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I know what lies beneath my feet. I told you what I did, didn’t I? I can scarce remember. I’d thought it would be only temporary, a place where nobody would think to look. Trying to find what I had already found, what I picked up from the library floor that morning. I was going to destroy it all, you see. Every last thing, but then I thought perhaps you might one day have need of it to offer proof, to offer mitigation. So there it stays, beneath the floor. I can scarce think of it without such a storm of dread arising in my heart that it leaves me weak, and shivering; let alone dare to move it, to touch it .
    I think this child must be a boy, and a big one. I am quite unrecognisable, I am vast. The creature has taken over my body. He’s too big now to even move around and kick me like he did these last few months. He’s tight packed in, like the air in a balloon. How I wish he would stay there! I don’t know where I will find the strength to raise him with a pure heart, happy and carefree, when I labour under such shadows. Enough now. I am tired. Even writing a letter is enough to tire me out; and especially a letter to you, sir, when I come to know that I shall have no reply. Still I hope for it, and that tires me even more .
    Wishing this letter brings you some comfort, in the cruel place where you are ,
    H. Canning
    Again, Leah read, and reread. She read the letter a third time, but only because she did not trust herself to look up, to look at Ryan and to speak to him. How did it always come to this? She cursed inwardly. That liquid feeling, hot in the marrow of her bones, as though her resolve was an actual substance that could melt under pressure, rush off into her bloodstream and be quite lost. Ryan was not even that close to her. He was perched on the window sill opposite, and she was sitting on the edge of the bed, one hand holding back her hair as she read. He stood up so suddenly that Leah jumped.
    ‘More coffee?’ he offered, voice so casual that Leah doubted herself, doubted that he had feelings anything like her own.
    ‘No thanks.’ She didn’t look up.
    ‘Sounds like she was in a right pickle, doesn’t it?’ he asked, pouring hot water onto a fresh scattering of instant granules. ‘What do you make of it?’

    ‘I hardly know. Something dire happened. She was left to deal with the aftermath by herself, our guy buggered off somewhere, and then to the war. She thinks he knows something about what happened,’ Leah said. Now she looked up at him. His back was turned, it was safer. The long, loose shape of his spine, the broad spread of his shoulders beneath his shirt. Just flesh and skin and bone, no more than she; but still magic, somehow.
    ‘But they weren’t lovers?’ he said.
    ‘I don’t think so, no. She’d hardly call him “Dear sir” if they were, would she? Not even a hundred years ago. It’s a bit cold and formal.’
    ‘The content of the letters isn’t though, is it? Cold or formal, I mean,’ Ryan pointed out. He sat down next to her, too close, touching at thigh, hip, elbow. Leah felt a sinking inside, the pulling open of old wounds. It was an odd pain, almost satisfying; like tugging at a loose tooth, pressing a bruise. A bruise that went right the way through. She remembered his treachery, the flying apart of everything she thought she knew.
    ‘It is and then it isn’t. Very odd. It’s as though she’s trying to be proper about it all, but there’s no way to reconcile what she needs to say with that. And the way she’s so vague – it’s almost like she half expected someone else to get hold of the letters and read them, and she didn’t want to give too much away …’ Leah trailed off. Ryan had tucked her hair behind her ear for her, left his fingers to brush her cheek with a touch softer than snowflakes. Mutely, she met his eye.
    ‘So you’ll look into it then? Try to find out who he was?’ Ryan said. Leah nodded. ‘It’s like old times, watching you get