Name & Address Withheld (39 page)

chapter 30

L
izzie and Clare sat cross-legged on the floor, their backs against the sofa, sorting letters into piles. Faced with a couple of extra postbags, Lizzie had broken house rules and brought her work upstairs. Clare, at home on a rare day off, had soon tired of watching television round her flatmate, who was apparently constantly and increasingly irritatingly tearing open envelopes. According to Lizzie’s plan, Clare had adopted the ‘if you can’t beat ’em join ’em mentality’, for which Lizzie was incredibly grateful. The radio was on just loudly enough to inject a little banal Top 40 normality into their day.

Provided they enclosed a return address, all the letters got a reply of some description whether they were published or not. It was the least she could do. If someone had taken the time and the courage to write in, she owed it to them to compose a personal response. Not a photocopied
Dear
….—insert name with a Biro—
thank-you-for-your-letter
circular signed by an assistant or a computer, but a proper note with, wherever possible, some constructive advice.

In amongst the letters there were always a few red herrings. People who’d sent in chain letters, messages from Jesus, bills
that needed paying, soft toys and the occasional shattered round of home-made shortbread for Lizzie to enjoy with a cup of tea and sympathy. Clare, to Lizzie’s amusement was just unpacking a hideous miniature cuddly frog from a grateful reader when Lizzie opened an envelope which transformed her mood completely.

Dear Lizzie

I just had to write in after reading your article. I’m afraid that I’m one of those men who’s had an affair, but I suspect unlike some of your readers and listeners, it was the best thing that I ever did.

My marriage was effectively over. I’d just been too lazy to do anything about it, and then, when I met the woman I really wanted to spend the rest of my life with, I was still married. Needless to say the woman in question left me when she found out, and now I’ve finally decided to leave my wife whether or not I get her back because I’ve realised that I will never have with my wife what, for a few precious weeks, I had with her.

She was a mistress. But only because I hadn’t been brave enough to make myself a divorcé before she came along.

Good luck with everything. I hope that you find the happiness that you deserve.

Name & Address Withheld.

Lizzie turned the piece of paper over in search of clues, and even smelt the sheet before checking the envelope. It was all inconclusive. She read the words again before alerting Clare to her latest wave of insanity.

‘Clare. Read this.’

Lizzie handed her the page and watched Clare intently as she read it. Her face remained disconcertingly expressionless throughout.

‘My heart bleeds. Well, you can’t reply. He hasn’t left his
address… Shall I trash it?’ Clare was ready to crumple it into a little ball.

‘No.
No
…don’t you see?’ Lizzie wondered whether Clare was being dim on purpose. ‘I think it might be from him.’

‘From…?’ The penny dropped. Clare didn’t need to say his name out loud. ‘Don’t be daft, Liz. Rest assured he doesn’t have the monopoly on not having the guts to leave his wife.’

‘But it could be…’ Lizzie handed Clare the envelope as further proof.

‘Yes, it could be…but then again all you have here is a bit of Times New Roman font, not professionally centred, margins all over the place, on a sheet of white A4 printer paper posted in a self-seal white envelope which the author probably pinched from the office stationery cupboard before licking a stamp and walking to the postbox outside his office in time for the—’ Clare squinted at the postmark ‘—five-thirty collection in London W1.’

‘Precisely.’

‘Which means “precisely” nothing. Liz, the number of workers with access to white paper, a computer and a letterbox in W1 is probably well over half a million.’

‘But something about it makes me feel like it might be from him.’

‘Look, if you’re going to become little Miss Clare Voyant on me I might just have to move out again, which would be a shame, because between you and me it’s great to be back. Face it, Liz, why would he bother with the whole anonymous thing? It just doesn’t make sense. You’re doing so well at the moment. Please be strong about all of this. You don’t need him. And, remember, he doesn’t deserve you.’

This time Lizzie had to concede that Clare had a point. Still, it didn’t mean that she couldn’t want it to be from him. That just made her…certifiable?…a romantic?…embarrassingly optimistic…? All of the above.

She was brought down to
terra firma
with a jolt when she picked up the next letter in her pile. Unless she was totally mistaken, it was a handwritten letter from Joe Dexter. His elongated script was as distinctive as the brown ink that he had
always insisted on using. As if she needed any further confirmation it had been franked at CDH. But it wasn’t addressed to Clare.

Gently folding it in half, she slipped it into the back pocket of her jeans before heading for the bathroom. Resting her back against the cistern, she skimmed the letter. Her hunch had been correct.

Dear Lizzie

Congratulations on a great front cover and a frank and interesting article.

He always had been a smooth operator. Lizzie felt her muscles tense defensively and involuntarily. What on earth could she do for the great Joe Dexter?

I hope you don’t mind me writing. I know I’m probably still
persona non grata,
but I guess reading the article made me think—and by some spooky coincidence Clare recently bumped into Ed Wallace. I don’t know if you remember him—he was one of the ushers? Anyway, I thought I’d be better off writing to you at work because I suspect should Clare recognise my handwriting on an envelope she might just file it, unopened, in the bin, or flambé it ceremoniously on the hob. Anyway, it’s not advice I need but a favour. I’d really like to talk to Clare. Just talk to her—to say sorry, maybe to meet up just as friends if that’s possible—but I don’t dare call her at the restaurant. It wouldn’t be fair and I’m not trying to give her a nasty surprise. I’ve put her through enough but we both know how stubborn she can be.

Lizzie smiled despite herself.

Anyway, I figured that you were the only person who might be able to persuade her to call me. She can reach me at the office on my direct line, at home or on my mobile.

Yours, Joe

Scrawled barely legibly beneath his excessively large signature were his contact numbers. He’d always had the most difficult handwriting. He probably should’ve been a doctor. Lizzie felt sure that without the computer revolution people like Joe would never have made it to the top of their trees. One handwritten memo and they would have been fired or sent to night school.

Lizzie felt guilty. Clare was currently sitting on the sofa sorting out her postbag while she was furtively and conspiratorially reading letters from her ex-husband in their bathroom. She put the letter back in her pocket and remembered to flush the toilet for authenticity’s sake, in case Clare was listening out for her return.

Back in the sitting room Lizzie sat down and, without Clare noticing, removed the letter from her pocket and pretended to read it for the first time. Eventually Lizzie felt Clare watching her.

‘This one’s for you.’

Clare sat back and uncrossed her legs, stretching them out in front of her to allow some of the blood that had been queuing up behind her knee joint to make the journey all the way to her toes. The relief was quite tangible as the blood almost fizzed down the arteries in her shins.

Was this one going to be about a flatmate who was so highly principled that she’d moved out over an affair? Was it about someone who had started working in a restaurant and had put on three stone in as many weeks? Or was it about a woman who was addicted to having sex with waiters in staff toilets? They’d had the latter already this morning. But Lizzie wasn’t cracking any jokes this time. Instead she just proffered a folded piece of paper and a slightly apprehensive expression.

Lizzie might have known Clare for more than a decade but she wasn’t sure how she was going to take this one. She could recall Clare’s total devastation as if it were yesterday, and sure
enough Clare stiffened as soon as she saw her ex-husband’s distinctive brown script. Lizzie scuttled off to the kitchen to give Clare a little bit of space, but returned a few moments later brandishing two chilled bottles of Fosters Ice and waited for Clare to finish.

Clare instinctively reached out for the drink and took a long swig of the ice-cold lager—unnervingly refreshing and entirely appropriate even at 12:03 p.m.—before she looked up from her letter.

Lizzie stared at her, looking for any tell-tale cracks, but there was nothing. Only six months earlier the sight of Joe’s writing would have guaranteed tears of hurt or frustration. Today she was calm.

‘He’s got a nerve, that man.’ Clare was staring at a fixed point on the horizon. Lizzie didn’t know how to take her last comment so decided not to take it at all, and instead concentrated on reading a few more letters until Clare returned from wherever it was she had just gone.

It was minutes before Clare started speaking again. Lizzie put her work down and gave her her undivided attention. She didn’t want to miss a syllable or an inflection.

‘Of course I’ll never be able to forgive him.’

‘Of course,’ Lizzie echoed. She was doing that friendship thing. Just reiterating what was being said without adding anything new. That way she wouldn’t have to do any colossal U-turns a few minutes, days, weeks, months down the line.

‘But I might just call him.’

‘Why not?’

But Clare wasn’t listening to Lizzie.

‘It’s funny…but since I ran into Ed the other week at CDH I’ve thought about Joe quite a bit. It all seems so long ago, almost another lifetime. I was such a different person. So naïve. So in love. So not aware of who I really was and what I really wanted.’

‘Mmm.’

‘It’s weird, but in a strange way now I see our divorce as the end of my childhood—my coming of age or something. Maybe
I’ll give him a call… What do you think? I suppose in a way I’m curious. It wouldn’t do us any harm to meet up, would it?’

‘As long as you feel that you’re ready and it’s on your terms I don’t see why not. Phone him. Have a chat. And if he doesn’t annoy you in the first ten seconds then suggest a drink…’

Clare paused while she reflected on the reality of meeting up with her ex-husband. Lizzie took her silence to represent doubt.

‘If it’s all too much, and too painful or awkward or difficult, you don’t have to meet him more than once. And if you tell me which night you’re going I’ll arrange to be working at home just in case you decide you need me and want to meet up for a post-drink drink or something.’

‘Thanks.’

Lizzie was secretly delighted at Clare’s new approach. While she doubted that a romantic reunion would ever be on the cards, the clearing-of-the-air-and-remaining-occasional-friends option would certainly be much better for Clare’s liver—which presently had to endure her drinking herself into oblivion on their wedding anniversary, his birthday and other significant dates from their shared past.

‘I’m absolutely gobsmacked that he wrote. It’s so…so…so…well…un-Joe.’

Lizzie had to agree. ‘Maybe it’s from an impostor?’

Clare laughed. Lizzie could be so left of field sometimes. ‘I think I will give him a call.’

Lizzie leapt to her feet and returned with the handset in seconds.

Clare shook her head. ‘Haven’t I taught you anything? I’ll think I’ll give him a call means some time in the next couple of days, not some time in the next ten minutes.’

‘Oh. Right. Course.’

‘In fact, Liz, I was going to ask you something else.’

‘Mmhm?’

‘Well…’

If Lizzie wasn’t mistaken Clare was almost being coy.

‘Well, I was actually thinking about giving Ed a call anyway.’

‘Really?’

Clare was doing her best to be offhand. She might have fooled a few people but not Lizzie, not this time.

‘Well, he was quite sweet the other week, and he’s left me a couple of messages since…’

A couple of messages and Clare hadn’t breathed a word. Lizzie was amazed. Clare had missed her vocation. She would have been a great member of the intelligence services. Secrets really were her forte.

‘I promised him supper some time and—well, I thought we could have dinner together. I’d always thought he was a bit too posh to be truly desirable, but there was definitely something there the other day…although I’m so out of practice that maybe it was just nerves.’

Lizzie laughed. ‘Just get a load of yourself. Justify, justify. Go with the flow and see what happens. Stop worrying.’

‘Well, I might.’ Clare pretended not to care and busied herself with shuffling an already fairly tidy pile of letters on the floor next to her.

‘Go on. Call him. It’s about time you had a bit of fun.’

‘I might do. Anyway, it’s just dinner.’

‘Just dinner…look, I’ll call him if you like. I owe you about forty-three favours at last count.’

‘Don’t even think about it. Anyway what would you say? No… Look, now you’re making me nervous. I knew I shouldn’t have said anything. Honestly, I’ll do it myself…’

Lizzie proffered the phone for the second time in several minutes.

‘Later. Maybe tomorrow. But you don’t think it would be a strange thing to do?’

‘What? Phone someone who’s left you a few messages and who you promised dinner to? Now, let me see…’

‘Don’t be so hard on me, Liz. You know—in terms of Ed being an old friend of Joe’s and everything.’

‘Absolutely not.’ Lizzie got to her feet and returned the handset to its base on her way to the kitchen. Clare really was a very cool customer.

chapter 31

‘B
ugger. Bugger. Bugger.’