The Last Letter from Your Lover

bright smile on her mother. ‘Just fine.’
    When she and Laurence went out in the evenings now, to dinner or for drinks, she found herself looking at their wider circle of friends and acquaintances with new eyes. When a man’s focus lingered on her a little longer than it should have, she found herself unable to tear her gaze away. Was it him ? Was there some meaning behind his pleasant greeting? Was that a knowing smile?
    There were three possible men, if B was in fact a nickname. There was Jack Amory, the head of a motor-spares company, who was unmarried and kissed her hand ostentatiously whenever they met. But he did it almost with a wink to Laurence, and she couldn’t work out if this was a double bluff.
    There was Reggie Carpenter, Yvonne’s cousin, who sometimes made up the numbers at dinner. Dark-haired, with tired, humorous eyes, he was younger than she imagined her letter-writer to be, but he was charming, and funny, and seemed always to ensure that he was sitting at her side when Laurence wasn’t there.
    And then there was Bill, of course. Bill, who told jokes as if they were only for her approval, who laughingly declared he adored her, even in front of Violet. He definitely had feelings for her. But could she have had feelings for him?
    She began to pay more attention to her appearance. She made regular visits to the hairdresser, bought some new dresses, became chattier, ‘more your old self’, as Yvonne said approvingly. In the weeks after the accident she had hidden behind her girlfriends, but now she asked questions, quizzed them politely, but with some determination, seeking the chink in the armour that might lead to some answers. Occasionally she dropped clues into conversations, enquiring whether anyone might like a whisky, then scanning the men’s faces far a spark of recognition. But Laurence was never far away, and she suspected that even if they had picked up on her clues, they could have conveyed little to her in response.
    If her husband noticed a particular intensity in her conversations with their friends, he didn’t remark on it. He didn’t remark on much. He hadn’t approached her once, physically, since the night they had argued. He was polite but distant. He worked late in his study, and was often up and out before she awoke. Several times she passed the spare room and saw the ruffled bedspread that told her he had spent another night alone; a silent rebuke. She knew she should feel worse about it than she did, but increasingly she wanted the freedom to retreat into her private parallel world, where she could retrace her mythical, passionate romance, see herself through the eyes of the man who adored her.
    Somewhere, she told herself, B was still out there. Waiting.
    ‘These are to sign, and on the filing cabinet there are several gifts that arrived this morning. There’s a case of champagne from Citroën, a hamper from the cement people in Peterborough, and a box of chocolates from your accountants. I know you don’t like soft centres so I was wondering if you’d like me to hand them round the office. I know Elsie Machzynski is particularly partial to fondants.’
    He barely looked up. ‘That will be fine.’ Moira observed that Mr Stirling’s thoughts were far from Christmas gifts.
    ‘And I hope you don’t mind but I’ve gone ahead and organised the bits and pieces for the Christmas party. You decided it would be better held here than in a restaurant, now that the company is so much larger, so I’ve asked caterers to lay on a small buffet.’
    ‘Good. When is it?’
    ‘The 23rd. After we finish for the day. That’s the Friday before we break up.’
    ‘Yes.’
    Why should he seem so preoccupied? So miserable? Business had never been better. Their products were in demand. Even with the credit squeeze predicted by the newspapers, Acme Mineral and Mining had one of the healthiest balance sheets in the country. There had been no more of the troublemaking letters, and those she had received the previous month still lingered, unseen by her boss, in her top drawer.
    ‘I also thought you might like to—’
    He glanced up suddenly at a sound outside, and Moira turned, startled, to see what he was looking at. There she was, walking through the office, her hair set in immaculate waves, a little red pillbox hat perched on her head, the exact shade of her shoes. What was she doing here? Mrs Stirling gazed around her, as if she was looking for someone, and then Mr Stevens,