None was signed other than with “B.” She had read them, and read them again until the words were imprinted on her soul.
Dearest girl,
It’s 4 a.m. I can’t sleep, knowing he is returning to you tonight. It is the road to madness, but I lie here imagining him lying next to you, his license to touch you, to hold you, and I would do anything to make that freedom mine.
You were so angry with me when you found me drinking at Alberto’s. You called it an indulgence, and I’m afraid my response was unforgivable. Men hurt themselves when they lash out, and as cruel and stupid as my words may have been, I think you know your words hurt me more. Felipe told me I was a fool when you left, and he was right.
I am telling you this because I need you to know that I’m going to be a better man. Hah! I can barely believe I’m writing such a cliché. But it’s true. You make me want to be a better version of myself. I have sat here for hours, staring at the whiskey bottle, and then, not five minutes ago, I finally got up and poured the whole darned lot into the sink. I will be a better person for you, darling. I want to live well, wish for you to be proud of me. If all we are allowed is hours, minutes, I want to be able to etch each of them onto my memory with exquisite clarity so that I can recall them at moments like this, when my very soul feels blackened.
Take him to you, if you must, my love, but don’t love him. Please don’t love him.
Yours selfishly,
B.
Her eyes had welled with tears at these last lines. Don’t love him. Please don’t love him. Everything had become a little clearer to her now: she had not imagined the distance she felt between herself and Laurence. It was the result of her having fallen in love with someone else. These were passionate letters: this man had opened himself to her in a way that Laurence never could. When she read his notes, her skin prickled, her heart raced. She recognized these words. But for all that she knew them, there was still a great hole at their heart.
Her mind buzzed with questions. Had the affair been going on for long? Was it recent? Had she slept with this man? Is that why things felt so physically stilted with her husband?
And, most incomprehensible of all: Who was this lover?
She had gone over the three letters forensically, searching for clues. She could think of no one she knew whose name began with B, save Bill, or her husband’s accountant, whose name was Bernard. She knew without a shadow of doubt that she had never been in love with him. Had B seen her at the hospital, in the days when her mind had not been her own, when everyone had been indistinct around her? Was he watching at a distance now? Waiting for her to get in touch? He existed somewhere. He held the key to everything.
Day after day, she tried to imagine her way back into her former self: this woman of secrets. Where would the Jennifer of old have hidden letters? Where were the clues to her other, secret existence? Two of the letters she had uncovered in books, another folded neatly in a balled-up stocking. All were in places her husband would never have thought of looking. I was clever, she thought. And then, a little more uncomfortably: I was duplicitous.
“Mother,” she said, one lunchtime, over a sandwich on the top floor of John Lewis, “who was driving when I had my accident?”
Her mother had glanced up sharply. The restaurant around them was packed with customers, laden with shopping bags and heavy coats, the dining room thick with chatter and the clatter of crockery.
She glanced around before she turned back to Jennifer, as if the question was almost subversive. “Darling, do we really need to revisit that?”
Jennifer sipped her tea. “I know so little about what happened. It might help if I could put the pieces together.”
“You nearly died. I really don’t want to think about it.”
“But what happened? Was I driving?”
Her mother inspected her plate. “I don’t recall.”
“And if it wasn’t me, what happened to the driver? If I was hurt, he must have been, too.”
“I don’t know. How would I? Laurence always looks after his staff, doesn’t he? I assume he wasn’t badly hurt. If he needed treatment, I dare say Laurence would have paid for it.”
Jennifer thought of the driver who had picked them up when she left the hospital: a tired-looking man in his sixties with a neat mustache and a balding head. He had not looked as if he had suffered any great trauma—or as if he might have been her lover.
Her mother pushed away the remains of her sandwich. “Why don’t you ask him?”
“I will.” But she knew she wouldn’t. “He doesn’t want me to dwell on things.”
“Well, I’m sure he’s quite right, darling. Perhaps you should heed his advice.”
“Do you know where I was going?”
The older woman was flustered now, a little exasperated by this line of questioning. “I’ve no idea. Shopping, probably. Look, it happened somewhere near Marylebone Road. I believe you hit a bus. Or a bus hit you. It was all so awful, Jenny darling, we could only think about you getting better.” Her mouth closed in a thin line, which told Jennifer that the conversation was at an end.
In a corner of the canteen, a woman wrapped in a dark green coat was gazing into the eyes of a man who traced her profile with a finger. As Jennifer watched, she took his fingertip between her teeth. The casual intimacy of the gesture sent a little electric shock through her. No one else seemed to have noticed the pair.
Mrs. Verrinder wiped her mouth with her napkin. “What does it really matter, dear? Car accidents happen. The more cars there are, the more dangerous it seems to be. I don’t think half of the people on the roads can drive. Not like your father could. Now, he was a careful driver.”
Jennifer wasn’t listening.
“Anyway, you’re all fixed up now, aren’t you? All better?”
“I’m fine.” Jennifer turned a bright smile on her mother. “Just fine.”
When she and Laurence went out in the evenings now, to dinner or for drinks, she found herself looking at their wider circle of friends and acquaintances with new eyes. When a man’s focus lingered on her a little longer than it should have, she found herself unable to tear her gaze away. Was it him? Was there some meaning behind his pleasant greeting? Was that a knowing smile?
There were three possible men, if B was in fact a nickname. There was Jack Amory, the head of a motor-spares company, who was unmarried and kissed her hand ostentatiously whenever they met. But he did it almost with a wink to Laurence, and she couldn’t work out if this was a double bluff.