She moved into the rented flat, and when Esme started school, she took an unpaid job at the local Citizens' Advice Bureau, the only organization that seemed unworried by her lack of experience. She would learn on the job, the supervisor said. "And, believe me, you'll learn rather quickly." Less than a year later, she was offered a paid position in the same office. She advised people on practical matters, such as how to manage money, how to handle rent disputes--there were too many bad landlords--how to cope with family breakdown.
At first she had been exhausted by the never-ending litany of problems, the sheer wall of human misery that traipsed through the office, but gradually, as she grew more confident, she saw that she was not alone in making a mess of her life. She reassessed herself and found that she was grateful for where she was, where she had ended up, and felt a certain pride when someone returned to tell her that she had helped.
Two years later she and Esme moved again, to the two-bedroom flat in St. John's Wood, bought with money provided by Laurence and Jennifer's inheritance from an aunt. As the weeks became months, and then years, she came to accept that Anthony O'Hare would not return. He would not answer her messages. She was overcome only once, when the newspapers reported some details of the massacre at Stanleyville's Victoria Hotel. Then she had stopped reading newspapers altogether.
She had rung the Nation just once more. A secretary had answered, and when she gave her name, briefly hopeful that Anthony might, this time, happen to be there, she heard, "Is it that Stirling woman?"
And the answer: "Isn't she the one he didn't want to speak to?"
She had replaced the receiver.
It was seven years before she saw her husband again. Esme was to start at boarding school, a sprawling, red-brick place in Hampshire, with the shambolic air of a well-loved country house. Jennifer had taken the afternoon off work to drive her, and they had traveled in her new Mini. She was wearing a wine-colored suit and had half expected Laurence to make an unpleasant comment about it--he never had liked her in that color. Please don't do it in front of Esme, she willed him. Please let's keep this civil.
But the man sitting in the lobby was nothing like the Laurence she remembered. In fact, at first she didn't recognize him. His skin was gray, his cheeks hollow; he seemed to have aged twenty years.
"Hello, Daddy." Esme hugged him.
He nodded to Jennifer, but did not stretch out a hand. "Jennifer," he said.
"Laurence." She was trying to cover her shock.
The meeting was brief. The headmistress, a young woman possessed of a quietly assessing gaze, made no reference to the fact that they lived at separate addresses. Perhaps more people did now, Jennifer thought. That week she had seen four women in the bureau who were seeking to leave their husbands.
"Well, we'll do everything in our power to make sure Esme's time here is happy," Mrs. Browning said. She had kind eyes, Jennifer thought. "It does help if the girls have chosen to come to boarding school, and I understand she already has friends here, so I'm sure she'll settle in quickly."
"She reads rather a lot of Enid Blyton," Jennifer said. "I suspect she thinks it's all midnight feasts."
"Oh, we have a few of those. The tuck shop is open on Friday afternoons pretty much for that sole purpose. We tend to turn a blind eye, provided it doesn't get too lively. We like the girls to feel there are some advantages to boarding."
Jennifer relaxed. Laurence had chosen the school, and her fears seemed unfounded. The next few weeks would be hard, but she had grown used to Esme's periodic absences when she was staying with Laurence, and she had her work to occupy her.
The headmistress got to her feet and held out a hand. "Thank you. We'll telephone, of course, if there are any problems."
As the door closed behind them, Laurence began to cough, a harsh, hacking sound that made Jennifer's jaw clench. She made to say something, but he lifted a hand as if to tell her not to. They made their way slowly down the stairs side by side, as if they were not estranged. She could have walked at twice the speed, but it seemed cruel to do so, given his labored breathing and evident discomfort. Finally, unable to bear it, she stopped a passing girl and asked if she would mind fetching a glass of water. Within minutes the girl returned, and Laurence sat down heavily on a mahogany chair in the paneled corridor to sip it.
Jennifer was now brave enough to let her eyes rest on him. "Is it . . . ?" she said.
"No." He took a long, painful breath. "It's the cigars, apparently. I'm well aware of the irony."
She took the seat beside him.
"You should know I've ensured that you will both be taken care of."
She glanced sideways at him, but he appeared to be thinking.
"We raised a good child," he said eventually.
Out of the window, they could see Esme chatting to two other girls on the lawn. As if at some unheard signal, the three ran across the grass, their skirts flying.
"I'm sorry," she said, turning back to him. "For everything."
He placed the glass at his side, and hauled himself out of the chair. He stood for a minute, with his back to her, focusing on the girls outside the window, then turned toward her and, without meeting her eye, gave a small nod.
She watched him walk stiffly out of the main door across the lawns to where his lady friend was waiting in the car, his daughter skipping beside him. She waved enthusiastically as the chauffeur-driven Daimler made its way back down the drive.
Two months later Laurence was dead.
Chapter 22
OCTOBER 2003
It has not stopped raining all evening, the dark gray clouds scudding across the city skyline until they're swallowed by night. The relentless downpour confines people to their homes, blanketing the street so that all that is audible outside is the occasional swish of tires on a wet road, or the gurgle of swollen drains, or the brisk footsteps of someone trying to get home.
There are no messages on her answering machine, no winking envelopes suggesting a text message on her mobile. Her e-mails are confined to work, advertisements for generic Viagra, and one from her mother detailing the dog's further recovery from its hip replacement. Ellie sits cross-legged on the sofa, sipping her third glass of red wine and rereading the photocopies of the letters she has returned. It is four hours since she left Jennifer Stirling's apartment, but her mind is still humming. She sees the unknown Boot, reckless and heartbroken, in Congo at a time when white Europeans were being slain. "I read the reports of the murders, of a whole hotel of victims in Stanleyville," Jennifer had said, "and I cried with fear." She pictures her walking to the post office week after week on a vain quest for a letter that never arrives. A tear plops onto her sleeve, and she sniffs as she wipes it away.
Theirs, she thinks, was a love affair that meant something. He was a man who cracked himself open in front of the woman he loved; he sought to understand her and tried to protect her, even from herself. When he couldn't have her, he removed himself to the other side of the world and, quite likely, sacrificed himself. And she mourned him for forty years. What did Ellie have? Great sex, perhaps once every ten days, and a host of noncommittal e-mails. She is thirty-two years old, her career is collapsing around her, her friends know she is heading full pelt down an emotional dead end, and every day it is getting harder to convince herself that this is a life she would have chosen.
It's a quarter past nine. She knows she shouldn't drink any more, but she feels angry, mournful, nihilistic. She pours another glass, cries, and rereads the last letter again. Like Jennifer, she now feels she knows these words by heart. They have an awful resonance.
Being without you--thousands of miles from you--offers no relief at all. The fact that I am no longer tormented by your presence, or presented with daily evidence of my inability to have the one thing I truly desire, has not healed me. It has made things worse. My future feels like a bleak, empty road.
She is half in love with this man herself. She pictures John, hears him saying the words, and al
cohol makes the two blur into each other. How does one lift one's own life out of the mundane and into something epic? Surely one should be brave enough to love? She pulls her mobile phone from her bag, something dark and bold creeping under her skin. She flips it open and sends a text, her fingers clumsy on the keys: Please call. Just once. Need to hear from you. X
She presses send, already knowing what a colossal error she has made. He'll be furious. Or he won't respond. She's not sure which is worse. Ellie's head sinks into her hands, and she weeps for the unknown Boot, for Jennifer, for chances missed and a life wasted. She cries for herself, because nobody will ever love her like he loved Jennifer, and because she suspects that she is spoiling what might have been a perfectly good, if ordinary, life. She cries because she is drunk and in her flat and there are few advantages to living on your own except being able to sob uninhibitedly at will.
She starts when she hears the door buzzer, lifting her head and remaining immobile until it sounds again. For a brief, insane moment, she wonders if it's John, in response to her message. Suddenly galvanized, she rushes to the hall mirror, wiping frantically at the red blotches on her face, and picks up the entry phone. "Hello?"
"Okay, smarty-pants. How do you spell 'uninvited random caller'?"
She blinks. "Rory."
"Nope, that's not it."
She bites her lip and leans against the wall. There is a brief silence.
"Are you busy? I was just passing." He sounds merry, exuberant. "Okay . . . I was on the right Tube line."
"Come up." She hangs up the phone and splashes her face with cold water, trying not to feel disappointed when it so obviously couldn't have been John.
She hears him taking the steps two at a time, then pushing at the door she has left ajar.
"I've come to drag you out for a drink. Oh!" He's eyeing the empty wine bottle, and then, for a fraction longer, her face. "Ah. Too late."
She manages an unconvincing smile. "Not been a great evening."
"Ah."
"It's fine if you want to go." He's wearing a gray scarf. It looks like cashmere. She has never owned a cashmere jumper. How has she reached the age of thirty-two and never owned a cashmere jumper? "Actually, I'm probably not great company right now."
He takes another look at the wine bottle. "Well, Haworth," he says, unwinding the scarf from his neck, "it's never stopped me before. How about I stick the kettle on?"
He makes tea, fumbling to locate tea bags, milk, spoons, in her tiny kitchen. She thinks of John, who just last week had done the same thing, and her eyes fill again with tears. Then Rory sits and places the mug in front of her, and as she drinks it he talks uncharacteristically volubly about his day, the friend he has just met for a drink who suggested some oblique route across Patagonia. The friend--he has known him since childhood--has become something of a competitive traveler. "You know the type. You say you're headed for Peru. He says, 'Oh, forget the Machu Picchu trail, I spent three nights with the pygmies of Atacanta jungle. They fed me one of their relatives when we ran out of baboon meat.' "
"Nice." She's curled up on the sofa, cradling her mug.
"I love the guy, but I'm just not sure I can take six months of him."
"That's how long you're going for?"
"Hopefully."
She's buffeted by another groundswell of misery. Granted, Rory isn't John, but it has been some compensation to have a man to call on for the odd evening out.
"So, what's up?" he says.
"Oh . . . I had a weird day."
"It's Saturday. I assumed girls like you went out gossiping over brunch and shopping for shoes."
"No stereotypes there, then. I went to see Jennifer Stirling."
"Who?"
"The letter lady."
She sees his surprise. He leans forward. "Wow. She actually called you. What happened?"
Suddenly she begins to cry again, tears pouring. "I'm sorry," she mutters, scrambling for tissues. "I'm sorry. I don't know why I'm being so ridiculous."
She feels his hand on her shoulder, an arm around her. He smells of the pub, deodorant, clean hair, and the outside. "Hey," he's saying softly, "hey . . . this isn't like you."
How would you know? she thinks. Nobody knows what is like me. I'm not even sure I know. "She told me everything. The whole love affair. Oh, Rory, it's heartbreaking. They loved each other so much, and they kept missing each other until he died in Africa and she never saw him again." She's crying so hard her words are nearly unintelligible.
He's hugging her, his head dipping to catch the words. "Talking to an old lady made you this sad? A failed love affair from forty years ago?"
"You had to be there. You had to hear what she said." She tells him a little of the story and wipes her eyes. "She's so beautiful and graceful and sad . . ."
"You're beautiful and graceful and sad. Okay, perhaps not graceful."
She rests her head against his shoulder.
"I never thought you were . . . Don't take this the wrong way, Ellie, but you've surprised me. I never would have thought you could be that affected by those letters."
"It's not just the letters." She sniffs.
He waits. He's leaning back on the sofa now, but his hand is still resting lightly on her neck. She realizes she doesn't want it to move. "Then . . . ?" His voice is soft, inquisitive.
"I'm afraid . . ."
"Of?"
Her voice drops to a whisper: "I'm afraid nobody will ever love me like that."
Drunkenness has made her reckless. His eyes have softened, his mouth turns down a little, as if in sympathy. He watches her, and she dabs feebly at her eyes. For a moment she thinks he's going to kiss her, but instead he picks up a letter and reads aloud: On my way home this evening, I got caught in a row that spilled out of a public house. Two men were scrapping, egged on by drunken supporters, and suddenly I was caught up in their noise and chaos, the cursing and flying bottles. A police siren sounded in the distance. Men were flying off in all directions, cars screeching across the road to avoid the fight. And all I could think about was the way the corner of your mouth curves into itself when you smile. And I had this remarkable sensation that, at that precise moment, you were thinking about me, too.
Perhaps this sounds fanciful; perhaps you were thinking about the theater, or the crisis in the economy, or whether to buy new curtains. But I realized suddenly, in the midst of that little tableau of insanity, that to have someone out there who understands you, who desires you, who sees you as a better version of yourself, is the most astonishing gift. Even if we are not together, to know that, for you, I am that man is a source of sustenance to me.
She has closed her eyes to listen to Rory's voice, softly reciting the words. She imagines how Jennifer must have felt to be loved, adored, wanted.
I'm not sure how I earned the right. I don't feel entirely confident of it even now. But even the chance to think upon your beautiful face, your smile, and know that some part of it might belong to me is probably the single greatest thing that has happened to me in my life.
The words have stopped. She opens her eyes to find Rory's a few inches away. "For a smart woman," he says, "you're remarkably dim." He reaches out a hand, wipes away a tear with his thumb.
"You don't know . . . ," she begins. "You don't understand . . ."
"I think I know enough." Before she can speak again, he kisses her. She stalls for just a moment, and that freckled hand is there again, tormenting her. Why should I feel loyalty to someone who's probably having wild holiday sex right at this very minute?
And then Rory's mouth is on hers, his hands cradling her face, and she's kissing him back, her mind determinedly blank, her body simply grateful for the arms that enfold her, his lips upon hers. Blank it all out, she begs him silently. Rewrite this page. She shifts, feeling vague surprise that for all her desperate longing, she can want this man very much. And then she's unable to think of anything at all.
She wakes up gazing at a set of dark eyelashes.
What very dark eyelashes, she thinks, in the few seconds before consciousness properly seeps in; John's are a caramel color. He has one white lash, toward the outer edge of his left eye, which she is pretty sure no one but her has ever noticed.
Birds are singing. A car is revving insistently outside. There is an arm across her naked hip. It's surprisingly heavy, and when she shifts, a hand tightens momentarily on her bottom, as if reflexively unwilling to let her go. She stares at the eyelashes, remembering the events of the previous evening. She and Rory on the floor in front of her sofa. Him fetching the duvet when he noticed she was cold. His hair, rich and soft in her hands, his body, surprisingly broad, above hers, her bed, his head, disappearing under the duvet. She feels a vague thrill of knowledge and cannot yet quite determine how she feels about this.
John.
A text message.
Coffee, she thinks, grasping for safety. Coffee and croissants. She eases herself out of his hold, her eyes still fixed on his sleeping face. She lifts his arm, lays it gently on the sheet. He wakes, and she freezes. She sees her own confusion momentarily mirrored in his eyes.
"Hey," he says, his voice hoarse with lack of sleep. What time had they finally slept? Four? Five? She remembers them giggling because it was growing light outside. He rubs his face, shifts heavily onto one elbow. His hair is sticking up at one side, his chin shadowed and rough. "What time is it?"
"Almost nine. I'm going to nip out for some proper coffee." She backs to the door, conscious of her nakedness in the too bright morning.
"You sure?" he calls, as she disappears. "You don't want me to go?"
"No, no." She's hopping into the jeans she discovers outside the living-room door. "I'm fine."
"Black for me, please." She hears him sink back against the pillows, muttering something about his head.
Her knickers are half under the DVD player. She picks them up hastily, stuffs them into a pocket. She hauls a T-shirt over her head, wraps herself in her jacket, and without pausing to see what she looks like, heads down the stairs. She walks briskly toward the local coffee shop, already dialing a number into her mobile phone.