“Conference is at eleven. I’m fine. Conference is at eleven.” She’s babbling, casting around her for nonexistent belongings. Then remembers why she’s there. She tries to gather her thoughts, but she doesn’t know how to say what she must to this man. She glances surreptitiously at him, seeing someone else behind the gray hair, the melancholy eyes. She sees him through his words now.
She gathers her bag to her. “Um . . . is Rory around?”
Rory will know. Rory will know what to do.
His smile is a mute apology, an acknowledgment of what they both know. “I’m afraid he’s not in today. He’s probably at home preparing.”
“Preparing?”
“For his grand tour? You did know he’s going away?”
“I’d kind of hoped he wouldn’t. Not just yet.” She reaches into her bag and scribbles a note. “I don’t suppose . . . you have his address?”
“If you want to step into what remains of my office, I’ll dig it out for you. I don’t think he leaves for a week or so.”
As he turns away, her breath catches in her throat. “Actually, Mr. O’Hare, it’s not just Rory I wanted to see.”
“Oh?” She can see his surprise at her use of his name.
She pulls the folder from her bag and holds it toward him. “I found something of yours. A few weeks ago. I would have given them back earlier, but I just . . . I didn’t know they were yours until last night.” She watches as he opens copies of the letters. His face alters as he recognizes his own handwriting.
“Where did you get these?” he says.
“They were here,” she says tentatively, afraid of what this information will do to him.
“Here?”
“Buried. In your library.”
He glances around him, as if these empty shelves can provide some clue to what she’s saying.
“I’m sorry. I know they’re . . . personal.”
“How did you know they were mine?”
“It’s a long story.” Her heart is beating rapidly. “But you need to know something. Jennifer Stirling left her husband the day after she saw you in 1964. She came here, to the newspaper offices, and they told her you’d gone to Africa.”
He is so still. Every part of him is focused on her words. He is almost vibrating, so intently is he listening.
“She tried to find you. She tried to tell you that she was . . . she was free.” She’s a little frightened by the effect this information seems to have on Anthony. The color has drained from his face. He sits down on the chair, his breath coming hard. But she can’t stop now.
“This is all . . . ,” he begins, his expression troubled, so different from Jennifer’s barely disguised delight. “This is all from so long ago.”
“I haven’t finished,” she says. “Please.”
He waits.
“These are copies. That’s because I had to return the originals. I had to give them back.” She holds out the PO box number, her hand trembling, either from nervousness or excitement.
She had received a text message two minutes before she went down to the library:
No he isn’t married. What kind of question is that?
“I don’t know what your situation is. I don’t know if I’m being horribly intrusive. Perhaps I’m making the most awful mistake. But this is the address, Mr. O’Hare,” she says. He takes it from her. “This is where you write to.”
Chapter 27
Dear Jennifer?
Is this really you? Forgive me. I have tried to write this a dozen times and I don’t know what to say.
Anthony O’Hare
Ellie tidies the notes on her desk, turns off her screen, and, closing her bag, makes her way out of Features, mouthing a silent good-bye at Rupert. He is hunched over an interview with an author who, he has complained all afternoon, is as dull as ditchwater. She has filed the story about surrogate mothers, and tomorrow she will travel to Paris to interview a Chinese charity worker who is not allowed to return to her home country because of controversial comments she made in a British documentary. As she wedges herself into the crowded bus home, her mind is on the background information she has gathered for the piece, already organizing it into paragraphs. It feels good to be thinking this way again.
On Saturday she will meet Corinne and Nicky at a restaurant none of them can really afford. They will not talk about John, Ellie has decided; it is the first relationship she has ever ended that she does not feel the urge to dissect for hours afterward.
“I see his latest book got a terrible review,” Corinne says when Ellie answers her phone. Corinne rings her most evenings. Ellie knows it’s just to make sure she’s okay. She doesn’t know how to make her friends believe her when she says she’s fine.
“I hadn’t noticed.”
She tidies her flat as she talks, the receiver wedged between chin and shoulder. She has decided to redecorate. She has been emptying her home of clutter, driving to and from the dump with the detritus of several years stuffed into cardboard boxes. She is unsentimental about what she throws away.
Corinne sniffs. “ ‘Unconvincing dialogue,’ apparently. Personally I always found his stuff very derivative.”
Ellie empties a drawer into a black garbage bag as Corinne talks.
She has specifically asked not to write for Books just now.
Dear Anthony,
Yes, it is me. Whatever me is, compared to the girl you knew. I’m guessing you know our journalist friend has spoken to me by now. I’m still struggling to comprehend what she has told me.
But in the Post Office box this morning, there was your letter. With the sight of your handwriting, forty years fell away. Does that make sense? The time that has passed shrank to nothing. I can barely believe I’m holding what you wrote two days ago, can hardly believe what it means.
She has told me a little about you. I sat and wondered, and hardly dared think that I may get the chance to sit and talk to you.
I pray that you are happy.
Jennifer
It’s the upside of newspapers: your writing stock can rise stratospherically, twice as quickly as it fell. Two good stories and you can be the talk of the newsroom, the center of chatter and admiration. Your story will be reproduced on the Internet, syndicated to other publications in New York, Australia, South Africa. They liked the letters piece, Syndication told her. Exactly the kind of thing they can find a market for. Within forty-eight hours she has had e-mails and a few handwritten letters from readers, confiding their own stories. Within a week, a literary agent has rung, wondering if she has enough of the letters to turn into a book. They have penciled in a date for lunch.