Maxines Letter

The inspiration for this story was a couple I once observed in a staff canteen!........

It was a letter Maxine had no wish to open. It dropped through the letter box while she was having her breakfast, and when she sat down to her lunch at midday it was on the sitting room mantelpiece leaning against one of her mothers silver plated flower vases, still unopened.

“There’s a letter for you,” her mother stated placing a plate of beans on toast onto the kitchen dining table.

“Yes, I know,” Maxine replied.

Elsie Prentiss sniffed loudly as if trying to clear an unwelcome smell from her nostrils. “ I’d say it’s from that Derek fellow,” she observed.

Maxine made no reply, and lowered her head to avoid meeting her mothers eye. Instead she shook both salt and pepper onto her dinner; shook far more than she had intended of either.

From her position beside the kitchen sink, Elsie finally asked, “ Well, are you going to open it, or not?”

Maxine pulled a face at the taste in her mouth, stood up and, crossing to the sink, filled a glass with water from the cold tap. She took a large mouthful and swallowed it staring out of the window into the back garden.

“Probably, but not now…. later.”

At teatime her mother switched off the six o clock news on the radio and said, “ If that letter’s still unopened when we go to bed I’m chucking it onto the fire. I’m not having it staring at me from the mantelpiece all tomorrow, and you wandering about the house pretending to ignore it.”

“If it’s bothering you,” Maxine muttered, “ Open it yourself.”

“ I’ll do no such thing,” Elsie exclaimed. “ It’s addressed to you, and it’s for you to open it.”

“ Oh for heavens sake it’s just a bloody letter, that’s all it is!”

“There’s no need for you to start swearing. It’s not my fault he’s dumped you is it? I‘ve never even met the fellow.”

Maxine marched off into the sitting room and stood by the mantelpiece. It was such an awful word she thought, ‘dumped.’ Like you were a piece of life’s furniture, once useful and treasured, but now neither needed nor wanted. The coal fire burning in the grate started to scorch her legs.

She took down the white envelope with Derek’s distinctive scrawl across the front, and stared at it. She didn’t really want to open it, didn’t want to read what he had written, or run the risk of empathising with whatever pain it had caused him to write it. She had already endured enough of that to last her a lifetime; last both of them in fact. Perhaps straight into the fire was the best place for it.

But then, she reflected, surely her pain entitled her to some explanation, no matter how inadequate or pathetic? She wondered if, in not opening it, she was not simply ‘dumping’ him in return?

“This wont do,” she snorted, and tore open the envelope.

**********************************************

It was on Maxines first day working at Shaws Department Store that she and Derek met. She was adjusting a mannequins underwear when his opening remark, “ I need to get your number,” brought a smile to her face, and a blush to his.

“ Well, it’s not the most original line I’ve heard, but I suppose, in the absence of anything else, it will have to do.”

His blush deepened making him seem to Maxine even more attractive. He was, as far as she could judge, in his middle to late thirties. Tall with dark hair beginning to grey at the temples, and with the clearest blue eyes she had ever seen in a man.

Maxine believed that you could judge a lot about a man from the colour of his eyes, and most especially by the way his eyes engaged with yours. Blue, she believed , usually signified integrity and a straightforward character. If his eyes only locked momentarily with yours before swivelling away to the side, that indicated that he couldn’t be trusted. On both counts Derek passed, and when, despite his embarrassment, he smiled with his eyes, Maxine knew she was going to like him.

“ I meant I need your National Insurance number. I’m from Wages and Salaries.”

She stepped off the stand she was working on and found she came up to his shoulder. Tall, at five feet nine inches, there weren’t that many men she felt comfortable standing next to. Standing quite close to either, without any sense of her space being invaded.

“ I’m Derek,” he said and waited, his initial blush beginning to fade.

“And I’m Maxine, but then you already know that don’t you?”

His smile widened even further and she thought, ‘You really are bloody gorgeous!’

“ I know quite a lot actually from the application form you filled up when you started with us yesterday, but I still need to make sure we have all your details correct before we can pay you. Especially I need to get your Insurance number which you didn’t have with you yesterday. It’s that rather than your telephone number that I need.”

“ Pity,” she said and suddenly felt as if he was looking into her soul. Why on earth had she said that? She wasn’t usually this forward.

“It needn’t be for long,” he said, and it was her turn to blush.

She found out later that he was already married, but without any children.

“Wifes a bit of a mystery though.” Beryl one of her new colleagues in Ladies Hosiery and Underwear informed her. “ He never mentions her, never brings her to staff do’s or anything like that. We think it’s probably not a happy union. They go on holidays each year, but they never seem to go out that much in the evenings, or at weekends… and he seems to do all the shopping. He’s probably really hen pecked and under her thumb at home. Sad really!”

‘Intriguing more like,’ Maxine thought and decided, subsequently, to discount the fact that the steadiness of his gaze had little to do with his character. In fact, without his glasses, he was quite short sighted!

****************************************

The first day in any staff canteen can be awkward. Everyone else already has their circle of fellow diners, friends and colleagues. Where do you, the newcomer, fit in? Is it wise to just sit yourself down anywhere uninvited? You might be sitting in somebody’s long established seat and become a source of annoyance and irritation on your very first day.

In the absence of any invitation from her fellow assistants in Ladies Hosiery and Underwear to sit with them, Maxine chose to sit alone at a vacant table for two near the door, but she didn’t remain alone for very long. Derek was suddenly standing beside the table smiling down at her. Now he was wearing dark horn rimmed glasses. He looked like one of her old teachers from school, or a wages clerk… which was, of course, what he was.

“Would you mind if I joined you?” he asked, and she indicated the empty chair facing her.

“ Not at all… feel free,… I’d like that…” Then in case she sounded too enthusiastic on such a short acquaintance, she added “ I’m going to be going out in a few minutes anyway. Things I need to get around town that I forgot to get this morning.”

In fact she was still sitting there talking to him when their dinner break finished. He was so easy to talk to, and so engaging that she talked as if they had known each other for years, and were just catching up after a long separation. She only realised later on in the afternoon that she had revealed her whole life history, even told him about the recent loss of her father to cancer. How that loss had impacted on her mother and herself.

“ Me being the only child probably hasn’t helped,“ she had mused. “If I’d had a brother or sister to help take the load perhaps things would now be different…. But then again… maybe not.“

In return he had told her very little about himself other than the fact that he had worked at Shaws ever since leaving school. She admitted almost flippantly that this was her fifth job in as many years.

His blue eyes twinkled behind his glasses.” I noticed that on your C.V. and it made me wonder which are you then, a sprinter, or a butterfly?”

She laughed. “ A butterfly I guess. It’s not that I lack staying power, in fact I can be quite determined sometimes, but I’m always on the lookout for the next opportunity. I like trying new things and I like the feeling of moving on to the next thing. I’m still too young to feel the need to settle for the status quo. In fact my mum always claims that I don’t do domestic!”

She would wonder afterwards if that was when he decided she was available.

The following day, when she walked into the canteen, he was already at the same table, and smiled up at her. It seemed the most natural thing in the world, once she had collected her lunch from the counter, to occupy the seat facing him. And every day after that they sat together. Lunch breaks became the highlight of her day, They were the period when she felt most alive in the job. Only later did it occur to her that other staff members must have noticed, might even have commented on their growing and obvious friendship. Had the change from friendship to intimacy been obvious to everyone else?

Afterwards Beryl made a remark that sealed Maxines subsequent course of action. “ We did notice, and we did think about saying something…. Warning you, but you always gave the impression of being so confident, so able to take care of yourself…. a bit aloof really. We just assumed you knew what you were doing.”

If only she had!

Eventually she asked him, “ What’s your wife’s name? I’ve noticed you aren’t wearing a ring, but I do know that you’re married.”

He stared at her for almost a minute, his eyes suddenly pained and wary, as if her question had brought them to a crossroads from which there might be no going back

“ Sylvia… Her name is Sylvia.” He was leaning forward, and speaking quietly as if he didn’t want anyone else overhearing what he was saying. “She’s my wife… but in many important ways no longer my wife …. if you can understand what I mean.”

His gaze had never wavered, but the hurt in his voice made Maxines heart lurch and, because she wanted Derek to realise she could understand, even when she didn’t, she nodded, reached across the table, and rested her hand over his.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, “ I wont ask anything more.”

The first time they ‘went out’ together it was simply for a coffee and a sandwich after work. He seemed not to want to leave her and return to whatever sort of homelife he shared with Sylvia, a world that he inhabited, but had clearly indicated he did not want to burden Maxine with. When they parted on the High Street she gave him a hug, and a kiss on the cheek.

Partings on following evenings were marked by embraces and kisses more intimate and intense. The following Sunday she agreed they could meet and spend the whole afternoon together. She sensed that their relationship was racing forwards, but its very speed exhilarated her.

It was a warm summers afternoon and, at his suggestion, they left the city centre and spent it walking in one of the suburban parks. They found a tea room where he insisted on buying her the most expensive cream tea on the menu, and then holding hands as they joined other couples and families beside the boating lake. It was there, watching young people in rowing boats, that she admitted first to herself, and then out loud to him, that she was in love.

He didn’t turn away as he might have done. He could have ended it there but instead he took both her hands into his and again looked her straight in the eye.

“ Then I’m blessed,” he murmured. “ At long last I feel that my life is blessed, but…”

She thought she knew what was coming, what he was going to say and quickly released her hand from his grasp and placed it over his lips.

“ No Derek, don’t say it please. Don’t ruin this moment for me. I want nothing from you except that you know how I feel, what is in my heart. What’s the old cliché they use in books?… No strings? …Let’s just leave it at that.”

And after a moments silence, a silence he should have broken, he simply nodded his head in agreement. Damn him!

*************************************

Derek insisted that the first time they had sex together would have to be special. She had told him that she was still a virgin. Odd fumblings and heavy petting in the past, but never with anyone who really mattered. Never with anyone like Derek, ... and never full intercourse. This idea seemed to please him.

He promised to be gentle, promised not to rush her into anything, but he asserted that her being a virgin meant that their first time must be something special, something she would never forget and, more importantly, never regret. She was, he told her, the most precious thing in his life. Her happiness was the only thing he cared about.

She had thought of Sylvia as he said this but quickly dismissed thoughts of his wife from her mind. After all hadn’t he already told her that whatever sort of wife Sylvia been to him in the past she wasn’t anymore?

Maxine did tell her mother. At least she told her she had met somebody special at work, and admitted that yes. this might be the ‘real thing’.

They were sitting together in the sitting room watching one of her fathers favourite detective series on the television. Continuing to watch it together somehow made them both feel that Tom Prentiss, by dying, had not left them completely. Her mother had remarked on how distracted Maxine had become of late.

“ You look happy enough but it’s almost as if you’re not really with us.. with me anymore.”

The word ‘me’ was emphasised as if to remind her that since her fathers passing, she, Maxine, had become her mothers only remaining focus in life. Those few months less than a year earlier when they had nursed Tom Prentiss through the final stages of his cancer had forged a bond between them that went deeper than the usual mother/daughter relationship. Sometimes, lately, Maxine had thought it went too deep.

Now Elsie looked at her with an expression at once curious and fearful. “What’s his name then… this special person?”

Maxine had been bursting for almost a week, ever since her afternoon in the park with Derek, to tell somebody about her feelings, but her mothers harsh tone made her stomach sink. She suddenly regretted admitting as much as she had. Why, she wondered, did becoming a widow rob you of the ability to take pleasure in anybody else’s happiness?

“ Derek,” she murmured staring at the television, “ His name is Derek.” She repeated his name because simply saying it out loud made her feel warm, even cherished, but Elsie had turned on the sofa to face her with an accusing expression on her face.

“ And does he have a second name? This Derek person who has you walking around the place with your head so much up in the clouds that you’ve barely spoken a sensible word to me all week?”

“ Of course he does…. But if you’re going to be awkward about me having a male friend then his first name will suffice for the present.”

Elsie, who was holding the remote control, switched off the television.

“I’m not being awkward, “ she insisted, “ But I am your mother and I’m obviously interested to know what you are doing. We didn’t used to have secrets like this before.”

Maxine tried to keep the rising sense of irritation out of her voice. “ And we haven’t any secrets now,” she asserted, "Really we haven’t.”

But then she thought, ‘Apart from the fact that Derek is a married man of course, with a wife he goes home to every evening.’ She almost added out loud, ‘But at almost twenty years of age surely I‘ve a right to live my life as I want to! Perhaps even have a few secrets of my own?’

Instead she muttered “What I’m trying to do at the moment is watch this television programme. Daddy never liked being interrupted while he was watching it and I want to know how it all ends. Now please, switch it back on before we miss something important.”

Her mother fumbled with the remote control, twice hitting the wrong channel button before finding the right programme. They watched it together in silence until the end but, in neither case, with any great attention. As they were turning off the lights, before going upstairs to their bedrooms, Elsie murmured softly,

“What’s important to me Maxine is that you are happy.”

“And I am mummy… for the first time in ages I am really happy, and I want you to be happy for me…. Can’t you at least manage that much?”

Realising that Elsie was crying Maxine enclosed the smaller woman in her arms. Since Tom’s passing her mother had even seemed to shrink physically as if all she wanted to do was disappear. The tiny thin shoulders shook for a moment and then stopped.

“ I’ll try too, “ Elsie muttered. “ But if this Derek person ever does anything to hurt you be sure and let me know… and I’ll hit him such a clatter he’ll wish you‘d never met!”

*****************************************

Later. when regret might have been considered only right and proper, Maxine had to admit that Derek had kept his word about making their first time really special.

Unlike sales staff at Shaws, those employed in Wages and Salaries did not have to work shifts that included weekend work. When he explained that Sylvia would be visiting friends over one weekend, Maxine swapped her Thursday afternoon off with Beryl’s Saturday afternoon off so they could spend almost the entire weekend together.

“ I’ll have to be back by Sunday evening when Sylvia gets home” Derek explained, “ But I’m telling her I’m attending an accountants seminar in Scarborough. She wont question that, or try to contact me at home. She‘ll be too busy sharing all the gossip with her friends.”

Maxine’s heart lifted. “ And where will we be?” she asked.

Whenever she had imagined them being together for a weekend she had assumed it would probably mean them being at his house, but instead he tapped the end of his nose.

“ That would be telling“ he whispered, “ But trust me, it wont be anywhere near Scarborough. It wont be anywhere that will have you thinking about Sylvia every time you turn around either. It will be somewhere which will be ours alone… our special place.” Then, almost as an afterthought he asked, “ What will you tell your mother?”

“ Oh I’ll tell her I’m spending the weekend with a friend from work. That way I wont have to answer any of her questions with any lies.”

Derek frowned. “ I wish I didn’t have to lie either, but its better Sylvia doesn’t know the truth …for the moment at least.”

Maxine’s heart leaped for a second time. Was he hinting that one day he might….?

‘No,’ she thought, ‘ I mustn’t think that far ahead.’

Actually what Elsie did ask, rather pointedly, was “ Do I need to enquire whether you and this friend from work will be sharing the same bedroom?”

“ No,” Maxine replied and left it at that. Her mother could apply that denial to whichever part of her question she liked, but ‘At least,’ Maxine thought, ‘ I’ve avoided lying.’.

He collected her from work at midday on the Saturday and they drove out of the city following the signs for Birmingham. Maxine closed her eyes and sank into the warmth and intimacy of being in his car, sharing his space, feeling his warmth.

“ Scarborough is to the north,” she murmured dreamily, “ But I trust you implicitly!”

Returning home on the Sunday afternoon nothing would have convinced her that her trust was misplaced. The whole weekend had been so wonderful, so perfect.

The hotel was set in acres of parkland and had pepper pot roofed towers, warm grey walls covered with wisteria, and a view over fields and hedgerows towards a misty lake and blue hills fading into the distance. It was like something out of a romantic novel. Their bedroom had a balcony and old style antique furniture and a four poster bed. They had dined by candlelight on their first evening at a window table that overlooked a terrace decked with fairy lights. Derek had even arranged for them to have breakfast in their room the following morning.

He had been gentleness and patience personified as they had sex for the first time in the four poster bed surrounded by white lace curtains. He had shushed her fears that she might have disappointed him by being so tense and inexperienced. When she awoke in the early morning and looked across at him lying beside her he had already been awake. He had taken her then a second time, and on this occasion she had achieved a climax simultaneous with his. They had remained in bed until it was time to vacate the room and after lunch in the restaurant they had begun a leisurely drive home. When he dropped her off in the town she had thanked him knowing that, of necessity, future trysts could not be as romantic as this their first..

******************************

As spring became summer and the fine weather typically gave way to rain and humidity Maxine told him that her mother knew she was seeing somebody, and wanted to meet him. She was startled to see how worried he looked.

“ You mean she knows about us?”

“ She knows I’m seeing somebody from work, she even knows your name,… well your first name anyway, but I haven’t told her anything about your situation because, to be frank, I don’t know that much about it myself”

“For heavens sake Maxine,” he protested, “ We have to be careful. I’ve kept my life with Sylvia separate from all this, and I thought you were doing the same. I can‘t possibly meet your mother!”

“Well I’m sorry but I can’t compartmentalise my life to that extent. I’ve never had to keep secrets from her before and I’m finding it difficult. I’m not an accountant like y ou. I can’t divide my life into separate little boxes the way you seem able to, and I haven’t been able to relegate our relationship to the level of ‘all this!’”

“ I didn’t mean it like that, but really I can’t just shake hands with your mother and then pretend that I’m not married, that I don’t have a wife somewhere.”

She was angry now, but angry for reasons she couldn’t immediately identify. “ You seem well able to pretend she doesn’t exist when we’re in bed together!”

The sudden pained look in his eyes hit her hard.

“Ohhh shit Derek, I’m sorry. That was unforgivable.. I should never have said that to you…..”

“ That’s alright… really… I deserve it.”

“ No you don’t. You’ve never tried to pretend anything with me and you don’t deserve to have me accuse you of deceit like that. Please tell me you forgive me..”

He looked away. “ There’s nothing to forgive, “ he muttered but she knew there was. Like a sour flavour in a favourite sweet you can’t quite identify, the tastelessness of her outburst lingered on afterwards. It even began to linger in those few private times together they managed to steal.

Later she realised that even thinking of their moments of passion as something ‘stolen’ was probably an indication that common sense and reality were beginning to reassert themselves. For the moment though she decided that her increased feelings of vulnerability sprang from the prospect of them being separated for three weeks in the summer holidays.

Her service at Shaw’s only entitled her to a weeks vacation. but Derek would be on holiday for three weeks. What made it worse was that he would be away from home for all of those three weeks. Away with Sylvia.

“ We always go away together for the three weeks,” he explained then added with an ironic shrug, . “ It’s about the only normal married thing we do.”

Did he mean they would….? ‘ Oh God no, don’t go there!’ she thought.

Out loud she cried “ But I wont see you for a whole three weeks!. I wont even see you at work, What will I do? It isn‘t fair. It‘s….it’s cruel!”

She couldn‘t help it but, for Maxine at least, Sylvia had suddenly become an issue. an unwelcome ogre occupying a corner at her own special party. It was silly of course. Maxine didn’t even know what the woman looked like. Was she blond, brunette? Tall, small; fat, thin? Did she wear glass’s?

Maxine thought she probably did. Strong dominant women always wore glass’s. They had their hair fastened up into a tight bun to emphasise their masculinity, and Maxine assumed that Sylvia was the dominant partner in that particular marriage. How else could she have so effectively emasculated Derek’s independence?

What Beryl had suggested must be true. He seemed totally under Sylvia’s thumb, almost pathologically afraid of doing anything that might upset her. Maxine knew that she couldn’t ask Derek any of the questions that were now keeping her awake at night, but she also knew that if their relationship was to have any future, she had to get the answers.

“Where are you going for this holiday” she asked him. “ At least tell me that much so that I can imagine you while you’re away.”

He seemed reluctant even to tell her that much but finally admitted that they were going to Eastbourne. “We always go there, to the same hotel. Sylvia likes it there. Now stop torturing yourself. It’ll be over before you know it and then everything will be as it was before.”

Maxine couldn’t imagine how switching her feelings off could ever mean things would be as they were before but, for the first week, she tried.

She avoided the staff canteen, going out to a nearby café for lunch each day, and in the evenings at home she redecorated her bedroom. She even helped her mother cut back the lawns and tidy up the flower beds which had become overgrown and weed infested during her fathers illness, but, by the second week, she was running out of distractions, and prowling the house like a caged animal.

“Oh for heavens sake Maxine, “ Elsie exclaimed, “ If you know where he’s gone on his holiday why don’t you just go and see if you can find him!”

The idea had occurred to her before but once her mother had tacitly given it her approval she made her decision.

“ Sunday,” she announced, “ I‘ll get the train on Sunday.”

But to where? Eastbourne yes, but where in Eastbourne? Which hotel would he be in? She spent an entire lunch break raiding travel agents for lists of hotels in Eastbourne, and almost two full evenings on the telephone ringing receptions, and asking in a subdued tone, so that her mother would not overhear, if she could be connected to Derek and Sylvia Fraser’s room. On the Friday evening she struck lucky.

“ But I’m afraid Mr and Mrs Fraser are out for the evening,” the voice at the other end of the line informed her. A male voice, very cultured and refined, almost public school. She could imagine him standing there consulting his registers, perhaps playing with his pen the way Derek did sometimes when he was thinking, or adding up columns of figures. “ Can I give them a message when they return? Tell them who is calling?”

“No, “ Maxine exclaimed loudly feeling as if the telephone in her hand had suddenly become red hot. “ No, no there’s no need… It’s not at all important.” And she dropped the telephone back onto the rest hoping it would sound as if she had been suddenly cut off. It bounced off the rest and down onto the floor with a clatter.

“Anything the matter?” her mother called through from the sitting room.

“ No.. no.. nothing at all,” Maxine gasped fumbling to replace it onto the hall table. “Everything’s fine.”

‘What am I saying?’ she thought. “ Of course something’s the matter. Nothing’s fine. The man I love is out on the town with his bloody wife and I don’t know what she’s going to make him do when they get back …. And I‘ve just told some ponce of a receptionist that it‘s not important!”

Of course it was important. Important for her to learn what sort of a woman she was up against in this fight for Derek’s attention. Because, in her mind, that was what it had become; a fight. If necessary a fight to the bloody finish. But equally important was retaining Derek’s trust. He mustn’t ever know that she had been checking up on him and was about to follow him.

She arrived in Eastbourne just after lunch and went immediately to the hotel which stood in Edwardian splendour on the promenade facing out towards the sea. For a while she sat in a shelter on the promenade staring across at the white marble entrance porch with two pillars on either side. She half hoped that Derek and 'she' might appear. ( Sylvia, she had decided, would henceforth only ever be thought of as ‘her,’ or ‘ she,’ never as a person with an actual name!)

It started raining, quite heavily and she decided that if they were indoors they were unlikely to emerge. On an impulse she decided to take one further chance. No point, having got this far, just turning around and going home.

She put up her umbrella, crossed the promenade and went down the nearest side street. She quickly located a newsagents, went inside and bought herself a broadsheet newspaper, one large enough to hide behind if she needed to. Then she returned to the hotel entrance. By now it was raining heavily and. with her heart beating so fast she thought she might actually faint. she went through the revolving door into the reception area.

She lowered the umbrella, gave it a shake on the tiled area just inside the door and then looked up. She noticed the young receptionist at the desk dealing with one of the guests, and turning to her left noticed the entrance into the hotel bar. She would wait in there before deciding what else to do.... what else she could do!

The reason she hadn’t immediately recognised Derek standing at the desk with his back to her, and talking to the receptionist, was because of the woman accompanying him.

For a moment Maxine had been rooted to the floor, her mind numb, staring at the woman. She, for Maxine continued to think of Derek’s wife as a ‘she’, looked back at her, and for a moment their eyes had locked. Then ‘she’ had smiled.

Maxine lurched sideways, turned, and without raising the newspaper at all walked in a daze into the bar. Sunday afternoon and the place was full. Well it was raining outside… of course it was full.!! Why wouldn't it be full? Her mind in a whirl she managed to find a stool by the wall and drop onto it. She wanted to be sick. Scream.

‘Please God,’ she thought, ‘Don’t let me faint. Not yet. Not till I can get out of here!’

She dropped her umbrella onto the floor, fumbled to pick it up and then lean it against the flock wallpaper beside her. Surely everyone in the bar was staring at her, realising what a fool she was making of herself Then, fearful that ‘they’ might come into the bar, she opened the paper and held it up in front of her face. Used it to hide the tears that were already stinging her eyes and starting to streak down her cheeks.

It wasn’t that ‘she’ was especially beautiful, although she wasn’t ugly either. Blond hair, short and wavy, blue eyes and no glasses. Nor was it the way ‘she’ had been holding onto Derek’s hand as he leaned across the desk to study something the receptionist was showing him. It wasn’t even the warm, open smile so indicative of a friendly trusting disposition.

“ She’s a cripple,” Maxine heard herself gasping aloud, almost choking on the words. “ She’s in a bloody wheelchair for Chrissake!”

********************************************

‘My Darling Maxine.’ the letter began ‘ I assume I am still allowed to call you my darling…’

She thought, ‘You assume too much Derek. I’m no longer your darling, or anything anywhere near it.’

She moved away from the fireplace to sit down on the sofa and read the rest of it, two sides of a single sheet of paper.

‘ You really know how to hurt a soul don’t you?’ the letter continued. ‘Not a word of explanation, not even a note saying goodbye. Surely Maxine after all we have meant to each other, all those times you assured me you would love me… always love me…. surely I’m entitled to something more than this unfeeling silence?’

‘ And what about my feelings?’ she wondered.

‘ I asked Beryl did she know why you had left Shaw’s so suddenly, barely even working a full weeks notice, and she told me that you had arrived in to work on the Monday really distressed but unwilling to explain anything. All you had said was that you had to leave quickly. As she put it, ‘ Get away from this place and all its associations.’ I have to assume, in the absence of any word from you, that the association you were referring to is me.

She did say something about you collecting brochures about Eastbourne, and I think I know what has happened. I’ve checked with reception at the hotel and they tell me that someone telephoned to check whether we were there or not, and Sylvia told me about a young woman behaving very strangely in the hotel lobby. The woman she described to me sounded like you. She’s used to people giving her second glances because of her situation, but not the look of horror she was treated to on this occasion. If it was you Maxine following me, and then glaring at poor Sylvia in that terrible way, then I am truly shocked. How could you be so cruel after I have made such efforts to protect you from the truth?’

Maxine got up from the sofa suddenly, her heart racing, her anger rising like an irresistible tide.

“ Me cruel?” she demanded out loud. “ For pity’s sake Derek get real! You’re the one who’se been cheating on poor Sylvia. But then, of course, you don’t do ‘real’ do you?”

She turned the letter over in her hand.

‘ If it was you Maxine,’ it continued, ‘ Then you know now why I am unable to let my feelings for you override my responsibilities for Sylvia. But you must also know that my feelings… no darling Maxine, my LOVE for you is the one real thing in my life.’

“ No, you miserable creep,” Maxine muttered, “ What’s real in all this is the fact that poor crippled Sylvia clearly loves you, and it’s not because being in a wheelchair means she has to rely on you either. Not like the way Daddy had to rely on me sometimes. I saw the way she was looking up at you, the way she was holding your hand and I remembered the way Daddy looked at me when I had to clean him up. The poor woman adores you the way I thought I adored you. And that means she‘s just as deluded about you as I was.”

‘ I considered telephoning you,’ the letter ended, ‘ But I shall restrict my efforts at reconciliation to this one letter. I shall not invade your privacy in the way you attempted to invade mine., but I do beg you to reconsider what we have shared and might still share in the future if you wish it so. You can always contact me at work, but if I don’t hear from you then I shall accept that the hurt you have caused me is intended to be terminal for our relationship.’

He signed himself simply ‘ Your friend, Derek.’ No crosses, no mention, in the end, of love.

Maxine stared at the scrawled signature and felt its cold finality. Felt it with a rising tide of relief.

“Everything okay?” Elsie asked.

Maxine nodded. She hadn’t realised that her mother had come into the sitting room and was standing beside her.

“ I heard you talking out loud, and you seemed upset.”

“ No mum, I’m alright,”

She let the single sheet of notepaper slip from her fingers and flutter down into the flames licking upwards in the grate. It darkened, then curled at the edges as Derek’s handwriting slowly faded into burnt ashes.

“It was from that Derek person then?” Elsie murmured, and rested a sympathetic hand on her daughters arm.

Maxine nodded. “ Derek nobody,” she muttered, and, turning back to the sofa, switched on the television.

THE END.