The Love She Left Behind by Amanda Coe Page B

humble, less optimistic of her gratifying his request than of her fetching ketchup for his shepherd’s pie.
    â€˜No,’ Mia told him, still relishing the view. In her experience, knowing what you wanted was half the battle. As her dad said, it sorted the men from the boys. Plan A, and plan B. Leaving the button as it was, she went to get the ketchup.
    Â 
    From the Daily Telegraph
    Letter to the Editor
    April 12, 1982
    Sir,
    While I pride myself on a certain acumen, and certainly subscribe to a view of history as the account of mankind’s doom to ignorant repetition, I would have to be nothing short of psychic to have written ‘a clumsily abstract and frequently obscene leftist attack on the Falklands conflict’. My play had its first performance at the National Theatre on April 9 th , a week after the first shots were exchanged in the South Atlantic. Does your critic have any idea of how a play is written, rehearsed and produced?
    Yours,
Patrick Conway
Author, ‘Bloody Empire’
Cobham Gardens
London N8
    Â 
    From The Times
    Letter to the Editor
    May 2, 1982
    Sir,
    Your correspondent E. Jarrett (Letters, April 30 th ) may be interested to know that I have never been a member of the Communist Party, nor of the Socialist Workers Party, Labour Party, Conservatives, Liberals or any other political party. I do not join parties. As my wife will corroborate, I seldom even attend them.
    Respectfully,
P. Conway
Author, ‘Bloody Empire’
London N8
    Â 
    O BVIOUSLY, MIA KNEW Nigel wanted to have sex with her; men did. Men in shops, boys at uni, Jonathon, blokes in clubs, friends’ dads. But she could tell that he wasn’t the kind of man to make it a problem, so when Patrick grumbled about Nigel wanting to pay another visit, she realised he must have some reason more compelling than her. He was a kind of lawyer—trademarks, apparently, although she only knew that from googling. Patrick had no idea what he really did, because he had no interest in Nigel. The firm’s website, as much as Nigel’s demeanour and the clothes he wore, confirmed to Mia that he was worth keeping on side. She suspected that this visit might have something to do with the legal documents she had found in Patrick’s desk, still folded and unexamined—documents to do with the house, from what she understood, as well as others concerning his play.
    â€˜Does he want to stay here? I can get a room ready.’
    Patrick snorted and said they weren’t a bloody hotel. In any case, Nigel was going to bring his family down with him, and he wouldn’t take the bloody liberty. Mia was a little deflated to hear this; she would have enjoyed the preparations. One of her current reveries was in fact the conversion of the house into a boutique hotel. They could offer seven large bedrooms, perhaps centred around a theatrical theme, given Patrick’s background. Shakespeare was obviously naff, and geographically wrong. Maybe themes were naff in themselves, as at weddings? In any case, there would have to be bathrooms installed. She had had to park the idea for now, but it was definitely one for the future.
    In the weeks since the deadline for Mia’s return to Newcastle had passed, Jonathon had sent an escalating run of emails, wondering what had happened to her. Mia hadn’t replied to any of them. Responding to the one missed call from him on her mobile (no message, typically craven), Mia had simply texted: ‘Not returning. Will msg. Mia.’ She hadn’t messaged. There had been another missed call, then a bewildered but still official email in which Jonathon had included the email address of the university counselling service and cc’d both the chief counsellor and the head of humanities. Since then, Mia had severed her ties with the university by way of actual, printed-out letters, none of them addressed to Jonathon.
    Throughout this time Patrick looked, but he neither touched