“You have a very stereotypical view of men and women.”
“No. I just spend a lot of time here immersed in the past.” He gestures around him. “And it’s a different country.”
“Perhaps it wasn’t addressed to a woman at all,” she teases. “Perhaps it’s to another man.”
“Unlikely. Homosexuality was still illegal then, wasn’t it? There would have been references to secrecy or something.”
“But there are references to secrecy.”
“It’s just an affair,” he says. “Obviously.”
“What’s this? The voice of experience?”
“Hah! Not me.” He hands the letter back to her, and drinks some of his tea.
He has long, squared-off fingers. Working hands, not a librarian’s, she thinks absently. But what would a librarian’s hands look like anyway? “So, you’ve never been involved with anyone married?” She glances at his finger. “Or you are married and have never had an affair?”
“Nope. And nope. Never had any kind of affair. With someone involved, that is. I like my life simple.” He nods at the letter, which she’s tucking back into her bag. “Those things never end well.”
“What? All love that isn’t simple and straightforward has to end tragically?” She hears defensiveness in her voice.
“That’s not what I said.”
“Yes, it is. You said earlier that you thought she said no.”
He finishes his tea, crumples his cup, and throws it into the garbage bag. “We’ll be done in ten minutes. You’d better grab what you want. Show me what you haven’t had a chance to go through, and I’ll try to keep it to one side.”
As she gathers up her belongings, he says, “For what it’s worth, I do think she probably said no.” His expression is unfathomable. “But why does that have to be the worst outcome?”
Chapter 18
Ellie Haworth is living the dream. She often tells herself so when she wakes up, hungover from too much white wine, feeling the ache of melancholy, in her perfect little flat that nobody ever messes up in her absence. (She secretly wants a cat, but is afraid of becoming a cliché.) She holds down a job as a feature writer on a national newspaper, has obedient hair, a body that is basically plump and slender in the right places, and is pretty enough to attract attention that she still pretends offends her. She has a sharp tongue—too sharp, according to her mother—a ready wit, several credit cards, and a small car she can manage without male help. When she meets people she knew at school, she can detect envy when she describes her life: she has not yet reached an age where the lack of a husband or children could be regarded as failure. When she meets men, she can see them ticking off her attributes—great job, nice rack, sense of fun—as if she’s a prize to be won.
If, recently, she has become aware that the dream is a little fuzzy, that the edge she was once famed for at the office has deserted her since John came, that the relationship she had once found invigorating has begun to consume her in ways that are not exactly enviable, she chooses not to look too hard. After all, it’s easy when you’re surrounded by people like you, journalists and writers who drink hard, party hard, have sloppy, disastrous affairs and unhappy partners at home who, tired of their neglect, will eventually have affairs. She is one of them, one of their cohorts, living the life of the glossy magazine pages, a life she has pursued since she first knew she wanted to write. She is successful, single, selfish. Ellie Haworth is as happy as she can be. As anyone can be, considering.
And nobody gets everything, so Ellie tells herself, when occasionally she wakes up trying to remember whose dream she’s meant to be living.
“Happy birthday, you old tart!” Corinne and Nicky are waiting in the coffee shop, waving and patting a seat as she rushes in, bag flying. “Come on, come on! You’re sooo late. We’re meant to be at work by now.”
“Sorry. I got a bit held up coming out.”
They glance at each other, and she can tell they suspect she’s been with John. She decides not to tell them that she was actually waiting for the post. She’d wanted to see if he had sent her something. Now she feels foolish for making herself twenty minutes late for her friends.
“How does it feel to be ancient?” Nicky has cut her hair. It’s still blond, but now short and choppy. She looks cherubic. “I got you a skinny latte. I’m assuming you’re going to need to watch your weight from now on.”
“Thirty-two is hardly ancient. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself.”
“I’m dreading it,” says Corinne. “Somehow thirty-one sounds like you might only just be past thirty, still almost technically in your twenties. Thirty-two sounds ominously close to thirty-five.”
“And thirty-five is obviously just a short step to forty.” Nicky checks her hair in the mirror behind the banquette.
“And a happy birthday to you, too,” Ellie says.
“Aw! We’ll still love you when you’re wrinkly and alone and in flesh-colored big knickers.” They place two bags on the table. “Here are your presents. And, no, you can’t exchange either of them.”
They have chosen perfectly, as only friends of many years’ standing can. Corinne has bought her cashmere socks in dove gray, so soft that it’s all Ellie can do not to put them on there and then. Nicky has given her a voucher for a prohibitively expensive beauty salon. “It’s for an antiaging facial,” she says wickedly. “It was that or Botox.”
“And we know how you feel about injections.”
She’s filled with love, with gratitude for her friends. There have been many evenings in which they’ve said they’re one another’s new family, airing their fear that the others will find mates first and leave them single and alone. Nicky has a new man who, unusually, seems promising. He’s solvent, kind, and has her on her toes just enough to keep her interested. Nicky has spent ten years running away from men who behave well toward her. Corinne has just ended a relationship of a year. He was nice, she says, but they had become like brother and sister, “and I’d expected marriage and a couple of kids before that happened.”
They don’t talk seriously of the dread that they may have missed the boat their aunts and mothers are so fond of mentioning. They don’t discuss the fact that most of their male friends are now in relationships with women a good five to ten years younger than themselves. They make jokes about growing old disgracefully. They line up g*y friends who promise to have children with them “in ten years’ time” if they’re both single, while neither party believes that could possibly end up happening.
“What did he get you?”
“Who?” Ellie says innocently.
“Mr. Paperback Writer. Or was what he gave you the reason you were late?”
“She already got her injection.” Corinne cackles.
“You’re both disgusting.” She sips her coffee, which is lukewarm. “I—I haven’t seen him yet.”
“But he is taking you out?” Nicky says.
“I think so,” she replies. She’s suddenly furious with them for looking at her like that, for seeing through it already. She’s furious with herself for not having thought up an excuse for him. She’s furious with him for needing one.
“Have you heard from him at all, El?”
“No. But it is only eight thirty—Oh, Christ, I’m meant to be at a Features meeting at ten, and I haven’t got a single good idea.”
“Well, sod him.” Nicky leans over and hugs her. “We’ll buy you a little birthday cake, won’t we, Corinne? Stay there and I’ll get one of those muffins with icing. We’ll have an early birthday tea.”
It’s then that she hears the muffled tone of her mobile phone. She flips it open.
Happy Birthday gorgeous. Present to come later. X
“Him?” says Corinne.
“Yes.” She grins. “My present’s coming later.”
“Like him.” Nicky snorts, back at the table with the iced muffin. “Where’s he taking you?”
“Um . . . it doesn’t say.”
“Show me.” Nicky snatches it. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Nicky . . .” Corinne’s voice holds a warning note.
“Well, ‘Present to come later. Kiss.’ It’s a bit bloody vague, isn’t it?”
“It’s her birthday.”
“Exactly. And that’s why she shouldn’t have to decipher crappy halfway-house messages from some half-baked boyfriend. Ellie—darling—what are you doing?”
Ellie is frozen. Nicky has broken the unspoken rule that they will say nothing no matter how foolish a relationship. They will be supportive; they will express concern through what is not said; they will not say things like “What are you doing?”
“It’s fine,” she says. “Really.”
Nicky looks at her. “You’re thirty-two years old. You’ve been in a relationship—in love—with this man for almost a year, and what you really deserve for your birthday is some measly text message that may or may not mean you get a seeing-to at some unspecified date in the future? Aren’t mistresses at least meant to get expensive lingerie? The odd weekend in Paris?”
Corinne is wincing.
“I’m sorry, Corinne, I’m just telling it like it is for a change. Ellie, darling, I love you to death. But, really, what are you getting out of this?”
Ellie looks down at her coffee. The pleasure of her birthday is ebbing away. “I love him,” she says simply.
“And does he love you?”
She feels sudden hatred for Nicky.
“Does he know you love him? Can you actually tell him so?”
Ellie looks over at Corinne, hoping for support. But Corinne is stirring her coffee, her eyes fixed on her spoon.
“Do you ever think about her?”
“Who?”
“John’s wife. Do you think she knows?”
The mention of her dissipates the last of Ellie’s good mood. She shrugs. “I don’t know.” And then, to fill the silence, she adds: “I’m sure I would, if I were her. I think she’s more interested in the children than him. Sometimes I tell myself there might even be some little part of her that is glad she’s not having to worry about him. You know, about keeping him happy.”
“Now that is wishful thinking.”
“Maybe. But if I’m honest, the answer is no. I don’t think about her. I don’t feel guilty. Because I don’t think it would have happened if they had been happy, or . . . you know . . . connected.”
“You have such a misguided view of men.”
“You think he’s happy with her.” She studies Nicky’s face.
“I have no idea if he’s happy or not, Ellie. I just don’t think he needs to be unhappy with his wife to be sleeping with you.”
The café falls silent around them. Or perhaps that’s just how it feels. Ellie shifts in her chair.
Corinne finally stops stirring her coffee. She makes a despairing face at Nicky, who shrugs and lifts the muffin aloft. “Still. Happy birthday, eh? Anyone want another coffee?”
She slides into her desk in front of her computer. There is nothing on her desk. No note alerting her to flowers in Reception. No chocolates or champagne. There are eighteen e-mails in her in-box, not including the junk. Her mother—who bought a computer the previous year and still punctuates every e-mailed sentence with an exclamation mark—has sent her a message to wish her happy birthday and to tell her, “the dog is doing well after having had his hip replaced!” And that “the operation cost more than Grandma Haworth’s!!!” The features editor’s secretary has sent a reminder about this morning’s meeting. And Rory, the librarian, has sent her a message telling her to pop down later, but not after 2:00 p.m., as they’ll be at the new building then. There’s nothing from John. Not even a thinly disguised greeting. She deflates a little, and winces when she sees Melissa striding toward her office, followed closely by Rupert.