Page 29 of The Love Letter

‘Night.’

Ian left, and Simon sighed, rubbing his face with his hands. Admittedly, the conversation had not been much of a surprise. He’d already been aware that there was something odd about Joanna’s burglary. Yesterday, at lunchtime, he’d gone to the car pool, smiled sweetly at the receptionist and handed her the letters of the number plate he’d spotted outside Joanna’s flat the night before.

‘Pranged it, I’m afraid. Only slightly, but it’s going to need some minor repairs, although it’s nothing urgent.’

‘Okay.’ The receptionist looked up the registration number on her computer. ‘There we are. Grey Rover, yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Right, I’ll just get you a form. Fill it in and bring it back to me, then we’ll process it.’

‘Will do. Thanks a lot.’

The fact he’d known the number plate belonged to one of their fleet of cars was sheer coincidence. His own work car was N041 JMR. The number he’d seen on Wednesday night was N042 JMR. The chances were that the car pool had bought in quantity at the same time and that the number plates had been in numerical order.

Simon stared at his computer screen blankly, and decided to go home. Pulling on his coat, he waved a goodbye to the stragglers in the office who hadn’t gone to the Lord George, then took the lift down and exited Thames House through a side door. Deciding to take a stroll down the river before heading back to the flat, he looked up at the austere grey building, many of the office windows lit up as agents completed paperwork. Long ago, he’d lost any guilt about lying to his friends and family about his job. Only Joanna took any interest in his work, and he made sure to make his tales of working at Whitehall as dreary as possible to dissuade her from asking further questions.

Given what Jenkins had said, it would no longer be so easy to put her off the scent. If this was now being handled by his department, he knew whatever it was Joanna had stumbled on was major.

And equally, that she was in danger as long as she had that letter.

As Joanna stirred the bolognese sauce on Simon’s hob, she watched the snow fall in fat white flakes from the panoramic window of his flat. She remembered how, when she was a child up on the moors, the farmers had dreaded the snow, knowing it would mean long, hard nights rounding up the flocks of sheep and taking them to the safety of the barns, then the sad job of digging out those they’d missed a couple of days later. For Joanna, snow had meant fun and no school, sometimes for days, until the narrow lanes around her farmhouse had been ploughed and were once more passable. Tonight, she wished she was once again snuggled up in her cosy attic bedroom, safe and untroubled by adult pressures.

When she had woken up on the morning after the burglary, Simon had insisted on calling Alec at the newspaper before he left for work. He had explained about the break-in as Joanna sat wrapped up in the duvet on the sofa bed, waiting for Alec to insist she turn up for work at the usual time. Instead, Simon had put down the receiver and said that Alec had been very sympathetic. He had even suggested that Joanna take the further three days that were owing to her from before Christmas, and use them to recover from the shock. And also set about the practical side of things, such as insurance, and the massive cleaning-up operation to make the flat habitable again. A relieved Joanna had spent the rest of the day recuperating in bed.

This morning, Simon had sat down on the sofa bed and pulled the duvet cover off her.

‘You sure you don’t want to go home for a few days to your mum and dad?’ he’d asked.

She’d groaned and rolled over. ‘No, I’m fine here. Sorry I’ve been moping.’

‘You’ve got every right to feel sorry for yourself, Jo, I just want to help you out. Going away might help.’

‘No, if I don’t go back to the flat today, it’ll just haunt me.’ She’d sighed. ‘It’s like falling off a horse. You have to get straight back on, or else you never do.’

The flat had looked no better in the light of day, when she’d eventually forced herself to walk down the hill after Simon had left for work. The police had given her the all-clear, and she had passed on their report for the insurance claim. Then she’d steeled herself for the task, beginning in the kitchen, and setting to work on the stinking mess covering the floor. By lunchtime, the kitchen was back to normal – minus the crockery. The bathroom was gleaming and the sitting room had everything broken stacked neatly on the slashed sofa, waiting for the insurance assessor. To her surprise, the telephone engineer had turned up without her even contacting the company, and had rewired the line where it had been brutally ripped out of the wall.

Feeling too exhausted and miserable to contemplate the bedroom, Joanna had packed some clothes into a holdall. Simon had said he was happy for her to stay with him for as long as she felt she wanted to. And for now, she did. As she had reached down to stuff her underwear back into a drawer, Joanna had noticed something gleaming on the carpet, half hidden by a pair of jeans that had been wrenched from the wardrobe. She’d picked it up and seen it was a slim, gold fountain pen. On its side were the engraved initialsI. C. S.

‘Some classy kind of a thief,’ she’d muttered. Regretting having touched it and possibly disturbed the fingerprints, she’d wrapped it in tissue paper and carefully tucked it into her rucksack to hand on to the police.

Hearing the key in the lock, she poured some wine into a glass.

‘Hi!’ Simon walked through the door and Joanna thought how handsome he looked in his immaculate grey suit, shirt and tie.

‘Hi. Glass of wine?’

‘Thanks,’ he said as she handed it to him. ‘Blimey, are you sure you’re okay? You? Cooking?’ he laughed.

‘Only spag bol, I’m afraid. I’m not even going to start competing with you.’

‘How are you?’ he asked, removing his coat.

‘Okay. I went to the flat today . . .’

‘Oh, Joanna, not on your own!’

‘I know, but I had to sort things out for the insurance claim. And I actually feel much better having cleared it up now. Most of the mess was peripheral. Besides –’ Joanna grinned and licked the wooden spoon – ‘at least I can get a new comfy sofa out of all this.’