Thanks,’ she says, and takes it.
    It’s as he sits down that she spies a familiar name on a different email: Phillip O’Hare. Her heart stops, the humiliations of the last hour temporarily forgotten. She clicks on it, and sees that it is from the Phillip O’Hare who works for The Times .
    Hi – A little confused by your message. Can you call me?
    She wipes her eyes. Work, she