The Last Letter from Your Lover

there’s a good girl.’
    And then there was her mother, who brought little gifts, soap, nice shampoo, magazines, as if they would nudge her into a semblance of who she apparently used to be. ‘We’ve all been so worried, Jenny darling,’ she said, laying a cool hand on her head. It felt nice. Not familiar, but nice. Occasionally her mother would begin to say something, then mutter, ‘I mustn’t tire you out with questions. Everything will come back. That’s what the doctors say. So you mustn’t worry.’
    She wasn’t worried, Jenny wanted to tell her. It was quite peaceful in her little bubble. She just felt a vague sadness that she couldn’t be the person everyone evidently expected her to be. It was at this point, when the thoughts got too confusing, that she would invariably fall asleep again.
    They finally told her she was going home on a morning so crisp that the trails of smoke crossed the bright blue winter sky above the capital like a spindly forest. By then she could walk around the ward occasionally, swapping magazines with the other patients, who would be chatting to the nurses, occasionally listening to the wireless, if they felt so inclined. She had had a second operation on her arm and it was healing well, they told her, although the long red scar where the plate had been inserted made her wince, and she tried to keep it hidden under a long sleeve. Her eyes had been tested, her hearing checked; her skin had healed after the myriad scratches caused by fragments of glass. The bruises had faded, and her broken rib and collarbone had knitted well enough for her to lie in a variety of positions without pain.
    To all intents and purposes, she looked, they claimed, like ‘her old self’, as if saying it enough times might make her remember who that was. Her mother, meanwhile, spent hours rummaging through piles of black and white photographs so that she could reflect Jennifer’s life back at her.
    She learnt that she had been married for four years. There were no children – from her mother’s lowered voice, she guessed this was a source of some disappointment to everyone. She lived in a very smart house in a very good part of London, with a housekeeper and a driver, and plenty of young ladies would apparently give their eye-teeth to have half of what she had. Her husband was something big in mining and was often away, although his devotion was such that he had put off several very important trips since the accident. From the deference with which the medical staff spoke to him, she guessed he was indeed quite important and, by extension, that she might expect a degree of respect, too, even if it felt nonsensical to her.
    Nobody had said much about how she had got there, although she had once sneaked a look at the doctor’s notes and knew that she had been in a car accident. On the one occasion she had pressed her mother about what had happened she had gone quite pink and, placing her plump little hand on Jennifer’s, had urged her ‘not to dwell on it, dear. It’s all been . . . terribly upsetting.’ Her eyes had filled with tears and, not wanting to upset her, Jennifer had moved on.
    A chatty girl with a bright orange helmet of hair had come from another part of the hospital to trim and set Jennifer’s hair. This, the young woman told her, would make her feel a lot better. Jennifer had lost a little hair at the back of her head – it had been shaved off for a wound to be stitched – and the girl announced that she was a wonder at hiding such injuries.
    A little more than an hour later she held up a mirror with a flourish. Jennifer stared at the girl who stared back at her. Quite pretty, she thought, with a kind of distant satisfaction. Bruised, a little pale, but an agreeable face. My face, she corrected herself.
    ‘Do you have your cosmetics to hand?’ the hairdresser said. ‘I could do your face for you, if your arm’s still sore. Bit of lipstick will brighten any face, madam. That and some pancake.’
    Jennifer kept staring at the mirror. ‘Do you think I should?’
    ‘Oh, yes. A pretty girl like you. I can make it very subtle . . . but it’ll put a glow into your cheeks. Hold on, I’ll pop downstairs and get my kit. I’ve got some lovely colours from Paris, and a Charles of the Ritz lipstick that’ll be perfect on you.’
    ‘Well, don’t you look fetching? It’s good to see a lady with her makeup on. Shows us that you’re a little more on top of things,’ Mr