The Last Letter from Your Lover

can you dig around a bit this afternoon? See what else you might find. We’re looking at forty, fifty years ago. A hundred will be too alienating. The editor’s keen for us to highlight the move in a way that will bring readers along with us.’
    ‘You want me to go through the archive?’
    ‘Is that a problem?’
    Not if you like sitting in dark cellars full of mildewing paper policed by dysfunctional men with Stalinist mindsets, who apparently haven’t seen daylight for thirty years. ‘Not at all,’ she says brightly. ‘I’m sure I’ll find something.’
    ‘Get a couple of workies to help you, if you like. I’ve heard there’s a couple lurking in the fashion cupboard.’
    Ellie doesn’t register the malevolent satisfaction crossing her editor’s features at the thought of sending the latest batch of Anna Wintour wannabes deep into the bowels of the newspaper. She’s busy thinking, Bugger. No mobile reception underground .
    ‘By the way, Ellie, where were you this morning?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘This morning. I wanted you to rewrite that piece about children and bereavement. Yes? Nobody seemed to know where you were.’
    ‘I was out doing an interview.’
    ‘Who with?’
    A body-language expert, Ellie thought, would have identified correctly that Melissa’s blank smile was more of a snarl.
    ‘Lawyer. Whistleblower. I was hoping to work something up on sexism in chambers.’ It’s out almost before she knows what she’s saying.
    ‘Sexism in the City. Hardly sounds groundbreaking. Make sure you’re at your desk at the right time tomorrow. Speculative interviews in your own time. Yes?’
    ‘Right.’
    ‘Good. I want a double-page spread for the first Compass Quay edition. Something along the lines of plus ça change .’ She is scribbling in her leather-backed notebook. ‘Preoccupations, ads, problems . . . Bring me a few pages later this afternoon and we’ll see what you’ve got.’
    ‘Will do.’ Ellie’s smile is the brightest and most workmanlike in the whole room as she follows the others out of the office.
    Spent today in modern day equivalent of purgatory, she types, pausing to take a sip of her wine. Newspaper archive office. You want to be grateful you only make stuff up.
    He has messaged her from his hotmail account. He calls himself Penpusher; a joke between the two of them. She curls her feet under her on the chair and waits, willing the machine to signal his response.
    You’re a terrible heathen. I love archives, the screen responds. Remind me to take you to the British Newspaper Library for our next hot date.
    She grins. You know how to show a girl a good time.
    I do my best.
    The only human librarian has given me a great wedge of loose papers. Not the most exciting bedtime reading.
    Afraid this sounds sarcastic, she follows it with a smiley face, then curses as she remembers he once wrote an essay for the Literary Review on how the smiley face represented all that was wrong with modern communication.
    That was an ironic smiley face, she adds, and stuffs her fist into her mouth .
    Hold on. Phone. The screen stills .
    Phone. His wife? He was in a hotel room in Dublin. It overlooked the water, he had told her. You would love it. What was she meant to say to that? Then bring me next time? Too demanding. I’m sure I would? Sounded almost sarcastic. Yes , she had replied, finally, and let out a long, unheard sigh.
    It’s all her own fault, her friends tell her. Unusually for her, she can’t disagree.
    She had met him at a book festival in Suffolk, sent to interview this thriller writer who had made a fortune after he had given up on more literary offerings. His name is John Armour, his hero, Dan Hobson, an almost cartoonish amalgam of old-fashioned masculine traits. She had interviewed him over lunch, expecting a rather chippy defence of the genre, perhaps a few moans about the publishing industry – she always found writers rather wearying to interview. She had expected someone paunchy, middle-aged, puddingy after years of being desk-bound. But the tall, tanned man who rose to shake her hand had been lean and freckly, resembling a weathered South African farmer. He was funny, charming, self-deprecating and attentive. He had turned the interview on her, asking her questions about herself, then told her his theories on the origin of language and how he believed communication was morphing into something dangerously flaccid and ugly.
    When the coffee arrived, she realised she