The Last Letter From Your Lover (26 page)

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I mean it.”

“Jennifer, no court in the land would let a child stay with an adulterous mother—a mother who can’t get through the day without a pharmacy of pills. Dr. Hargreaves would testify to the sheer number you get through.”

“They’re gone. I’ve thrown them away.”

“Really?” He consulted his watch again. “Congratulations. So, you’ve made it a whole . . . twenty-four hours without pharmaceutical help? I’m sure the courts would find that admirable.” He laughed, pleased with his response.

“Do you think they would find the lung-disease file admirable, too?”

She caught the sudden rigidity of his jaw, the flash of uncertainty.

“What?”

“Your secretary gave it to me. I have the name of every one of your employees who has become ill and died over the past ten years. What was it?” She pronounced the word carefully, emphasizing its unfamiliarity. “Me-so-the-lio-ma.”

The color drained so quickly from his face that she thought he might pass out. He got up and walked past her to the door. He opened it, peered out, then closed it again firmly. “What are you talking about?”

“I have all the information, Laurence. I even have the bank slips for the money you paid them.”

He wrenched open a drawer and rifled through it. When he straightened up, he looked shaken. He took a step toward her so that she was forced to meet his gaze. “If you ruin me, Jennifer, you ruin yourself.”

“Do you really think I care?”

“I’ll never divorce you.”

“Fine,” she said, her resolve strengthened by his disquiet. “This is how it will be. Esmé and I will take a place nearby, and you can visit her. You and I will be husband and wife in name only. You will give me a reasonable stipend, to support her, and in return I’ll make sure those papers are never made public.”

“Are you trying to blackmail me?”

“Oh, I’m far too dim to do something like that, Laurence, as you’ve reminded me countless times over the years. No, I’m just telling you how my life is going to be. You can keep your mistress, the house, your fortune, and . . . your reputation. None of your business colleagues needs to know. But I will never set foot in the same house as you again.”

He genuinely hadn’t realized she knew about the mistress. She saw impotent fury spread over his face, mixed with wild anxiety. Then they were smothered by a conciliatory attempt at a smile. “Jennifer, you’re upset. This fellow reappearing must have come as a shock. Why don’t you go home and we’ll talk about it?”

“I’ve lodged the papers with a third party. If anything were to happen to me, he has his instructions.”

He had never looked at her with such venom. Her grip tightened on her handbag.

“You are a whore,” he said.

“With you I was,” she said quietly. “I must have been, because I certainly didn’t do it for love.”

There was a knock at the door, and his new secretary walked in. The manner in which the girl’s gaze flicked between them was a banner of extra information. It boosted Jennifer’s courage. “Anyway, I think that’s all I needed to tell you. I’ll be off now, darling,” she said. She walked up to him and kissed his cheek. “I’ll be in touch. Good-bye, Miss . . .” She waited.

“Driscoll,” the girl said.

“Driscoll.” She fixed her with a smile. “Of course.”

She walked past the girl, collected her daughter, and, heart hammering, opened the double doors, half expecting to hear his voice, his footsteps, behind her. She skipped down the two flights of stairs to where the taxi was still waiting.

“Where are we going?” said Esmé, as Jennifer hoisted her onto the seat beside her. She was picking her way through a handful of sweets, her haul from the troupe of secretaries.

Jennifer leaned forward and opened the little window, shouting to the driver above the noise of the rush-hour traffic. She felt suddenly weightless, triumphant. “To the Regent Hotel, please. As fast as you can.”

Later she would look back on that twenty-minute journey and realize she had viewed the crowded streets, the gaudy shopfronts, as if through the eyes of a tourist, a foreign correspondent, someone who had never seen them before. She noted only a few details, an overriding impression, knowing it was possible she might not see them again. Her life as she had known it was over, and she wanted to sing.

This was how Jennifer Stirling said good-bye to her old life, the days when she had walked those streets laden with shopping bags filled with things that meant nothing to her as soon as she returned home. It was at this point, near Marylebone Road, that she had felt daily the stiffening of some internal brace as she approached the house that felt no longer like a home but some kind of penance.

There was the square, flashing by, with her silent house, a world in which she had lived internally, knowing there was no thought she could express, no action she could complete, that would not invoke criticism from a man she had made so unhappy that his only course was to keep punishing her, with silence, relentless slights, and an atmosphere that left her permanently cold, even in high summer.

A child could protect you from that, but only so far. And while what she was doing meant she might be disgraced in the eyes of those around her, she could show her daughter that there was another way to live. A way that did not involve anesthetizing yourself. A way that did not mean you lived your whole life as an apology for who you were.

She saw the window where the prostitutes had displayed themselves; the tapping girls had disappeared to some other location.
I hope you’re living a better life,
she told them silently.
I hope you’re freed from whatever held you there. Everyone deserves that chance.

Esmé was still eating her sweets, observing the busy streets through the other window. Jennifer put her arm around the little girl and pulled her close. She unwrapped another and put it into her mouth. “Mummy, where are we going?”

“To meet a friend, and then we’re going on an adventure, darling,” she replied, suddenly brimming with excitement.

“An adventure?”

“Yes. An adventure that should have taken place a long, long time ago.”

The page-four story on the disarmament negotiations wouldn’t make a lead, Don Franklin thought, while his deputy drew up alternatives. He was wishing his wife hadn’t put raw onions in his liver sausage sandwiches. They always gave him gut ache. “If we move the toothpaste ad to this side, we could fill this space with the dancing priest?” the deputy suggested.

“I hate that story.”

“What about the theater review?”

“Already on page eighteen.”

“Eyes west-southwest, boss.”

Rubbing his belly, Don glanced up to see a woman hurrying through the newspaper office. She was dressed in a short black trench coat and had a blond child with her. To see a little girl in a newspaper office made Don feel uncomfortable, like seeing a soldier in a petticoat. It was all wrong. The woman paused to ask Cheryl something, and Cheryl gestured to him.

His pencil was wedged in the corner of his mouth as she approached. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I need to speak to Anthony O’Hare,” she said.

“And you are?”

“Jennifer Stirling. I’m a friend of his. I’ve just come from his hotel, but they said he’d checked out.” Her eyes were anxious.

“You brought the note a couple of days ago,” Cheryl recalled.

“Yes,” the woman said, “I did.”

He observed the way Cheryl was looking her up and down. The child was holding a half-eaten lollipop, which had left a sticky trail on the mother’s sleeve. “He’s gone to Africa,” he said.

“What?”

“Gone to Africa.”

She went completely still, the child, too. “No.” Her voice cracked. “That’s not possible. He hadn’t even decided whether to go.”

Don took the pencil out of his mouth and shrugged. “News moves fast. He left yesterday, got the first flight out. He’ll be traveling for the next few days.”

“But I need to speak to him.”

“He can’t be contacted.” He could see Cheryl watching him. Two of the other secretaries were whispering to each other.

The woman had paled. “Surely there must be some way of reaching him. He can’t have been gone long.”

“He could be anywhere. It’s Congo. They don’t have telephones. He’ll telegraph when he gets a chance.”

“Congo? But why on earth did he go so soon?” Her voice had faded to a whisper.

“Who knows?” He looked at her pointedly. “Perhaps he wanted to get away.” He was aware of Cheryl loitering, pretending to sort a pile of papers nearby.

The woman seemed to have lost the power of thought. Her hand lifted to her face. He thought, for one awful moment, that she might be about to cry. If there was one thing worse than a child in a newsroom, it was a crying woman with a child in a newsroom.

She took a deep breath, steadying herself. “If you speak to him, would you ask him to telephone me?” She reached into her bag, from which she pulled out a paper folder stuffed with documents, then several battered envelopes; she hesitated, and thrust the letters deep inside the folder. “And give him this. He’ll know what it means.” She scribbled a note, ripped it from her diary, and pushed it under the flap. She placed the folder on the desk in front of him.

“Sure.”

She took hold of his arm. He noticed she was wearing a ring with a diamond the size of the ruddy Koh-i-Noor. “You will make sure he gets it? It’s really important. Desperately important.”

“I understand. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get on. This is our busiest time of day. We’re all on deadlines here.”

Her face crumpled. “I’m sorry. Please just make sure he gets it. Please.”

Don nodded.

She waited, her eyes not leaving his face, perhaps trying to reassure herself that he had meant what he said. Then, with a final glance around the office, as if to check that O’Hare really wasn’t there, she took her daughter’s hand. “I’m—I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

Looking somehow smaller than she had when she’d walked in, she made her way slowly toward the doors, as if she had no idea where she was going. The few people gathered around the sub’s desk watched her leave.

“Congo,” said Cheryl, after a beat.

“We need to get page four off stone.” Don stared fixedly at the desk. “Let’s go with the dancing priest.”

It was almost three weeks later that someone thought to clear the subeditor’s desk. Among the old galley proofs and dark blue carbon sheets, there was a shabby folder.

“Who’s B?” Dora, the temporary secretary, opened it. “Is this something for Bentinck? Didn’t he leave two months ago?”

Cheryl, who was arguing about travel expenses on the phone, shrugged without turning but cupped her hand over the mouthpiece. “If you can’t see who it belongs to, send it to the library. That’s where I put everything that doesn’t seem to belong to anyone. Then Don can’t yell at you.” She thought for a moment. “Well, he can. But not for misfiling.”

The folder landed on the trolley destined for the archive, with the old editions of the newspaper,
Who’s Who
, and
Hansard
, in the bowels of the building.

It would not reappear for almost forty years.