The Last Letter from Your Lover

were flooded with light. Jennifer spun round to see Laurence holding open the fire-escape door. He took in the illuminated spectacle of his wife and the man who was stepping away from her. Reggie, head down, swept past Laurence and into the building without a word, wiping his mouth.
    She stood, frozen. ‘Laurence, it’s not what you—’
    ‘Get inside,’ he said.
    ‘I just—’
    ‘Get inside. Now.’ His voice was low, apparently calm. After the briefest hesitation, she stepped forward and into the stairwell. She made for the door, preparing to rejoin the party, still trembling with confusion and shock, but as they passed the lift he grabbed her wrist and spun her around.
    She looked down at his hand, gripping her, then up at his face.
    ‘Don’t think you can humiliate me, Jennifer,’ he said quietly.
    ‘Let go of me!’
    ‘I mean it. I’m not some fool you can—’
    ‘Let go of me! You’re hurting me!’ She pulled backwards.
    ‘Listen to me.’ A muscle pulsed in his jaw. ‘ I won’t have it . Do you understand me? I won’t have it. ’ His teeth were gritted. There was so much anger in his voice.
    ‘Laurence!’
    ‘Larry! You call me Larry !’ he shouted, his free fist lifting. The door opened, and that man from Accounts stepped out. He was laughing, his arm around the girl from earlier. He registered the scene and his smile faded. ‘Ah . . . We were just stepping out for some air, sir,’ he said awkwardly.
    It was at that moment that Laurence let go of her wrist and Jennifer, seizing her chance, pushed past the couple and ran down the stairs.

There are things that I love so much about you but there are things I hate too. I guess you should know that I think more and more about the things that bother me about you now.
    The time you slaughtered that lobster.
    The way you shouted and clapped at those cows to get them out of the road. Why couldn’t we have just waited for them to pass? We could have missed the cinema . . .
    The haphazard way you chop vegetables.
    Your constant negativity.
    It took me three coats of paint to paint over where you left your phone number on my wall in red pen. I know I was redecorating but it was a complete waste of paint.
    Male to Female, via letter

9
    Anthony sat on a bar stool, one hand around an empty coffee cup, watching the staircase that led to street level for any sign of a pair of slim legs descending. Occasionally a couple would walk down the stairs into Alberto’s, exclaiming about the unseasonal heat, their outrageous thirst, passing Sherrie, the bored cloakroom girl, slumped on her stool with a paperback. He would scan their faces and turn back to the bar.
    It was a quarter past seven. Six thirty, she had said in the letter. He pulled it from his pocket again, thumbing its creases, examining the large, looping handwriting that confirmed she would be there. Love, J.
    For five weeks they had traded letters, his forwarded to the sorting office on Langley Street, where she had taken out PO Box 13 – the one, the postmistress had confided, that nobody ever wanted. They had seen each other only five or six times and their meetings tended to be brief – too brief – confined to the few occasions that either his or Laurence’s work schedule allowed.
    But what he could not always convey to her in person, he had said in print. He wrote almost every day, and he told her everything, without shame or embarrassment. It was as if a dam had been breached. He told her how much he missed her, of his life abroad, how until now he had felt perpetually restless, as if in constant earshot of a conversation that was going on somewhere else.
    He laid his faults before her – selfish, stubborn, often uncaring – and told her how she had caused him to start ironing them out. He told her he loved her, again and again, relishing the appearance of the words on paper.
    In contrast, her letters were short and to the point. Meet me here, they said. Or Not at that time, make it half an hour later . Or, simply, Yes. Me too . At first he had been afraid that such brevity meant she felt little for him, and found it hard to square the person she was when they were together, intimate, affectionate, teasing, concerned for his welfare, with the words she wrote.
    One night when she had arrived very late – Laurence, he discovered, had come home early and she had been forced to invent a sick friend to get out of the house at all – she had found him drunk and churlish at