The Last Letter from Your Lover

the dead.
    For two hours. She is up and in the office by seven thirty. She wants to catch Melissa before anyone else is there. She showers away her tiredness, drinks two double-strength espressos, makes sure she has blow-dried her hair. She is brimful of energy; her blood fizzes in her veins. She is at her desk when Melissa, expensive handbag slung over her shoulder, unlocks her office door. As her boss sits down, Ellie sees the barely disguised double-take when she notices she has company.
    Ellie finishes her coffee. She nips into the Ladies to check she has nothing on her teeth. She’s wearing a crisp white blouse, her best trousers and high heels, and looks, as her friends would say jokingly, like a grown-up. ‘Melissa?’
    ‘Ellie.’ The surprise in her tone manages to carry with it a mild rebuke.
    Ellie ignores it. ‘Can I have a word?’
    Melissa consults her watch. ‘A quick one. I’m meant to be talking to the China bureau in five minutes.’
    Ellie sits opposite. Melissa’s office is now empty of everything except the few files she needs to make that day’s edition work. Only the photograph of her daughter remains. ‘It’s about this feature.’
    ‘You’re not going to tell me you can’t do it.’
    ‘Yes, I am.’
    It’s as if she’s primed for this, already teetering on the burst of bad temper. ‘Well, Ellie, that’s really not what I wanted to hear. We have the busiest weekend of the newspaper’s life ahead of us and you’ve had weeks to get this thing sorted. You really aren’t helping your own case by coming to me at this stage and—’
    ‘Melissa – please. I found out the man’s identity.’
    ‘And?’ Melissa’s eyebrows arch as only the professionally threaded can.
    ‘And he works here. We can’t use it because he works for us.’
    The cleaner propels the Hoover past Melissa’s office door, its dull roar briefly drowning the conversation.
    ‘I don’t understand,’ Melissa says, as the drone fades.
    ‘The man who wrote the love letters is Anthony O’Hare.’
    Melissa looks blank. Ellie realises, with shame, that the features editor has no idea who he is either.
    ‘The chief librarian. He works downstairs. Used to.’
    ‘The one with the grey hair?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Oh.’ She’s so taken aback that she briefly forgets to be annoyed with Ellie. ‘Wow,’ she says, after a minute. ‘Who’d have thought?’
    ‘I know.’
    They mull this over in almost companionable silence until Melissa, perhaps remembering herself, shuffles papers on her desk. ‘Fascinating as that may be, though, Ellie, it doesn’t get us past a very big problem. Which is that we now have a commemorative issue, which needs to go to print this evening, with a great big two-thousand-word hole where the lead feature should be.’
    ‘No,’ says Ellie. ‘There’s not.’
    ‘Not your thing about the language of love. I’m not having a recycled-books piece in our—’
    ‘No,’ says Ellie, again. ‘I’ve done it. Two thousand wholly original words. Here. Let me know if you think it needs rejigging. Are you okay if I pop out for an hour?’
    She’s stumped her. She hands over the pages, watches Melissa scan the first, her eyes lighting as they do when she reads something that interests her. ‘What? Yes. Fine. Whatever. Make sure you’re back for conference.’
    Ellie fights the urge to punch the air as she walks out of the office. It’s not that hard: she finds it almost impossible to move her arms emphatically while balancing on high heels.
    She had emailed him the previous evening, and he had agreed without demur. It’s not his kind of place; he’s all gastropub and smart, discreet restaurant. Giorgio’s, across the road from the Nation , does egg, chips and bacon of unknown provenance for £2.99.
    When she arrives he is already sitting at a table, oddly out of place among the construction workers in his Paul Smith jacket and soft, pale shirt. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, even before she sits down. ‘I’m so sorry. She had my phone. I thought I’d lost it. She got hold of a couple of emails I hadn’t deleted and found your name . . . the rest . . .’
    ‘She’d have made a good journalist.’
    He looks briefly distracted, waves the waitress over and orders another coffee. His thoughts are elsewhere. ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose she would.’
    She sits and allows herself to examine the man opposite, a man who has haunted her dreams. His suntan doesn’t hide the mauve shadows