The Last Letter from Your Lover

closed her eyes. This is my husband, she told herself. He adores me. Everyone says so. We’re happy. She felt his fingers running lightly along her right shoulder, the touch of his lips at the back of her neck. ‘Are you very tired?’ he murmured.
    She knew this was her chance. He was a gentleman. If she said she was, he would step back, leave her alone. But they were married. Married. She had to face this some time. And who knew? Perhaps if he seemed less alien, she would find that a little more of herself was restored to her.
    She turned in his arms. She couldn’t look at his face, couldn’t kiss him. ‘Not if . . . not if you’re not,’ she whispered into his chest.
    She felt his skin against hers, and clamped her eyes shut, waiting to feel a sense of familiarity, perhaps even desire. Four years, they had been married. How many times must they have done this? And since her return he had been so patient.
    She felt his hands moving over her, bolder now, unclipping her brassière. She kept her eyes closed, conscious of her appearance. ‘May we turn out the light?’ she said. ‘I don’t want . . . to be thinking about my arm. How it looks.’
    ‘Of course. I should have thought.’
    She heard the click of the bedroom light. But it wasn’t her arm that bothered her: she didn’t want to look at him. Didn’t want to be so exposed, vulnerable, under his gaze. And then they were on the bed, and he was kissing her neck, his hands, his breath urgent. He lay on top of her, pinning her down, and she linked her arms around his neck, unsure what she should be doing in the absence of any feelings she might have expected. What has happened to me? she thought. What used I to do?
    ‘Are you all right?’ he murmured into her ear. ‘I’m not hurting you?’
    ‘No,’ she said, ‘no, not at all.’
    He kissed her breasts, a low moan of pleasure escaping him. ‘Take them off,’ he said, pulling at her knickers. He shifted his weight off her so that she could tug them down to her knees, then kick them away. And she was exposed. Perhaps if we . . . she wanted to say, but he was already nudging her legs apart, trying clumsily to guide himself into her. I’m not ready – but couldn’t say that: it would be wrong now. He was lost somewhere else, desperate, wanting.
    She grimaced, drawing up her knees, trying not to tense. And then he was inside her and she was biting her cheek in the dark, trying to ignore the pain and that she felt nothing except a desperate desire for it to be over and him out of her. His movements built in speed and urgency, his weight squashing her, his face hot and damp against her shoulder. And then, with a little cry, a hint of vulnerability he did not show in any other part of his life, it was over, and the thing was gone, replaced by a sticky wetness between her thighs.
    She had bitten the inside of her cheek so hard that she could taste blood.
    He rolled off her, still breathing hard. ‘Thank you,’ he said, into the darkness.
    She was glad he couldn’t see her lying there, gazing at nothing, the covers pulled up to her chin. ‘That’s quite all right,’ she said quietly.
    She had discovered that memories could indeed be lodged in places other than the mind.

Happy Days Are Not To Be . . . It Really Isn’t You, It’s Me.
    Male to Female, via postcard

3
    ‘A profile. Of an industrialist.’ Don Franklin’s stomach threatened to burst over the top of his trousers. The buttons strained, revealing, above his belt, a triangle of pale, pelted skin. He leant back in his chair, and tilted his glasses to the top of his head. ‘It’s the editor’s “must”, O’Hare. He wants a four-page spread on the wonder mineral for the advertising.’
    ‘What the hell do I know about mines and factories? I’m a foreign correspondent, for Christ’s sake.’
    ‘You were,’ Don corrected. ‘We can’t send you out again, Anthony, you know that, and I need someone who can do a nice job. You can’t just sit around here making the place look untidy.’
    Anthony slumped in the chair on the other side of the desk and drew out a cigarette.
    Behind the news editor, who was just visible through the glass wall of his office, Phipps, the junior reporter, ripped three sheets of paper from his typewriter and, face screwed up in frustration, replaced them, with two sheets of carbon between.
    ‘I’ve seen you do this stuff. You can turn on the charm.’
    ‘So, not even a profile. A puff