The Last Letter from Your Lover

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.
    She had been too honest with him. She shouldn’t have confessed the confusion, the haunted nights. If he’d thought she was less upset, he wouldn’t have felt the need to act like this.
    Know that you hold my heart, my hopes, in your hands.
    And then this: this great tenderness. Anthony, who couldn’t bear the thought of making her less than she was, who wanted to protect her from the worst of her feelings, had given her the two easiest ways out: come with him, or remain where she was blamelessly, knowing she was loved. What more could he have done?
    How could she make a decision so momentous in so little time? She had thought of travelling to his house, but she couldn’t be sure he would be there. She had thought of going to the newspaper, but she was afraid some gossip columnist would see, that she would become the object of curiosity or, worse, embarrass him. Besides, what could she say to change his mind? Everything he had said was right. There was no other possible end to this. There was no way to make it right.
    ‘Oh. Mr Stirling rang to say he’ll pick you up at around a quarter to seven. He’s running a little late at the office. He sent his driver for his dinner suit.’
    ‘Yes,’ she said, absently. She felt suddenly feverish, reached out a hand to the balustrade.
    ‘Mrs Stirling, are you all right?’
    ‘I’m fine.’
    ‘You look as if you need some rest.’ Mrs Cordoza laid the dresses carefully over the hall chair and took Jennifer’s coat from her. ‘Shall I run you a bath? I could make you a cup of tea while it’s filling, if you like.’
    She turned to the housekeeper. ‘Yes. I suppose so. Quarter to seven, you say?’ She began to walk up the stairs.
    ‘Mrs Stirling? The dresses? Which one?’
    ‘Oh. I don’t know. You choose.’
    She lay in the bath, almost oblivious to the hot water, numbed by what was about to happen. I’m a good wife, she told herself. I’ll go to the dinner tonight, and I’ll be entertaining and gay and not pontificate on things I know nothing about.
    What was it Anthony had once written? That there was pleasure to be had in being a decent person. Even if you do not feel it now.
    She got out of the bath. She couldn’t relax. She needed something to distract her from her thoughts. She wished, suddenly, that she could drug herself and sleep through the next two hours. Even the next two months, she thought mournfully, reaching for the towel.
    She opened the bathroom door and there, on the bed, Mrs Cordoza had laid out the two dresses: on the left was the midnight blue she had worn on the night of Laurence’s birthday. It had been a merry night at the casino. Bill had won a large amount of money at roulette and insisted on buying champagne for everyone. She had drunk too much, had been giddy, unable to eat. Now, in the silent room, she recalled other parts of the evening that she had obediently excised in her retelling of it. She remembered Laurence criticising her for spending too much money on gambling chips. She remembered him muttering that she was embarrassing him – until Yvonne had told him, charmingly, not to be so grumpy. He’ll squash you, extinguish the things that make you you. She remembered him standing in the kitchen doorway this morning. What are you bothering with that for? I hope you can make yourself a little more agreeable this evening.
    She looked at the other dress on the bed: pale gold brocade, with a mandarin collar and no sleeves. The dress she had worn on the evening that Anthony O’Hare had declined to make love to her.
    It was as if a heavy mist had lifted. She dropped the towel and threw on some clothes. Then she began to hurl things on to the bed. Underwear. Shoes. Stockings. What on earth did one pack when one was leaving for ever?
    Her hands were shaking. Almost without knowing what she was doing she pulled her case down from the top of the wardrobe and opened it. She tossed things into it with a kind of abandon, fearing that if she stopped to think about what she was doing she wouldn’t do it at all.
    ‘Are you going somewhere, madam? Would you like help packing?’ Mrs Cordoza had appeared in the doorway behind her, holding a