The Last Letter from Your Lover

salary, and you’ll be the most senior of the girls in the pool. I’ll make that quite clear to the others. As you said, they need someone capable to take charge of them.’
    ‘But I don’t understand . . .’ She stood up, her knuckles white on the transistor. Panic rose in her chest. ‘What have I done wrong? Why would you take my job away from me?’
    He looked irritated. ‘You’ve done nothing wrong. Every organisation moves people around once in a while. Times are changing and I want to freshen things up a bit.’
    ‘Freshen things up?’
    ‘Marie is perfectly capable.’
    ‘Marie Driscoll’s going to be doing my job? But she knows nothing of how the office runs. She doesn’t know the Rhodesian wage system, the telephone numbers, or how to book your air tickets. She doesn’t know the filing system. She spends half her time in the Ladies room doing her make-up. And she’s late! All the time! Why, twice this week I’ve had to reprimand her. Have you seen the figures on the clocking-in cards?’ The words tumbled out of her.
    ‘I’m sure she can learn. It’s just a secretarial job, Moira.’
    ‘But—’
    ‘I really don’t have any more time to discuss this. Please move your things out of the drawers this afternoon, and we’ll start afresh with the new set-up tomorrow.’
    He reached into his cigar box, signalling that the conversation was over. Moira stood up, putting out a hand to steady herself on the edge of his desk. Bile rose in her throat, blood thumped in her ears. The office felt as if it was collapsing on her, brick by brick.
    He put the cigar into his mouth and she heard the sharp snip of the clippers as they sheared off the end.
    She walked slowly towards the door and opened it, hearing the sudden hush in the outer office that told her others had known this was taking place before she had been told.
    She saw Marie Driscoll’s legs, stretched against her desk. Long, spindly legs in ridiculous coloured tights. Who on earth would wear royal blue tights to an office and expect to be taken seriously?
    She snatched her handbag from her desk and made her way unsteadily through the office to the Ladies, feeling the stares of the curious, and the smirks of the less than sympathetic burning into the back of her blue cardigan.
    ‘Moira! They’re playing your song! “Can’t Get Used To Losing You” . . .’
    ‘Oh, don’t be mean, Sandra.’ There was another noisy burst of laughter, and then the cloakroom door was closing behind her.
    Jennifer stood in the middle of the bleak little play park, watching the frozen nannies chatting over their Silver Cross prams, hearing the cries of small children who collided and tumbled, like skittles, to the ground.
    Mrs Cordoza had offered to bring Esmé, but Jennifer had told her she needed the air. For forty-eight hours she had not known what to do with herself, her body still sensitised by his touch, her mind reeling with what she had done. She was almost felled by the enormity of what she had lost. She couldn’t anaesthetise her way through this with Valium: it had to be endured. Her daughter would be a reminder that she had done the right thing. There had been so much she had wanted to say to him. Even as she told herself she had not set out to seduce him, she knew she was lying. She had wanted one small piece of him, one beautiful, precious memory, to carry with her. How could she have known she would be opening Pandora’s box? Worse, how could she have imagined he would be so destroyed by it?
    That night at the embassy he had looked so pulled together. He couldn’t have suffered as she had; he couldn’t have felt what she had. He was stronger, she had believed. But now she couldn’t stop thinking about him, his vulnerability, his joyful plans for them. And the way he had looked at her when she had walked across the hotel lobby towards her child.
    She heard his voice, anguished and confused, echoing down the corridor behind her: Don’t do this, Jennifer! I’m not going to wait another four years for you!
    Forgive me, she told him silently, a thousand times a day. But Laurence would never have let me take her. And you, of all people, couldn’t ask me to leave her. You, more than anyone, should understand.
    Periodically she wiped the corners of her eyes, blaming the high wind or yet another piece of grit that had mysteriously found its way into one. She felt emotionally raw, acutely aware of the least change in temperature, buffeted