The Last Letter from Your Lover

you would know?’
    ‘I’m not a fool. Nobody gets everything. I know that as well as you do.’
    ‘Your husband did.’
    ‘It’s nice of you to say so.’
    ‘I’m not saying it nicely.’
    Their eyes locked, and then she looked away, towards the shore. The mood had become almost combative, as if they were quietly furious with each other. Away from the constraints of real life on the shore, something had loosened between them. I want her, he thought, and was almost reassured that he could feel something so ordinary.
    ‘How many married women have you slept with?’ Her voice cut through the still air.
    He almost choked on his drink. ‘It’s probably simpler to say that I’ve slept with few who weren’t married.’
    She pondered this. ‘Are we a safer bet?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And why do these women sleep with you?’
    ‘I don’t know. Perhaps because they’re unhappy.’
    ‘And you make them happy.’
    ‘For a little while, I suppose.’
    ‘Doesn’t that make you a gigolo?’ That smile again, playing at the corners of her mouth.
    ‘No, just someone who likes to make love to married women.’
    This time the silence seemed to enter his bones. He would have broken it if he’d had the slightest idea what to say.
    ‘I’m not going to make love to you, Mr O’Hare.’
    He played the words over twice in his head before he could be sure of what she’d said. He took another sip of his drink, recovering. ‘That’s fine.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘No,’ he forced a smile, ‘it’s not. But it’ll have to be.’
    ‘I’m not unhappy enough to sleep with you.’
    God, when she looked at him, it was if she could see everything. He wasn’t sure he liked it.
    ‘I’ve never even kissed another man since I got married. Not one.’
    ‘That’s admirable.’
    ‘You don’t believe it.’
    ‘Yes, I do. It’s rare.’
    ‘Now you do think I’m terribly dull.’ She stood up and walked around the edge of the yacht, turning towards him when she got to the bridge. ‘Do your married women fall in love with you?’
    ‘A little.’
    ‘Are they sad when you leave them?’
    ‘How do you know they don’t leave me?’
    She waited.
    ‘As to whether they fall in love,’ he added eventually, ‘I don’t generally speak to them afterwards.’
    ‘You ignore them?’
    ‘No. I’m often abroad. I tend not to spend much time in one place. And, besides, they have their husbands, their lives . . . I don’t believe any of them ever intended to leave their husbands. I was just . . . a diversion.’
    ‘Did you love any of them?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Did you love your wife?’
    ‘I thought so. Now I’m not sure.’
    ‘Have you ever loved anyone?’
    ‘My son.’
    ‘How old is he?’
    ‘Eight. You’d make a good journalist.’
    ‘You really can’t bear it that I do nothing useful, can you?’ She burst out laughing.
    ‘I think you may be wasted in the life you’re in.’
    ‘Is that so? And what would you have me do instead?’ She came a few steps closer to him. He could see the moon reflecting light on her pale skin, the blue shadow in the hollow of her neck. She took another step, and her voice lowered, even though nobody was near. ‘What was it you said to me, Anthony? “Don’t try to fix me.”’
    ‘Why should I? You’ve told me you’re not unhappy.’ His breath had caught at the back of his throat. She was so close now, her eyes searching his. He felt drunk, his senses sharpened, as if every part of her was ruthlessly imprinting itself on his consciousness. He breathed in her scent, something floral, Oriental.
    ‘I think,’ she said slowly, ‘that everything you have said to me tonight is what you would say to any of your married women.’
    ‘You’re wrong,’ he said. But he knew she was entirely correct. It was all he could do not to crush that mouth, bury it under his own. He didn’t think he had ever been more aroused in his life.
    ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that you and I could make each other terribly unhappy.’
    And as she spoke, something deep inside him keeled over a little, as if in defeat. ‘I think,’ he said slowly, ‘that I’d like that very much.’

Staying in Greece, not coming back to London because you scare me, but in a good way.
    Male to Female, via postcard

6
    The women were tapping again. She could just see them from her bedroom window: one dark, one with unfeasibly red hair, seated at the window of the first-floor flat on the corner. When any man walked