The Last Letter from Your Lover

raspberry tweed swing coat and hat, her black-patent handbag and matching gloves resting neatly on her lap. She heard his car pull up, saw the lights outside dim and stood. She pulled back the curtain a few inches and watched him sitting in the driving seat, letting his thoughts tick over with the dying engine.
    She glanced behind her at her suitcases, then moved away from the window.
    He came in and dropped his overcoat on the hall chair. She heard his keys fall into the bowl they kept for that purpose on the table, and the clatter of something falling over. The wedding photograph? He hesitated for a moment outside the drawing-room door, then opened it and found her.
    ‘I think I should leave.’ She saw his eyes go to the packed suitcase at her feet, the one she had used when she’d left hospital all those weeks earlier.
    ‘You think you should leave.’
    She took a deep breath. Spoke the words she had rehearsed for the last two hours. ‘This isn’t making either of us very happy. We both know that.’
    He walked past her to the drinks cabinet and poured himself three fingers of whisky. The way he held the decanter made her wonder how much he had drunk since she had returned home. He took the cut-glass tumbler to a chair and sat down heavily. He lifted his eyes to hers, held them for a few minutes. She fought the urge to fidget.
    ‘So . . .’ he said. ‘Do you have something else in mind? Something that might make you happier?’ His tone was sarcastic, unpleasant; drink had unleashed something in him. But she was not afraid. She had the freedom of knowing he was not her future.
    They stared at each other, combatants locked in an uneasy battle.
    ‘You know, don’t you?’ she said.
    He drunk some of his whisky, his eyes not leaving her face. ‘What do I know, Jennifer?’
    She took a breath. ‘That I love someone else. And that it’s not Reggie Carpenter. It never was.’ She fiddled with her handbag as she spoke. ‘I worked it out this evening. Reggie was a mistake, a diversion from the truth. But you’re so angry with me all the time. You have been ever since I got out of hospital. Because you know, just as I do, that someone else loves me, and isn’t afraid to tell me so. That’s why you didn’t want me to ask too many questions. That’s why my mother – and everyone else – has been so keen for me to simply to get on with things. You didn’t want me to remember. You never have.’
    She had half expected him to explode with anger. But instead he nodded. Then, as she held her breath, he raised his glass to her. ‘So . . . this lover of yours, what time will he be here?’ He peered at his watch, then at her cases. ‘I assume he’s picking you up.’
    ‘He . . .’ She swallowed. ‘I . . . It’s not like that.’
    ‘So you’re going to meet him somewhere.’
    He was so calm. As if he was almost enjoying this. ‘Eventually. Yes.’
    ‘Eventually,’ he repeated. ‘What’s the delay?’
    ‘I . . . I don’t know where he is.’
    ‘You don’t know where he is.’ Laurence downed the whisky. He stood laboriously, and poured himself another.
    ‘I can’t remember, you know I can’t. Things are coming back to me, and I don’t have it clear in my head yet, but I know now that this,’ she gestured around the room, ‘feels wrong for a reason. It feels wrong because I’m in love with someone else. So I’m very sorry but I have to go. It’s the right thing to do. For both of us.’
    He nodded. ‘May I ask what this gentleman – your lover – has that I don’t?
    The streetlight outside the window stuttered.
    ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘I just know that I love him. And that he loves me.’
    ‘Oh, you do, do you? And what else do you know? Where he lives? What he does for a living? How he’s going to keep you, with your extravagant tastes? Will he buy you new frocks? Allow you a housekeeper? Jewellery?’
    ‘I don’t care about any of that.’
    ‘You certainly used to care about it.’
    ‘I’m different now. I just know he loves me and that’s what really matters. You can mock me all you want, Laurence, but you don’t know—’
    He sprang up from his seat and she shrank back. ‘Oh, I know all about your lover, Jenny,’ he bellowed. He pulled a crumpled envelope from his inside pocket, brandishing it at her. ‘You really want to know what happened to you? You really want to know where your lover is?’ Flecks of spittle flew, and his eyes