The Last Letter from Your Lover

can’t call her friends: they’ve endured these conversations too many times, and she can guess what their response will be – what it can only be. What Doug had said to her was painful. But she would say exactly the same to any of them.
    She sits on the sofa, flicks on the television. Finally, glancing at the pile of papers at her side, she hauls them on to her lap, cursing Melissa. A miscellaneous pile, the librarian had said, cuttings that bore no date and had no obvious category – ‘I haven’t got time to go through them all. We’re turning up so many piles like this.’ He was the only librarian under fifty down there. She wondered, fleetingly, why she’d never noticed him before.
    ‘See if there’s anything that’s of use to you.’ He had leant forward conspiratorially. ‘Throw away whatever you don’t want but don’t say anything to the boss. We’re at the stage now when we can’t afford to go through every last bit of paper.’
    It soon becomes apparent why: a few theatre reviews, a passenger list for a cruise ship, some menus from celebratory newspaper dinners. She flicks through them, glancing up occasionally at the television. There’s not much here that’ll excite Melissa.
    Now she’s leafing through a battered file of what looks like medical records. All lung disease, she notes absently. Something to do with mining. She’s about to tip the whole lot into the bin when a pale blue corner catches her eye. She tugs at it with an index finger and thumb and pulls out a hand-addressed envelope. It’s been opened, and the letter inside is dated 4 October 1960.
    My dearest and only love,
    I meant what I said. I have come to the conclusion that the only way forward is for one of us to take a bold decision.
    I am not as strong as you. When I first met you, I thought you were a fragile little thing, someone I had to protect. Now I realise I had us all wrong. You are the strong one, the one who can endure living with the possibility of a love like this, and the fact that we will never be allowed it.
    I ask you not to judge me for my weakness. The only way I can endure is to be in a place I will never see you, never be haunted by the possibility of seeing you with him. I need to be somewhere where sheer necessity forces you from my thoughts minute by minute, hour by hour. That cannot happen here.
    I am going to take the job. I’ll be at Platform 4, Paddington, at 7.15 on Friday evening, and there is nothing in the world that would make me happier than if you found the courage to come with me.
    If you don’t come, I’ll know that whatever we might feel for each other, it isn’t quite enough. I won’t blame you, my darling. I know the past weeks have put an intolerable strain on you, and I feel the weight of that keenly. I hate the thought that I could cause you any unhappiness.
    I’ll be waiting on the platform from a quarter to seven. Know that you hold my heart, my hopes, in your hands.
    Your
    B
    Ellie reads it a second time, and finds her eyes welling inexplicably with tears. She can’t take her eyes off the large, looped handwriting; the immediacy of the words springs out to her more than forty years after they were hidden. She turns it over, checks the envelope for clues. It’s addressed to PO Box 13, London. It could be a man or a woman. What did you do, PO Box 13? she asks silently.
    Then she gets up, replaces the letter carefully in the envelope and walks over to her computer. She opens the mail file and presses ‘refresh’. Nothing since the message she had received at seven forty-five.
    Got to go to a dinner, gorgeous. Sorry – behind already. Later x

Part 1

The only way I can endure is to be in a place I will never see you, never be haunted by the possibility of seeing you with him. I need to be somewhere where sheer necessity forces you from my thoughts minute by minute, hour by hour. That cannot happen here.
    I am going to take the job. I’ll be at Platform 4, Paddington, at 7.15 on Friday evening, and there is nothing in the world that would make me happier than if you found the courage to come with me.
    Male to Female, via letter

1
    1960
    ‘She’s waking up.’
    There was a swishing sound, a chair was dragged, then the brisk click of curtain rings meeting. Two voices murmuring.
    ‘I’ll fetch Mr Hargreaves.’
    A brief silence followed, during which she slowly became aware of a different layer of sound noise – voices, muffled by distance, a car passing: it